[SPOILERS] Serdoa as DeGaulle of Maya

[Kurumi]

Politics. They destroy everything!

[Serdoa]

Long turn today (several hours) as I had to decide on if I want to switch Civics via another GA or not. That meant calculating if I would get enough GP for a third one (last GP produced was the 800 one, so I need 900, 1000 and 1200 GPP for my next GA IF I get 3 different GP). Reason for that of course is that I will want to switch into State Property when it is available, but that's still Chemistry, Scientific Method and Communism to research, a total of ~22000 beakers. Probably nothing I'll get done in just one GA

Finally decided that I would switch Civics to Pacifism and Environmentalism (Rep, Merc, and Caste being the others). And Environmentalism is ... interesting. I let a picture make the talking:



Of course, I do produce wealth in a few cities, but only in a few. I think that's around 50-70 gold that I produce this way. That makes it ~150 gold per turn that I'm making minus. That's pretty low, I remember not too long ago it was more along the lines of 400 gold per turn. And most of my cities are hammer-cities, so really some of them have to produce wealth or research, otherwise I can't expect to keep up with the others who have cottages everywhere.

Now I'll go Chemistry -> SM -> Communism. I think I should be able to get Chem and SM within the GA. Communism should take maybe 7-8 turns afterwards. IF I can't get into another GA. Otherwise I'll probably start that right away and should get it in like 5 turns I'd guess. If I am first I'll have a GSpy to play with and of course SP, which should let me grow most of my cities very fast while providing an incredible amount of hammers. Biology after that for even more growth. At that point I probably have to look for more happy.

Alternatively I might go for Rep.Parts -> Rifling if I feel I need to defend myself. If not I'll do it afterwards to get Cavalry and finally rid of xenu. I'm pretty sure he'd be happy to be out of this game by now.

[Serdoa]

Well, it seems plako doesn't want to keep our non-EP-standing declaration (=we both didn't spend on the other EP, that's it, no talking was involved) and started to do just that. And not a small amount, already 160-180 last turn. Plako, I won't let you steal Scientific Method from me and beat me to Communism. If you try that, it means war. And yes, I'm fine to let Commodore win the game in that case

I wonder if my trade offer will be understood. His City of EPs for Iron...

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

How's it going?

[Serdoa]

plako's winning - actually I think we could concede at this point to him. He has the most cities, a GNP of over 4000 (certainly building wealth and all that but still, I can get mine at best to 2500, maybe 3000 if I starve my cities). Pretty much, I wait only for Commodore to finish his war before I'll officially ask in the tech-thread if we want to concede. At least if Commodore isn't soo much stronger after his war that he believes he can catch him.

Btw: I think I can keep up long enough with plako that he can't overrun me simply (I have ship of the line and grens now while he has Rifles I believe and also SotL) but he should build the SS first. I'm not really interested in playing out 100 long late-game turns just to get to that point.

[Serdoa]

I think plako is racing me to Physics. Not entirely sure but his sudden GNP-spike does mean he wants to get something really bad and that's the only "first to"-tech that I can see. So, I bulbed Physics and made my empire starve (no citizen will die, they are just a "little" bit hungry...). End result:




And Physics will finish end of this turn. Lets hope he isn't finishing it now as well. Though his GNP did drop, so I assume he has nearly finished it and doesn't need to go all out on it. :/

[TheHumanHydra]

Holy GNP, Batman!

[Serdoa]

Yeah, but look at the food. I'm not able to keep that up at all. Tbh, I a really hurt by not having much food and not having planted enough cottage cities. What is my fault, but at first I didn't need to, then I needed hammers to get other players land, then I thought I take well developed BRick-land, but it wasn't as well developed as I hoped and then it was so late in the game already that I thought cottages wouldn't have time to mature anyway (what is bullshit as I had to find out as this game takes muuuuch longer than I thought). At that point I decided to replace my missing cottages by taking those of xenu. But xenu has made it his sole target to stay in this game, building military and only military. I can understand that and it is a valid strategy, but it meant together with my fuck-up that lost me several Knights there was no way for me to invade him. I still can't - it simply takes fucking long till you get better troops when you get out of Medieval. Muskets are not strong enough against Knights and Maces and LBs behind walls and 14+ catapults on top.

Well, that has changed now, I have Grens and will have Steel soon + Rifling hopefully as well. If we continue this game I will try to take him out. Not sure if we do though as slow has decided to attack Commodore and if he has to divide his attention, he might not be able to take out Zulu. If he can't do that, he can't compete with plako. But if he can't compete with plako, plako might decide to strike at me, just to end this game quicker as I'm the only contender left then. That would mean I can't go attack someone, but without more land I can't win either.

Also, it is crazy how many cities plako has. Not sure if he had just a good starting position or if someone let him get too much. Certainly Merohoc expanding onto the island to my east that BRick also expanded to did help plako immensely. That gave him a foothold there that I could not attack. Oh well, fun game in any case.

[TheHumanHydra]

Thank you for the thoughts!

[flugauto]

How do you spend your EPs?