Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[Speaker]

Here's a quick update from my turn, since I will be gone most of the day tomorrow, and Sullla and Sunrise weren't around tonight to play with me.


As I mentioned earlier, Thoth couldn't actually see into Lewwyn's city (which he renamed "Not the Alamo" as he withdrew all his units. So I captured it, taking 121 gold in the process, which was fortuitous because it allowed me to end my turn before Sunrise, so I could actually finish everything tonight. I did peek in the (size 2) city before I razed it, and there were 0 buildings, so it's no real loss. The way the cultural borders played out was pretty disastrous, unfortunately.


Not only does Lewwyn's territory still extend to the tile we wanted to plant on (blue dot), but because of the stupid culture bug when a city is captured, I don't immediately get the tiles that are rightfully mine, which now allows Lanewick to be one-moved by Cavalry out of the Alamo. I have no idea what causes this bug to happen (I remember it happening to us in one of the other Pitboss games), but it's really annoying. I have 60% culture in that city. So I had to leave several units in there for this turn, to be sure it was safe. I also took advantage of the lack of Lewwyn-culture to use a couple units and clear Thoth off his pig pasture. With an Infantry and Rifle on the hill, I don't think Thoth will be eating bacon any time soon. That tile is pretty important for me to hold, not just because it is such a high-yield food tile, but also because it shields my gem mine from being pillaged, and because it prevents me from being one-moved while the game sorts out the cultural borders.

That's pretty much it for now. I'm still finishing grocers and/or harbors and/or aqueducts in my cities, following factory and coal plant builds, and I did build a 1-turn settler in my capital, which I doubt I'll be able to use until I capture LOLOLOLOL, but I figured I may as well just build it now, to give myself more flexibility.

One other tidbit I noticed while logged in: Thoth got a Great Engineer this turn. I happened to log in just before he ended turn, and saw it pop up when the turn flipped.

[Sullla]

Meanwhile, over on the western front:



Dave retreated all his ships in the northern sea into his cities. Very good decision on his part. I still built the fort in the north for use as a canal, but I didn't send any ships up there. They've all congregated around the island cities instead. Five destroyers in Teleport Gank, one destroyer on the fort tile just north of it (didn't have the movement to get into the city).

I'm grouping them here with the intention of moving onto the white dot tile next turn and blockading Dave. Since coastal blockade extends three tiles in all directions, this neatly hits most of his important tiles, including his key fish resource in the northwest. I've drawn in the borders of denied tiles in white. This tile has the advantage of being very defensive for my own cities - I'm still close enough to defend my own stuff as needed, while also shutting down two of Dave's most important cities. Obviously I need to see what Dave does next turn, and in particular if he upgraded those two frigates to destroyers in Vigo Bay (I am guessing that he did). This is the tentative plan for next turn.

You might notice the Research builds on the corner of the screen above. Well, we were reasonably close to getting Physics tech, so I decided to see if we could do it. The answer was yes, albeit with "a few" Research builds:

Just a few. Check out the research bar, which I highlighted in the corner for you. We were 2463 beakers short of getting Physics tech. With the standard 20% bonus beaker modifier in play, we needed 2053 beakers to be able to land the tech this turn. I checked to see if we could make it, and we were just barely able to do so, if I ran Research builds in every city. Painful to do this, as a lot of those poor cities are starving, but in the end we decided it was worth it.

What was the logic there? Well, we could see from CivStats and F4 research tracking that Team 3 did not get a tech on either of the last two turns. That means they did not go for the Assembly Line path, as they'd need to land the cheap Economics tech first. The only techs that they couldn't have already gotten were Physics and Biology. I'm about 95% sure that their team is going for Physics, since it's clearly the most logic tech to pick up next. Free Great Scientist for first to research, and a pre-requisite for a ton of other useful stuff (Electricity, Flight, and Artillery all require it). So they are probably researching Physics right now, and there's a good chance that they will get this tech on the same turn as us. Why risk losing a Great Scientist? Sure, it's not as good now as earlier in the game, but the thing still has value. Subtracting a Great Person from their team and adding one to ours felt like it was clearly worth it.

And the result is why you see above. I genuinely did not want to build Research in a couple of cities (in the Heroic Epic city of Crescendo and some of the starving cities in the northeast), but I really did need those extra beakers to knock out the tech. The actual amount of research I produced on this turn was 2067 + 1 = 2068 * 1.2 = 2481 beakers. All of 18 beakers to spare! Not a lot of overflow into that next tech.



Hey Francis Bacon, pleased to meet you. Anyway, Electricity will now be a 4t research because of our lack of overflow here. My poor cities will have to wait one more turn to get their health stuff in place, heh. I should be able to show some pictures of them when there's some down time in the upcoming turns. Also need to get more military going as well, but I have the production to do that in spades (#1 in Manufacturing by a country mile thanks to the factories/plants, and Speaker is #2).

Team 3 gifted a bunch of their units to Shoot the Moon; his power is now over 2 million on the Demographics screen, and Dave's power has dropped below mine. This would seem to suggest that they have the same idea as us, going for the juggular with Team 2. Perhaps we'll carve them up and partition Team 2 between us. Maybe? Well, it should be interesting to see what happens there. One city down already for us, on to LOLOLOLOL.

Tanks are probably 9 turns away at this point. By then my cities will finally be done with their infrastructure crap, and we'll have Pentagon, so...

[Speaker]

The Kathlete Defense ™ continues:

[Speaker]

Team 3 did, in fact, research Physics this turn, so bravo to Sullla, for his slick micro, stealing the free scientist away.

[novice]

Team 3 did, in fact, research Physics this turn, so bravo to Sullla, for his slick micro, stealing the free scientist away.

Indeed, nice one!

[T-hawk]

Although I have to point out that you didn't really beat them; you just tied them and got the scientist by virtue of going first in the turn order.

[ironstar]

Major Buzzkill reporting for duty, sah!

[Speaker]

Although I have to point out that you didn't really beat them; you just tied them and got the scientist by virtue of going first in the turn order.

Does that make Sullla's play any less slick?

[zakalwe]

Although I have to point out that you didn't really beat them; you just tied them and got the scientist by virtue of going first in the turn order.

I'm with Speaker, this seems like a pointless quibble. They got it first, ergo they beat them to it.

[Ellimist]

Although I have to point out that you didn't really beat them; you just tied them and got the scientist by virtue of going first in the turn order.

If you ain't first... you're last.