[SPOILERS] scooter tries again: back to school! (Willem of Vikings)

[scooter]

What's everyone got against wonder movies? Everyone's in such a hurry.

They're fun to watch once I guess.

[scooter]

T76 dances with Yuri

I can never quite tell what he's intending. So I'll give him a chance and show him I'll be nice:



Surely he can see I can permanently pillage that crab right now. I chose not to. We'll see if this guy runs away:



I'm fine, but I'm dancing around with him there. Also, in the north:



I seem to have things under control up here. Things are a little hazy with the lack of unitns on the island, but I'll have a Trireme in the water in just a turn or two and I'll sink any galley no questions asked. I'm also about to ferry over a couple more units by withdrawing my galley. You see a couple markets completing, working on a couple more:



Markets and Courthouses in all major cities is the goal. ORG is such a powerful trait here, I do still wish I had gotten Zara like I wanted. Demos with Yuris + Seven in a golden age:



This was yesterday's turn, but I'm not sure I'll get to post today's screenshots. I didn't take much today anyways.

[scooter]

T77-78 goes away for the weekend

Two turns were played without reporting in mind, so all you have is 4 random times where I apparently hit print screen. So I'll just look at them and try to remember why I took them. Here goes:



Giving Yuri a chance to live here. Hoping that this + unpillaged seafood will keep his longbows away. I think it worked too... If he moves in though, mercy is gone. Builds for T77:



Courthouses and Markets please? I need a fleet of settlers again next. The problem is my sudden happy cap that I'm also trying to fill out which is limiting my ability to squeak in settler builds at the moment. I also did a neat trick - I purposely lost Seven's graphs so that they would look prettier:



(Or Seven just happened to build Courthouses too fast so I lost his graphs)

And on T78:



Well then, he has Metal Casting. I'm going to back away to continue to feign peace, but geez, defending your Moai city with a warrior is insane and not very Seven-like. Unfortunately I have but one young city to work with here so I don't have a galley yet on this body of water. By the time I do, I'm sure he'll have infantry in the city.

Machinery done next turn. Couple Zerks please?

[NobleHelium]

Not sure why you think defending his Moai city with a warrior is necessarily not very Seven-like.

[scooter]

T80 despairs

My report didn't go up last night even though I played and took pictures and whatnot. That's because I was despairing. First, the happy part:



Yeah I can build Zerks or whatever. Now the bad news:



Seven has freaking Nationalism. Yes, Nationalism. That means he can grab Military Tradition or Constitution. Likely the latter. Contrast that to my tech screen:



This is just a romp. I can try to screw with him a bit but there's only so much I can do:



Maybe he'll continue to not defend Moai for another 5 turns...?

Yuri trying to raze Finance:



At least I'm assuming that's why he moved his galley up. Anyways, I'm fine. I covered my worker and moved my trireme up, so he'll sink if he doesn't back up. And he'll lose his fishing nets:



Guess he's going to parade his WB past my Trireme? Again, I'll maybe possibly play nice if he will, but if he doesn't quit threatning me in the north then get ready for pillaging and blockades.

Seriously though, no clue on how to handle Seven. Who needs Pyramids when you can just get Constitution before T100?

[scooter]

Not sure why you think defending his Moai city with a warrior is necessarily not very Seven-like.

You guys razed his Moai city in 29V right?

[Commodore]

Well, Curs are only a little bit harder to deal with than 'phracts, right? What was your plan in 32 to deal with Turn 85 'phractagedeon? Surely it wasn't just "die a lot".

[scooter]

Well, Curs are only a little bit harder to deal with than 'phracts, right? What was your plan in 32 to deal with Turn 85 'phractagedeon? Surely it wasn't just "die a lot".

Well, I was kind of assuming his plan involved Constitution next for Representation, but now I'm wondering if this isn't an accidental hint that it'll be Military Tradition for Cuirs instead . (don't sweat it, I've been thinking about both)

Anyways, the best defense against Phracts/Cuirs is not Pikes, Elephants, Rifles, etc. It's to not have to defend against them. My plan in 32 revolved around getting you attack somebody not named "scooter." Part of this was expressing my ability to defend against you (elephant rush and flashing them early), but also expressing my desire to not fight you (not killing units I could have killed). If you defend against Phracts and win, you've already lost due to the sheer resources required to defend against them.

Same idea here. If Seven goes for Cuirs and goes on a killing spree, my best hope is that it's not me. However, we're in a sliiightly different situation here than PBEM32. In 32, we had a different runaway (Serdoa), so me being attacked by you meant a 3rd party would be uncatchably far ahead of me. However here, I consider myself to be fairly even with Pindicator. Longterm, I'd argue I'm a bit ahead of him given that FIN is really heating up for me. If Seven comes at me, that's the leader, so it's less of a terrible thing to try to deal with that. My real advantage would be controlling the seas. Going for Military Tradition means delaying Astronomy, which means my boats will rule the seas for awhile longer.

Sorry for the real lack of direction in this post so far, but I'm getting somewhere slowly. I just wanted to establish all the things to think about first, and I'm multitasking at the moment so the flow of this post is awful. I can hook elephants (so can everyone) and all that good stuff, but my best defense is simply hoping he goes elsewhere with his military. Honestly, if he goes Military Tradition next I'll be thrilled. If he goes Constitution and keeps blowing by us in tech, this game is done. If he techs Mil Trad and churns our Cuirs at some unlucky neighbor, this game is probably over, but if for whatever reason we get a dogged defense from someone, that MIGHT open the door just enough for Pin and/or I to catch up a bit - enough to make it interesting. So what's my defense going to be? Simple. I'm going to hope he doesn't pick me. Investing heavily in military might improve my chances of finishing 2nd or 3rd, but I'm not really interested in that. I'd rather just keep pushing and hope he attacks somebody else and it goes really badly. If he picks me, eh whatever, I wasn't going to win anyways. I'll make him bleed as best I can and maybe Pindicator will have a shot. In reality though, I suspect he'll just roll over Dazed or something. Dazed and Yuri are kind of checked out I think, and Yuri has longbows everywhere so he'll probably pick Dazed.

Oooooor he'll just go Consitution like I'd expect and continue crushing us economically .

[NobleHelium]

You guys razed his Moai city in 29V right?

Nah, it was further south, at the gold. We took a decent island city that was important strategically for us, but not very big for him.

[scooter]

Slow pace lately due to absences and technical difficulties, but two shots from the last two turns:



The strangest thing here is the galley. Not sure what he's doing with that. Unfortunately the next turn was a disaster:



Seven gets a bunch of big wins here. I also upgraded the warrior because I couldn't count on that galley being empty. A little scary. Maybe that's why he moved him forward. And of course, Seven went from one Golden Age right into his Taj golden age. Brutal. This is just a romp at this point.