Chairmen NobleHelium and Gaspar Demand Your Presence in the Collective

[oledavy]

Any story behind the worker names?

[Gaspar]

Any story behind the worker names?

The NATO Phonetic Alphabet

Because NH and both sort of believe in giving no free information we RNG the a letter each time we train a worker so that one can't tell how many workers we have by the name of the worker. Same reason we only named one of the initial island cities after the "Ocean" hive city names. Now that the map is fully common knowledge to everyone, we've been more comfortable to do so. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

[oledavy]

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

QOTM?

[Gaspar]

QOTM?

Well, maybe the first time I heard it...

...20 Years Ago, when I was in High School.

Please kill me.

[Serdoa]

Its actually funny, before the diplo burnt us all out I thought PBEM14 was a really great game because we were all relatively the same skill level, or at least within a standard deviation of one another (Serdoa might have lept past the rest of us since with his newfound spreadsheet genius.)

Hey Gaspar, I wanted to comment on that for quite some time now (basically since I saw it). I agree with the sentiments that groups should be setup so that the skill-disparity is not too great. But when I look at PBEM25 despite me feeling quite outmatched by plako and mackoti (later on when I realized how much better they played and what errors I did) I wouldn't want to miss the experience. I think my game improved quite a lot by playing against those guys and learning from them. And I surely am not the only one who experienced that. Though of course if the whole game is thrown out of whack because of a massive skill-disparity, that is no fun either.

Apart from that and completely unrelated to your game here and to the topic discussed, I don't think that I have lept past the PBEM14-group. And if, then I'd say that spreadsheets have the least to do with it. Didn't need one to tell you at the start of this game to concentrate on one thing, did I?

[NobleHelium]

Hohoho, mackoti builds the Taj Mahal.

...and mackoti capturing Lewwyn's city on the border bugged the culture and now nobody owns those tiles this turn. God damn it.

[NobleHelium]

It's okay I made a mistake anyway, apparently plantations only take 4 turns on Quick.

[Gaspar]

So we opened the turn to this offer:



We actually discussed this for over an hour. We're basically trying to buy time and so what's the best way to do that? Renegotiate, of course!

We offered these two trades:




Mostly in the hopes that they'll renegotiate for Whales and less gold, respectively. We're really just hoping to stall until we're in a position of strength somewhere, anywhere. So every turn we buy is valuable right now. I doubt this works, but its worth the shot.

More later...

[oledavy]

Why do you think they offered that trade?

It looks to me like they're trying to extend a hand of friendship. They have to be pretty worried about Mackoti's position in this game.

[Gaspar]

Let me finish the turn report and then I'll answer a few of the points raised upthread.

So the most interesting thing we did this turn was settle a pair of new cities. Neither one is terribly exciting, one a pure filler, though you will note the crabs workboated immediately (that's for you, Commodore ) and mildly impressive chop finishing the granary the turn it was settled micro :



And one settled mostly for security (nothing noteworthy about the micro here) :



The highlight of that settlement is that it gives us vision into Latte Isles, otherwise known as NobleHelium's White Whale:



That's probably doable should the opportunity arise.

In foreign news, everything is coming up roses for mackoti.



The red square on the map is where mack detonated a GA Bomb after capturing a Lewwyn city. The red circle is the Lewwyn city mack took last turn, making us neighbors now. And the white box is probably what caused N7 to hold the turn. Also resulted in novice playing the save in the first time in forever - if PBEM23 is any evidence, perhaps its also an indicator that 7 was particularly upset by this turn of events. Oh, shucks. Should note that N7 grabbed PP this turn.

Not really sure what else to show you after the big T100 extravaganza. So here's a couple info screens I didn't show in that report. Military:



Feels like we've built a lot, but really not that much if you look at it. Smoke and mirrors, ladies and gentlemen.

Religion, to give a sense of our spread thus far (and also Lewwyn's bizarre infatuation with founding religions.) AP bonus.



Social Artery and Deep Passages will find Vishnu next turn.

Victory screen, where you can see the effects of mackoti's culture bomb.



And here's one of those flying camera shots people like to stick in that I'm not any good at generating:



Demos: