UNGY5 Let's keep it simple!

[silverbullet]

Our plan was to stop the war with Izzy ASAP so we can take advantage of our lead and take Asoka. He has more decent cities.

I think the timing of the game requires us to take Asoka before Ramesses anyway. We can take the time to build more infrastrucutre, such as heroic epic, and our troops shouldn't have much problem against Asoka. The only issue is that we will need a few more trebs.

 

[ungy]

Nice going Silverbullet!

I think stopping was fine--nothing compelling to take.

I'm thinking we should hurry over and take Ramesses. Unless I missed it I couldn't find a SOD--he's got hardly any troops. We have 22 Catas!
Ramesses has only 8 cities--2 of which will fall our first turn. We'll have to accept his vassalization sooner than we'd want as otherwise he'll likely vassal to Charlie but I think if we vassal Ramesses we've won.
If we wait on Ramesses there is a possibility that he may have a DP with Charlie by the time we're ready.

 

[Rusten]

Ramesses can't vassal to Charlemagne as long as we're pleased with Charlemagne (assuming we're at war) so I think we should swamp Ramesses with units now.

 

[silverbullet]

Great, Ramesses it is then.

I don't think we will need siege against him. Instead of stealing education (which we don't need right now) we can just use the spies to take down defences. We want to take his main wonder cities (shrine + UoS)

I would leave Vandal intact. It will be good for espionage after the war to backfill the missing techs.
I think we can switch to org religion/representation regardless of the war. We have most of the army we need and if we need extra cataphracts they will get 5xp anyway.

 

[ungy]

If Charlie will not take Ramesses as vassal and DOW us I might be inclined to eliminate him so for that I'd build a few more accuracy trebs.
Either way we stand well.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

ramses never builds enough army so I guess you can take him now without trouble... And if he has UoS + SM... it's so yummie.

Ramesses can't vassal to Charlemagne as long as we're pleased with Charlemagne (assuming we're at war) so I think we should swamp Ramesses with units now.

izzy and charlie were happy with each other before when she was budhist? normally I guess they were, given similar personas and probably ob/some resource trade... Will charlie still be pleased with her after she'll switch to budhism and get -1 for declaring on his friend ramses?

 

[silverbullet]

Izzy is not likely to switch to budhism because she has no control of the holy city anymore.
Ramesses is diligently sending missionaries to her.
In any case, it's a good point and it's worth to keep 2 spies in her closest city so we can switch her back if she decides to adopt budhism.

Ungy: Eliminating Ramesses is an option - but not a must. He is friendly with Charlemagne so it's safe to vassal him. He won't have much land left so he won't be a good tech trading partner, but we might want to delay eliminating him until we steal all of his techs.

If we want to be completely safe from Charlie, we could try to bribe him vs. Asoka. It will also force his SOD to move far away and make him an easier target once we declare on him. Perhaps stealing divine right from Ramesses will give us enough to bribe Charlie.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

you need friendly with charlie in order to bribe him(I think)

 

[silverbullet]

I am not sure if you must be friendly with Chalres to bribe him, but we are already friendly with him

 

[SnowlyWhite]

you + izzy

 

[Rusten]

Not much going on here now. Who's up?

 

[silverbullet]

I think Dirk is next. Ungy - can you confirm?

Rusten (or anyone else), if we don't here anything from anyone today and you want to take the next turn, I am sure no one would mind. Just post a "GOT IT" message before you start playing so that it's clear who is currently playing and we don't play in parallel.

 

[Dirk1302]

I assumed Vra or pigswill is up. I don't have too much time atm. Can probably play some turns this weekend if i'm up then.

 

[ungy]

Went off for a 3 day weekend and forgot my laptop --wasn't planning on being out of touch.

Pigswill--if you're back up to speed you can take this--or if pigswill doesn't post a got it then Rusten why don't you take it?

I assume VRA is not with us--he hasn't posted much and the set he took was frankly not that carefully played.

 

[vra379971]

*nod*

Sorry folks. I sadly must withdraw from this. With life as it is the Succ GOTM is the only one can handle atm. Sorry about that.

 

[pigswill]

I've got it. Had a look. Our economy is in deep shoot atm, whipping lots of courthouses will help (and give free eps) but I'm wondering how much expansion we can afford. I guess its declare on Ramses, hope he capitulates early and then worry about the economy.

 

[silverbullet]

I've got it. Had a look. Our economy is in deep shoot atm, whipping lots of courthouses will help (and give free eps) but I'm wondering how much expansion we can afford. I guess its declare on Ramses, hope he capitulates early and then worry about the economy.

Our economy is not so bad. If I recall correctly we were breaking even at 50% last time I checked, and that is before getting all the new Spanish cities out of revolt.
Courthouses will definitely help, but the priority should be to capture Ramesses's great cities and important wonders.

I am still not sure about capitulating him. It might be more useful to eliminate him, but that's something we can discuss once we get the option.

We have a lot of EP against Ramesses, so we might have time for 5 turn Confucianism to steal a few techs and still be able to maintain enough EP to take down his defences. We must be back to jewish though before we declare so that Charles will not declare on us. I don't think we need to spend our EP on things like education or liberalism at the moment, but if Ramesses chooses gunpowder or nationalism we can consider spending our EP on that.

 

[pigswill]

Looking at the 900ad save we're running +18gpt at 100% cash, -4gpt at 90% cash. We've got a couple of thousand in the bank so its not a crisis by any means. However we ain't generating much in the way of beakers or eps atm.

 

[ungy]

Pigswill--
don't worry about the economy atm.
Madrid will shortly come on line and that will help.
Key thing here is to move fast against Ramesses--he's got almost no army.
We can bring our whole force to bear as Izzie protects our rear and our relations protect us vs. Charlie.
We may want to whip up a few trebs in case either spies don't work.
Once we have Ramesses down--and we need most of his land as we need the holy city we should coast to victory--the other AI are not that advanced and the combination AP/Uof S/SM is very strong even w/o monasteries (as well as the other wonders).

Feel free to pause midstream for comments if you're not sure how to proceed.

 

[pigswill]

I have a plan....

The cities we really want are Thebes and Memphis. We can avoid a long and tedious slog by sending our phracts through HRE and launching invasion from the Augsburg/Egypt border.
Send spies to Thebes and Memphis to do their spy-y stuff while our phracts heal up and head south.
Leave trebs and footsloggers on our borders ready to take Vandal conventionally.