[Spoilers] GES, Roland & Friends (Mansa of Egypt)

[luddite]

This was a tricky turn. First of all, it's turn 117, the critical turn when yuris and Commodore can declare if they want. Here's the border with yuris right now (Comm doesn't have much):


We had a great scientist, and decided to use him for a golden age. No point bulbing when everything is a 1 turn tech, anyway. Here's the demos before and after.


Hardest thing to decide is what techs to go for now. Democracy, physics, railroad, and astronomy are all tempting. I decided to go for chemistry/steel first, just to make sure our military situation is solid.

[luddite]

yuris just sent me an email saying he's declaring war. I haven't seen the save yet, though. Unless he's got a lot more this turn, I'm actually tempted to attack HIM.

This was the email exchange:

Hi GES/Luddite,

I regret to say that we declared war on you this turn. We discussed it
earlier in the chat, so it probably doesn't come as a surprise. Sorry
we had to make this decision, and good luck

All the best
yuris125, Music Director of Radioland

Alright then. Have at ye

GES will probably make fun of me again for that...

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Well, 7 just won the game by being completely dishonorable.

We had a long term agreement to work together and an NAP through T150 that included specific discussion over providing troops to enemies. For a guy who spent countless time in chat complaining about the nefarious tactics of the players in PBEM17 and the creeping desire to do anything to win, he showed himself as a rank opportunist.

My recommendation Luddite, commit seppuku and walk away with your honor in tact.

[luddite]

Yeah that's... surprising.

The funny thing is though, it might not even work.
Here's what he's got:

I've got 5 rifles to defend a city with 60% culture defense, vs. his 6 cats and 9 Jans. And he needs to take it this turn, or I'll get reinforcements there (I switched to nationalism). He really made a mistake by not attacking amphibiously last turn, when there was just 1 rifle and 2 warriors in that city. I'll also get steam engine this turn, allowing me to build ironclads which will wreck those galleons.

Also, with so much of his military comitted to that naval attack, he doesn't have much behind. So I went ahead and attacked his front line city. I moved to the open square to block in his army there (this pic is from last turn, but not much changed).


Cmoooooon RNG.

And... what do we do about RL7 now...?

[luddite]

So, the game continues...
I gave the two hub cities to yuris in exchange for peace (and he's trading us back the fur). I hate to do that, but it's the only way to end the war with a minimum of damage. We're also at peace with commodore now- he didn't have much, but enough to be annoying and maybe take a city.

I researched scientific method, hoping to at least grab the communism spy, but 7 figured out what I was doing and took communism first. Stupid turn order.

However- scientific method revealed something very interesting. nobody has any land based-oil! Each continent has just one oil patch, and it's at sea. That means whoever gets to plastics first will have a huge advantage. And we'll be able to get there first... We could race to plastics, put a submarine on everyone's oil patch, and everyone else would have no oil at all. Unless they can hook up uranium to build a destroyer.

[luddite]

I decided to continue the NAP with seven. It ends on turn 150, so maybe the warfare will start then.

Meanwhile, I settled a new city. It's not very good, but it'll still make money I think.


And I switched civics to free market, Universal Suffrage, and emancipation. Unfortunately that's causing us happiness problems, but yuris said he'd send us his ivory. And it'll hurt everyone else's happiness from emancipation.

RL7 managed to build the Kremlin in just 3 turns...

[scooter]

I'm confused - seems like I missed details... but what exactly did 7 do? This is kind of vague:

Well, 7 just won the game by being completely dishonorable.

We had a long term agreement to work together and an NAP through T150 that included specific discussion over providing troops to enemies. For a guy who spent countless time in chat complaining about the nefarious tactics of the players in PBEM17 and the creeping desire to do anything to win, he showed himself as a rank opportunist.

My recommendation Luddite, commit seppuku and walk away with your honor in tact.

[luddite]

I'm confused - seems like I missed details... but what exactly did 7 do? This is kind of vague:

He sold Yuris some galleons (at least 5, maybe more) and didn't say anything about it to GES, even though they were working closely together on everything for most of this game. Yuris didn't have astronomy, so we thought our coastal cities were safe, and didn't put any defense there. Luckily, yuris landed instead of attacking amphibiously, so I had time to draft/upgrade rifles.

Seven's defense is that he did it while yuris was at war with MNG, so he thought yuris would use the galleons against MNG. I still have my doubts, but I'll go along with it. It's not like we can really do anything right now to him, since he's so close to machine guns. Besides, our real strength is our tech rate- I might be able to have modern armor by the time the NAP expires on turn 150.

[luddite]

I've traded commodore 5gpt for sugar. That should take care of the last happiness/unhealthiness issues, for now.

I've also teched assembly line, for more unhealthiness...

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Screw the health of the citizens. You'll get them some hospitals eventually.