Lizzy's rise to greatness

[mzprox]

we captured gaunlet city and destroyed it. we had to because many of rb's units have city raider promotion and our troops are more important now than a city. we will rebuild it with a settler.
There was only one maceman defending. unfortunately our first rifleman died in combat (we had 79% winning odds)
right now our forces are a bit weaker than rb's, and they have the ability to strike first with their many catapults. However I expect that they will not want to get into exchange in a bloody battle.
We are advancing slowly.. waiting for the rest of our troops to arrive.

[Hercules]

any further news? any pics?

[OzzyKP]

Sorry, I'm out of town. I'll get some up on Monday.

[Dinner]

Well, I was going to post some pictures but I can't even seem to log in to the server much less get to the point where I choose our civ and use the new password.

[mzprox]

Some post has been lost, anyway, here is the newest situation:

The war against egypt is going well so far. Aztec has made a bold attack with their crusiaries and achieved a big victory. So big that at this moment cfc has the biggest power, we are the second and RB only the third. this will probably change, because we stopped drafting and RB will probably continue, but really now the question is not whether we will win the war, but how much we lose and gain.
So far we lost 2 riflemen took, a city and destroyed/rebuilt an other. In the next two turns we will capture 3 more cities, then we will need to decide what next.

Our primary concern besides getting as much land as possible is to watch cfc closely as they might become the new RB..
We were discussing an agreement btw that everyone in this alliance will get a fair share from RB's land.. but so far really aztec the only one who did the work.
Aztec said they killed 70 units and lost about 30. They asked if we could forget about their debt, 850g that they used for upgrades. In a way it's fair, but I think first let's wait till the end and see how much each of us losses will be and what we will gain. I think we can agree that they delay paying the money back a bit later. We are more advanced than the aztec or anyone at the moment. What do you think?

Btw we will finish steel so we can build/upgrade to cannons. Next we unless there is better idea we will get compass so we can start build harbors then we go for constitution/corporation for even more trade routes and the ability to build the wall street.

[Dinner]

I'm ok with delay repayment especially since we need them to keep fighting. All in all we're doing much better than I thought we would do.

[Hercules]

I'm ok with delay repayment especially since we need them to keep fighting. All in all we're doing much better than I thought we would do.

I agree with that and am much impressed by the military size.

I will and look in , when it's our turn.

[Dinner]

I'm hoping we can continue to coast a bit on the military we have slaved just so we can rebuild our population levels and start to get our economy growing again. That way we are well positioned for the next round of conflict which will inevitably follow this one. Naturally if we have to we can slave more but if possible we should avoid it.

[mzprox]

I too want to let our cities recover as much as possible, but we can not gnore that cfc has the strongest army already and they hrdly even started building their military. They soon will have a huge army of grenadiers+cannons and they probably wont suffer heavy losses against egypt.. they will look for other targets as soon as this war ends, and so shall we.. or cfc just will become too big and strong.
For next obvious target I think we should attack wpc/natives (if they survive till our nap ends) which is at t200 if i remember right.

[OzzyKP]

Great to see the military success!!! RB seemed like a bunch of jerks anyhow, crush them under our boot!

As for CFC... yea, they are definitely our next (current?) concern. CFC (and 2metraninja & Sommerswerd too) are good at building good alliances and then building themselves up slowly. By this point in the game they are never top in score or power. So your focus is always on someone else, and they are friendly with everyone, so no one targets them, focusing instead on whichever civ has taken that early lead. Then when everyone teams up to take down that leading civ, they step back and realize that now CFC is a far bigger threat than the previous foe ever was, and now can't be touched. Especially when they've created a lot of good will up to that point, so building up a strong alliance against them becomes impossible.

Our top priority has to be creating division between the Aztecs and CFC. As this war progresses we will end up discussing how to divide the spoils. This gives us a good opportunity to paint CFC as greedy and a threat, and try to get the Aztecs to see us as a better ally than CFC, and see them as a threat. If we can divide them then we can isolate CFC. That has to be a top priority. And, of course, growing more ourselves.

[mzprox]

I came to the same conclusion. That's why i had several conversation with aztec about my concerns about cfc and try to make the cooperations stronger between us. we extended our nap to t220, have several dealings ( we still owe them a great person and we pay them 2 gold6turn from the shrine etc) But i think there is a good chance that for at least temporary we will grab the no. 1 position on the score board (until cfc start regrowing in their many foo rich cities.

[mzprox]

pics from the fronline.

With very focused research and a huge money boost from uciv/hre Egypt finished rifling by this turn.
It really seems the north/northeast is relatively undefended so we can take it, but holding the cities might become problematic. Right now we face about 35 catapults and 30-35 other units near PETA (muskets, maces, knights) we are about even in strength, not really enough to attack especially if we need to split our force, and if they start drafting/slaving/upgrading they could turn the tide. There is of course the aztec army too. the two of us should defeat egypt here so we are trying to synchronize our moves.
I think our priority is to take the incan land (it will be harder since they can draft/slave rifles) and in the meanwhile play safe with our main army- Not moving in if there is high chance they can destroy it with enough catapults and less advanced units.
Unfortunately we need to start drafting more units.. i expect rb going suicidical.. slaving drafting everythin they've got and we need to match their army. hopefully cfc will be fast taking their core cities.

[Dinner]

What are our workers doing right now? I trust we're putting them to max use even as we manage the war? Also, am I right that we destroyed 1 city, captured 2, and built 1 new one?

[Hercules]

Popped in yesterday. Quite impressed by our military and by Civplayers (Aztecs). Maya seemed well behind techwise and very vulnerable. I agree we need to keep watch on CFC.

[mzprox]

Some of my posts have dissappeared again.. anyway:





So yes our workers are improving the land. due to heavy slaving/drafting though there are many unworked tiles at the moment.

About the war
We had a fight NE of PETA, our riflemen defending on a hill were destroyed by catapults an maces. Ofc it was expected that we might lose them, but RB won fights again with bad odds (like 17%).
So far they are emptying their cities or leave only a single defender. This turn we captured the former inca capital (the academy fortunately survived). We will also take two coastal cities in this turn from our galley. These are 6 cities altogether including the one we destroyed/rebuilt.
on the first picture a battleplan on storming PETA. I don1t want to assign too many units so I sent this to the aztec to support us with their cavalry. For this plan to succeed we need to cut the road beneath their catapults, wher one of our spies stands. I think PETA should be destroyed too. we cannot allow to spread our defense force too much. we are already having losses and unfortunately we can't replace them, while rb can theirs.