Turn 125, 70 BC

[Shiber]

"It's here!" said the elephant to the bee.

[Shiber]

No diplomacy pop-ups, no disasters...
It's the quiet before the storm.

[FrustratedPoet]

/me checks we're in the right forum here.

[Shiber]

[Aeson]

I think Sufu and Tornado should build a Galley each. Typhoon (if it's not too far along in the Aquaduct and won't waste the chop) and Bolderberg too. If we can land an extra 8-10 units per trip when/if we hit RP, it's going to make a huge difference in how easy things are on us and how many losses we take. Better to delay the Harbors/Aquaducts a few turns and make sure the landing goes as well as possible.

I'm leaning towards agreeing with NYE that the Galley headed West would be more useful staying near home to help with the invasion. If somehow RP isn't blocking the landing to their Iron it would be a huge blow to them, but the chances are pretty slim that they wouldn't be. I forget there is a galley crossing to Lego there which they would almost surely be watching.

[Arrian]

Concur on galley building.

As for the 2xpike galley, where is it now?

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

The 2x pike galley is off RP's southeastern coast.

I'm not so sure that hitting RP's iron would give us an advantage even if we could do it. On one hand, we would temporarily disrupt their ability to build iron-based units. On the other, when they get iron re-connected, they could upgrade a lot of non-iron-based units they built in the meantime. And if they think of it, they already have a road right next to a non-coastal iron supply outside their cultural borders. Plopping a colony there could reconnect them very quickly whenever they're ready for the upgrade.

[nbarclay]

I'd rather put Bolderberg, Tornado, and Typhoon on harbors. That way if the diplomacy works out for us to invade, we can build veteran galleys instead of regulars, and if it doesn't, we can use the harbors for peaceful economic growth. I don't really like the idea of focusing on war production when we aren't even sure yet that the political climate will be conducive to invading Bob. And with RP having veteran galleys, I'd feel a bit safer with a few vets of our own. Sufa has another three turns or so before we have to commit on whether to build a galley or an aqueduct there.

[nbarclay]

Typhoon has a chop scheduled in such a way that switching it to a galley is not practical. I might have been able to work around that if I were more used to how things work in PBEM with the 1.21 patch, but workers behave differently from how they always have before (and from how they do in 1.21 SP) and I'm not fully comfortable with the new order of operations. The other cities don't have to be committed this turn, so we have at least a little more time to discuss build priorities. I went ahead and added two workers to Tempest, bringing it up to a net of 21 shields per turn. That puts us 29 turns from a 600-shield wonder, or 19 from a 400-shield wonder. That should go down a little more once Arashi completes its FP.

[nbarclay]

Turn and shots sent.

[Arrian]

Good points re: vet galleys. Can we afford to partially rush those harbors?

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

We're taking in upwards of 140 gpt; it's all a question of how we want to prioritize our gold.

[vulture]

Subject to the constraint that we have to research banking in some fixed timescale for the deal with Lego, which drains off a set amount in the near future.

[Arrian]

Exactly. And, depending on just how fast we decide to do that, we might not need more ships (Caravels, baby!).

We should probably really think about that. How long will Banking take at breakeven spending?

-Arrian

[Theseus]

I wouldn't worry so much about vet Galleys... RP has one decent coastal city.