Turn 129, 10 AD

[Shiber]

RP declares war!!
Peace offer, RoP, Inchon, Toledo, WM, 43 gold... I wouldn't call that a "treasury", really. Any captured RP town would lose them only a few pennies, and it's not worth paying the banking commissions to transfer these funds every turn just to save a measly sovereign or two.

We have 4 luxuries and 11 happy in Hurricane, the remaining citizen unhappy. Lots of cities celebrating 'We Love Shiber Day'.
We can hold with 0% lux, btw. RP can give us four more luxuries and we'd have 'We Love' day in Hurricane. Cool!

Now for some graphs. We're bumping everyone else aside in score. Our spike is huge relatively! Of course that's just thanks to the new cities, but still, it's cool (as well as dangerous)
Both GoW and ND are gaining in power, ND in particular.

[Shiber]

Any big in-game decisions this turn?

[asleepathewheel]

GoW stack confirmed at Bilbao 77. 13 vet riders, 1 elite, as expected


GoW has planted a couple more cities in the north (or I could have missed them before)


Port isolation is looking awfully inviting, showing just a spear there.

We can get ivory from Spain.

Great wall in four turns.



Steady as she goes!

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Shiber
Any big in-game decisions this turn?

Nay. I think all to be done is the follow our plans with the galleys, which I can't recall exactly.


Have we considered the problems with culture? Nd looks to have maybe 2.5 to 3x our culture. yikes. and lego has about the same. Not good.

[alva]

ND in particular.

Probably from the territory they gained and RP losing land.

[Aeson]

A penny saved is a penny earned. A penny kept from ND is two.

We gift back the 43g, Iron, Furs, and Incense.

As for culture, RP is going to be the one holding most the cities, and they are closer to ND in that regard. Also a much closer Palace. The cities we capture will have an added flip guard in that the citizens will be Spanish once we gift the city to RP. What does the cultural advisor say about our citizens and their views on ND culture? I don't remember if the culture graph goes by current turn culture or overall, but either way it looks like ND has ~1.75x what we do.

[nbarclay]

I have the save open and am ready to play the turn. I'll go ahead and do our landings on NM 6 and send our ships back to pick up their next wave. Also, if there are no objections, I'll go ahead and upgrade two WCs to knights (which we can just barely afford after returning RP's gold to them).

[nbarclay]

What do we want to do with our new settler? Build a city between Inchoff and Dissidentville, or keep him in reserve for a military city on Bob? Food-wise, Sandstorm's best use is building three-turn workers; working two flood plains and a mountain, it can get both the growth and the production in three turns. But our worker supply is good enough that slowing it or Cyclone down to build a settler wouldn't hurt us much.

[notyoueither]

We will need a second settler for the Bob coast if we do as I indicated. Build at NM 3 3, and then replace that port with one at 6 9 when the road at NM 9 is complete. RP is sending a worker pair to NM 9 to build the road (2 of them, complete in... 4 turns).

RP strongly prefers the permanent port to be at 6 9 so that it does not interfere with food supply for NM.

Hmmm. We are going to hold Toledo with 4 pikes, 3 MI, 3 knights, and 4 cats? Close if 14 riders take a pop at us. Miscalculation, btw. Toledo starved to 6 pop, and will starve a bit more, it seems. Damn.

[nbarclay]

We're okay with the lux slider at zero at the moment, but we need to see about getting at least one lux and preferably two from RP (not counting gems, which probably don't have a trade route anyhow and which could fall into ND hands at any time). Two would keep us safe even if GoW attacks and we lose a lux and get hit with a little war weariness at the same time.

[notyoueither]

Well, they only have 1 silk now. Ivory is safe, for the moment. I hope they have a second spice hooked up.

[notyoueither]

It looks like the best crossing point will be OG 7 7 to NM 3 3 6. 4 tiles, 2 turn round trip, average 7 units per turn. That can be replaced with Whirlw 4 to NM 6 6 once the road 9 of NM is built.

[nbarclay]

NYE, it looks to me like building the one city and replacing it with the other would use up a settler (equal to a pike plust two pop points) just to reduce transit times by one tile and avoid taking one 2-food, 1-shield tile from RP. I'm seriously skeptical that that would be worth it. Later, once our position is consolidated, we may want to ship in some workers and build a city at NM 9-9-9-9 (especially if RP would be willing to let us keep the city permanently since it wouldn't interfere with their existing cities). That way we wouldn't interfere with New Madrid at all in the long term.

[notyoueither]

I am thinking that as well. If we must build only 1, then we should build only at NM 6 9, I think. It effects NM less, and the crucial road will be complete soon.

[nbarclay]

If we build on NM 6-9, we'd have to keep custody of New Madrid until the road is complete and the workers who build it are moved out of the way because otherwise, our efforts to bring in reinforcements would be slowed down enormously. With a city at NM 3-3, we can land at NM 3-3 or NM 6 and go around the city to the south as long as RP's troops and workers don't get in the way. So the real question is whether it makes sense for us to hang onto New Madrid for that long. On one hand, we'd speed up most of our reinforcements a little that way and we'd have a city in a position that helps troops get to the front just a little faster. But on the other, RP can get a lot more production out of the city than we can.