Turn 103, 510 BC

[Shiber]

To be edited by the leaders of the Scholia.

Status:

- 209 gold (?), +139gpt (?)

Check this and every turn to see if we lost some war unweariness due to the killing of troops within cultural borders and therefore must readjust the lux slider.

Urgent questions:

- We've got a settler. Where do we plant our next city?

Military:
- Pound Vox with cats and see what else needs doing.

Economy:

Diplomacy:

- Deal with ND postponed (due to bureaucracy, we are told).
Was the PM to ND sent? Was it received? Have they replied yet? Have we tried email?

- Discuss deal with Lego: Feudalism + some gold for Theology (in order to get more value out of Feudalism). Were they notified of our intensions yet?

Thread library:
- Standing orders for workers (Orders last revised April 5.)

[Shiber]

Btw, I'd like to be made an official 3rd player for this team.
Currently we have Nathan as our only active player. I'll be available for most hours of the day during the next two months or so, so I'd like to become an official player for GS.

[Arrian]

Sounds fine to me.

Regarding the settler, I'd hold it for "Inchon" or to replace Dissidentville if they abandon it (or we autoraze it).

-Arrian

[Shiber]

Do we have a schedule for Inchon yet?

[DeepO]

Shiber, I've seen your request a couple of times now, and I support it, but maybe it's best to start a poll on this in a separate thread, so that others can comment. I'm not certain how you see being an active player, the problem is that as there are no specific orders for the economical part (a lot depends on the memory and immediate minmaxing of Nathan), it would be hard to just jump in on any turn. But I agree that we should have another player, at least as backup...

Make a new thread, and we'll be easier discussing it, and we could also make it official. It's not right that you have to ask this 3 or 4 times before receiving a definite answer

DeepO

[Shiber]

Will do.

[DeepO]

Just saw the opening screenie... good. So they want to take a longer walk into our territory? The only good that can come from that is that they have more map to sell to other teams. It doesn't take more defenders from us, on the contrary, we can use less.

I'd say: pound them with cats, and now or next turn take them out. They have wandered our territory long enough.

As to Aeson's idea of starting / rushing a temple in SS: perfect. Howeverr, allow me to suggest one change: Before a border expansion, we should be able to drop off two pikes 8 from their stack, blocking their mountain retreat. If we don't do that, they would simply create the same situation one tile North, with the only advantage to us that we can use one stack of pikes, instead of 2. If we do this, we should go all the way for it, and don't stop before that stack is dead. If we play it right, by retreating 1 of the galleys East at the right time, we could deceive them into thinking we're hauling another galley of pikes up North, while in reality we're only deplying them 2 tiles from our borders. Could work nicely

DeepO

[Arrian]

Temple build is a go from me, btw. Remember the border expansion will take 5 turns to kick in.

You're talking about dropping 2 pikes "8" from their eastern immortal stack (by SS)? I have no objection, as that either forces them to attack at a disadvantage (4 v. 6), move out onto the flats , or sit there and wait for our cats to pay them a visit.

-Arrian

[Shiber]

Good thinking.

We can do this even better: step 1, put both galleys 889 of that stack, where they can't see it. Step two, move 222, load up with 3 or 4 pikes*, move 8 and move the pikes inside the galley 7, onto the mountain.

* Another question is how many pikes we want to use to block them off. 2 pikes is IMHO obviously too little to hold off 5 immortals, even if they're just regulars. But if we put 4 pikes on the retreat route, Vox will never consider attempting to break through such defenses. Whereas, if we put 3 pikes, they might be tempted to try... in that case, I'd like to see them try - pikes unfortified on mountains have six defense, immortals only four, plus our pikes are vets. We may very well come out of it without losing a single pike.

[zeit]

Whoever is playing the turn (let's make it a regular procedure)- why not take the shots with the Cats, when opening the file? This gives us lots of time to discuss whether or not we should attack the stack, and has some effect on other long term plans (such as when we will be ending their presence in the east).

Also- how long before we have 2 galleys ready to drop some forces on Vox's territory (around D'ville probably). The way things are going, my guess is it will be 4 turns from now we will be on the move, and unlike Vox, we intend to make headway with our assault, so we should plan accordingly.

P.S
Shiber- could you mail me the .sav?

Address: (nick)+"an" @ attglobal.net.

Many thanks.

[zeit]

Important notice- have you considered how well worked our galley "scouting" operations?

We have accomplished an important objective, according to Sun Tzu's (TM- we have built his academy, after all ) Art of War: our enemy is uncertain of where we will strike- their defense is streched, while ours is concentrated. This is a psychological as well as startegical victory.

Another important MP strategy we should note ourselve.

[Theseus]

I had the same thought when I saw the fortified Immortals to the west... on unroaded mountains, no less.

That said, it's a little dangerous, as it makes Vox unpredictable (something to keep in mind).

Temple in SS, good.

3 Pike pick, good.

Player should bombard while online and reporting results.

[DeepO]

If we can spend the galley and troops, we should either drop off 3 pikes and a med inf, or 2 pikes + 2 med infs. Cuts of their escape routes... otherwise we would need a lot of WCs close by to be sure we can get them before reinforcements arrive. 5 healthy immortals on desert still need ~8 WCs to be sure, a couple of med infs can seriously limit their options, making it easier on us.

Scouting: I'm not too pleased with them spotting us West, we should in the future stay out of sight... we have the room to do it, at the expense of movement radius. But it doesn't matter much, at least they spread their defenses.

To the East, Vox has been testing us last turn, I wonder how the situation is there now. Last turn, they intentionally left a gap, to see if we would land in a not-so-ok spot. I'm betting they are now doing the same, and if they feel bold, keep a larger gap. We can exploit that by retreating one of our galleys. They will attack the other one for sure, but maybe that's not so bad, we should be able to use that to our advantage too.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

I'm ready to start playing the turn. We can afford to rush a temple in Sandstorm or short rush a MedInf in Arashi this turn, but not both. (We currently have only four shields accumulated in Sandstorm.) Strictly in terms of shields and food, it would be slightly more efficient to wait until next turn to rush a temple in Sandstorm; the city grows this turn and if I'm guessing right about where the new laborer will land, that should provide five shields this turn without compromising growth (when normally the trade-off is a significant loss of food anywhere past 2 shields). But getting the temple sooner would give us the option of getting our cats into action on that front a turn sooner. The other aspect is that if we rush a MedInf in Arashi this turn, it gives us an extra MedInf we could attack with if it makes sense to do so this turn. But we'd probably need very good luck with our cats for this turn to be a better time to attack than next turn.

So which do we want this turn, an extra MedInf in Arashi or the temple in Sandstorm?

[Theseus]

5 healthy Immortals?

Isn't the point to put our f*cking foot on their neck and hold'em down for some Cat-lashing?