[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[spacetyrantxenu]

PB7 Spoiler, PB7 players stay out (teammate excluded).

You didn't lose half our army here so I'll take this turn over what I did there.

I have two suggestions for you: snippingtool and save the images as .jpg

Start | Run | snippingtool to take the pictures, you can crop and save at the same time. And save as .jpgs because doing that instead of leaving as .png will compress the image to have a smaller file size. If I load this page on my phone right now it is going to crash with those big image file sizes.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Dazed sure is saving a lot of gold. His research must be terrible if it costs that much to tech something, or he is going for something big. Or he is saving cash to buy something...a great person or an army perhaps?

[spacetyrantxenu]

And one more thought while I pull off a Rego (isn't that what 3 quick consecutive posts is called?), we're #2 in hammers and we have half of what #1 (Sian) does. Any guesses which wonders he's building and how many times he'll build it for fail gold?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

And one more thought while I pull off a Rego (isn't that what 3 quick consecutive posts is called?), we're #2 in hammers and we have half of what #1 (Sian) does. Any guesses which wonders he's building and how many times he'll build it for fail gold?

At this point I'd just rather not know. We'll find out soon enough.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T104 - I spread Christianity to Newt, started on a monastery. Guilds will finish at 30% research slider, we're making a bit of cash this turn. What tech is next? I started a few longbow builds, queued up a chariot in Huntsman because there's a stable up there. Chariot build should swap to a knight build and will probably take a while to finish. But I wouldn't whip Huntsman unless it's necessary, that city grows slowly.

I did screw up and whipped the courthouse in Bob Dole when I forgot I already had the Hindu on the way. Oops. I also 3 pop whipped Herman Cain, I think it was a market there. Or maybe a courthouse. Cain got whipped. That much is correct.

Sian's GNP and MFG numbers are still crazy. Running 100% science forever does that I guess. Still no votes on which wonders it will be this time? Chicken Pizza is still available, I think. He's surely built that about four times by now. When he finishes it, it's going to be like cashing in stock options (pre-crash).

There isn't much for our scout to do since Dazed doesn't like us running around his land and standing around on Sian's border just makes it obvious what we're up to. I'm sending him toward Rudy, maybe he's the last unit someone will have to kill to take the city from us. Saved by a scout! I don't think it's worth deleting him to save the 1gpt.

I was chatting with Dazed while playing the turn, a non related topic to this game came up, T-Hawk's insane one bazillion point game he posted over in the general forum. We agreed we'd never want to play T-Hawk because really, what would be the point: I wondered what an all-star PBEM would look like - T-Hawk vs. Krill vs. Sullla vs. Speaker vs (who's missing? I thought Seven seems to know every game mechanic and would qualify, insert uber player here in slot 5).

There's a PBEM variant for you: RB all-star challenge. (Not to volunteer anyone for ANOTHER game just to entertain everyone....:neenernee)

[spacetyrantxenu]

For some reason I'm not getting phone notifications about the save now, I'll have to check into that. But I'm packing up to leave town, Number One the save is yours.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Ah crap. I thought you had it today. I've been off all day and didn't look at the save. I'll see if I can get to it tonight.


Edit: NM. Went ahead and played quickly before going out. Hopefully not too much FUBAR this turn.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

The turn is in. We have diplo from Slowcheetah. Xenu, you play this turn. I want your take on the upcoming war. I think we should go in. Either cheetah fights him, or us, and he has better tech than us, so we should support him in chasing down the leader. Let's make this fun.

Call me if you have questions on what to do.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I just loaded up the save, it's T109, my last report was on T104 and I have no clue what is going on in this game. Everyone except us is currently in a golden age. We're ahead of only Slowcheetah in GNP, he's golden-age pacifism-starving his cities for GPPs and drafting maces like crazy (Nationhood).

Also, Dazed is sitting on 870 gold, likely he was working on whipping some libraries in his many new cities, as well as waiting to spend his gold until he made it into Bureaucracy courtesy of his golden age. Sian is sitting on 223 gold even though he has been running 100% research for what looks like a long time now.

The MFG graph is stupid with GA boosted numbers. This is the one that confused me so much when I first saw it, I was wondering why we were behind everyone. Our numbers look flat while everyone else is growing. That isn't good (especially since our GNP is also mostly flat so it isn't like we made a decision of one over the other).

We're doing OK in food but we could be better. We have a major failing in our development in the jungle area. We've lost control of two critical tiles, a fish against a size 1 city bordering Slowcheetah where I have no idea how he's pressing culture -- I don't see a cultural building in that city. If it turns out he's settled a great artist on me...that doesn't work for me. I don't see any city improvements here, did I miss something? Where is the culture coming from?

Anyway, at Rudy we've lost control of our pig tile at level 3 borders to Dazed's function.

Food graph, nothing exciting except Slowcheetah starving for GPPs.

Here's the power graph. Rant to follow.

Bonus chart, our army:

We're obviously behind in power, but we don't have Sian's amazing all IND forge, golden age MFG, or Slowcheetahs GA MFG/drafting. We're basically keeping apace of Dazed but that's all, and of little comfort since I don't think he's in this dogpile alliance anyway. Our NAP with him ends on T115, right? I'm not only suspecting Dazed's contribution to our dogpile at this point, I think he has been silently supporting Sian all along, hoping for a later game 1 on 1 with him after they partition the world (eliminating Slowcheetah and myself). Evidence: Dazed has known of Sian's preeminence in this game for a long time now, yet his EP allocation against him stands at 85/80. They've hardly spent EPs on each other ever. Why would you not spend EPs on the #1 threat in the game? Instead, Dazed has a ratio of 129/422 against Slowcheetah. Meanwhile Slowcheetah has been spending most of his EPs against Sian, only arriving at a total of 729/268 (yes, Sian has that much of an EP lead. Early zigs and ORG? Yes please). It isn't helping Slowcheetah that he hasn't built many courthouses, but he built so few cities for so long that he really didn't need them. Anyway, all that to say if Dazed was truly interested in allying against Dazed why would he spend points on anyone else?

More graphs:

All quiet, I mean I know Slowwalk has way more culture overall than us but where is he getting it in that size 1 front city? Artist specialists from Rep/Caste? Building research? I want to bulldoze that city.


Wheeeee, early zigs.


Sian's GNP number is ridiculous.

Yes he now has Sistine Chapel (Why? Because he can) and now has even more culture muddying the picture trying to figure out what his real economic output is, but it's certainly higher than everyone else's. This game is doomed, Slowcheetah's planned invasion is irrelevant. Sian has the wonders, the traits, and enough army to defend. He has Gunpowder for defense if he needs more. He'll tech Chemistry soon for more workshop power on the way to Steel. That beeline makes a lot of sense for him, as it would make Slowcheetah's stack of drafted maces completely irrelevant. This game is over, I don't really see a lot of point in writing long turn reports anymore. This is just a state of the game post anyway, I'm not playing the turn tonight.

As for our tech path, we finished Banking this turn. We're 19 turns from Military Tradition and cuirrasiers, or 3 turns from Gunpowder and muskets, or 22 turns from cavalry. We can have Engineering in 3 turns to build the pikes Dazed was supposed to build, which won't matter in a few turns when Sian techs to Steel for his cannons. Or we can spend 6 turns ignoring military longer, build banks, and tech Alphabet + Paper + Printing Press to boost our economy. Alternatively we're 25 turns from Rifling via Gunpowder, Alphabet, Paper, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts, Rifling. At this point we've surely been invaded by a backstabbing Dazed or Sian has taken apart Slowcheetah since we didn't help and we lose that way.

I don't see a path to victory for us. We can't do a CV, we don't have the GP farms for it nor the tech/defenses to make it work. We're certainly not going to be Sian to space, and we won't win a domination or conquest victory when we're going to be an era behind in tech. AP/Diplo wins are banned, Time is less feasible than a space win. Did I miss anything? This game is spinning toward some inevitable conclusion, and the winner won't be hailing from the Republican Party.

So. We need some goals. Go war machine and punish someone, either out of spite (Dazed, his penalty for not participating when a dogpile would have worked) or a noble gesture (Sian, our sacrifice may give someone else a chance...but that's not very sporting when he really hasn't played a game any better or worse than anyone else. He's winning this by default, mostly). I need goals to keep me interested or I can spend the time I've been spending on this game doing something more productive.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Diplo from Slowcheetah. I'm not even raising shields at this point. I don't think I'm replying either. Not now anyway.

[COLOR="MediumTurquoise"]I currently have visibility on Sian's cities of Joao II, Mehmed II, Peter and Hannibal, garrisons are as follows:

Hannibal (tundra city)- 3 LB's, 2 CB's, Spear, Archer
Joao II (opposite TMC)- LB, HA, CB
Mehmed II (above Joao II)- LB
Peter (island)- LB

My army is currently at 20 Macemen, 13 Hwachas, 2 Pikes, 8 triremes, 3 Galleys and some obsolete Junk.

Mehmed II and Joao II can reinforce each other, however if Sian is busy with my forces in TMC, then there could be an opening there through Dazed's culture (would need to road the gems).
Peter is also lightly garrisoned and might be vulnerable to attack. Unfortunately, they are both rather crap cities, and I'm not sure how we'll be able to move further into his core. I believe I am going to declare war on Sian on turn 111, I probably won't attack with foot troops. I simply don't have the weight of numbers. However, I am going to attempt to use my triremes to harry his coasts, before he gets Frigates and they become obsolete. To that end, an in game map trade would be helpful; I didn't have time to fully scout out Sian before we closed borders and it'd be useful to know exactly where nets are.

Finally, I feel we are going to have to involve Dazed, as moving through his culture would be powerful, despite his lacklustre power buildup so far (and NAP) with Sian do you guys agree with his involvement in this?

slowcheetah[/COLOR]