[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[NobleHelium]

Hey now, we reported 38 well into the industrial age. Not sure how useful the reports are for learning though.

[Qgqqqqq]

PBEM 19 was also well-reported at that stage.

[WilliamLP]

You know what this game really needs right now? Turn timing drama!

Retep logged in to pause for Boldy with a couple of hours left, without either one communicating anything, and they let the timer roll without Retep actually playing. I wonder if Xenu and Boldly even know they're on the first half of a turn split? Or I guess they are?

[WilliamLP]

If you have time to log in and pause the game (without anyone requesting it!) you could have played your turn. Forcing a turn spilt is idiotic and I'm tired of your clock shenanigans.

I can't argue with that. Games are hell when more than one person cares about being the last to play, so if there's a single such person they should probably be called out. And if Retep wants to attack he should just do so in the appropriate half of the turn. At this point in the game with a drastic tech difference the extra 1/2 turn hardly matters.

So, I guess I just play? Any lurker advice on how to handle this delicate emotional situation, in a way where I can just play Civ and not worry about pissiness and table flips?

[WilliamLP]

Playing on... I'm doing little but city management right now.

How do defensive pacts work? Boldly and Bandit have had one for a while. I know if you declare war on one, you get war with the other. Maybe this is why Retep wants the end of the turn? If you then offer peace, does it force peace with the other as well? Can you cancel a defensive pact after 10 turns as usual? As you can tell I've never really played with them, other than dealing the with the side effect of fighting 2 AIs instead of 1.

I'm forcing some Research and Wealth builds, in order to get Radio in 2. I want to make a run at Cristo even if Retep is trying to deny it.




So, apparently, Factories and Coal Plants must factor into the Prod stat, right? And it's not just raw hammers? (Or am I just rising this quickly growing new cities onto workshops?) I don't think the Exp bonus factors into it, so this does seem a little odd.

Today I'm learning: at this point in the game with SP, junk filler cities are worth settling.




I'm over the conqueror's plateau now, so number of cities maintenance is capped at 6. And this city immediately makes 7 commerce, plus the addition to the Hindu shrine. (Also I can build the granary quickly with the mine, or work the village then build the granary at size 2... I don't really care that much which is slightly superior. Or at least I didn't until writing this. )




Island cities have a very clear profit just from domestic trade, so really I should have been spamming these all over the place, even in junk filler spots. It's not even that bad a rate of return on the settler.

Bandit switched to full war civics at the end of his GA, and appears do be doing whipping and / or drafting. Maybe I could use more military immediately, I don't know. What little I know about this era is that machine guns are a pain to take out before tanks, as in real life. And anything that comes at me with 1-movers would give me time to run max wealth, then upgrade a ton of rifles to infantry. (Retep doesn't even have HBR.) And I do have a lot of cannons as well. So bring it, I guess.

[WilliamLP]

By now you probably guess that I'm going to attack you, no secret since you can see the power graph in-game. I was three turns away to hit you, yet now I feel like just hitting enter to the end of his game.

Geez, I didn't know that for sure, and I bet Bandit and Suttree didn't know that either. This is spoiler info in the tech thread. So, I guess knowing a bit about the psychology of gamers (heh) the steps leading up to this were well in place, but this is pretty close to a multi-party rage quit now.

I really don't get why Retep couldn't play before BoldlyTyrant, and just attack anyway, either before them, or after on the next turn. (You should always have the option to attack on any given turn if you play last.)

This part of the organizing thread was so unfortunate:

When a player makes a Declaration of War, they must play after the other player on subsequent turns, until peace is made.
A third or subsequent player DoWing in the same fray becomes the new last in the turn order, in order of declaration. Any confusion or grey areas could rely on experienced player advice direct to warring parties’ spoiler thread (or a shout out for Spoiler help to the Q&A or tech thread if needed), however if that is not available then last player to DoW is now last in the turn order. (up for discussion)

We haven't been playing this way and I did clarify this in the tech thread a while ago. Maybe Retep is trying to play according to this and being confused?

[WilliamLP]

So Retep is playing 3 minute turns now... I'm pretty sure he must be working some computer-assigned spy specialists like that. It takes me at least 20-30 minutes just to go through all my units and cities!

Radio finishes at the end of this turn. And I'm going to start Cristo in my IW city with overflow from a machine gun.

The bigger issue is what to do with the unfortunate spoiler info that retep dropped. I may actually value being a good neighbour over poaching cities from BoldlyTyrant. And it's not clear that Retep is going to attack them now anyway. Maybe I'll just worry about it as it happens. If Retep declares an option is to fight a proxy war by gifting some machine guns. Another option is to go for Retep's navy and weakly held island cities.

The other question is what is Bandit building up for? If he weren't in the picture things would be a lot simpler.

[WilliamLP]

Another turn in this mess of a game. Ironically I'm actually enjoying the turns though.

Radio is in. Cristo is due in 5. I could probably reduce it to 4 by breaking irrigation chains for workshops but I'm not sure if that's worth it. At worst Retep wastes hammers to deny it and we get fail gold.

Retep's GNP is very high, so I think he has stopped building units and is powering wealth and research builds. He's showing Industrialism in 3. I really want Biology but I don't know if we can afford to be 7-8 turns behind on starting to build tanks. That might be a bad idea, so Industrialism is next for us too.

No screenshots but there really isn't much new to see.

[WilliamLP]

So I thought I had switched to Industrialism, but I actually left the tech at Biology. Oh well, that works too... If a tank rush is coming I'll have to defend with infantry, machine guns and cannons, but that's not a crazy thing.






Retep is playing five minute turns, and seems to have switched everything to research and wealth now after his last round of military builds. His GNP is very high now, higher than the last tick of the graph shows.

Needless to say, this guy's personality is kind of erratic. (Not just judging by this game.) I can understand his annoyance with being forced to miss a turn if he thought the etiquette was to pick a side of a turn split and play there all the time. But putting spoiler info and diplo into the tech thread is extremely childish and poor sportsmanship.

The question is what is Bandit doing? It's safe to say he can't win the long term tech game. If he's hoping to win the game, his only chance is if something gets seriously shaken up. Does he think he can profit from a war vs either me or Retep? I don't think he can do either, but only play kingmaker. But I don't think I can afford to let my power stat lag behind so I'm slowing a bit to build a round of infantry.

His other option is to attack Molach, but Molach has infantry and is just sitting there like a rock with plenty of units - not a great targe. Does he have other war options? A boat invasion of Suttree or trying to pile onto Xenu maybe?

My workers have little to do right now, so I'm dropping down some rails in BoldyXenu's territory. This is both to be friendly and also with an eye to enabling a move of defensive units to his coast, to make things more complicated for Retep if decides to attack after all.

I'm also dropping down a few junk cities, for the marginal (but positive) payoff.

[WilliamLP]

So what's new in this game, that has become kind of surreal?

Retep, the tech leader, appears basically checked out. He's playing 5 minute turns min-maxing for tech. Bandit is building up military, for what I'm not sure. Oxy has declared on Molach. Good luck with that, North Korea! Molach has tons of units, and though a lot of it is junk he does have infantry and Oxy has nothing better than muskets that I have seen.

My workers are basically out of stuff to do, and some are railing up Xenu's territory as a sort of quasi-alliance.

I'm going to try and fill in some of the city sites that Retep is too lazy to, because I think they will pay for themselves if only marginally.

I'm thinking I should actually research how to run a space race optimally, by reading T-Hawk reports and stuff like that. It would help to know where the bottlenecks and critical path are and where the tech should go first so everything finishes at the same time. I've won in space plenty of times vs the CPU, but it was years ago and it was always a pretty casual affair.

Biology is done, and I got Democracy for the civics. Industrialism is next, I guess.




Cristo is due at the end of the turn, so I have at least a coin flip if Retep is trying to deny it. That will help a lot. We don't need Hereditary Rule anymore, either Universal Suffrage or Rep is much better now, and I'm not sure which wins yet. The beauty of Cristo is we can actually try them both perhaps. Also it makes sense to switch from OR to Free Religion now, for the flat 10% science boost. Also being able to switch to Nationalism for emergency drafts is huge.

Airship scouting:




Man, retep sure isn't guarding Chirimolla with much. Is he not worried about a couple of rifles razing that from a boat trick?




We're building a lead on pop. GNP will catch up with the civic changes (I hope) and when we can change health builds to wealth and research. Right now I'm working on several grocers, aqueducts, public transit, etc., to deal with the industrial age.