Ok, after playing almost to the end of teching calendar and noticing that I couldn't whip because I had reolted in t0 to serfdom (
) , I decided to start all over again ( well, not all over again. Didn't had to cut the mountains in America to broke the Incans free and to connect both Americas by land again )
Anyway, first thing to go , get the civics right this time :
Then I OB'ed with the Chinese and the Koreans, set Sailing to tech and changed the iron and the copper tiles to the cap to work. All stuff already discussed before the turnset.
Some more turns gone in boring move of units towards the south of the country and finally we got the galley into the Chinese borders. No
Marco Polo bridge was needed for the next action
As fortune favours the bold, we decided to not lose time and attack from the ship. The alternative was to lose a turn and maybe face a whipped or upgraded LB. Not worth the risk to wait.
And fortune favoured the bold indeed ( the odds were low, 40ishs % )
As we didn't lost any of the Samurai that we had landed, we decided to move the healthy one to the interior while the galley picked 2 more samurai to attack the southern chinese coast. We managed to attack both the target cities in the same turn and we got a unexpected bonus:
Besides contacting Sury, we managed to attack and conquer both cities ( due to the fact that neither city upgraded their garrisons or whipped defenders ). No units lost... and btw we OB'ed with Sury.
The Sury screen shows that QSH had 4 cities ... as we had only captured 2 at the time and QSH started with 7, it means that the Mongols already started their northern action. This probably explains partly the lack of chinese counterattacks ... that and the fact that China took Lhasa some turns later ( it means that any free units should had been moing through Tibet ).
That is the justification for what I did next: as the Mongols were alredy in the moe in the North, I suposed that I had to move fast. I made my maths and the faster way of getting to the last coastal Chinese city was to gamble and leave Lin'An undefended. The city had only one archer defending, so it was possible that the Mongols could snatch it with a keshik raid ( not that likely, but ... ) or even see a musket/LB appearing if we didn't moved fast.
So,
carpe diem again and again we get a unexpected result:
OB'ed with him as well... it will surely help to have their territory open for the Korean invasion later or even to manouver vs China
BTW Khmer and GK are in war and the first wanted us to jump in the war as well:
Thanks, but no thanks. Atleast for now ... China is piling units in the last cities they have ( I launched a lone samurai to try to see if there was any easy picking and both cities had a LB + Chu-no-ku in garrison ... and I seen a musket going south and trashed a cat while getting back to safety ), so we are still not exactly done with China. And as we had 5 samurai in China proper and 4 cities to protect, even China would have to wait a little until a proper offensive could be pursued against the interior .
I finished the set with Calendar:
At the same time I disembarked our first 2 cats in the mainland and managed to get our second galley to the
Satsuma area , so bringing LB's to China will not be complicated . We have some in the queues, so keep that in mind.
Some more intel:
I
a little when I noticed in the end of the set that GK had Alpha and that we could had traded for it sooner. But it is not a big deal ... unless we want to extort some techs in a peace deal with China. More on that later. The real usefulness of having Alpha now would be knowing what techs Wang has. They don't start with Gunpowder, but I'm pretty sure they could have traded it with China . Anyway, if we trade with GK for Alpha, the least we can give him is Machinery, and this is not exactly a fair deal ( from our point of view ).
Our F1 screen is a little diferent of everything I seen in between the set, since we had a major boom in happiness with the advent of calendar + the linking of the gold mine in the southern tip of the main inland. There are no issues in that regard. The only thing to take in account is that the Kamakura LB was whipped this turn. We will need more 2 to garrison what we conquered in China... and probably more a couple of cats ( have only 2 now ). The only cities with barracks are the cap and Kamakura ( that has a huge food surplus, perfect for whips ), so take that in account ( we would like another barrack in Hakata, but that is already queued ( note the forest being chopped near it, btw )
To end, I queued Engineering as the next tech, but IMHO it is not necessarily the best next tech. We can make a case for a lot of techs, like Alpha, compass or even Lib ( btw, Oracle has gone to the fishes in the turn before the last )... this needs discussion
Thys is up, nocho is on deck.