Turn 138, 190AD

[notyoueither]

* General Info
- 1014 gold, +175 (at start of turn)

* Military
-

* Economy

I'm recommending that Arashi and EotS stick to building knights for the moment. Their production numbers are (or can be) good for that (with minimal waste), while some other cities can build lower-cost units for upgrade more efficently than they can.

- Dissidentville laborer on iron mountain moves to bonus grassland at D3.
- Monsoon and Arashi swap tiles around. Monsoon moves from the two hills to the iron mountain and the mined grassland currently used by Arashi. Arashi moves from that mined grassland to a mountain, and from the desert to the incense hill being vacated by Monsoon. This lets Arashi start a four-turn knight.
- Tempest laborer on hill at OG6 moves to incense desert at WW3 (trading wasted excess production for extra gold).
- OG laborer on the irrigated plains moves to the hill at OG6.
- EotS and Cyclone swap tiles, giving EotS a mined plains currently used by Cyclone and Cyclone a mined grassland currently used by EotS. This sets EotS up for a five-turn knight.
- If we want another cat, we could have Sufa give Typhoon the Sufa 4 tile for a turn and switch Typhoon to a cat. Otherwise, we're probably better off not making that switch.

I'm not going to try to come up with worker orders.

Regarding production, we may want to switch Tornado to a pike so it can start work on units for upgrade a turn sooner.

We may also want to switch Dissidentville over to military units and use it as a production city instead of as a growth city. It can get to size six fairly quickly without a granary, and at size six working two mountains, it should be a pretty decent production center.

* Diplomacy
-

* Additional info
Big issues.

We should give Toledo back to RP. It is more productive for them. The only possible glitch is the activity of the ND units on the periphery.

Iron cut this turn, after upgrading 1? 2? 3? WC's in the north?

We can cut the DVille one, and the single road without mine linking N and S just North of DVille. On the following turns, we can get the WC to the actual Inchoff iron tile and pillage the road, just before the mine there is completed. There will be 2 workers on DVilles iron to immediately start remining.

Oh, and we land next to Valencia. No biggie.
We have 9 k who can get to V 8 8, and a strong force 9 of the pike camp to support Barca if needed. If GoW's riders are at Slamanca/Alamo, they can make the desert to attack the pikes, but can get no farther than the pike hill. With our mi's and cats beside Barca, and our k's at V 8 8, we should dream that GoW does this.

Really big issue: What do we do if GoW gifts Valencia to Lego or Vox?

[Velociryx]

The problem I have with giving their cities back in the here and now is that if either ND or GoW makes another big incursion into the area, they (RP) lack the unit base to defend their cities properly....we set up a situation where a spiteful GoW or ND will come thru and raze them.....ouch.

-=Vel=-

[notyoueither]

RP can give back to us if they see Toledo threatened. We would not move our 4 pikes and 3 mi's out of the area. They are the guards for that flank.

[notyoueither]

re GoW gifting Valencia away to a neutral, I would say we simply take it from them. We should take some steps before Vox and or Lego get the save to ensure they understand what will happen if they accept any cities in our path.

[Shiber]

I agree with NYE, definitely take the city and back up our actions with diplomacy.

Now let's take a moment to think of the consequences. If Lego gets Valencia, they take the risk that we'll have to declare war and they'll lose their precious dyes (a serious economic blow since they're not exactly swimming in luxuries). They probably won't go as far as to accept a city from GoW, but if they do, I think we can count on getting peace back up ASAP.
However, Vox is a different issue. They don't need us for anything, and by remaining at a state of war with us they get some nice war-unweariness (not that they need any though), and inflict weariness upon us. This is why I think we must hold talks with Vox on the matter of Yonder Isle before GoW even sees our forces outside Valencia. This would greatly reduce the chances that Vox will take the city IMHO.

[notyoueither]

Actually, we would get the positive WW back from the War of Voxian Aggression...

[Shiber]

REALLY??

[DeepO]

Toledo: I advocated before to give it back to RP asap, so of course I still think we should do it. But, we need to road , or let RP road the mountain 2(? don't have a screenie here) of Toledo, so we can reach the North side of it without needing to accept the city. And of course we keep our defenses in place, we could even improve them if we have enough units.

Valencia going to Lego or Vox: I don't think either will do it at this time, Lego would do it once we invade GoW, and take half their territory. If they accept we don't hesitate and attack. After that, we ask them why they accepted the city, and if they wanted war.

Upgrading: I would make 3 (or more) knights, who knows if we can use them. Further, I would start thinking on an extra 1 or 2 galleys: we've got enough of them for an invasion, but if we want to ship more units to RP in a hurry, all our boats would be up North.

Iron pillaging seems okay... although I've got a little question on the road cutting: do you mean you split Stormia in North and South, where the North still has iron? In that case, it won't work, Wittlich still has a harbor... if the road you're talking about is closer to Inchoff, it will work of course. In that case go ahead, the sooner we're ironless the better.

Diplomatically: not only improve information flow from RP, but also inform them of our plan with the iron... otherwise they will be too surprised when it happens. It won't matter much for them, but they should know... and there is no risk for leaks, ND will see we're without iron, I'm sure they are checking this regularly when they're doing the same with GoW.

DeepO

[Arrian]

If a neutral party takes a city, we (or RP) capture it straightaway. End of story. We have no NAP to restrict us.

As for the rest... I'd dearly love a map...

-Arrian

[zeit]

Of course we take it- after all, its not like GoW stood by the NAP we used to have, so there's no reason we should avoid taking the town- I hardl believe they will, however.

[Theseus]

What about some early diplomacy... we get Lego and Vox to agree to gift Valencia to US!!

No need ever know...

[notyoueither]

Iron pillaging seems okay... although I've got a little question on the road cutting: do you mean you split Stormia in North and South, where the North still has iron? In that case, it won't work, Wittlich still has a harbor... if the road you're talking about is closer to Inchoff, it will work of course. In that case go ahead, the sooner we're ironless the better.

Damn. Forgot about Witt's harbour.

Do we need to cut this next turn? If not, the chariot can make the Inchoff Iron tile itself the following turn. If we do not get the road on that iron tile, it will effect improvements in all adjacent tiles (no roads to the S or SW).

If we cut the road between WoChange and the iron, the chariot will not be able to move onto the mountain to get the road there.

So, unless we want to spoil Inchoff's mined grass, and avoid roading several tiles to the S and SW of the iron, we have to wait another turn.

[Arrian]

Wait, then.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

yeah, wait if we're not perfectly ready...

BTW, how far do we want to go with this? By rushing shields on the 1-shield cities right after disconnecting the iron, we can build a couple of inexpensive spears. If we then would leave it unconnected for let's say 5 turns, we could rush another warrior in those cities right after. This would give us warriors for 28 gold, or MI for 88 gold.

So... in e.g. Beta, we could spend 36g to rush a spear, 28g for a warrior, and upgrade both for 20+60g. In total, that gives us 144 gold for a pike and MI. The alternative would be e.g. 12 rush to WC, 100 to knight or 112 gold for a knight, or 12 rush to spear, meaning 32g to a pike.

I'm inclined to let at least part of the 1-shield cities build two units, if we can't upgrade all the warriors right away, we could save them a little. Added advantage is that those cities are close to the front, so them producing slowmovers is better then our core producing them. The South should focus on horses or WCs instead, as these can travel 6 tiles per turn.

DeepO

[DeepO]

What is a realistic time frame to get us 50 units, BTW?

Let's see (very rough estimate here, based on screenshots and the shield production of the build priorities thread):

EotStorm k(1), h(3)(12g), h(5)(12g), h(7)(12g)
Hurricane mi(2), wc/sp/cat(3), wc/sp/cat(4), wc/sp/cat(5), wc/sp/cat(6), wc/sp/cat(7)
Cyclone Workers
Bolderberg k(1), wc(3), wc(5), wc(7) or k(1), h(4), h(7)
Tempest k(2), wc(3), wc(4), wc(5), wc(6), wc(7)
Tornado h(2), h(5), wc(7)
Typhoon wc(3), h(7)(12g)
Arashi k(1), h(3), h(5), h(7) (if we can find one more shield)
Sufa h(5)
Sandstorm Settlers
Monsoon wc(3), wc(6)
Whirlwind p(1) h(6)
Blizzard h(6)?
further 7 1 spt cities, meaning either 1 or 2 slowmover units

in total, I count 42 or 49 units in 7 turns from now, cutting the iron in 2 turns. Probably I made a few mistakes, though.

In that timeframe, we should be able to get ~2000 gold (little more), and have to upgrade 13 horse, 16 wc, ~10 warriors, and a couple of spears. Those 16 wcs could be changed to 16 spears, and most likely we can have a couple more cats / warriors in between them. Our 2000 gold would nearly be enough to do it all at once (well, we have more wcs which can still be upgraded, and we've got RP to support as well.)

My guess is that 5 full turns without iron (meaning that we cut it in turn 139, reconnect in 145) would be best. That should also fit nicely with moving our galleys up North after invading Valencia...

Oh, and again, these are very rough calculations, not meant to be a plan, just to see what time frame we're looking at. And I wouldn't keep us connected to iron for more than a turn, but have another run immediately afterwards, meaning another 50 units build in ~6 turns. We're going to need those.

DeepO