Nobody expects the Chinese Inquisition: Isabella of China

[Gaspar]

Someone nag me to report this next turn.

[oledavy]

Report dammit! We demand more cities named after Chinese-Spanish restaurant dishes!

Joking aside, I've enjoyed lurking this game so far and would like to see it out to its conclusion You're updates are always really good.

[Gaspar]

So I'm going to try and update this turn. This game lost a lot of its appeal for me with a lot of the silliness that occurred 20T or so ago, and never really regained it. Also, mackoti is going to win - Commodore NAP'd him and its game over now. By the time anyone can threaten him he'll be drafting Rifles if not Infantry. I'm in a decent position which I've frittered away by doing this with my turns:



Anyway, I figured I'd update you anyway, because I hate when people stop updating.


I've been busy doing meaningless stuff to feel like I accomplished something these last few turns. For example, I built the Statue of Zeus and got the Great Artist from Music. (Jesus, its been 12 turns since I took a screenshot.)



I've settled a fair few cities... let's see since t83 I think I've added 4? They're a little underdeveloped because the empire is so sprawling at this point. I won't do a city by city but please do encourage me to do a full T100. I am currently on 17 cities with a Settler in production and another 4-ish spots to settle. 21 will probably be the peaceful limit. Mackoti has 16, Commodore also 17, TT 12. As I said before this is a map for 6 players, not 4.

Here's F1. I cut off the capital accidentally.



Unfortunate, since the Capital is pretty much the whole empire at this point.

Here's the contested center area. Somehow, despite having the upper hand, I got the better part of flood plains land but Commodore settled the Gems island AND got the center line up top. This was a concession to a concession. I had agreed to give Commodore the top of the upper half and then split Gems island while he settled mackoti's floodplains land. Mackoti came at him with a galley loaded with a chariot and spear and a threat of maces coming soon. Commodore folded, gifted him the city and somehow got the idea I agreed to let him settle Gems. So by finding it first, I ended up with the lousier share of the top land and losing out on the Gems island, particularly as the middle has fish on the south side but not on the north. Meanwhile I have one food resource between 3 cities in the middle.



So what have we learned about diplomacy this game:

1. Mackoti is better at it than either Commodore or I.
2. I lost on the gambit part of farmer's gambit and capitulated, ruining any chance I had for victory.
3. Commodore is a really lousy ally and capitulated even easier than I (mackoti had a reasonable chance of eliminating me when rolled up on me with 2 chariots - Commodore folded because he wanted to land the... wait for it... TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS!) Unreal.
4. TT checked out of this game after about T50 when he realized he was going to finish last again. He plays his turns but I don't know why he signs up for these games if he's going to check out of all of them. I sent him two diplo emails and he didn't respond to either. Whatever.

What's endgame for me? Basically there are two options. One is to try a cultural victory. I have founded 3 religions (Judaism, Confucianism, Taoism) and had a 4th spread to my territory (Hinduism.) So given that I have no actual experience with a Cultural victory, I could read one of T-hawk's guides and see what I have to still research to get it done. Fairly certain I can get Sistine built, and I've still only popped 1 GP so far, so with Nat Epic and Pacifism, could probably generate a ton of Artists. The clock is basically to win a cultural victory before mackoti eliminates TT. I don't think I can actually manage that, given that its T95 and I've laid virtually no ground work for it.

Option 2 is to accept that I've lost but move to Guilds, slave out a ton of Knights and kill Commodore because he's ticked me off in diplomacy. This won't win the game for me in any way shape or form, and he'll definitely have Longbows if not Pikes. But it would be cathartic. But it would also further throw the game to mackoti. But he's going to win anyway, so who cares?

Here's the demos:



CY and MFG have been pretty close between the 3 of us. CY basically depends on where folks are on a whip cycle at any given time. But that GNP is out of control for mackoti - I'm expecting Liberalism to fall any turn now, especially as I'm pretty sure he has at least 1 scientist on ice, probably 2.

Any questions, comments, concerns - have at it.

[NobleHelium]

You could tell Commodore that he spelled satyr incorrectly.

[pindicator]

I say go for the option that will be the most fun. I'll even accept the Dwarf Fortress interpretation of "fun."

[luddite]

I agree with pindicator. There's certainly no obligation for you to maximize your score or whatever if you think you can't win. Just have fun with it.

[Gaspar]

Update forthcoming in the next day or so. I'll do the T100 bit a day or two off.

[NobleHelium]

So yeah, I just stumbled into the tech thread and realized that the barbarian submarines were not a joke. Bob's ranting for the FFH15 map makes more sense with this additional context now.

Oh and for what it's worth - Bob could have put in a non-spoilery warning using the in-game signs (like the ones Mist has in FFH10), where they wouldn't have been seen until the players got to the inner sea. Something like "Here be sea monsters" would be suitably vague and in-perspective.

[Gaspar]

As per usual, mackoti beat me to Taj by a turn. So that really is ballgame this time. He appears to be sandbagging Liberalism to take Fusion with it or something.

[Gaspar]

Game is really uninteresting now that the Taj win basically sealed Mackoti's victory. I was ready to 8-whip my capital to land it, so it wouldn't necessarily have helped me more than Commodore, but its really the only thing I could do to slow down Mackoti. I did land Great Library as a consolation prize to go along with Parthenon a few turns ago. I unfortunately burned the Music great artist on a golden age in an attempt to land Taj, so my 1-man GA is gone. The reason mackoti's Taj-GA is so painful is he's already in a GA and he has MoM. So you're talking 18 solid turns of GA. He could have Infantry at the end of it if he plays his cards right - I'm going to be lucky to get them before he's invading me having already done away with TT.

Revolted to Pacifism and Caste after missing Taj (had to stay in OR until Taj was won or lost) so I'm currently HR/Bur/CS/Nothing/Pacifism. As you can see from the above shot I'm currently working on Constitution to pair Representation with this next time I run it.



Here's Agria Dulce, where I did manage to get Nat Epic in with a combination of Engineer specialist and some whip overflow. Much like the capital a GP is due next turn, though I'll have to push starvation for a few turns to get one more out here before the GA is done. Which is fine, it grows like a weed.



Moai cities always look hawt in a Golden Age - here's mine, about to complete Sistine. Unfortunately you can see I've horribly mismanaged it, but so it goes. If I hadn't been mailing the game in I'd have managed a few more HR units. Still its a damned nice city:



Here's another nice site, my canal city to the inner sea. You can see again that it has outgrown my worker management, but nonetheless is an excellent, excellent city. [In fairness, a lot of these tiles across the empire are the result of recent growth and the governors quite rightly don't want to work specialists in a Golden Age.



Even this little runt to grab incense on the mackoti border is a pretty nice burg in a Golden Age:



Banana Caramelo or, there's too much food on this map:



Here's Arroz con Pollo, the floodplains bonanza folly city:



And its northern neighbor, where I'm currently working on improving the silver:



Here's my newest city and the tipping point with Commodore and I.



You can see the city ruins NW of the City Center. That housed the former Barbarian city of Navajo. It was building warriors rather quickly (I think Commodore might still be the only one with Archery, so they're not building Archers yet) and I was using the Chariot housed in the city to try and get my HE unit. I had farmed it down to 1 warrior and paused to heal, then the following turn Commodore razed the city with a Keshik:



Eff you, Commodore. Eff you. It was a size one city, I was clearly farming it and he got about 10 gold tops from the raze. I'm sure it made him feel all warm and squishy inside. I'm going to make all of his little cities feel warm and toasty inside when I BURN THEM TO THE GROUND. I can't win because mackoti played too well. Well Commodore isn't going to be able to win because I played better than him and I'm going to prove it by shoving a few dozen two-movers up his ass. I firmly believe if Commodore's and my map positions were reversed I'd be winning this game.

I won't have a chance to do much soon, Commodore has medieval defensive techs, but I'm going to burn his stuff down before this games over, I promise. Just really a question if I can do before mackoti burns mine. :P

If there's something else the lurkers want to see, let me know.