Turn 94, 690 BC

[Harovan]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
The lighthouse is obsolete at magnetism.

Obsolete, what the extra move point concerns. But the benefit of sea movement and trade is available to everyone already with Astronomy.

The extra sea turn would greatly help a war. Since no doubt we would shoot for cavalry long before magnetism, the lighhouse would aid us considerably.

How? There are several 3-tile sea-to-coast crossings to RP, one even ends only 2 tiles apart from Madrid. Meaning with Astronomy, we can rush RP even with galleys without an extra move point. The lighthouse brings no considerable benefit on the way to Bob.

About saving a turn or two cutting Voxes iron, it would be nice to have, but to build a mediocre wonder for this when we can have a better one? I don't know.

[nbarclay]

The Pyramids are no longer on our list of things we can build, so if we go for Sun Tsu's, the way to do it is to move the laborer from the iron mountain onto a coast tile. That has the palace set to finish in two turns instead of one (by one shield!), so we can switch straight from the palace to Sun Tsu's. Although I'm tempted to be paranoid and set the build for the Great Library next turn just in case the game might figure out a way to give us an extra shield we don't want.

[alva]

WE're going to either have to take on all three civs at once or join a war in progress. There's no way that we can gain a foothold without the three joining against us.

Not really, they were all keen on joining or teaming-up against Vox, maybe (just maybe ) not so against us, things will change.
Sooner or later, one of them is going to take advantage of the situation of attacking someone on BoB, instead of the invader.
Although we would have to 'move' the city to hill of-course.
Besides, this strategy isn't going to succeed in 10 or 15 turns, lot of water under the bridge
-
Having looked at the save, going after RP directly from Olibanum (the only place possible I saw correctly) wouldn't the wisest of things to do IMHO.
We would land right next to their capital (lot's of units in the neighberhood?), we can't rush a harbor and we would leave ourselves vulnerable for a second front in the north.
Really, the only way ever to get onto BoB is through Wittlitch..
We have no use for the either GL
-

Maybe we should be concentrating on this eugh incident, instead of thinking about toppling the next regime, shouldn't we

[Harovan]

Originally posted by nbarclay
The Pyramids are no longer on our list of things we can build, so if we go for Sun Tsu's, the way to do it is to move the laborer from the iron mountain onto a coast tile. That has the palace set to finish in two turns instead of one (by one shield!), so we can switch straight from the palace to Sun Tsu's. Although I'm tempted to be paranoid and set the build for the Great Library next turn just in case the game might figure out a way to give us an extra shield we don't want.

We should be able to change the build order when we get prompted for the next research (choosing "the big picture" and then switching to the domestic advisor).

[Shiber]

I gotta agree with Sir Ralph on this one.
The arguments regarding RP are weak, IMHO, and are only relevant if we intend to attack them before Astronomy.
Vox's attack force might be stronger than GoW's shots portray it. We are still weak militarily, compared to Vox, despite all the upgrades and the many new units that have entered service.
Plus, depriving Sun Tzu's (and hopefully Leo's as well, later on) from the rest of the world is sweet.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I'm thinking we probably want to move Hack onto the road this turn and have a spear cover him just in case Vox notices that he's really a swordsman or medieval infantry in disguise, not a lowly warrior, and takes a shot at him with a spear. We can move one of our two mountain spears into Arashi and plan on upgrading both of those two spears to pikes next turn.

We move the warrior and sword we pulled out of Hurricane last turn into Arashi this turn, right?

Yes to both.

[Theseus]

I vote Sun Tzu as well. I doubt we'll go intercontinental with Galleys, so the Lighthouse just doesn't do it for me. Agree with the previously stated weaknesses of the Colossus and the GLib.

Any thoughts on how we lost the Pyramids? I was impressed with our build strategy.

[nbarclay]

If Lego had a city near their capital with four or five bonus grasslands (and maybe a food bonus), it wouldn't have been that hard, especially if they started right away. Remember that EotS was competing with Hurricane for fur tiles through most of our build.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by Theseus
I vote Sun Tzu as well. I doubt we'll go intercontinental with Galleys, so the Lighthouse just doesn't do it for me. Agree with the previously stated weaknesses of the Colossus and the GLib.

I agree. Even if we built the Lighthouse, I wouldn't want to attack before Caravels. The journey across the crossing is still several turns, and I'd rather land with ships with a bigger capacity.

Any thoughts on how we lost the Pyramids? I was impressed with our build strategy.

Well, it's really easy to play the smart guy after the deed was done, but since you ask, I think our major mistake was building those barracks in Hurricane. We should have made our minds that Hurricane was going to build a wonder now, a big, sought-after wonder, and barracks just aren't right. I would have voted for that decision, even considering the risks involved.
Edit: come to think about it, that was before we realized how fast techs fly in this game and abandoned the idea of building the GL in favor of the Pyramids.

Btw: what are RP building? They told us that they were probably going to try for either the Pyramids or the GLib. Now that both are no longer options, where do you think they'll be aiming?
I'd say that RP would like to have Leo's. It fits their plans well, if I see things as they do.
Do you think that they have a prebuild? How big would you say it is? Certainly smaller than their palace cost, but would you say that it's half of it, or more?
We can't really tell much by guessing, I'm afraid. We do know, however, that GoW's prebuild is small; it's certainly less than the cost of the GLib, and I think that they started building it with a Pyramids prebuild, not a Palace prebuild (otherwise, I figure that they wouldn't be able to switch to the GLib now).

[Aeson]

Pyramids are buildable before 1000BC... we just started much later than they did.

I really thought they would finish it sooner if they were going to beat us. They either switched from a Palace well before they needed too, or are at about 8 shields per turn (avg since they switched) in that city.

[nbarclay]

The one big advantage to the Great Lighthouse is that if we'd attack RP across the narrowest part of the channel using either galleys or caravels, our round-trip time would be two turns instead of three (if I'm counting correctly). That's a 50% higher rate of delivering reinforcements. So the Great Lighthouse could be worth quite a bit if we see an opening to hit RP while they're fighting someone else.

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for ensuring that no Bobian civ will automatically have free barracks in every city.

[alva]

It's really a pity, as they certainly debated on wether to switch goverments or not...
All in the game I guess

We're still rated weak compared with Vox in spite of having just built two galleys and two WCs this turn. I'd hoped building so much would bring us up to average relative to them.

That's is slightly worrying indeed.
Wasn't there a thread in the strategy forum recently, that described how this worked?

[Aeson]

When is the chat with Lego? I wouldn't mind letting them know they beat us to it (not necessarily exactly how much, just that we were making a play for it and they beat us), it takes some of the wind out of the lines RP has likely been feeding them. A good natured 'we should have known better than to try and beat you guys to a building project' type of atmosphere might be helpful to the rest of the negotiations.

It will be something they can figure out by the timing of our build of Sun Tzu's anyways. There is an upper limit as to how many shields per turn a city could have at this point, and Hurricane is close to it.

[alva]

Ah, I thought it was one of Nathan's threads

If anyone else is interested:

Average strengths

[alva]

I wouldn't say we did it by one turn though, as that would give away what our palace costs.