[Spoiler] Team slowwalk of the Reservoir Cats (Suleiman/Korea, slowcheetah + Catwalk)

[slowcheetah]

A bit later than planned here's how thing look in a golden age:

I'm aiming to get 4 or 5 great people out of this first GA.

They will be coming from; Dirty Dishes on turn 98:

Headache on turn 99:

On Her Period on turn 101:

I'm also going to swing by Music for the great artist (T100), I may also starve down DD four sizes to get another great person this time around. That's a bit extreme but it'll mean I am able to fire two GA's back to back (and probably get the Taj for a third).

Ok so there's me boasting about generating lots of great people but what am I actually going to do with them:

The aim is to tech up to currassiers and go and attack someone, I am ahead in GNP currently but have a distinct land disadvantage. The plan is currently to attack Sian on turn 125 with BoldyXenu and Dazed (I will get to how that came about in a few). My techpath currently looks like this:

Poly->Mono->Aes->Lit->Music->HBR-> (bulb Paper and Edu)->Lib (if I get three GS's first off)->Nat->Monarchy->Feud->Guilds->Mil Trad.

Looking at my techrate this should be done by about turn 119, without three GSci's first off, liberalism will slot in slightly later. I will then adopt production civics, although I am going to put up workshops everywhere in the coming turns so am hoping to stay in caste system.

All of this of course assumes that nobody attacks me and I can stay in caste and pacifism. Sian might be pushing for an attack, he has very good MFG numbers and is close to guilds. However, if that does happen then I at least have two allies who want Sian dead.

How did those allies come about, apparently Krill said to dazed that his chances are currently really quite bad (his tech is awful). Dazed then proceeded to organise a close borders coalition on Sian (we all closed this turn) and war talks started from there.

Here's the site Sian settled on the island which drastically annoyed me. If my settler hadn't been there he was planning on settling west of the corn. Since I'm in caste I'm using artists to pop borders, which should help a bit against his annoying henge culture.

Of course that wasn't the only thing Sian did, which seemed to annoy everyone. 'Playing well' seems to be the main one.

Luckily, the war plans sprouted BEFORE this turns graphs were seen by the others (I forgot to deselect the next technology). I was sure to warn the others that was unsustainable, which in fairness it is with my three biggest cities starving.

Other little deals I need to remember are
1) Trading dazed a maceman for a settler. I'd like a couple more cities and it's good to maintain good relations with an ally
2)Sending dazed a missionary to help fight Sian's culture in the jungle, this could be important strategically in the coming war.
3)Building a tundra road connection between Dazed and me for troop movement.

Comments? Questions? Anything else you guys would like to see?

[Ceiliazul]

A bit later than planned here's how thing look in a golden age:

I'm aiming to get 4 or 5 great people out of this first GA.

Cheetah, you're putting together a pretty good pull there! Between your existing tech advantage and good leveraging of PHI, I'm impressed.

What does the legendary cities screen look like?

[Catwalk]

slowcheetah, you disappoint me severely. Have you completely abandoned our goals and visions for this game? :neenernee

Names:
Trying to Sleep
Hot Secretary
Forgot to Call

Any that I missed?

Thanks for the excellent update, game looks good! The coalition against Sian is good news, let's hope it comes through. I'm done with my horrible paper today, and should have time to drop by here more often. If you find the time, I'd like to have a look at all graphs and the demographics + city count for all players.

[slowcheetah]

Sure thing Catwalk, I'll post them up later today. Key information that I found out late last night. Dazed says Sian is building up to attack us, that can come any time after turn 111, he'll probably be using a force of knights.

[Catwalk]

Do you know what NAPs are in place between players currently, if any? What can we counter knights with, pikemen? Spearmen and hwachas might do in a pinch, especially if we can get some assistance.

[slowcheetah]

Do you want to get back to playing some turns Catwalk? If so we should see if we are both online when the weekend turn comes so I can catch you up in more detail.

We are provisionally in a three on one against Sian with BX and Dazed, once Xenu agrees we will have an NAP until five turns after the war is over. We still need to figure out the details of that one.

We have an NAP with Sian until turn 111, no-one else has an NAP with him.

City counts:
Dazed-18
BX- 13
Sian-17
Us-13

Demographics and Graphs

[Catwalk]

I'll be busy most of Saturday, but I might be available Sunday. I'll let you know. Crop Yields worried me, until I remembered that we're starving a bunch of our cities. Have you thought about generating a great merchant? Great for teching, through a trade mission.

[slowcheetah]

We're currently generating GScis for bulbing paper and education, this will allow a lib grab of nationalism (for drafting). I think this is faster currently, because we are getting more out of the scientists (boosted by libs) than the merchants (not everywhere has markets). A great Merchant would certainly be a very good option when it starts taking two or more scientists to bulb though.

Crop yields are pretty bad, we need to take more land out of the coming wars. Although our specialists do use up a lot of excess food even when we aren't starving cities.

[Catwalk]

Sounds like we need a defense plan fairly urgently. What's our best option?

I disagree with you a bit about bulbing. Scientist is far better when it can apply all of its points to a tech. On a tech like Paper, it only gets to use half of its points. A GM would yield far more points for that purpose. Moreover, the cash from a GM would be boosted by research multipliers, effectively yielding far more beakers than a GS.

[slowcheetah]

I'm in the mood to write an update, and since my lackadaisical attitude towards what turn it is means I missed the big turn 100 report. I'm going to do a rather comprehensive one. There is a maginficently large amount of weed going on (both detected and undetected) so please be kind .

Ok lets start out with a bit of scene setting:

Relations with BoldlyXenu:

Dazed, Xenu and I are in a threeway agreement to slow down Sian. This agreement is very good for us, however the details are not ironclad yet. The issue centres around an NAP for the duration of the 'war' with Sian; we need to define how long 'war'actually is. I'm thinking of sending off a suggestion that we stay at war until turn 130, after then we can initiate a 5 turn NAP cooldown, or alternatively if the colossus and GLH have been razed we can initiate the 5 turn cooldown. Thoughts Catwalk?

However, things with BoldlyXenu aren't all rosy, firstly there are these extremely aggressive jungle plants.

Their excuse, 'we needed to get a solid border'. Yes, they need to have a solid border with the guys who've traded with them all game and traded them happy resources for free to help them out.
Nevertheless, I don't want to call issue with these sites at the moment. Diplomatically, the alliance with Sian is much more important than my ire over these cities. So I'm going to suck it up, and make a deal for gems if I need happiness.

And maybe run artists in the two new cities I've founded. Just for kicks :P

DazedRoyalty

Again the key point is the three way alliance; in order to cement his goodwill I've donated him a missionary, and done a trade of a maceman for a settler (Dazed's military tech is pretty poor).

Sian

Well as everybody already knows; relations are bad. He's probably going to attack me come the end of the NAP (turn 111). Unfortunately, Sian got the music great artist. I don't think I need to tell anyone how much trouble that could cause. Consequently, war prep is high on the agenda.

The empire-
At the end of turn 104 the empire looks like this:

The Tundra Region

A culture bomb down here, would not have sufficient power to allow a one move of On her Period (Pyrmaids, MoM city). The tundra city is not really important, although the loss of silver happiness would be irritating. Sian's garrison down here (two longbowmen) also suggests that he is just protecting the city rather than launching an attack out of it.

The Core

Jungley Stuff

Probable site of the culture bomb, cultural battles all over the place. I'm fighting Xenu, Sian's stolen my rice and I've stolen dazed's pigs.

Southern Island

Antother possible site of the culture bomb, however, aside from stone city I'm willing to lose these new and relatively unproductive cities and focus my forces on damaging Sian elsewhere. These sites will have mainly trireme protection, helpfully ours move faster than everyone elses.

Overall plan:

I've set things up so that liberalism will finish next turn, I will have one turn of GA left and will be able to revolt to nationalism and slavery. Then the turn after (106) I will use a great engineer to rush the Taj mahal. Using the golden age couple to whip and draft I should be able to have a reasonable army of maces and Hwachas and a strong tirreme navy. Not brilliant, to be honest I wanted to wait until knights for major population loss. However, it should be able to stand up on defense and may be able to launch an attack depending on how many troops Sian has. After liberalism, research will be set to engineering and then guilds (possibly with compass in between). I have a great scientist which can be used to bulb optics.

Cities:

Headache

Headache is busy being awesome, running many scientists and one turning hwachas. Next turn it will be switched over to mainly production, it will probably be my main seigie producer and I have no plans to draft it.

Dirty Dishes

Commodore-starving in order to get Liberalism on time. Will also be producing military next turn. Will draft if necessary

Jaw Hurting

Not that exciting. Miltary, population draft and slave centre. Incidentally it's the taoist holy city

On Her Period

Doesn't really have large production capabilities, will probbaly keep running as many specs as I can run there in order to Kkeep some semblance of science and money.

Toilet Seat Up and I'm Not Fishy

My main naval producers, will be producing triremes from next turn, they will also be drafted.

Too Much Civ

If I don't switch to slavery I can get this place to fourth ring borders before turn 111 by running lots of artists. I'm considering doing it, might help fight off the culture bomb.

There isn't really much going on everywhere else so I'm going to leave the city screens for now.

Demographics and Graphs (graphs from turn 103 (I've now lost both dazed and Sian's graphs).

At least power is pretty even