Turnplayed Thread #4

[Sullla]

Wow, I must have logged into the game right after Ruff. I swapped over all of the cities with zero hammers in the box to knights, but left Airstrip One (which had shields invested) to auto-upgrade to knight between turns. Even if it does not, we can manually change A1 to knight next turn, because it won't finish its horse archer build for two more turns.

Here's a zoomed out shot of the eastern continent in full:



Gee, I wonder who's going to be dominant on this continent? The civ in the exact center, able to exchange techs and resources with both continents, and with easily defensible chokepoints on both sides? Or the two civs on the far end of nowhere, with massive regions of pure desert adjourning their starts? Hmmm, I wonder...

(I'm still up in arms over this craptastic map job. Banana has a nice immediate area around their capital, with FIVE food resources and stone at the start, but they seriously lack space for expansion. That desert area to their SW just kills them. What was the mapmaker thinking when he placed those spots?!?! No one is ever going to settle there! Was he on crack?! PAL had both a tremendous strategic position and a nice start: four floodplains, fish resource, and stone. PAL had quintuple ivory just north of The Warning, easy access to copper, and a half-dozen gems to the south. I fail to see how this is at all comparable to our position! )

mh, I also missed your screenie request until after I had logged out the game. Apologies.

[sunrise089]

Is the other continent smaller than ours, or is that just perspective?

Also, the horse archer in queue should switch just fine to a knight.

Finally, guys, Banana is going to get rolled. They have something like a 6 city front, and PAL has like 6 tiles that can split cities. I know two city elimination isn't on, but still the upcoming war isn't going to be pretty.

[ruff_hi]

@sunrise - yes, any attack on Banana by PAL will be over pretty quickly. And (as Sullla pointed out) PAL has a huge advantage.

I suggest that we put together the following

• a screenshot of how PAL will take out Banana complete with strategic directions
• share this with Banana and get their approval to share this with Templar, Rabbits and Imperio
• share this info with Templar, Rabbits and Imperio
• Tell them the only way to stop PAL just walking away with this game is a concerted 5 team response, thus turning PAL's strategic strength into a strategic weakness

[TAD]

Guys, it seems I logged in shortly after the turn was processed. In any case, 2 cities had finished builds and asked me to assign a new project.

Red Herring and a city on the western coast. I assigned both to research so they are easy to see.

The timer on the righter, upper corner is the time left for the turn?

[Kodii]

Yes it is

[sunrise089]

I assigned both to research so they are easy to see.

This is a great plan. Can everyone do this from now on?

[Swiss Pauli]

More shame on the original Bananas for not pushing north properly: Pi-Ramesses (horses/gems) was PAL's 6th city, and with only one direction in which to expand, a settler-factory capital, and being closer to the spot Banana failed to secure it even though they had no copper

[Zeviz]

@sunrise - yes, any attack on Banana by PAL will be over pretty quickly. And (as Sullla pointed out) PAL has a huge advantage.

I suggest that we put together the following

• a screenshot of how PAL will take out Banana complete with strategic directions
• share this with Banana and get their approval to share this with Templar, Rabbits and Imperio
• share this info with Templar, Rabbits and Imperio
• Tell them the only way to stop PAL just walking away with this game is a concerted 5 team response, thus turning PAL's strategic strength into a strategic weakness

First 2 points sound good. Not so sure about sharing this with Imperio and Templars, given that PAL might not have all of this map information.

[ruff_hi]

well - 3 & 4 will not happen if we cannot convince the other teams that PAL is ready to walk over Banana. As I see it, the only way for us to save Banana is to give PAL other things to think about (ie attacks from the North by Imperio, by us from the Middle and by Banana from the South)

[sooooo]

My turn for a mistake while logged in: When chatting to banana I pressed either an "i" or an "e" but the chat window was not active. This caused the selected horse archer that mh had accidentally moved into templar lands to move 2SW. That horse really needs stronger reins! I presume it actually wanted to move 2NW instead. Sorry.

Also I gave banana our galley since he chased it up while we were talking.

[Sullla]

More shame on the original Bananas for not pushing north properly: Pi-Ramesses (horses/gems) was PAL's 6th city, and with only one direction in which to expand, a settler-factory capital, and being closer to the spot Banana failed to secure it even though they had no copper

Yikes. I didn't realize it was quite that bad. What can you do in a Demogame when the powers on the other continent were totally incompetent in the landgrab phase?

Anyway, in response to "what can Banana do to avoid getting rolled up militarily by PAL?" The answer is.... uh, not a lot. PAL can legitimately threaten 6 of the 7 Banana cities, while keeping their own defending/counterattacking force holed up in a single location, Pi-Ramesses. It's a complete nightmare from a tactical perspective. The two western Banana cities (Foster and something else) are completely toast in the event of war. PAL will cut the road connection with ease, isolate them, and then raze them (probably replacing with one new city of their own). The eastern cities can at least reinforce one another by road, but it's still really bad. PAL could fake at any one of those four - Doal, Fried Banana, Banana Pudding, Banana Split - and then rush another one at the other end of the lines. Banana will have to divide their forces, and that's alway a bad sign.

Honestly, the best chance Banana has to defend itself is a pre-emptive strike that captures or razes Pi-Ramesses. The new Pi-Ramesses would then become the center of a Banana defensive line, and a stack on the forest tile 3 east of Pi-Ramesses could defend both it and Banana Split together. But without Pi-Ramesses removed from the scene, Banana is pretty much in a "Czechoslovakia 1938" position, surrounded on 3 sides by enemy invasion routes.

PAL is going to roll them up with ease if war actually does break out. It's.... not a good situation.

[ruff_hi]

right - so we either spell this (PALs attack plan and the result) out to Banana and they agree to ask for help from Templar / Imperio / Rabbits or we provide military pre-emptive strike planning to Banana and help them (somehow).

[sunrise089]

I agree Sullla - if Banana can take Pi-Ramses they'd be in decent shape.

Thought: Could it be best to NOT tell Banana how bad things are tactically. I mean, if we tell them it's hopeless they might go and capitulate to PAL right away in order to live.

[sooooo]

Let's move this to the diplomacy threads.

We are about 1020 beakers from nationalism. I set research to 80% since that helped me figure out what our eta is. At 80% research we lose 84 gold per turn and make nationalism in 4 turns. We have about 220 gold, so asking banana for a loan of 120 gold gives 340, enough to withstand losing 84 gpt for 4 turns. However, I stupidly forgot that we had 2 cities on research! We may be helped by selling literature to rabbits for 50 gold. I talked in-game to them and they said they would think about it.

[sooooo]

Last minute worker instructions: The two workers that have just finished the winery can head north to help on the Taj or for Sunrise's Jericho plan. They both get a "free" worker action - I suggest they both put a turn into a cottage on the tile 1NE of Airstrip One. I suggest that the worker next to them building the farm continues to do so. He can be joined in his irrigation quest by two workers soon: the worker that will chop the forest this turn and the worker that will build the cottage at something fishy this turn.