Turn 105, 470 BC

[nbarclay]

To be edited by the leaders of the Scholia.

Status:

- 255 gold, +128gpt (+/- depending on tiles worked)

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:

- Have we decided for sure that we want to delay Inchon/Inchoff a turn to cut off Vox's immortals by Hurricane? (The plans below assume we take that approach; if we don't delay Inchon, we need to rush a galley in Whirlwind in the production phase this turn.)

Military:
- Finish withdrawing the eastern galleys and load the troops to cut off Vox next turn, replacing a pikes with a regular MedInf on each mountain so Vox thinks the move is part of the cut-off maneuver rather than having reason to suspect Inchoff.
- Let injured troops heal where they are.
- Move our Hurricane galley 6-6-8-1 to scout and end up in a position to load next turn and stay in positions where Vox's immortals can't see it.
- Continue Inchon/Inchoff preparations.

Economy:

Production Phase:
- Short rush a courthouse in Tempest (140 gold).
- Short rush a temple in Monsoon (84 gold).

Rest of the turn is TBD.


Diplomacy:

- Need to respond to ND.

- Still working on a possible deal with Lego for Feudalism + gold for Theology.

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

[nbarclay]

Anyone want anything different for the production phase?

[Arrian]

Hmm... sounds ok to me. Good work last turn, by the way.



-Arrian, the tired.

[nbarclay]

Production phase completed.

[nbarclay]

I think we did a pretty good job discussing this turn's moves last turn, so I'll recap the key points and give about an hour for comments before I actually make the moves.

Eastern front:
- Pull back the galleys and load them with three pikes and a MedInf, as described above.
- Move our new galley where it can load next turn and won't be seen.
- Position the new galley where it can load next turn and won't be seen, and move our new EotS pike into loading position.

Western front:
- Move the cats into Arashi with plans to storm Arashi 9-8 next turn if practical. (Vox now has an immortal on that tile in addition to the spear they've been keeping there; with decent cat luck, we can deal with that, but additional troops could mean trouble.)
- Move our uninjured vet MedInfs into Arashi for that operation.
- Wounded units heal where they are.
- Galleys already in position for Inchon scout and move back. Remaining galley moves toward the jumping-off point.

Workers:
- We have five workers in the Monsoon area where we can chop the forest by the city this turn and have three of them build a mine next turn. I'm inclined to go ahead and do that before we do our big worker add to Tempest so we can get Monsoon's growth rate back up a little faster.
- Move two workers from Sandstorm 6 to Sandstorm 8 to build a road to give our WCs more flexibility. Move the third to Hurricane; he and a new worker about to be finished in Sandstorm will be added to Hurricane to replace the pop lost building a settler. (Hurricane will build a pike and then a settler.)

Edit: We may want to leave Tempest at 20 shields per turn for however long we have other useful things for our workers to do. I'm not sure how much incremental value there is to having it produce 1-turn horsemen instead of 1-turn WCs, and I'm hoping we won't need a huge number of additional pikes.

[nbarclay]

Scouting with one of the galleys planned on Inchon (plus what we could already see) reveals Vox's total western forces are as follows:

Arash 8-9: One reg. immortal, one reg. spearman.
Arashi 8-8: two vet. immortals, one reg. immortal.
Monsoon 9-9: two reg. immortals.
Dissidentville 2: One vet. spear, one reg. spear, one reg. immortal.
Dissidentville 1: One reg. immortal.

[nbarclay]

Turn and shots sent.

[notyoueither]

Good job, Nathan.

If I am silent, it is because I am confident in the player.

[Shiber]

Good job this turn
I was still sleeping tight during the action though

So, we're going to land pikes behind the SS immortals next turn, right? Cool
Also, preparing to storm A98 next turn was a good call IMHO

Btw, you don't need to forward saves to me anymore. I get them from Lego now.

[Shiber]

Btw, I'm in favor of roading A98 if and after we capture it. Once the cats are done bombarding the SS immortals they can move to A98, so any Voxian unit trying to get around A98 and to A9 would take 3 turns of ZOC hits on the way.

[zeit]

I'm glad we've decided to take on A98. This diversion (or not...) will surely lead Vox to strengthen the mountains- as they are surely the best spot they could pick to stage their defense from- highly defendable, and far from their productive core, with ample opportunities to fall back to secondary defense lines.

[Shiber]

I absolutely agree.
Once again, excellent call Nathan.

Oh, by the way: Nathan, being the chief economist, what do you say about sparing workers to road A98 to let our catapults onto that mountain? Judging by the screenshots, most of our territory is already full developed.
Do you think that we can divert workers for this task? If so, how many can we divert, and how long will it take to road that mountain tile?
Edit: btw, roading A98 if and once we take it will contribute to our efforts to make this invasion seem more convincing.

[nbarclay]

I've already been planning to road A98; I just didn't think to mention it. I'm thinking in terms of using the two workers currently on Arashi 9, plus maybe a third. Working on a road there will make the threat to Dissidentville look that much more real and serious. Completion time would be two turns with three workers, or three turns with two.

[Shiber]

If we're going to move the cats to deal with the SS immortals first after we've taken A98, then we can take our time with the A98 road. IMHO if the third worker is needed elsewhere then two would be enough.

Anyway, just so I get this right: the cats are in Arashi right now, and next turn we're going to move them 8 and fire at A98, then storm it with Medinfs and disperse our pikes between A98 and A8. If all goes well, the turn afterwards our cats will be en route to the eastern theatre.
I would have opened the save and checked for myself if my CPU wasn't malfunctioning and barely working.

[zeit]

No word from Lego re Theology. Vondrack said tuesday they'll have time to discuss.
No word from GoW either...

Either we're being neglected by other teams, or they neglect they're diplomacy, perhaps both.