Lizzy's rise to greatness

[mzprox]

I have sent a message to Maya that they should check their inbox. I believe that it's too late for inca to start researching feudalism so I had the idea that I will try to convince maya to give elephants to Inca so they could build warelephants.

[Dinner]

That will be nice until they build pikemen. Still, if they hide them out of view and if RB doesn't see them with a spy (a big if) then I guess it is the best they can really hope for. I still think we should try to grab as many of their cities as possible to keep them out of the hands of RB.

[mzprox]

i don't think this is a trick from Inca and Egypt.
Now a lot depends on Inca. they have not prepared for war at all, but if they start now they can still slave down all their cities to pop1 and build enough soldiers to halt Egypt. I know this was India's advice to them. of course this would put them out of the game anyway.. so with these slavings they would really help only us, who on the other hand we will not offer any help. (possibly the only thing we will do is to send taoist missonaries into their cities).
Knowing how hard is to make deals with Maya I don't give too much chance that they really give ivory to Inca. If i was in Rb position I would probably try to make alliance with Maya and if I were Maya i'd probably accept it. Rb should know that india and aztecs are hostile to them and they probably know we are working with cfc (map trade, money loan) and since they can't win alone maya as ally would be logical. A war between us and the Maya looks likely anyway.

[Dinner]

That's something to consider. If we tried to grab a couple of Inca cities how likely is it the Maya would attack us as soon as we declare war? They do seem like aggressive players.

[mzprox]

After giving some thoughts this is how I see the situation now:

We will not attack the Inca, so we will not grab cities from them-except maybe the current border city, but we should see how the war develops.
The reasons are:
-We offered them a non aggresion pact.. ok they had answered quite late, but still..
-The incan army is stronger than ours, so if we attacked Inca we would not be succesful. If we attacked after Egypt killed most of inca's troops then we would be too late to grab cites.
-we should probably save our honor by not backstabbing a smaller civ while they face the biggest army already.
-and if we won't backstab inca then maybe their spirit will be higher. It probably won't make much diference, but who knows..

Things could had happen differently if there was better diplo between us and the error was not on our side that our communication did not work. Also Inca totally disregarded the danger up until now and made questionable moves (giving marble to Egypt, lending their great general so Egypt could build the heroic epic which is used against them now.. etc.. they have co-operated on many levels) All those made me believe that they can not be Egypt's target. fearing that they might launch a combined attack against us we had to make NAP.. we tried with Inca, but without result we had to try NAP with Egypt so in case they had refused it we would had time to prepare.

We believe the attack against Inca will start in two turns, max 3. The border cities will fall without much resistance then the rest will follow. They can not get help from any other civ with the exception of money.

while i think Inca made quite stupid moves (like wasting a golden age, then a turn converting to buddhism, and disregarding our advices to get horse back riding) it still might be a good investment if we help them getting feudalism so they can slave longbowmen.
Aztec and india don't really want to help, but I'm trying to convince them that all 3 of us should give about 2-200 gold. it's like wasting one turn in our research, but could slow down RB's victory with a few turns and probably giving them losses.

at t170
Best case scenario is that still there will be some incan city when we get our janissaries, but i wouldn't count on this.

Worst case scenario: Egypt conquers Inca land without much hassle, they have a huge veteran army, India is occupied with the Zulu (they do intend to make a quick war against them before going after Egypt), and we couldn't secure NAP extension with Maya, Aztec didn't build significant army. so basically we are either RB's next target or we need to do something to protect Aztec from becoming an easy prey.

This worst case scenario is actually quite likely and it is mostly independent from us. NAP till t170 means that t170 is not included so our defense should be ready by then. that's 21 turns. Egypt will probably will keep building knights and catapults, draft etc. Our only chances that we draft too and that we start it very soon. To do it we need a plan.

Of course there was a plan but it was not finalized, things might get changed so we needed to adapt. The current plan is that we research economics, nationalism and gunpowder. we use the free great merchant to go into golden age and switch to nationalism.
This way we would beunder nationalism for only 8 turns so we would need to do as much drafts as possible. And in the end it would be nice to adopt representation.

i1m considering alternatives. like going into golden age sooner and switching to nationalism later so we would stay in nationalism. it's not a bad civic actually, but would weaken our oxford city.

also there not be enough time to properly execute it, but i'm planning a spy action against RB. we might be able to steal nationalism from them or some other tech. problem is that to get the max bonus we would need at least 13 turns (to get into target city and wait 6 turns) , and that's too much.. that might be too late for nationalism.

[Dinner]

If you want to give them a couple hundred (200) gold to help them kill a few RB units that's fine but I would like to limit our loses as it's a doomed cause so let's not get in too deep. Also it would be nice if we could build up some good will with the Inca so that, when the inevitable end comes, we can walk into a few of their cities unopposed. We should set our sites a bit higher than just the one border city because the more we take the more room we have to lose before RB will get into our core territory.

[Dinner]

I see we have one city which will be founded next turn along with another settler and a worker which will be finished next turn. This is good. This will give us 17 cities and 11 workers but we really, really need to get up to at least 17 workers minimum and a better ratio would be 1.5 workers per city or 25 workers. I know it will be hard, maybe even impossible, to fit all of that in and build the banks you want and still be ready to fight a war if RB attacks an ally but I really do feel this is also a necessity. You've done a great job slaving buildings and getting our tech output up but now we need to develop tiles and max out our city locations. I see we're out of cash right now; we have just 1 gp in the treasury and a +50 gp per turn cash flow with science down to just 50%. No doubt that is why you want the banks but workers can help as there is no replacement for town tiles when it comes to money.

[mzprox]

I just had an idea.. what if we offer to buy workers from Inca? We would pay 60g for each.. maybe 5 workers for 300 gold.

[Ben Kenobi]

That would be interesting. I like that idea. See if Inca goes with it.

[mzprox]

Ok, I sent this offer to the Inca.. I did not want it yet, but at some point I will also ask for the border city.. it would be nice to have as it is a nice position to defend.

[OzzyKP]

The offer to buy workers is fantastic. I very much hope they accept. Absolutely works to everyone's advantage.

I do like the idea of creating some good will with them so that hopefully, at a later point, they will hand over (leave empty) a city or two to us to keep it away from RB.

[Dinner]

I just had an idea.. what if we offer to buy workers from Inca? We would pay 60g for each.. maybe 5 workers for 300 gold.

That would work. If they're willing to do it then that would be an excellent solution to our worker problem, lower their maintenance costs, and get them the gold they need.

[Hercules]

That would work. If they're willing to do it then that would be an excellent solution to our worker problem, lower their maintenance costs, and get them the gold they need.

I agree.

[mzprox]

No answer from Inca though I have sent several letters to them recently... I fear they are not very good in strategy, I fear they will let their troops massacred while trying to defend their cities. They would need to retreat until they amass a big enough force.

[Dinner]

If they're really that bad at strategy then let us attack them as well.