Gandhi of France: The Non-Violent Warrior

[fluffyflyingpig]

I had Minden slated as a name for one of my jungle cities, until we decided Shoot would be better off settling it. I'll make use of those if you don't mind

Well, except for Golden Spurs. I thought about using it a couple times, but decided the name was just too silly and ruled it out.



It was a city I captured, so I named it after a French victory. If I manage to capture any other cities, I'm planning on doing the same.

But you captured Orleans from someone else and the proceeded to abandon it completely when it was attacked! Something like Chaves seems more apropos, no? Too bad you no longer have the ability to rename it.


Golden Spurs is awesome and totally deserves a city named after it. Keep fighting the good fight Dave.

[oledavy]

Keep fighting the good fight Dave.

Will do my best

[SIZE="4"]Turn 182 - Part II[/SIZE]

Lesson learned: ALWAYS test something out in WorldBuilder before planning around it.



I played most of my turn earlier today, but waited until after Shoot played to do my final moves. I had detailed off four workers to build an oil well, which I thought would allow me to complete it. Unfortunately for me, an oil well takes five turns to build.

Two effects of this:

1) I miss out on -1/+2/+1 base tile yield for a turn.
2) I don't get to build a destroyer in Trafalgar this turn

I set Trafalgar to 1-turn a machine gun instead, and re-micro'd it to one-turn a destroyer on t183. Not the end of the world, but disappointing. I need every advantage I can get going toe to toe with Sulla in the Industrial era, and this doesn't bode well for the future. So, just to repeat: When in doubt, TEST IN WORLDBUILDER.



Here are my ships blockading the as yet unseen Sullan city. This is the last turn I will get to do this before he starts raining on my parade. Where did my other two ships go you ask?



Here are the two Combat III Frigates that won the battle of Sandstorm Bay. Shoot and WK both correctly pointed out that it is too costly to upgrade them at this point. I am putting them on ice in anticipation of us reaching a point where we can burn some gold on upgrade (perhaps from pillaging Chinese cities ) Combat III destroyers are just too valuable for me to pass up.

Lastly, the domestic advisor:



As a team, we're now fielding 35 machine guns, most slated for Armageddon. We should be able to get around 30 on the field. We have about 50 cannons and catapults; a little lighter on the collateral than I wanted, but not bad. The other hundred units are going to be rifles, muskets, musketeers, and assorted medieval crap. I expect that after Lewwyn spends his collateral, we'll be confronting around 150 units in the city of Beijing itself. If all works out, it should take us two turns to take the city down.

Just five turns to go.....

End Turn.

[oledavy]

@Shoot & WK

Something really fishy happened this turn. Long story short, we need to attack as soon as possible. I started moving my musketeer swarm, and now, all but two are under Indian control. Unfortunately, the earliest they can reach the staging tile is t185. This would allow us to invade one turn earlier, (t186), and reach Beijing on t191. Not much of an improvement, but it'll have to do. I’ve re-deployed my workers to get my last couple knights into position a turn sooner. If there is any way to speed up the arrival of troops to the front, do it. If either of you have last minute unit whips planned, move them up a turn. If I’m right, Team #2 is going to win a culture victory within the next ten turns, and we need to move as rapidly as possible. It may already be too late to stop them.

[Gaspar]

Something really fishy happened this turn. Long story short, we need to attack as soon as possible.

Do tell.

[Kylearan]

Something really fishy happened this turn. Long story short,

"No story short" would describe it better, I guess...

So what was it that happened?

[oledavy]

Do tell.

So what was it that happened?

I won't know with absolute certainty that I'm correct until next turn.

For now, I think I'l just tease you guys

[Krill]

Nah, we'd rather you post your fears now and you can either be happy or sad next turn and bitch some more then. Gives us something to read when we are stuck at work, and makes our day seem better...

[Shoot the Moon]

At least shoot WK and I an email about it

[spacetyrantxenu]

Nah, we'd rather you post your fears now and you can either be happy or sad next turn and bitch some more then. Gives us something to read when we are stuck at work, and makes our day seem better...

This * 1000%. RB is where productivity goes to die I think I'm going to have to manually block access to this forum when I start my new job, at least for the first few weeks. Or maybe that just means my priorities are not in order!

[oledavy]

Alrighty, time for the reveal. But first, a little background information:

Last fall, one of my favorite games to lurk on RB was PBEM24. It wasn’t an extremely well-reported game, but had some really good moments. It stands out in my mind for two elements, both of which, ironically, are coming into play in this game. First off, there was TT’s epic defense against Mackoti’s more advanced armies with hordes of muskets and collateral - much like I expect we’ll be facing when we invade Lewwyn. Second, and most importantly, the game featured Commodore coming within a hair’s breadth of winning a Culture Victory. To this day, to my knowledge, it remains the closest someone on RB has come to a culture victory. So, a couple weeks ago, I had some time to spare, and decided to reread the last couple dozen pages of Comm’s thread. As the most recent - and probably best - body of work on RB regarding the topic of going for a culture victory, it would be something ASM and Lewwyn might look to in planning their attempt. So, I read it to get ideas of what they might do – like starving cities down running max artists…

One of the things I check every time I log in to the game is the top 5 cities screen. Lately, I’ve been watching for a population decrease in Istanbul, and then, it finally happened. . On t182, Istanbul was at 18 population. When I logged in on t183, it was at 17 population. Now, I was 90% I was not going crazy and that the city had shrunk, but I wasn’t completely sure. So, in light of the chance I am not a raving loon, I made my previous post and took a screen of the city:



Here it is again after T2 played t184:



Between t183 and t184, Istanbul lost another population point; and no, ASM is most decidedly not in slavery, nor is he in Nationhood. So, a Size 18 city just lost two population over two turns, and they definitely weren’t whipped or drafted. Now, it is possible ASM made a micro mistake and accidentally starved the city, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case. The liklihood of him doing it two turns in a row is slim to none. It’s also possible the city is being besieged and denied food. However, all evidence suggests neither Team #1 nor Team #4 is doing anything of the sort. If Team #4 was besieging ASM, they probably wouldn’t have gone on an offensive against me. If Team #1 was invading ,we would see evidence of it in Civstats or the event log. So, let’s go back to PBEM24.



Here is Commodore’s city of Naga. He has flipped into Caste System and is running 23 artists. You cannot lose more than population point in a city, and running artists is the most efficient way to produce culture. So this is a very effective way to dramatically ramp up your CPT, and get a few couple last GA’s out in time to win.

ASM is starving down the city of Istanbul, running 16 artists.

This isn’t trying to bang out a couple more GA’s, this is his legendary city that he is starving down – destroying his future CPT potential. This means they are extremely close to winning – probably within ten turns of the finish line.

The other piece of evidence supporting this notion was Lewwyn’s Golden Age. When I saw them get the GE, I speculated they would use it to start a GA for China or India. Of the two, China would make the most sense, since Beijing does not have the world wonder culture that Milkshake does. I was a little surprised when he did not revolt into CS last turn, but Lewwyn obliged me on t184; getting in one last round of whips, before revolting into CS. He is undoubtedly now running max artists in Beijing, pushing for the victory.



The icing on the cake was the worker Lewwyn sent into our territory last turn an forgot to delete. While not conclusive evidence for an imminent culture victory, it just adds to the evidence in favor.

Final Estimate: Team #2 will win a culture victory some time between now and t192.

I’ve now changed my Culture Victory turn estimate four turns. Each time, I forget to factor in something, or Team #2 surprises me with another way to speed up the victory. Honestly, it was a little gratifying to see Istanbul start to starve last turn. When I made my t192-t197 estimate, about as much guesswork as actual tangible evidence went into it (thus the broad range). I made that recalculation based on the techniques in Commodore’s thread, moving up the possible date of the win. When I continued to see Team #1’s lack of action, I started to think I might be missing something again and my estimate was off; that they had it right and I was sending us in too early. However, the last couple turns confirm we’re right on the money.

This is the third time we’ve moved up the date of Armageddon. The net effect of this is increasingly less time for Team #1 to act and distract Lewwyn. At this late hour, I feel none will be forthcoming. I keep hoping I’ll log into Civstats one day and see a score decrease from Team #2, corresponding with Team #1 capturing Milkshake. However, with so few turns left to go, it’s probably too late for a Team #1 one-mover offensive to even reach the target on time. Still, we may be pleasantly surprised in the coming turns. While our stack is extremely powerful, with enough bodies, Lewwyn can hold Beijing long enough to win.

So, here we go, making our home run swing at Team #2 to try to save the world. I’m going to be doing much briefer reports for France for the upcoming turns and focus on writing up the invasion instead. Hopefully we can give you guys a good show

So saddle up, grab a machine gun, and get your towels ready ‘cause it’s about to GO DOWN.

We invade next turn.