[SPOILERS] Commodore, Mist and the Weed. A Farce in three acts.

[Commodore]

Scratch one more Melville. Apparently, chariot vs. spear in Serdoan hands will do a silly amount of damage.

[Commodore]

So apparently, whatever I write here is being sent directly to Serdoa. Mostly joking about the RNG hell, but seriously...who is transmitting to him? Anyway, Serdoa, why don't we NAP like gentlemen, what say? Just write here if you'd like to negotiate, but obviously abandoning Kipling is a start. Until I hear how much reporting is being sent to you, I'm going to be avoiding posting too much alas.

For those at home, we have good news,



Bad news,



And good news...but also bad news.



There is a hole in the empire, pouring in an airlifted Viking per turn plus lots more garrison too. This is a mite bit depressing, and the economy is bad too. I think I'll look for donations...



Maybe?

[fluffyflyingpig]

You can sail over the great wall?!

[Commodore]

You can sail over the great wall?!

No, my good sir, but we can sail UNDER! Waterbenders, ho!



Oh, well...darn...



That's more or less how it's been. Frustration times confounded.



So, Serdoa, here's the report directly for you, so you don't have to parse it from the screens: Three more turns to Feudalism, then a double revolt to Vassalage/HR will see me pumping ironless Cover longbows to come after the festering sore that is Kipling, which I won't be able to raze, tragically. Gutshot and crippled, I'll flounder onward until everyone else realizes you've won, then we call the game in your favor.

[novice]

Since Serdoa has the cultural majority in Kipling, I think you should be able to raze it?

[Commodore]

Since Serdoa has the cultural majority in Kipling, I think you should be able to raze it?

What's the cultural flipping point? I thought it was enough for it us to have had solid culture there, although I guess as the poor city never popped borders either time...



Serdoa reinforced, so kind of a moot point anyway I guess. Brian's horses or Lewwyn's, then?

[scooter]

Well, this thread should be longer. First off, really nice work by you two planning out the pre-game Guilds rush . I'm actually sort of bummed your plan never came to fruition just for chaos's sake, despite the fact that I would've been a logical target.

Oh, your opponent previews were amazing. First off, I feel like I may need to add this as my username tagline:

[img]Scooter (Machiavellian, balanced)

Also:

I'm pretty sure he wanted Vicky, actually, and Joao was a panic reaction after we took her.

Nailed it. Also:

...sure.


Krill (terminator, unthwartable) as Somebody (Unexpected, Not usual) of the Somepeople (Agriculture, Stonehenge)

I don't have anything to say about this, but I just wanted to quote this because it made me laugh more than it should've.

The crusade against the dark artists (scooter, Serdoa both C&D don't they?)

Not really. I pay loose attention to scores just by flipping between screenshots to see any anomalies in huge jumps/drops and check demos frequently, but I don't go guessing techs or all that stuff. Too much work for too little payoff.

I like your early dotmap. Seems like the others went for the incense spot early, but you went for that southeast spot. Tend to think that gave you a better start overall. In general though the south was a bit more attractive for a FIN civ with the river flatland windmill and the Oasis. Still, I'm thinking you made a good choice there.

Speaking of which, I think it's gone to Scooter's head a bit. Dude, you do need some GNP...like, try not to crash pre-Pottery. He must be settling some huge reaches now. Silly Joao. Serdoa is beating us slightly, but that's okay, my sang is still froid.

I actually have no regrets here. My REXing really started to pay off as the game progressed - I spammed so many workers that I had nearly unlimited improved tiles to grow onto, which is a big deal on a mega-lush map like this. Took quite awhile to get going though. Also, my GNP was never as bad as it looked - I had less culture than anyone by far. I was frequently settling cities in which I didn't need a border pop for awhile because all I had was Monuments. Still though, if you ever get through my thread, my GNP was the running gag for quite awhile . Though I was quickly catching up to Serdoa at the end.

Also, what the crap is scooter babbling on about over there? We've got a 50% better post/view ratio, but my word he babbles on. Is he talking himself into crashing his economy pre-Pottery?

Not really trolling for information, just kind of weird. Anyone have any requests for information, commmentary, insults, or flirty come-ons?

Had to check this date in my thread - apparently I was planning for a Henge build at this point. Which, yeah, that went well . Thankfully I didn't burn any chops into it.

Anyways, this thread is a bit longer, so I'll dump this post now as I'm probably a little past halfway. Working on the rest. This is an excellent thread by the way, really good read.

[scooter]

Forge before Granary in a capital with a high food surplus, never though I'd see that happen . Unusual circumstances though.

I'm curious, why did you settle Trollope inland instead of on the coast on the desert hill tile? I would have guessed that being FIN with Colossus in the plans you would want to let those water tiles be Lighthouseable. Plus I don't see any tile benefit in settling Trollope close to MacDonald since MacDonald would always use that Sheep I'd guess. Not criticizing by the way - just trying to understand better as I don't think I've seen that one explained anywhere . Was it the lack of 1st-ring forests on the desert hill? Or were you thinking allowing yourself to fort between those two waters? I settled my city (Sante Fe) on the desert hill very early on in the game and it definitely became one of my strongest cities.

Surprised to see Lewwyn pushed towards you for gems. Sure there was some nice city sites in that area, but compared to other areas of the map is was kinda meh. Also had no idea Brian went for the bananas near you. I got those easily on my eastern side, and I also got the northwestern ones that bordered Brian's eastern side. No wonder those were easy to get - Brian settled towards you. Interesting. There really were a lot of routes to settle in this game. I liked that the most - that there were 4-5 options on which path to settle, and probably 2.5-3.5 of them were good choices.

I was amused to see the bit of mental ping-pong we played there trying to decide if we were going to be friendly or not. I was certainly trying hard to signal friendly (trying to keep the runaway Serdoa situation from getting worse), but I felt like the message did not send when you killed my chariot. Then you backed off and I felt a bit better, better enough to go send a bunch of Keshiks at Serdoa and do a good old-fashioned razing . My one problem with rushing for elephants is it put me closer to you and your Phracts which made me nervous. The land was too pretty for me to resist though.

Whoa - Brian had his pigs/gold city walled?? I mean, I worked hard to defend my ports, but that makes my defenses look puny. I think I see now why Brian's power graph got so high.

Alright finally finished it. Took a couple hours, which is pretty long for a game that ended around 1AD. Was really fun to read.

Had Serdoa not taken Kipling and Music bombed it, what were you going to do with Phracts? It looks like from your last planning post you were thinking of just going after the easiest target and getting a bunch of land, but what were you planning? Was it going to be me? Or were you going to go after someone who hadn't gotten elephants? Just curious what your plan would've been here, as we never got to see it in action.

[Commodore]

I'm curious, why did you settle Trollope inland instead of on the coast on the desert hill tile? I would have guessed that being FIN with Colossus in the plans you would want to let those water tiles be Lighthouseable. Plus I don't see any tile benefit in settling Trollope close to MacDonald since MacDonald would always use that Sheep I'd guess. Not criticizing by the way - just trying to understand better as I don't think I've seen that one explained anywhere . Was it the lack of 1st-ring forests on the desert hill? Or were you thinking allowing yourself to fort between those two waters? I settled my city (Sante Fe) on the desert hill very early on in the game and it definitely became one of my strongest cities.

Mostly because the plan was to settle the workshopped desert hill north of the gulf (was actually 2 turns out), your Sante Fe location would have blocked it. The whole ridiculous east was just way way too good, I had neither happy nor time to plop down the super-cities that would be epic in 20+ turns. Tight ICS grid is the name of the game.

Surprised to see Lewwyn pushed towards you for gems. Sure there was some nice city sites in that area, but compared to other areas of the map is was kinda meh. Also had no idea Brian went for the bananas near you. I got those easily on my eastern side, and I also got the northwestern ones that bordered Brian's eastern side. No wonder those were easy to get - Brian settled towards you. Interesting. There really were a lot of routes to settle in this game. I liked that the most - that there were 4-5 options on which path to settle, and probably 2.5-3.5 of them were good choices.

I felt a little settled-up-on in general, actually. Lewwyn's aggressive city was going to get burnt as soon as possible, Brian fortunately could sit and stew for a bit.

Had Serdoa not taken Kipling and Music bombed it, what were you going to do with Phracts? It looks like from your last planning post you were thinking of just going after the easiest target and getting a bunch of land, but what were you planning? Was it going to be me? Or were you going to go after someone who hadn't gotten elephants? Just curious what your plan would've been here, as we never got to see it in action.

The easiest and best-to-integrate target was Lewwyn, who with his Fin cottage love would have also been nicely synergistic. Is was planning Lewwyn -> Brian -> fill all holes, which would have had me right at the dom limit actually. The WE were less of an issue, really...yeah, they're good, but 'phracts are better for offense, the reason I'd avoid you is that I could trust you to read the metagame and know that Serdoa was the biggest threat. Lewwyn, Brian...who knows? Angry birds, man.