A Record of Joey's Journey to Immortality

[Cornflakes]

After years upon years of trolling me, the GPP gods finally throw me a bone! 3% odds, baby! 

I'm betting the GPP gods had a momentary lapse in concentration, thought you were going for [academy?], saw the 3% odds at the GArtist and tried to spite you 

In any case ... 

[GermanJoey]

T128.

The game has been getting a little bit more lively lately!

First, a short domestic update. My GA ended, and my post-GA stats are looking pretty good. I was #1 MFG by a big margin (+32hpt over #2) on the turn I came outta the GA, but then I whipped off a *ton* of pop so now I'm only #1 by a dozen hpt or so). I've been hovering around tied for second in CY, behind dtay by about 70 CY, but more on dtay later. My tech rate is also worlds better; I finished CoL on my second to last turn of my GA, and I've since already whipped in 7 courthouses and should have another half dozen done in 2-3 turns. Each one of those is worth 5gpt on average (which is worth about 7bpt) and 4ept, the latter of which isn't worth too much now but will be soon when I'm able to start drowning other players in EP. Nobody else even has a single courthouse, other than JR, but then they're currently getting tossed around by Gavagai (and possibly, in the coming turns, dtay as well). I just settled my 16th and 17th city, behind dtay's 21 (!), but am actually #1 in land area. I still have room for a couple decent filler cities once I can figure out when to slot those in.

Here's an up to date overview shot:




Internationally, the game's more interesting. First, to my surprise, Krill wardecced Coeur. Nothing seems to be happening there... I don't know. Maybe he's just pissed off about them being coy about trade routes? Oh, and speaking of Coeur, they, amazingly, just landed The Great Library a few turns ago! TGL might be one of the most important wonders on the whole map, with GS bulbs being so useful here. I think Krill built the SoZ like 30 turns ago, and he's had a Heroic Epic in his capital forever, so I have absolutely no fucking idea how he completely whiffed this wonder, but serious kudos to Team Carthage for having the cajones to go for it so late.

Next, on the same turn, Gavagai wardecced on Mongolia and has taken a total of 3 cities from them so far! This one was not so much of a shock. Offshore, Gavagai got boxed in very hard from all sides. This is potentially related to his Pyramids timing... while he was finishing that big thing, other players were pushing settlers into the sea. This very thing happened to me with my eastern coast, where my one real port was working on the Great Lighthouse. Got the wonder, but Coeur snatched up a whole lot of islands that otherwise should have easily been mine.

Anyways, without an easy expansion vector it was obvious that Gav would predate on one of the newer players' holdings. And thus, he's been #1 in power for a long time, especially far above his land neighbors, DS and Krill. However, both of those are particularly bad targets for a land war, at least in this era. Thus, I had expected him to go after Dark Savant by sea, but I suppose his islands nearest to Gav are far crummier than JR's. And it seems that JR was indeed pretty unprepared to fight out on the water. Defending a scattered archipelago is a very difficult against a dedicated naval invasion, at least unless you're Cha/Pro and purposely settled all your island cities on hills. (muwahaha). Unfortunately, JR is neither Pro nor Cha and apparently did not settle his island cities on hills. I don't know how much more Gav has on hand, but IMHO if they don't stem the bleeding now then Gav will eventually take all of their islands, as their ability to produce naval units on that sea decreases further with every city lost. Of course, they may have a far more serious problem...

dtay wardecced Dark Savant a couple turns ago and took one of his over-extended island cities; I have a funny feeling that dtay suffered the same frustration with that guy as I did, and decided on the exact same course of action. (more on that later) They made peace the turn afterwards at any rate. More interesting is that dtay did 10 single-pop whips in 10 cities this turn, which, I'll bet dollars to donuts, is 10 horse archers whipped on the turn before he finishes Guilds. Next turn, he'll probably whip 16-17 times to finish about that many Knights on the turn afterwards. This is why his CY has been so high - he's just been building wealth and inflating his pop to afford whips into Knights.  The big question is who he hits - dead-man-walking Yuri, or weakened but far-more-formidable JR?  A tangential note on dtay - he has an utterly enormous tech lead right now. Part of this is ignoring utility techs, part of this is the Colossus of course, and part of it is wealth builds... but the biggest reason is Agg + Ikhanda. Based on my expenses before my first CH came out, I estimate that his trait and UB together are saving him roughly 75gpt! For reference, my post-GA, pre-CH income, without wealth builds, was, IIRC, 108gpt. Pretty freaking ridiculous.

Finally, as for me, I also wardecced on Dark Savant this turn. I've just freakin' had it with this guy. Every turn we go back and forth about open borders, its ridiculous. I offer to pay 8gpt, he responds with 10gpt, etc ad in finium. Remember that these are only worth 17 commerce per turn to me. First of all, someone trying to nickle-and-dime me gets under my skin like nothing else. Second of all, every turn he does this is money that I'm losing. Like, he's been doing this for about 20 turns or so now. That's about an entire classical-era tech worth of commerce all by itself. If I got this money for free, then OK, that shows we're good friends, and I'm willing to ignore that you settled an island site that you settled 2 tiles away from my mainland and have been garrisoning it with a single unit for 20 turns. If I had to pay for it, then OK, we're business partners, and so I'm willing to live with seeing your city from my shores only so long as I think that it is more profitable to deal with you than it is to take it. But we're not business partners if you keep trying to microadjust this deal each turn, are you? And not only have I not gained any profit from our non-existant routes, I've also invested 400 hammers into an invasion force that I parked right outside your borders. And how did you respond, when I gave you one last chance to offer something in exchange for me not declaring war and taking your city? (as routes and a gpt offer (from you) woulda been acceptable to me)




ASKED ME TO PAY THREE GPT FOR OPEN BORDERS!!!!! I couldn't fucking believe it. Did you think it was a bluff, that these galleys were empty? Or did you think you were offering me a deal now? Man, this guy. Also compare DS's available naval production in this theatre as compared to mine:




A size 7 and a pair of size 8 cities, plus 3 tiny islands. Meanwhile, I have 8 large cities totaling 60 pop, including what is probably the highest hpt city in the world. Even with his formidable circumnav bonus, there's just no way he can avoid getting overwhelmed here if I want to focus on overwhelming him.

At any rate, I just teched Alphabet this turn, and I'll see if I can get OB from elsewhere. I also figured I might need to rescue JR and/or Donovan at some point soon, if dtay or Krill, respectively, decide to clobber them. Especially for JR; there's not much I can do if dtay blasts into Yuri, but it wont be the end of the world if he does. If he blasts into JR though, and gobbles up another dozen cities and ends up on my doorstep, well then that's gonna be a huge problem.

[GermanJoey]

After years upon years of trolling me, the GPP gods finally throw me a bone! 3% odds, baby! 

I'm betting the GPP gods had a momentary lapse in concentration, thought you were going for [academy?], saw the 3% odds at the GArtist and tried to spite you 

In any case ... 

Nah, not an Academy, it was just a mixed Merchant/Scientist/Engineer at that point, from my Great Lighthouse city - a generic great person for my second golden age. GS's will be important soon for Astro bulbs more so than for an Academy, IMHO. An engineer (at 9% odds) woulda been real swell too, but the artist is amazing just to deter Krill for long enough for me to be able to weigh down on him with my vastly higher MFG.

[GermanJoey]

T139.

War!

For the crime of the nickle-and-dime, I took Portsmith and Castle Kalindra from Dark Savant. Wasn't too lucky with rolls though: lost 2 swords at 75%ish odds, one at 90% odds, and then had to sacrifice 3 triremes to kill 3 of DS's. Also, he razed a fishing boats, bleh! But, I successfully achieved my objectives, and really, what's the point of units if you're not gonna use them? Better to take cities and trade triremes than let him cruise his 3-movers around my territory.

After taking CK and wiping his navy, I offered white peace so that he could avoid a dogpile. But, of course, he refused it... only to re-offer it when JR and Couer jumped in on him a few turns later, heh. The former has taken one city so far, the latter 2, including the large, ultra-lush island of Regna. DS has now lost 6 cities to 4 different players, so I'm sure it won't be long before even more players pile onto him. Gav in particular - DS has built the MoM kinda close to the Ottomans' land border, and I'm sure Gav would just love to have that.



(Portsmith came with a Granary, CK with nothing. also, I saved over the CK screenshot, woops )

Still though, whatever Mongolia and Carthage end up taking, I'm happy to have what I wanted and then cleanly extract myself from the mess.

Next up, Yuri of Russia. No vengeance here... more of a mercy-killing, with a little bit of "get it before someone else" mixed in. Ok, its really more like a big bit of that.  I took Yakaterinburg by sea and Yargoslav by land, losing just a chariot in total. And that's that for this war, pretty much. I'm gonna see if I can raze Seattle before dtay gets there, but its not a huge priority or anything. (and honestly, Carthage is the one who should be doing stuff like this - it doesn't seem like they've tried to slow dtay down at all here!!)



(no buildings in Yakaterinburg)



(scored a Granary in Yargoslav)

Domestics

Domestically, things are pretty good. I just popped my 3rd great person, a Great Scientist, out of State of Zijin. I'm planning to throw a GA soonish, but I want to let my more recent gains/plants grow a little more first. I've got 12 courthouses now, and have for some time - everywhere except for new conquests and recently settled fillers. (22 cities now, including the two I just took from Yuri). I'm saving about ~75gpt here, which is like 90bpt. To put that in perspective, that's about a third of my break-even income, after expenses, and that's not including the ep. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my economy... its not quite as good as dtay's, but its honestly pretty close to it, and at any rate my MFG is vastly higher than his. The only player whose base MFG is competitive with mine (outside of the 2 players in a GA) is Gavagai. Well, Coeur seems to have made some significant gains in their GA, but its hard to tell. Here's the MFG graph from right the graph is distorted by the burst of GAs:




At any rate, I've picked up a lot of techs in the last 10 turns: Alphabet -> Polytheism -> Priesthood -> Aesthetics -> Literature -> Monarchy -> Feudalism. The whole Lit bit is interesting... I had four pre-chopped BFC forests at Yellow Maple, and so I decided to put 3 of them into the ToA (everybody's favorite wonder!!!) and one into the NE, which will be done in 3 turns. I also had a pair of 3rd ring forests at Heavenly Star, which went into my HE after I unlocked it with a CR3 sword at Castle Kalindra. That finished this turn, and I'll be pumping out a mix of 3-promo Wellies and Trebs until I get Knights in like 6 turns or whatever. Heavenly Star will gain 40hpt when Guilds comes in, without Caste. (which is what you need to 1-turn Knights, if you didn't know!) Finally, I decided to pay for this diversion by trying to gain some failgold off the Parthenon, but it looks like I might actually get it somehow? I don't know how it gets ignored for like 50 turns, but there you go. It'll be due in 5 turns if some miracle happens, but the failgold would be just fine too.

Machinery is next; I have the cash to 2-turn it, but I'm gonna wait until Couer finishes it to get a bit of extra KTB. After that, I'll have a choice between Guilds, Engineering, and Compass+Optics.  Guilds, as always, seems like the Right Choice, but then Engineering is key for an increasingly-wide empire like mine, and Caravels will be pretty important for checking that all these OB-recalictrant neighbors of mine aren't planning an invasion. On the other hand, I ran the numbers on Bureau, and, after prospective GA ending in ~12T, then, because I don't have an Academy in my capital, I would only gain around ~5gpt and 10hpt after you subtract out the expenses savings of Vassalage. And IMHO the XP bonus of Vassalage is worth more than that, so I'll only need Civil Service to spread irrigation and gain access to maces, at least for the time being. Bureau will be more worth it around time for a 3rd GA, when I have better multipliers there like an Observatory, University, etc. Likewise, I'd ordinarily want Theocracy at around this point, but I had terrible luck with religious spreads up till now, with only State of Zijin having access to Buddhism and 2 other cities having access to Hinduism, which is Krill's religion. Unfortunately, State of Zijin is a weak city due to the nasty border situation with Mongolia, and thus hasn't had the spare hammers to build missionaries until just recently. So what's the point in rushing to Theocracy if I'm not gonna get a lot of use out of it yet? It'll have to wait until my 3rd GA, unfortunately. 

Other Players

It seems right now we've got 3 tiers of players: a.) top 5 of dtay, myself, Couerva/Bacchus, Gavagai, and Krill, b.) a second tier of JR and Dark Savant, and c.) a bottom tier of Donovan and Yuri.

... and I'm just gonna finish this section in another post, because I'm falling asleep while typing this out (after typing a short para on 3 players so far), and if I wait any longer, the turn is gonna roll again and then everything I've already typed will be outdated again, arrghhh!!! 

[GermanJoey]

Note: I first started writing these on T137, and its, uh, like T143 now? I've just been so crazy busy this is the best I could do. I tried to update these for the current turn, but if the wording sounds strange, that's why.

dtay

Current tech leader and city leader, but I don't think he has anything resembling an unassailable position. His conquest of Yuri has been kinda slow, and his power never spiked insanely high. I think he did 1 round of Knight whips at most, with very few deep whips after that. He's at... IIRC, 27 cities right now, with 3 more left to take from Russia, as Yuri whipped out a last-second spear that prevented me from razing Seattle, alas.  His land area will definitely balloon up to first place once he consolidates, but I'm at 195 tiles right now, and Krill has been #2 at 183 for awhile now, so I don't think he'll overtake me by too much, at least in the near-term. He's just gotten Engineering and has since cleaned up all the Classical age techs he skipped in his rush to Guilds. I'm expecting that he'll next try to rush down Education, and then try to guard Lib for as long as possible before eventually taking Astro so as to maximize the Colossus. (dtay ALWAYS goes for lib, so you can count on this) And, as far as last turn, he switched saving gold (edit: up to over 1700 gold now, on T143) from CS to Philosophy, so there you go. I mean, not much to say, he's gonna be very predictable in the next 20 turns but that doesn't mean he'll be easy to beat.

Couerva/Bacchus

These guys are doing pretty well overall, just finishing their 1st GA. They've got high power, a strong manufacturing base (it weak before the GA, but it looks like they got out a lot of forges during it - better late than never), and IIRC 23 cities now. They just finished a war with Dark Savant, in which they took 3 cities, including the super island city of Regna, and then made peace. (a bit annoying for me, I was hoping they'd keep DS occupied so that he isn't interested in coming back on me, but I guess this helps avoid a dogpile from Gav somewhat).

However, they've made some bizarre moves strategically... every time I start thinking about these guys I always end up saying to myself, "uh, so what's up with that?" Like the whole bit with letting dtay run all over Yuri despite them having near power parity - so what's with that?? You're basically just letting him go on a shopping spree here! And you had OB w/ Yuri! Walk some elephants down there and put some pressure on the dang guy! Or raze his cities on your borders at least!  And, although their latest round of forges is great, they dont have any courthouses at all (their expenses have gotta be insane, especially with that huge standing army and 16% inflation now) and they just *finally* teched Compass a few turns ago. I mean, for chrissakes, do y'all have any idea how good your own UB is on this map!!! WELL, ILL TELL YA, ITS SUPER FREAKING GOOD!!! Shoulda got that tech like 25 turns ago and started whipping them out all over the damn place! But, on the other hand, they've got the Great Library, which is just amazing on this map. They were 1T from Optics last turn and have a GS stached, so I'm expecting an Astro bulb any day now. As to what they do then... I'm not sure, but I'm definitely going to throw up some walls and CG3 LBs on my east coast.

edit: on T143, uh oh, they just bulbed Astro! That's even sooner than I expected!

Gavagai

Gavagai's got a very strong position here, IMHO. He just fired a GA 3 turns ago, and he looks very prepared for it. His cities are enormous, he's got a ton of infrastructure, and basically every tile in his empire is improved. He used his first GP on an Academy, and so I'm expecting that he'll end this GA in Bureaucracy. My own calculations seemed to show that Bureau didn't make much sense unless you already had an Academy, and an Academy didn't make sense for me considering how low I've been running my slider. I guess it was a different situation for Exp gav, with a much higher slider %. The fact that his cottages are a lot more further developed probably helped too.

As to where he goes next: my guess is that he'll either dive back in on JR (least likely, 10% chance), blast through Krill (35% chance), or try to finish off, and take the lion's share of, Dark Savant (55% chance). It's extremely likely that he's about to get guilds any turn now, if he doesn't have it already.

Krill

Man, I still don't know what the hell Krill is doing in this game. The latest update with him is that he's finally thrown a GA, after holding onto the Music artist for a good 30 turns and then a GS for another 10 turns. I have no idea which one he used, although I have a good guess I think.

On the one hand, Krill's caught up in a lot of ways - he's up to #2 in CY, is roughly tied for #2 in land with dtay and Gav. (although dtay will surely shoot ahead of everyone when his former-Russian cities come out of revolt), and doesn't seem to be behind in tech, as I've been watching his research for awhile now. And his traits/wonders still give him uber units I guess. However, other things don't look so good:

a.) his MFG is bottom-barrel... we have about the same city count, and yet his MFG is so low that mine was actually above it when he started his GA! (more serious for him: that means neighbor Gav's woulda been too)
b.) his power is super duper low... I'd estimate he's at least around 100k soldiers under the 6th place player. Note that he was just in a war with a player that now has about +300k soldiers on him (Carthage), is neighbors across the water with dtay (has about 340k soldiers on him), and shares a land border with the #3 power, Gavagai in a GA. (~+200k soldiers or so). And then there's me, if he's ever intended to invade Donovan. (I'm also +200k on him). Are uber-units going to win 1 unit for every 2?
c.) has barely any forges, much less courthouses (I'm about to get city vis on him in 2 turns, heh, and I'm sure Gavagai will start pouring EP onto him too)

Then there's all this other weird shit he's done. Like, he's had the Shwedagon Paya for like, I don't know, 25-30 turns or so? And he has his Hinduo religion spread to like, every single one of his cities. And used his first GP, from the Oracle, on a shrine. And presumably its a decent shrine. But - he *just* revolted from Paganism last turn!!!! (edit:meaning like T140) What the heck!! It's especially bizarre in that you usually think of RtR Agg as being mini-Cre, using cheap half-priced barracks to pop borders instead of needing to tech Myst. But he goes for a religion and spreads it everywhere, not even bothering to use OR. So why waste so many hammers to spread it just for 1gpt per city? And then, as far as doing something with it - he could go after the AP, but then if you're gonna tech Theology, why get the SP? Then there's his SoZ HE capital, which he's had for like, what, 50 turns now? (and I just realized he built the HE without Marble! expensive!) But he pretty much hasn't used it for anything! His power is so goddamn low! What gives here? Why rush something oddball like that if you're not gonna use it?

Krill just switched into Pacifism in his GA (WHICH I GUESS MUST BE A GOOD ECONOMIC CIVIC FOR HIM, LOL!! ) rather than OR, which means he's probably desperate for a GS to bulb Astro I guess. I still don't know what happened with him and Couer, but even if their past scuffle was a fake-ish trade route grievance sort of thing, I wouldn't be surprised if Carthage comes back on him. Or Gav jumps in on him. Or he gets dogpiled.

JR

Man, these guys. I've been pretty frustrated with them. We've got a horrible border situation coming up now, where, at Engineering, either of us can 1-turn the others' 4th-ring expanded border city. Yeah, 4th ring! Enormous cultural outpouring for little benefit on either side. It's especially tragic because we'd have a super good border if they had settled Ohgul Oglish (or whatever it's called) 1 tile north, but I guess they didn't want to give up territory that close to their capital, which is fairly understandable. And they probably intended to try razing State of Zijin early, but then backed away when I armed it up with CG archers and a phalanx. What is less understandable is that they've continued to be passive aggressive ever since; they've refused every type of trade offer I've tried - fish/fish, open borders, open borders + gpt, etc. Even after I filled up my routes and they had open ones, they refused OB w/ gpt! Probably lost them a good 30gpt or whatever for the last 20 turns, although they've recently just signed OB with Krill (meaning Krill just got Alpha for Astro), so I guess they're fine for now. Still, that's basically a whole Medieval tech they've flushed down the toilet. To me, that behaivor could only signal hostility. I've had a sentry chariot poking around up there on my side of the borders, and I've seen them build up some Keshiks and a catapult. Could be defensive, but who knows. I mean, if they were actually worried about me invading them, why not just sign OB and park a sentry chariot in State of Zijin? They just whipped like 9 times on T143, according to the tracker, so I think I need to get more defense up there.

Dark Savant

Well, DS has lost like 8 cities now from 4 different players, and has one of the most aggressive players in RB as his land neighbor. I'm very surprised that he gave Coeur peace, but I guess he's not feeling too vindictive. He's still in his MoM GA, so I guess he extended it... his power has ramped up quite a bit in the last 10 turns or so, enough to buy him some time, but I can't imagine a realistic way for him to get back to prominence. 

Donovan

Just waiting to die, pretty much. Chopped all his myriad border forests into CG2 archers and city walls. ;[

Yuri

Already dead.

me

I set a goal on T141: 1M soldiers by T155. I had 490k soldiers on T141... figure about 50k from new techs, buildings, and population, and it'll work out to about 33k/power per turn. That's a lotta hammers, so wish me luck!

[OT4E]

Thank you for your report it was interesting. Good luck in your militarizing. Finally, kill someone please!

[GermanJoey]

Roger roger. Guilds in 2, upon which I shall move every "Knig", for great justice.

[GermanJoey]

T145.

A quick update of a demographics screenshot, since I forgot one in both of the last 2 updates:




The 3 players above me in MFG are all in GAs: Gavagai, Dark Savant (whose MoM ends this turn I think?), and Krill. OTOH, I don't think I'm really #2 in CY as Gav and Krill are running lots of specialists. #2 Land is dtay.

I'm only up 105k in power since setting my goal, which is not on pace, but: I finish Guilds EOT, and launch a GA next turn. I should have about ~15 Knights 2 turns from now, and that'll put me ahead of my planned power pace. OTOH, I'll switch out of slavery temporarily, so that'll slow me a bit.

Other news: I actually did end up finishing the friggin' Parthenon. Wow, look out y'all - the game-breaking combo of the Temple of Artemis and the Parthenon, my ultimate dream come true... But seriously, it's really not so bad for me here, because I have some freaking enormous cities that are running a bunch of specialists simply because they ran outta good tiles to work. I mean, LH coast is ok, but why not milk a bit more GPP?

[GermanJoey]

T146.

City counts:

dtay: 28
me: 24
Gavagai: 22
Coeur: 21
Krill: 18
JR4: 18
Dark Savant: 15
Donovan: 7
Yuri: 2

Players with Astro: Coeur, Krill, Gavagai

[GermanJoey]

Code:

9/24/17 10:14 am Gavagai Logged out
9/24/17 10:06 am Gavagai Finished turn
9/24/17 9:25 am Gavagai Score decreased to 1055
9/24/17 9:24 am Gavagai Score decreased to 1062
9/24/17 9:23 am Gavagai Score decreased to 1073
9/24/17 9:23 am Gavagai Score decreased to 1080
9/24/17 9:23 am Gavagai Score decreased to 1090
9/24/17 9:21 am Gavagai Score decreased to 1095
9/24/17 9:18 am Gavagai Score decreased to 1103
9/24/17 9:02 am Gavagai Logged in
9/24/17 6:38 am Gavagai Score increased to 1110

That's: a 3, a 3, a 2, a 4, a 3, a 4, and a 3 pop whip. So Gavagai got Guilds in the last turn of his GA, which just ended, and whipped out a ton of Knights. Who will the target be? Well, his land neighbor of DS is the obvious choice, but I suspect it more likely to be Krill, which is bad news for me. (also bad news for Krill)

Krill just lost a very large city (size 11 Mandrake) to Coeurva. It looks like whipped out a ton of Galleons, and probably also blew a lot of cash upgrading galleys to Galleons. He has seriously a lot of them now, I counted at least 7 IIRC, lurking just out of view of Carthage's. Many are C2, so I think those are the newly whipped ones (from Vassalage/Theocracy), while the non-promoed must be the upgraded galleys.  Unfortunately, his land-based units are not many... lots of multi-upgrade ancient trash (e.g. C3 Shock Axes, C4 Axes, etc), and it seems he just recently got a few Longbows and Crossbows. He's been moving them westward to presumably load them on ships, and indeed a bunch have disappeared. OTOH, his core is like, completely empty, and a heavily-armored Gav might be able to sweep through him faster than I can sweep through Donovan to get down there to even grab a piece for myself. Lets hope he goes after DS instead.

The good news is that I'm now #1 in power, at 757k. I'm invading Donovan from 2.5 fronts next turn, so look forward to many complaints about slamming my 90 hammer horsies into 25h walled archers and losing.

Also, Donovan has 3 workers sitting on a forested plains deer next to my borders in a brand new city, and if he chops that into a city walls I am just going to fucking cry. He's already chopped so many forests into freaking archers and walls!!!!!!!!!