Turn 170 : 550AD

[Cort Haus]

News

Our good, noble friends and allies the GoW have sent us their World Map accepted! How do we react to that?

University Complete in Arashi

Aqueduct complete in Dissidentville

ND have a spare Saltpeter on the F2 screen

[vulture]

It wouldn't be entirely out of character for them to do this to see if we'll take it on the sly.

I say we ask them if it was intentional, and if so whether it is a free gift or some kind of bargaining thing (who knows, perhaps they just used an embassy to steal Lego's map, and are dishing it out to everyone )

BTW why has no-one done any map-stealing yet. You can do it with embassies can't you? Or has my memory failed again.

[Cort Haus]

I think you need Espionage to enable map-stealing.

btw, we don't have embassies yet with GoW (90g) or Lego (81g).

Cheapest ND city to investigate is Daki (36g). Brand new cities are the cheapest - we should keep an eye out for bargains - useful to see slider settings.

It'd be good to put an embassy in Legoland sometime - see how far their 'Sistine' is, see their slider, and see how many Bobian luxuries they're enjoying.

[Cort Haus]

Well, we're gonna be using a Sistine prebuild ourself now, Tempest gets its 'Bank' next turn, so we have to switch to a wonder. We're allowed to use it as a prebuild.

[Cort Haus]

Start

University Complete in Arashi, starts Bank
Aqueduct complete in Dissidentville, starts Library


Moves

Eliopolis : WF to Eli-77, freeing up bonus grass for Inchon's growth next turn
Dissidentville : Set for +3f for growth to 7 next turn
Santa Ana : needs 45s for aqua - Set to +9spt, -1fpt for aqua in exactly 5 turns. Can hit food after that.
Irrigate Blizzard-7 and add worker coming from Sandstorm for size 10. Add another worker next turn.
Disband 4 galleys in OG
6 Workers from Inchon-32 to Inchoff-4
Worker from Diss-1 to Santa Ana-87
Shuffle units to bring Knights and Cats north

Next Turn

Shortrush Knight in Monsoon to take a turn off library build
OG and Diss hit size 7 - can add workers
MM Sandstorm for growth & worker in 1

Diplo

Don't accept GoW's map - I'll send a PM to MZ along the lines Vulture suggested.

[Cort Haus]

Sent. Screenies to follow.

[Cort Haus]

South

[Cort Haus]

North Stormia

[Cort Haus]

Spain

[Cort Haus]

Economy

[asleepathewheel]

nice work

GoW-who knows what's going on with them.

It wouldn't be unlike them to demand something in return if we accepted that map.

Maybe they want to have the barb huts refreshed on the map, when you trade maps, you an see new huts without wandering around.

[Cort Haus]

Note to MZ at GoW here .

[vulture]

Re Gow:

They can see the minimap as well as we can, and have presumably noticed that ND is now 50-100% bigger than GoW and looking like taking the entire south of Bob for themselves - at least, there is no noticable GoW expansion there. Note also that they are beelining for cavalry, and making nice with us with tech trades. They were uniquely compliant regarding the gold in exchange for screwing around with Chemistry, and this free world map offer may just turn out to have been a free gift from our good friends. It's all beginning to look a bit like them wanting to secure either our help (if they feel Lego are shifting in favour of ND) or our non-interference (if they have Lego's help) in dealings with ND. I'd guess they are worried about getting their share of Bob, and are starting to try and form alliances in case they have to get their share by forces. I wonder if they are trading their techs with ND - I'd guess not; that they are competing for the same techs, and GoW has been clever enough to get in trading deals first (hence wrapping up the Metallurgy / Magentism one at all costs many turns in advance), so that we don't trade to help ND's advance. GoW have the big advantage with cavalry of being able to upgrade their riders for trivial cost (20 gold withouth Leo's, 10 with), while ND's ansars are, IIRC 10 shields cheaper and cost 40 gold to upgrade - 4 times as much as GoW will be paying.

Of course, no-one is going to help them capture all of Bob, so any war against ND is going to have to have them dishing out a few hundred tiesl of Bob to allies. ND might be silly enough to think they can crush GoW on their own (which is possible in isolation), but no way do we or Lego sit there and let ND take control of the whole of Bob. ND are going to have difficulty securing allies, despite GoWs atrocious reputation.

Now, dear friends, is the time to start thinking about what we'd do in the event of war on Bob. Abandon the sea wall, borrow some SP and re-hash our plans of taking 100 tiles or more of Bob (preferably 200, to give some land back to RP as well). Stay out of it in our isolation and become builders to try and get ToE and hoover first, while Lego get embroiled in defending GoW's honour?

[Cort Haus]

I've been thinking along similar lines, Vulture, re: GoW.

I think we are committed to the ToE plan, at least to deny Lego a checkmate. If we jump in on Bob to help GoW against ND, Lego can relax. We want to see Lego at war, so let them help GoW. ND supply us 2 luxuries - vital for our building plan.

Next turn our navy will be down to 5 galleys. As Caravels, that's 15 unit capacity. We have 2 dozen Knights. If an ally supplied us with MT and SP we could deliver 30 Cav to Bob in two runs of the ships - very quick if we were to land at Port Isolation, slower for a southern landing. I see this is a theoretical medium term possibility, not a short term one.

I say let Lego bail GoW out - or ND out - if they need it. We hold steady to get tech from GoW and Lux from ND and maybe jump in later. The time to sieze our piece of Bob would be post-Hoover, if we can get it, as that will be our window of power.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I think we are committed to the ToE plan, at least to deny Lego a checkmate. If we jump in on Bob to help GoW against ND, Lego can relax. We want to see Lego at war, so let them help GoW. ND supply us 2 luxuries - vital for our building plan.

SNIP

I say let Lego bail GoW out - or ND out - if they need it. We hold steady to get tech from GoW and Lux from ND and maybe jump in later. The time to sieze our piece of Bob would be post-Hoover, if we can get it, as that will be our window of power.

I pretty much agree. Lego can take on the job of getting involved in a war and having to manage the balance of power more directly than they have been. It's fair to say that we're not going to affect things that much as we stand at the moment. I'd rather see Lego have to invest heavily in military for a while. The possibility of being able to sit out a war, and profit from trading with both sides, would be a nice change.

Not so sure on our odds of taking a part of Bob post-Hoover though. That's just about when infantry will be appearing on the scene: namely the time at which offensives will become all but impossible until tanks. We already need stacks of 20 or more knights to have much chance against cities with pikes. Teams are going to need 80+ infantry / cavalry / artillery to have a good shot at capturing a town of any significance defended by infantry.