[spoilers] Going Dutch: The Commodore Files

[Commodore]

Foment unhappiness would be lethal, actually.

Only for eight turns....

Yeah, but as it is, we've just got culture shenanigans. I'm not rich in eeps, so I have to do it the traditional way...Proven Guilty is about to be 80% defenses.

Officially like 7% of the way to a culture victory, woohoo!

Basically, Plako and I will be doing this little dance infinitely, it seems. He's building up a dark fleet on either wing, preparing to strike up and down the coasts. If he does, I'll shift to murdering his inner sea ports, basically...I'm building up a set of 10xp pinch/C1/CG1 muskets for upgrade into terrifying rifles.

RoP rapers: Carracks and East Indiamen.

A bit of good news, though! The grateful and tense soldiers all returned home and got exceedingly giggety with it. Pop boom!

Creches all over, Democracy, Planned Economics: recipe for cheese.

[Commodore]

Why none of this matters: Gavagai owns three civs' worth of land.

That's Dtay with the Communism spy, probably still too little, too late.

[Whosit]

Out of curiosity, think Gavagai is going to keep swallowing more civs, or just sit tight with what he's got and ride that to a win?

[Commodore]

Out of curiosity, think Gavagai is going to keep swallowing more civs, or just sit tight with what he's got and ride that to a win?

Well if he wanted to join in on Plako I'm be all over that, but that would be dumb.

I suspect he'll eat bits and pieces, but mostly just raze rivals' main cities with Sirian fleets.

[Commodore]

Eureka! Guys, guys! When you spin a bullet by using grooves within the gunbarrel, you can achieve staggering improvements in accuracy and range! When you train and outfit the 10xp/C1/Pinch/CG1 monster musketeers with these newfangled guns...you get yourself some right proper monsters.

Yeah, I know everyone else is figuring out how many infantry to draft.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

It's the small things. AmIrite?

[Commodore]

GEOPOLITICS:
And then there were seven. The last few turns have been a bloody consolidation phase; Donozan Zoi, Furungy, and REMAI all bit it. This is the Relation Web as it remains; convivial if watchful amongst the big dogs, while our own long continent's ABAB alliance/hostility network remains as it always has. The remaining hot war seems to be primarily trench-static along the land front, with Dtay's galleons burning rear line cities. Technologically, we'd expect nothing other than this diplomatic situation.

Plako really is furious, I'm willing to bet. Dashed upity wogs spiking his wheels.

Techs...are a bit embarrassing. This state cannot remain forever; while the other nuisance power (2mn/Pacal/Portugal) has Steel and Railroad, of all things. It's crazy. We're very behind on all tech fronts, and if were weren't burning 400gpt on upgrades at the moment, we would be able to get some excellent known tech bonuses. But needs must as devils drive, etc. It looks to me like the 3Gs (Gavagai, GermanJoey, Gawdzak) are all lurching toward Artillery and thus destroyers. Which actually suggests something fun for 2metraninja if he were creative enough for it; he could probably research Combustion and command a great price on oil...being able to skip that whole line would be gold for one of the great naval powers. Dtay is biased economically as usual, having netted Statue of Liberty and soon Kremlin...just remains to be seen if that's enough to compete. And Plako, finally, is going for heavy security techs before swapping to culture. It's a tough world out there, man.

Yeah, but as long as we have cannons and rails before the tanks roll out...

Civics are kind of interesting right now. I'm pretty sure part of Portugal's tech insanity is Fetoriae and coast, but the serfdom windmills help. Everyone else is in One Right Choice caste system and One Right Choice free market; State Property might compete for Gavagai eventually but holy crap did the other options need buffing. The rest are all pretty simple; for the Must Have of +2xp most of us prefer Theocracy but Gawdzak's Vassalage isn't awful (Organized makes that configuration better). Plako's avoidance of Nationalism/experience civics makes his defensive orientation clear, but his cannons and culture should kibosh your immediate comment about killing. Civics will probably remain static for most of us for the rest of the game, save Gavagai's next golden age.

Portugal and the Netherlands remain kingdoms until death, you heard it here first.

The 3G Network contains our winner and probable silver and bronze medalists. Frankly, given psychological toughness factors and backline potential, we could reasonably concede to Gavagai right now. He is absolutely stoppable with coordinated action, but I don't think anyone left relevant has it in them to extend trust like that. Silver is still a pretty tight fight, with Gawdzak ahead but Joey having a bit more potential once he slowly regrows the horrifically whip-ravaged tundra lands of Furungia and Korea. These empires of the 3G Network are vast.

Furunguria split three ways: Weird outcome.

Finally, occupying half the land, here are 33% more empires. The tense, well-armed, militarized, everyone-competent straight-line continent, shockingly, has not prospered. I think a retrospective look on how each one of us might have bettered ourselves is probably warranted, but honestly if you stack these four players in a line like this nine times out of ten you're going to have this outcome. Even the most trust-filled, harmonious direct border in the Western Hemisphere, Inca-Netherland is blessed with one of the most secure natural border geographies I've ever seen and we still don't do open borders.

Pretty sure we'll outlast Portugal, question remains if we'll live to see the English Victory.

[Commodore]

It's the small things. AmIrite?

Like a dog and a toddler laughing. You got it!


Or like, you know, butchering a superior force's advance.

[spacetyrantxenu]

It's completely coincidental that they're in front of the oven with the light on, laughing maniacally, and the cat is nowhere to be found?

[Commodore]

It's completely coincidental that they're in front of the oven with the light on, laughing maniacally, and the cat is nowhere to be found?

Absolutely! And thus the family has Chinese for dinner...

Poor Plako. There is precisely one thing we do really well. But it's a doozy.


Sucks to live on this continent, yeh?