SGOTM 12 - Spooks

[WackenOpenAir]

Sorry, that's kinda my "work", i have to pay my rent

Well. I played 4 more turns, then discussed with KC for an hour and decided to save the game and post it here.


1450BC(2):
Sell MM to Babylon for 18g.
Load 4 units back on boats.


1425BC(3):
Another SOD was in Teoti, so 2 stacks are comming for us.
A roman boat enters our waters, i bombard it and hope it will retreat.
We meet France. They have all we have except lit.
Land units on main land. Load 3 new units in the boats. Only 2 are left behind.

With the extra stack, i will have to hurry taking the next town, before they closest stack comes back. So i will first land unupgraded swords.
This means i will most likely have to gift Teoti as well, but that is better than fighting some 20 aztec units. Doing this will safely trap the Aztecs behind the Egyptian Teoti.


1400BC(4):
Meet America.


1375BC(5):
Trade is done.
It was nerve wrecking. I managed to gather 44 gpt.
5 civs got feudalism, 1 got monotheism, 1 got engineering.
Buying feudalism was the easy part for 26gpt.
my remaining gpt was not enough to get Engineering or mono.
So i went trough all civs again, 1 gold here, 2 gold there, and in the end i had just enough.
When i got all 3 techs, i got back our gpt except for 9 of it.
Then, we got Invention for free. I think that was the worst of the 3 to get as the AI would surely research it for us.

Now, we want the AI to research Gunpowder. So we will gift some AI's up to invention. I gave every AI Literature. The more libraries in the world, the better.

Meanwhile, we want some AI's to grow and some others to die. We want to start wars.
I have already started an alliance with persia and babylon against The netherlands. I added the screenshots of the embassies.

The only 2 strong researchers in the game i think are India and France. France is the other side of the world. I giften them invention.
India is a difficult matter though. They are very interesting for us to conquer. But they are one of the very few who may really help us properly with research. If we are gonna conquer them, we may not want to gift them invention. We need to make a choise.

All other AI's appear to be very very slow in research.

Please share your toughts about wars, embassies and gifting more techs.

 

[Paul#42]

Bad luck with the free techs
However I would not consider chivalry any better...

Research
At least we don't have to think about going for Shakespeare's anymore...

France, Persia and Babylon (soon to have their GA) are my bets to research Gunpowder fastest.
Right now I'd favor not spreading invention further than to those three...

Korea, Ottomans and Russia should be likely to push to Chemistry, Metallurgy, (MT) later. So maybe they should get invention, too. They might surprise me.

I think we will have trouble to be as fast on the upper path as they are on the lower.

Who could research Banking for us while we do the Astro path?
Again France, Korea (perhaps in their golden age).

warfare
first I'd upgrade every vet sword and spear. MDIs' chances against spears are much better.
Maybe we should kill those SoD by placing some Pikes and MDIs on a hill - either W of Osaka or N of Teotihuacan (or both?)...
I'd favor N of Teo to
1. cut NE forces
2. keep marching towards Kyoto.
3. give Japan a chance to take part in the fighting

diplomacy
Who's sharing islands?
1) Persia, Babylon, Dutch, Egypt, Hittites, Mongols
2) Russia, Cartaghe, Iroquois, China.
3) Ottoman, Korea, Maya, India, Spain, Portugal, Inca
4) Germany, Greece(?), Zulu, England,
5) France, Vikings(?)

I'd love to have this table complete...

 

[Andronicus]

Do we definitely need to gift Teno?
Those 2 Jap warriors should act as a distrction to Aztec troops and if we use the worker due next turn to lure units further north our 2 swords may hold.
The majority of Aztec units appear to be spears.

We can land an attack force of 4 (1 vMDI, 3 vsword) outside Teot next turn and outside Osaka the following turn. If both subsequent attacks are successful we would only need to hold off 3 inter-turns at Teno. he first is no risk, the second they will probably attack the Jap warriors, the third we can decide then if odds of holding are good enough or whether better to gift.

 

[Andronicus]

diplomacy
Who's sharing islands?
1) Persia, Babylon, Dutch, Egypt, Hittites, Mongols
2) Russia, Cartaghe, Iroquois, China.
3) Ottoman, Korea, Maya, India, Spain, Portugal, Inca
4) Germany, Greece(?), Zulu, England,
5) France, Vikings(?)

I'd love to have this table complete...

There is a light blue border SE of English - I dont think Greeks are ever light blue - could be Sumerians as we have not met them yet

I thought China had a third city as there is another pink border with what appears to be a horse colony nearby to China's east, however F4 reveals they only have the 2 - perhaps these are the Arabs?

Rome and Celts appear to be alone

 

[WackenOpenAir]

France, Persia and Babylon (soon to have their GA) are my bets to research Gunpowder fastest.

Have you looked at the screenshots with the embassies?
Persia and Babylon look like they are not gonna research anything BC.

We should do the gifting. there are 3 archers comming in the first stack, and the second stack is on the hills out of view this turn. If we do the gifting, we will have an empty egyptian town, easy to retake. If we fail to keep the city, we will have some 15 extra aztec units to fight.

I will upgrade 2 swords and a spear.
Next turn, i land 3 swords and MDI, i load two 5/5 swords, 2 MDI.
turn after i land two 5/5 swords, 2 MDI.
It may however be needed to attack with just the 3 swords and MDI. 2 spears and an archer are next to the town now. Next turn they will be 1 further.
I drop, and they will get closer again. If i now wait for 4 more units, the 2 spears and archer will have reentered town. That kind of nullifies the effect of our extra units.

We want 2 guys to research gunpowder. France for sure. I think India my be the only other to do it. Therefore, if we have any plans of conquering India, i think we may have to delay those a little.

We have some ideas about war:

We could allow france to become stronger by taking on the vikings. 1 v 1 wars are kind of a gamble, so that would probably need to wait until we have some more explored.

We could make aztecs and maya fight. Then 5 turns later or so, after they weakened eachother, but in the ottomans to attack from behind. Ottomans have separated cities making them weak. Do we actually want the otto's to conquer that continent, or do we want to take it for ourselves just leaving a spot for the scientific ottomans. I think we will only use the AI for free techs, gunpowder and maybe astronomy. I don't ever think they will be able to research IA techs for us. Thus, i think we will want to conquer mayas and incas for ourselves and leave the ottomans a spot. In that case, i may prefer to have them start a war shortly before we plan to invade.

I think it may be a good plan to keep the city for one more turn indeed.
If we drop next turn, they will start bringing back their units. We then have the choise between attacking with just 4 units or dropping 4 more but allowing them to bring in 2 more spears and an archer (now north of teoti). If we assume 3 spears in Teoti, both options will give us little less than 60% chance for succes.
If however we can keep the city a turn longer, we will have 2 more turns and thus we should be able to drop 8 units without facing the reenforcements comming back.
This should be possible due to the japanese units as you say.
I think they have 3 archers and they should not attack with spears.
However, we should gift the town, we cannot likely hold it more than 1 turn.

After discussions with KC, I will be playing within an hour if no objections. And i will do the following:
-no more wars / alliances for now.
-Keep city for 1 extra turn to give us time on teoti
-Gift India invention so they and france both get a chance to research gunpowder (a chance is like 90%, it is a huge favorite)

 

[WackenOpenAir]

1375BC(5)
Upgrade spear and 2 Swords.
I gift India up to Invention.
The extra turn we get by keeping the town 1 turn longer allows me to upgrade a bunch of units, so i unload them.
I swich the worker to a warrior for extra safety in Teno.

1350BC(6)
Everyone starts building TGL.
Upgrade 3 swords. Load MDI's on dromons.

1325BC(7)
Our landing spot is taken
i land an MDI on the only open spot so that next turn i can fight my way in.
However, we took only 1 archer attack on Teno, and we won. With just 3 archers to attack us now and 3 units to defend, i keep it another turn.

1300BC(8)
They attack with spears
However, we kill a bunch of units on the defence and keep the city.
With some of their units defeated, and others being scattered around all over the place, the place looks pretty safe now, next turn is safe to keep it.

1275BC(9)
Our units finaly stand next to Teoti.
Aztecs brought out a boat. I keep my distance.

1250BC(10)
Though it's the 10th turn, i couldnt help it but to attack and take Teoti
I hope you forgive me though if you hear this produced a leader

There will be plenty of exciting stuff to do next turnset though.
We still have both towns in controll, so indeed we may not have to gift anything to egypt.
We have a good number of healthy units to move on to Osaka.
We now need to see if we can keep everything together for about 3 more turns needed to take Osaka.
Aztecs have boats out in our canal. Please never and a turn within 2 tiles from an enemy boat.
An early golden age would be quite a disaster. Since the aztec boats went both ways, we need to think carefully about how to handle this.
Redlining boats makes them retreat to town, but if they are trapped in these cannals, i don't know if that is guarantee they won't fight us. I never thought they would attack with spears either.

 

[Paul#42]

I hope you forgive me though if you hear this produced a leader

Good news!
With our empire being quite concise theer is no chance to rush something they will call FP later...
So we should form an army and load it with a single MDI. This is good for fighting of stacks of archers and spears. Always keep it with a pike so it's not on top of the stack...

CA2 tells me we need one more town to form an army
If that's true, we should get that town soon

Teo's got a harbor

I like the territory graph much more now

We still have both towns in controll, so indeed we may not have to gift anything to egypt.

yes, that's the panic option. Good choice you kept it.

Have you looked at the screenshots with the embassies?
Persia and Babylon look like they are not gonna research anything BC.

Well Persia has some research capacity, maybe they get more focused if they get GA and reduced unit support by the war. But Babs seem hopeless.
Any AI with a river in their territory might be capable of doing good research.

We could make aztecs and maya fight. Then 5 turns later or so, after they weakened eachother, but in the ottomans to attack from behind. Ottomans have separated cities making them weak.

Great idea. I already thought how we could help them, that might work. However I would give them 10 turns of fighting, the AI seem to reduce their units slowly...

 

[Andronicus]

Do we need more dromons to enable landing bigger stacks simultaneously adjacent to enemy cities? We can afford more unit support now. They will come in handy esp when attacking further away and reinforcements take longer

Should we be building libs in our newly captured towns?

Well done on the leader
Need to decide which island we would get most value out of an army.
I suggest MDI army either to Egypt or probably better choice to Maya.

Suggestion for diplomacy in continent to our west
- dow Maya, ally Incans, bringing in Ottomen later
- after alliance with Incans expires turn on them helping Ottomen gain control of their peninsula

- once India has Chivalry, dow Portugal, ally India, get India's extra gpt during it's GA

- if Korea survives long enough, dow Spain and gift cities to Korea

Suggestions for continent to our southeast
- after Persia / Babs destroy Dutch, turn them on Egypt taking at least Thebes which has the makings of a top research city with 5 gems +/- Memphis (Egyptians currently have 7 spare gems)

 

[killercane]

We can gift Persia some lux to get rid of their entertainers. Lets get Maya into war with Inca per Andronicus' suggestion. Shouldnt they be our next target? Japan and Aztecs wont take long now.

What to do with the leader really? Army, FP, or university or marketplace. We cant build FP yet, Army wont do us any good really on islands until magnetism or at the earliest astro. Do we really need an army to take down Inca and Maya? I dont think so. We have limited units, it seems attacking w/ 3 mdi separately is better than with 2 attacks with army.

A uni isnt coming in for 50+ turns. Im inclined to say that doing a market is the best bang for our buck in Constantinople, as crazy as that sounds. We get immediate benefit and it will be very good for our commerce when we get spices from Inca and gems from Egypt. We will get others fighting all these archers and warriors.

 

[Paul#42]

Do we need more dromons to enable landing bigger stacks simultaneously adjacent to enemy cities?

I'd say so. Every attack to a more distand island would be hemmed with just 4 units transport capacity per 2-3 turns. I'd build another two as soon as we are sure to have enough units to take Kyoto and Osaka.

Should we be building libs in our newly captured towns?

Yes, and also courts where appropriate. Money for maintenance won't be a problem this game, commerce will. Every single beaker counts.

But first I'd produce some workers there, as long as they are slaves. If we got a mixed population, is there any clue to know what nationality the worker will be of?

Suggestion for diplomacy in continent to our west
- dow Maya, ally Incans, bringing in Ottomen later
- after alliance with Incans expires turn on them helping Ottomen gain control of their peninsula

- once India has Chivalry, dow Portugal, ally India, get India's extra gpt during it's GA

- if Korea survives long enough, dow Spain and gift cities to Korea

That might be too late, it will take some time till we got spare units to help them. We'd better get Spain busy on another front.
Whether we ally them or their oponent there (Portugal?) is not too important - I tend to ally with them to be able to do trades.

Suggestions for continent to our southeast
- after Persia / Babs destroy Dutch, turn them on Egypt taking at least Thebes which has the makings of a top research city with 5 gems +/- Memphis (Egyptians currently have 7 spare gems)

 

[Paul#42]

We can gift Persia some lux to get rid of their entertainers.

Nice idea. Make sure to take no lump sum for it just in case a roman galley drops by...

What to do with the leader really? Army, FP, or university or marketplace. We cant build FP yet, Army wont do us any good really on islands until magnetism or at the earliest astro. Do we really need an army to take down Inca and Maya? I dont think so. We have limited units, it seems attacking w/ 3 mdi separately is better than with 2 attacks with army.

A uni isnt coming in for 50+ turns. Im inclined to say that doing a market is the best bang for our buck in Constantinople, as crazy as that sounds. We get immediate benefit and it will be very good for our commerce when we get spices from Inca and gems from Egypt. We will get others fighting all these archers and warriors.

Marketplace sounds weird, indeed...
We don't have to fill it with 3 units, if we just insert two MDI (or even just one for now) it is as useful as two single MDI, improved movement, improved attack and defense.

I'd form an army, add one MDI, let it have a cheap win against Aztecs so our next MGL could even rush Heroic Epic if FP is not in order and we don't want another army.

 

[Abegweit]

Good turns. Looks like there's more fun coming up.

Questions:

What to do with the leader? "Gift" him to the Maya?
Persians and Babs each have 7 gpt. Do we take it? Gets my vote.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

The leader
I think we must think carefully if we want to make an army. I don't see a real lot of value in an army. If we simply make AI's at war before we land every time, we will never be fighting a lot of opposition.

If we are planning to take Paris in the future, a leader for an FP there would be pretty godly though. If we make an army now, we may just happen to get no more leaders. I think we must consider keeping the leader for paris. It may seem like a waste to keep it and not be able to get more of them, but the value of an FP in Paris so greatly exceeds the value of an army that it may be the better choise.

The new towns
For now and probably 3 more turns, we are fighting to keep the towns we conquered. I built a warrior to do this, and another one could be ready next turn. I think we should just build this next warrior for safety incase the stack currently on the ivory plains or even on the hills returns to Teno before we took out the Aztecs.

After that, we should build an aquaduct and library to start with. In what order to bulid those i am not yet sure.
Osaka will also need a harbor. Courthouses, Marketplaces, Universities are a next chapter.

I think we need to work our new lands. Building workers from the capital IMO is the way to go, however, we need to find out exectly when to start and stop building those. Before we start building those workers, we need at least enough units to conquer Japan. Possibly we may choose to conquer more after that. The capital also needs a harbor pretty soon.

Military
ATM, we have 7 MDI and 3 eSword Most likely, that is enough to take Japan already.
SoZ is finished in Kyoto 6 turns ago, So they should have their first AC. I hope they attack Persia with that. We probably have to fight one anyway.
Say we lose 1 or 2 MDI on Osaka and 2 or 3 on Kyoto. That would leave us with 6 attackers and an AC every 5 turns. Adding a few more might enable us to conquer quite a bit more with the remaining forces while we build infrastructure and workers and SoZ replaces our losses.

If we are not gifting Egypt, we have an open choise where to attack next. Maya's and Inca's are a reasonable option as well. It is better to have that ground for ourselves than for the ottomans. I think we need to accept that the AI is not gonna research anything for us after gunpowder and maybe Astronomy. We just need to keep the scientifics alive for the next age techs.

We also have to defend our home land though. In fact, the aztec boats, the very lightly defended Teoti.... It scares me a bit already. We should go for Osaka right away and remove this threat.

Politics
While fighting those aztecs, i kinda forgot to check for gpt opportunities. Taking the gpt from Persia and Babs surely sounds good to me.

For safety of our soon to be trade routes (enemy boat N of capital breaks em all), for decreasing the risk of some random units being dropped on our lands, and for decreasing the risk of an unwanted GA, we want as little wars as possible. Since i also think making the AI grow to research for us is gonna be rather useless, i think we should hold back and only make wars from now with guys that we are gonna conquer or have another specific plan.


Most important things i'd like to make clear:
-Lets get rid of the idea that the AI is gonna be researching for us after Gunpowder / astronomy. They simply won't.

-Let's think carefully about when to make workers from the capital, what work they have to do and when they can be joined. The workers, size7, the needed aquaducts, the tile improvements, everything should fit perfectly

-An army is not the automatic thing to do with the leader. Even if we have 70% chance of getting another one. If an FP in Paris is 4 times as valuable to us than an army, we should keep it. (I am not saying the FP is the automatic thing to do either, but the issue needs serious consideration IMO. Doing pretty much ANYTHING automatically without consideration leads to possible mistakes.)

-An early GA is a disaster. Do not let it happen.

 

[Paul#42]

The leader
I think we must think carefully if we want to make an army. I don't see a real lot of value in an army. If we simply make AI's at war before we land every time, we will never be fighting a lot of opposition.

If we are planning to take Paris in the future, a leader for an FP there would be pretty godly though. If we make an army now, we may just happen to get no more leaders. I think we must consider keeping the leader for paris. It may seem like a waste to keep it and not be able to get more of them, but the value of an FP in Paris so greatly exceeds the value of an army that it may be the better choise.

I strongly doubt we will be able to conquer Paris without an army once they have gunpowder

Right now I'd keep France as a strong ally and make it gain other towns rather than trying to beat them

The new towns
For now and probably 3 more turns, we are fighting to keep the towns we conquered. I built a warrior to do this, and another one could be ready next turn. I think we should just build this next warrior for safety incase the stack currently on the ivory plains or even on the hills returns to Teno before we took out the Aztecs.

After that, we should build an aquaduct and library to start with. In what order to bulid those i am not yet sure.

I'd build a lib (40s) first in any case. Building the duct (100s) first would take so long... it will be quicker when we have those tiles improved.

I think we need to work our new lands. Building workers from the capital IMO is the way to go, however, we need to find out exectly when to start and stop building those. Before we start building those workers, we need at least enough units to conquer Japan. Possibly we may choose to conquer more after that. The capital also needs a harbor pretty soon.

I'd rather avoid to let our capital go down to size 6 again (I guess that's your suggestion).
Could anyone calculate how many worker turns our new land (and Consti's area) really need?

Military
ATM, we have 7 MDI and 3 eSword Most likely, that is enough to take Japan already.
SoZ is finished in Kyoto 6 turns ago, So they should have their first AC. I hope they attack Persia with that. We probably have to fight one anyway.

Now that's a really innovative way to mess up our oponents...

Say we lose 1 or 2 MDI on Osaka and 2 or 3 on Kyoto. That would leave us with 6 attackers and an AC every 5 turns. Adding a few more might enable us to conquer quite a bit more with the remaining forces while we build infrastructure and workers and SoZ replaces our losses.

I'd accept to leave our leader for an AC-army.
If I fail to convince you and we don't use the leader soon, we should upgrade our e-swords to MDI because they will likely promote again soon.

If we are not gifting Egypt, we have an open choise where to attack next. Maya's and Inca's are a reasonable option as well. It is better to have that ground for ourselves than for the ottomans. I think we need to accept that the AI is not gonna research anything for us after gunpowder and maybe Astronomy. We just need to keep the scientifics alive for the next age techs.

We need to judge which island has the strongest sites. Rivers are welcome, luxuries also. Food boni would be nice even if vastly corrupt.

We also have to defend our home land though. In fact, the aztec boats, the very lightly defended Teoti.... It scares me a bit already. We should go for Osaka right away and remove this threat.

We could leave 1-2 warriors in Consti for MP and urgency once all resistance is quelled.

-Lets get rid of the idea that the AI is gonna be researching for us after Gunpowder / astronomy. They simply won't.

I fear you are right

-An army is not the automatic thing to do with the leader. Even if we have 70% chance of getting another one. If an FP in Paris is 4 times as valuable to us than an army, we should keep it.

Of course that's not clear cut but I don't want to wait some 1000 years without any chance to get leaders. We will be facing a bunch of really crappy units on our mission - I bet we will get several opportunities to get other MGL.
And - as stated before - I doubt we will get Paris without an army. There will be easier targets - less appealing but better "achievable".

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I strongly doubt we will be able to conquer Paris without an army once they have gunpowder

Right now I'd keep France as a strong ally and make it gain other towns rather than trying to beat them

That is a choise we got to make. Either we go for Paris but not the rest of the world, or we go for the world and Paris is largely unimportant.
If we take say 40 cities all over the world, and FP in Paris will only make Paris good, but not the cities around it. Paris will then still be nice, but the value of the FP would no longer be exceptional. In this case the FP would be better build on Maya/Inca island so that the whole island may benefit from it.

The other option is to forget about the world, build infrastructure and then take Paris and 5 cities around it. That would then become a second core. It will however only work if we do not take a lot of cities as that would increase corruption in our second core.

Anyone care to make a list with distances from our capital to all known cities ? With this, we would be able to properly decide what we want to capture and where we want the FP to be in the future.

I'd build a lib (40s) first in any case. Building the duct (100s) first would take so long... it will be quicker when we have those tiles improved.

We will have to calculate

I'd rather avoid to let our capital go down to size 6 again (I guess that's your suggestion).
Could anyone calculate how many worker turns our new land (and Consti's area) really need?

I will calculate this as well as the time needed to grow and build aquaducts.
Yes, we should make our capital go down to size6. I assume you have seen the difference in the graphs i posted ?
I think in fact that that may be a deciding move in this SGOTM. Note that the capital going to size 6 is not for workers to improve our lands primarily. It is for all our cities to get to size 12 asap. Working the lands with these workers is just kind of a bonus.

I think eveything else depends on these 2 plans:
-How do we want the world to look in the end, mostly ours, or 2 cores?
-How are we gonna develop our cities and how do we balance that with conquest.?


As i already had started calculating on this subject with my graphs etc, i will continue to do so.
Who volunteers to make a list of towns with their distances to our capital ?

 

[Abegweit]

A lib seems pretty clearly to be the first choice in Teno. Not only is it much cheaper, most of the value of the city is in the six ivory tiles. We don't need a duct for that.

I like the idea of saving the MGL for an FP. One problem with this is that, if we do so, we won't get another. The French have 18 wool No wonder they're such a powerhouse. Together with Scandinavian silks and Indian spices, that would get us up to six luxes. Pretty good.

While it is true that the AI won't be much help in tech, they will be able to pay us for ours. There's already 15 gpt out there. That makes markets much less useful.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I know, you guys want our territory graph to grow by the libs
(For Teno, you may well be right though)

For our world plan, we should estimate
-the research we get over time by conquering many towns and making the FP on the aztec or Egyptian island (depending on the city distances, that may mean we will have to leave the other of those 2 islands to the AI for corruption purposes)
-the research we get over time by build a second core.

 

[Paul#42]

How long would our dromons need to get to France ?
(anyone remember that 80ies' song from Mike Oldfield & Maggie Riley )

If we wanted to take Paris, that should be latest before they connect salt (I bet they sit right on it )

If they got their muskets going, I doubt we will be able to take Paris without cavs.

Maybe we should esatblish an embassy there soon.
Right now they lack Iron so against spears we might be successfull with a surprise attack.
If we do decide so, I'd accept saving the precious MGL for the fp.
No matter how we expand - the fp in Paris would be a great boost.
I consider that more effective than a second core on a close-by island... (I remember that core discussion we had in SGotm11 which nearly brought our team to collapse...)
Wacken, you had some great experience in your SGotm 8 (?) when you handbuilt your FP in the jungle - I trust you to understand the maths behind that...

Paris would be most certainly our UN-town.

Abegweit, you know you are up, don't you?

 

[Abegweit]

Anyone care to make a list with distances from our capital to all known cities ? With this, we would be able to properly decide what we want to capture and where we want the FP to be in the future.

How far out do you want to go. Here are the ones on the nearer islands.

Teotihuacan 4
Osaka 5
Teno 7
Kyoto 9
Delhi 11
Chichen 11
Thebes 11
Persepolis 12
Second Maya 13
Edrine 14
Memphis 15
Rome ~15
Tarsus 18
Veii 19
Second Indian ~19
Amsterdam ~20
Istanbul 21
Rotterdam 21
Ta-tu 24
Hittite capital 24
Barcelona 25
Karakorum 26
Babylon 26
Madrid 30

Edit: adding one more
Orleans 39

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Yes, i fully understand the FP maths. Do we all ?

If we could capture Paris soon, and rush the FP there right away, that might indeed be a real coup. However, they are researching Gunpowder themselves now. So we can expect to have about 20 turns for that.

Abegweit, i hope you're not in a big hurry ?
For now, i have to do some real life matters that can't wait. Tonight i will be calculating and analysing again