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

[luddite]

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

yeah, that's the plan public transit will help too. I always thought it was weird how researching combustion actually improves your health.

My tech path now is steel, railroad (for extra free hammers while the cities build factories) and then compass, optics (finishes right when my work boat gets to the whales). I'm also building 5 banks to unlock wall street, and I'll put the iron works in Ballast Point.

The capital is building the Sol VERY quickly... I'll switch to Free Speech as soon as it's done. I'm annoyed at myself for researching sci meth though, which cancels all the monastery bonuses. It still shows +2 hammers, but apparently that's a graphical bug.


RL7 boosted their power recently. I wonder if that' just tech/pop growth, or if he was nervous that we might attack?


Long term... This is almost certain to end in modern warfare. The only game I've seen where that happened is pbem1, where mostly harmless used artillery, protective infantry/antitanks, and highly promoted fighters to hold off Dreylin's much larger army of tanks, fighters, and bombers. He observed that having a better airforce makes a huge difference, since there's basically no advantage at all for the defender there. I'm thinking about beelining advanced flight, to get jet fighters, which win 3/4 of the time against regular fighters. Then I could use an army of pure air power- jet fighters, stealth bombers, gunships, and paratroopers- to move super fast and avoid collateral damage.

Anyone have any other references for games that went into modern warfare?

edit- you know what I just realized? combustion obsoletes whales. I'm going to obsolete my whales almost immediately after getting them hooked up. Guess I'll have to spread taoism/islam and switch to free religion.

[scooter]

That.... looks pretty deliberate to me.

Look, it seems pretty blatant to me that RL7 has, at the very least, been whispering into ears about a dogpile on you. I think you need to be a bit more proactive in handling the other players... Yuris declared on you and you had to buy him out. Commodore hasn't been all that friendly right? And RL7 sorta-maybe-kinda broke a deal with you and now their power is spiking. What's their MFG look like btw? On top of all that, RL7 has got far and away more land than you, and the only way you're going to combat that is by leveraging your tech lead into a conquest.... So what's the gameplan? What type of army are you hoping to field? What's your RL7 NAP situation?

Sorry - just nervous about the diplo situation, that's all. Not a fan of seeing you getting bullied into handing over 2 cities to a dude fielding Jannisaries as you research Assembly Line. You were in a stronger position there than you give yourself credit for, so that needs to be leveraged, diplomatically.

[luddite]

other ideas- buy a factory in Karl Strauss (NE city) to try and win mining inc.

build the pentagon somewhere? I'm the first to assembly line, so i can probably win it. On the other hand, that thing is really expensive- almost as much as the SoL, and without any bonus resource.

Win the fascism GG, make a supermedic, and build the HE. I could also research military tradition and build West Point, but I don't think it's worth it.

[luddite]

That.... looks pretty deliberate to me.

Look, it seems pretty blatant to me that RL7 has, at the very least, been whispering into ears about a dogpile on you. I think you need to be a bit more proactive in handling the other players... Yuris declared on you and you had to buy him out. Commodore hasn't been all that friendly right? And RL7 sorta-maybe-kinda broke a deal with you and now their power is spiking. What's their MFG look like btw? On top of all that, RL7 has got far and away more land than you, and the only way you're going to combat that is by leveraging your tech lead into a conquest.... So what's the gameplan? What type of army are you hoping to field? What's your RL7 NAP situation?

Sorry - just nervous about the diplo situation, that's all. Not a fan of seeing you getting bullied into handing over 2 cities to a dude fielding Jannisaries as you research Assembly Line. You were in a stronger position there than you give yourself credit for, so that needs to be leveraged, diplomatically.

The thing is, those cities were worthless. They were costing more in maintenance then they provided, and I had whipped/drafted them into the ground before I gave them up. Their only benefit was the fur and deer they provided, and now yuris is gifting them back. Yes I could have destroyed him, but it would have taken a while and cost a lot, and seven would have just stabbed him as soon as i destroyed their army.

Maybe I'm wrong, but my judgement is that yuris and commodore are more on our side right now, after GES laid out the full situation for them. They've both offered to cooperate in a joint attack against RL7 later. Maybe they're just tricking me, but for now I'll trust them.

The NAP with RL7 goes until turn 150. I'll have a nice military by then.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Sorry scooter, it is high time I post my diplo efforts in here:

I sent this to Comm and yuris immediately upon seeing the galleon stacks.

By flagrantly breaking a long-term agreement, RL7 has allowed yuris to make a successful landing in my core.

Here is my advice: do not trust 7. Apparently he is much more Krill than novice, which comes as a good lesson for everyone at RB in future games.

I advised Luddite to basically walk away from the game. I don't know what he will do, but as far as I am concerned, you two should take all my land and then attack RL7 from every angle possible.

Good luck to both of you.

GES

I was pissy, it was way too early on a Saturday, and I needed to go stain my deck. I was in no mood for shenanigans.

Hi GES,

I'm very sorry to hear this. As you can imagine, I had no idea there
was an agreement between you and Seven, which they violated by selling
us the Galleons. Obviously I made every effort to make sure info about
the sale didn't leak to you, and had no way to check its legality and
conformance to other agreements

It is very sad to hear that you are considering walking away from the
game. If you do so, we will probably win, but I feel this win will be
undeserved. I very much hope it doesn't happen. Unfortunately, I don't
see how we can resolve the issue in-game; an honest thing would be to
declare peace, but we invested too much in the military to end the war
without making any gains, and we signed long-term NAPs with both other
team to guarantee our safety during the attack. If there's anything we
can do to assure you don't walk away from the game, let me know

I hope there is no hard feelings between us, and this incident won't
affect the chance of us playing together in the future

All the best
Yuri

You didn't do anything wrong.

My thought is to have Luddite break our NAP with 7 and start raizing as many of his cities as we can.

But if you would like, certainly I can adopt Nationhood, draft, and make it as difficult on you as possible.

GES

Well, whatever works for you works for me. I have no doubt you can
make our life extremely difficult if you start drafting, your power
rating certainly increased a lot in the last 10 turns, and doesn't
look like it's going to stop. But now that you know we have Galleons
and we don't need to hide them, we can bring units into your land
quite fast. We do have another stack ready to be sent to the war

If you decide to break the NAP with RL7, is there anything you would
like us to do? As I said, we do need to make gains in this war,
otherwise everything we did in the last 10 turns has been a waste of
pop and hammers. But we could agree to not attacking some of your
cities, so that you don't have to worry about the most important ones

Our NAP with RL7 extends beyond T140, so unfortunately if you attack
him, we can't help you

Hope we can work something out. It's a very unpleasant situation, and
I don't like that I unknowingly became an accomplice in a broken deal

Finally, please let me know if we can share your message with Commodore

All the best
Yuri

Whoa, so Seven fully broke it? Dully noted, and he's in the Krill list. If you truly are going to walk out, this will massively warp things if 7 can capture your core. Taking your advice, I have moved in on New English (slightly disappointingly, there are many warriors there, meaning my culture isn't going to do the job alone, although more than 1/5 New Englishermen consider themselves Hyborian). I'll also be beefing up my northern holding/coastal cities, as my short-term NAP with them might mean less than thought. Yuri, might be wise if you do the same likewise.

Otherwise, good luck to all the combatants and may the Financial player win.
-Commodore

Comm:

Not exactly. I had a long term deal with 7 that was pretty obviously violated by selling galleons to yuris so he could land janissary stacks in my lands.

If you want to try to attack Luddite, I cannot stop you. But I think Luddite is going to try to play it out without giving up. Right now the only gains to be made are by yuris in my lands, so don't worry about 7. There will be machine guns popping up within about 2 turns, and at that time, really any attack becomes futile I think. Hit up Luddite and chat with him. He would probably appreciate it if you hold off on the attack unless you were planning to attack anyway.

Luddite is interested in working some peace deal with yuris so we can go attack 7. We could raize one of their tundra cities in two turns guaranteed.

As for your NAP, 7 won't break that. Of that I am sure. But be careful how much you trust him in other regards.

GES

Comm:
So Luddite wants to know if you plan to go ahead and attack or not? He can siege your troops, draft, and move more in, but he would prefer to focus elsewhere if you were only attacking because my angry message this morning gave off the wrong vibe about how he was going to proceed forward.

GES

Hrm. Well, if you do intend to make a play for it all, and if you're really two turns from machine guns...the whole thing does become rather futile, as I'm only five turns out from MG's myself. That's not a lot of progress that's going to get make either way. How long is the potential RL7 strike timescale? In the interests of full disclosure, I have a 7-turn rolling NAP with them, and would really prefer notice if any kind of coalition alpha strike against them is going down.

Siege away if that's the only strike to be done right now. I'll probably move them back if it looks like a CoW can be formed to hit RL7, but I need to get in chat with Yuri and Luddite first to really decide. Anything sieged is just damge to repair though, that's fine if I withdraw.

-Commodore

This is the email that likely moved Yuri fully from the "dogpile GES" to the "dogpile RL7" camp.

Yuri:

So I am offering this as an explanation so you don't feel bad about attacking or whatever. You guys had a good plan, executed it well, and you should attack to the full extent you think it will benefit your civ.

If you all hadn't figured it out, RL7 and I came to an agreement early on in the game to work together. I basically gifted them marble to get all their wonders in exchange for only one worker (which was cheap due to EXP and I didn't even need) and an agreement that we would essentially stay friendly the entire game. The plan was pretty much to just demilitarize our lands, build up, and conquer everyone else. At that point, the two of us would agree to race or DOW each other.

I was able to beat you to Apostolic Palace because 7 sold me their great engineer and basically told me exactly when you would be finishing it. Comm says I beat you to Taj by turn order and the only reason I knew you were building it is because RL7 told me. I had to 6-pop whip my Bureaucracy capital to beat you. I would've never whipped without their information. I gave them Confu for free. They sold me stone even though he knew you wanted it so I could beat you to UoS and Minaret. We have gifted resources back and forth for free. Map exchanges, endless chats, strategizing etc. All my dealings with them were with 7.

I consider 7 selling you galleons to be a violation of the not only the spirit of my arrangement with 7, but also in particular given some of our chat discussions. Troop exchanges with known enemies--definitely unacceptable.

So here is the deal. Luddite has built up enough beaker overflow to literally 1-turn to combustion and astro even if he turned off science. There will be machine guns and ironclads in about 2 turns. At that time, really any attack is pretty much doomed to fail I think. You have ~20 turns before 7 can attack you. He will have technologically superior troops and has significantly more MFG to leverage. If you are still busy fighting us, 7 will probably attack to reach the Dom limit.

GES

Hi GES,

Many thanks for sharing this info. Maestro repeatedly warned me that
he didn't feel RL7 were truly friendly towards us. I didn't listen to
him. I wish I did

At this point, discussing peace seems to be the most reasonable option

As you know, we killed a large stack of yours in the hub last turn. We
can't take any of your core cities, but we can threaten them and force
you to whip/draft them, which would probably be painful. Would you be
willing to surrender your two hub cities for the peace? I know you
needed hub for the furs, and if you agree to this, we will be willing
to gift you furs for the rest of the game. Finally, If you're
interested in a coordinated attack on RL7 after our NAP expires, we
will be willing to commit to it as well

Let me know what you think, and please keep these negotiations secret from RL7

All the best
Yuri

Commodore: Hey, really quick...
Does your NAP with RL7 hinge on OB?

me: Honestly, I haven't played a turn in 25 turns
You will have to ask Luddite

Commodore: Fair enough.

me: If I was still playing, I would've immediately DoW'd 7
and started ripping cities down

Commodore: Sigh, he's bullying poor last-place Yuri for going into Merc.

me: I think Luddite has Demo.
He should build SoL and then revolt to Rep/Merc.

Commodore: Exactly

me: If you went Merc too, that would be a big cost to 7.

Commodore: Yeah, should just go for it. Sigh. Although that will remove a motivation to delay going towards infantry.

me: Hit up Luddite and propose him doing that. He might agree. I think he recently went into Univ Suff and Free Market, but in a few turns that could change.

Commodore: Yeah, I'll have a GA to swap soon too.
I'll hit him up.

Hi GES/Luddite,

I feel I will have to confront RL7 about his attitude to our deals in
the near future. Can I say that you told me about the GE gift and
other ways he abused the info about our wonder builds, or would you
prefer to keep it between us?

Cheers
Yuri

Yuri:

Comm told me about RL7's attitude to your civic change. Seems a rather unfortunately aggressive stance to take.

Luddite will have to make a decision on this for what he wants you to share. I personally don't care. I like 7 as a person, but the sale of those galleons infuriated me in game. But Luddite may have reasons for preferring to keep the information we passed on to you between us. So I would simply ask that you wait until Luddite gives you the thumbs up or down to share.

GES

So scooter, unless they are thoroughly playing us, I think the world has coalesced in an anti-RL7 union.

[scooter]

Ahh, thanks for that GES. That is certainly enlightening. I think walking away from the game definitely would've been an overreaction. Sounds like Yuris and Commodore are pretty firmly in your court then, which is a positive thing. Are you still going to nap-break and go after RL7 or are you waiting for T150?

[luddite]

Ahh, thanks for that GES. That is certainly enlightening. I think walking away from the game definitely would've been an overreaction. Sounds like Yuris and Commodore are pretty firmly in your court then, which is a positive thing. Are you still going to nap-break and go after RL7 or are you waiting for T150?

I'm gonna wait for turn 150. I think it would take me that long to get a proper military, anyway.

I did think for a while about breaking the NAP, especially after I saw that there's no land-based oil on this map. But I think it would be too hard to destroy both their uranium sources, since they can defend really well with machine guns right now.

So the tech path I guess is railroad, compass, optics, fascism, physics, electricity, industrialism, assembly line, combustion, plastics, flight, rocketry, radio, satellites, advanced flight. I wonder if I can get all of those in 1 turn...

[scooter]

Any clue how much beaker overflow you are sitting on? Looking forward to some modern warfare for sure.

[luddite]

Any clue how much beaker overflow you are sitting on? Looking forward to some modern warfare for sure.

I think I've finally run out of beaker overflow. Just researched Railroad. But the next techs are compass and optics, to restore the overflow . I'll get another golden age soon, too.

The best attack plan that I can think of right now is send in 2-unit stacks of modern armor and gunships on as many different tiles as possible. The thing is, if send in a big stack, it'll just get clobbered by artillery. Even if I take out all his railroads with air strikes, he can rebuild them instantly. And I don't have enough production to overwhelm him with numbers. But with a 2-unit stack of modern armor and gunship, there's really no cost effective way for him to kill it. I'll take Minas Tirith with airstrikes/gunships/marines/paratroopers, and then move in to cover all the tiles past it with 2-unit stacks (or maybe 3 units would better). Once we take Barad-dur, all tiles will be within air strike range, which will basically win the war for us. Here's the terrain


The other option, of course, is a big naval stack with battleships and marines, to raze all his cities amphibiously. The problem there is that with naval warfare there's not much room for me to use superior tech to get an advantage. He can built more battleships than me, and the defender gets the advantage with collateral, so I feel like any big naval attack is doomed to failure. I'll still need a lot of battleships to defend, though.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

You can also hit his tundra cities through yuris and if you want, you could shuttle some troops over to Comm or yuris's lands and attack the former MNG lands from the other sides.

The best option is probably a coordinated attack of:

1. Comm from the south on MNG's lands.
2. Yuris from the north on RL7's core and MNG's lands.
3. You attack his core from the south and the tundra from the west.
4. Given the size of his holdings, there is no way he can have enough navy to defend everything. A few targeted naval strikes is all it would take to really string out his defenses.

The value of this map for the attacker is the sheer number of ways to fork someone. If you can even get control of any part of the oceans, you can fork 3-4 cities simultaneously. If you have modern armor on there, he simply cannot defend everywhere.

I think your plan to go Adv Flight is a good one.