Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[novice]

Turn 98 is in. Mackoti killed one of our galleons at 22% odds, and presumably retreated into Eretria. The other caravel is gone as well. He retreated his knights and advanced a mace and a crossbow onto a hill towards Ganymede.

His power increased by 40k, so presumably he built 4 knights, and now has 20 knights in total. Athens and Eretria were whipped last turn.

Fierce lost a city to Luddicator, and Sian shows a dip in his power graph. It looks like the beating that Fierce gave to Sian last turn didn't show up for us in Sian's power graph until after Sian had seen the save again. Maybe the power graph is plotted when a player ends turn, not when the entire turn rolls over.

We have 9 catapults and 23 macemen to Mackoti's 20 knights, so I feel pretty safe. Our economy is well and truly tanked though, with us making -3gpt at max tax, and showing Liberalism due in 21 turns.

[spacemanmf]

So where are you on the Communism plan now?

[novice]

So where are you on the Communism plan now?

Well we have a Taj Golden age coming in 4 turns, hopefully coinciding with a civic switch to Bureaucracy, Caste and possibly Pacifism. And we can build wealth en masse, so I still think we can get Communism within a reasonable time frame. We need to tech Communism and half of Scientific Method.

Actually, thinking about it now we can easily produce another great scientist from Io during our golden age. It has 10gpp base from HG and GLib, and with 7 scientists it will produce 31gpp base. The next GP costs 804gpp, and with +300% from a golden age, pacifism and national epic (currently under construction), Io can produce 31*4*6 = 744 gpp during the golden age. That scientist would let us bulb the second half of Scientific Method, so we could just make sure to tech Liberalism by t107.

[SevenSpirits]

We finished the great wall and quite a few more catapults. And two pikes. And we drafted some maces.

BACK TO #1 IN POWER WOOOOO!





We are currently making ~50 beakers at about 0 gold per turn. At 0%. So yeah, we're not in tech mode at the moment. But I think we'll be secure enough to revolt back to all econ on t102 (our next opportunity to do so), and as Novice said this should carry us to Communism one war or another.

Luddicator got Civil Service this turn. I think he'll pick up Monotheism next so he can swap a few civics on the last turn of his golden age. I guess that explains his Polytheism tech last turn. But why Aesthetics first? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Sian got Priesthood (or maybe already had it in the last couple of turns). Yuris is teching but I don't notice any new techs for him offhand.

[spacemanmf]

Any sign of a second wave of attack? The longer he waits the less effective it will be surely given your cat stack and increasing number of pikes.

[novice]

Any sign of a second wave of attack? The longer he waits the less effective it will be surely given your cat stack and increasing number of pikes.

Hopefully it's coming soon, otherwise I'll suspect he's gotten cold feet.

OK, it's a no talking game and you've just been surprise attacked by knights. You don't have iron, but every other player does. If you only had iron, you could build pikemen, and maybe survive; without it you're screwed. So you offer 20gpt for iron to every other player in the game, hoping at least one of them will bite. If multiple do, you'll be paying more than you wanted (maybe you'll have to build wealth in a few cities) but it's worth it for the increased chance of being able to defend yourself at all.

Nice misdirection.

[SevenSpirits]

Nice misdirection.

Heh, I didn't mean it as such. I just thought it was the best example. Although I guess I might still be bitter about the iron placement on this map.

[SevenSpirits]

Mackoti left his crossbow and mace pair on the hill. We finished a road so we could attack them from the northeast and not expose our first victor to counterattack from any of Mackoti's knights. We also finished the great wall. So, attack!

With the crossbow defending, a mace got 8% odds but a C1 mace got 17.3%. That's a big difference so in goes a C1 mace, dying but wounding the crossbow to 4.0/6. Now the mace is top defender and the difference between a draftee and a C1 attacker is only 5%, so I send in a draftee at 25.1% and he wins! 5xp for the victory translates into 15 great general points (+100% each for being in our own lands and having the great wall) so we get a great general in Titan. But we ignore him for now, there's still a crossbow to kill.

I promote another mace to C1 and again it's just a 5% odds difference so I send in another unpromoted mace. 58.9%: win! He earns us another 9 gg points.

Finally there's also a chariot in our lands that pillaged our dyes last turn. We could easily kill it with a mace, but then the mace would be sharkbait. So I attack it with a War Chariot, which will be able to fall back afterwards. 75.1% odds (plus retreat chances) and it's a win, too. Woot. Remember how we're Egypt and have this awesome unique unit? Yeah, it mattered!

OK, now boats. Mackoti's are nowhere to be seen but we suspect he has only a couple. So I fan some galleons out to do some recon. Two caravels are spotted in Thebes, one of them the bastard who killed our galleon at 22% and then ran away with combat 2.

I move two galleons down towards where we know Athens to be. One of them pillages a seafood while the other scouts ahead an extra tile, in case Athens' seafood is still 3 tiles away (but it's only 2, it turns out). One galleon heads north to pillage the last seafood on Mackoti's northern island. Two ships stay put to finish healing since it will only take one turn, and the last moves into our territory:

So... if we need to, we have the ability to move up to 3 units pretty far. It probably won't matter but why not set up opportunities like that, eh?

We end turn with top power again (by a hair), but Mackoti's after us so the graphs will probably continue to show him constantly ahead.




Pacifism is no longer usable; it would cost almost 50 bucks a turn more than OR! So if we don't get into a fight and lose a significant number of units, I think the extra great scientist plan gets scrapped, and we have to tech half of Scientific Method.

[SevenSpirits]

Btw we have some stealth trashtalk in the form of a Mackoti signup into PBEM29 (check the reason for edit).

[novice]

Pacifism is no longer usable; it would cost almost 50 bucks a turn more than OR! So if we don't get into a fight and lose a significant number of units, I think the extra great scientist plan gets scrapped, and we have to tech half of Scientific Method.

I don't know, as long as we can safely adopt Caste System, we can produce that scientist pretty quickly also without pacifism. If we have to wait a few turns more for it, and that let's us pick up another tech or two before Liberalism, no big deal (Music, anyone?). Nobody seems to be racing us to Liberalism at the moment. (Only Mackoti can see our ETA at the moment - the others can just see that it's researchable for us, although our GNP is admittedly unimpressive right now.)

We'll have to see what our teching capability is if/when we get back to peace civics to decide, of course.

Also, to repeat from last turn, since it's awesome: We completed the Great Wall, and killed a chariot, crossbow and maceman at the cost of one maceman. That netted us 33 great general points!