Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[Ceiliazul]

Sorry, I should have specified I was replying to Lurker.

To be constructive: I think the main difference is people have gotten better at not being spoilerish. Since most people are global lurkers there aren't very many people who can really discuss anything here. And you haven't been updating that much.

I agree with both points. Sullla, you brought me to this site through you game reports, and I'm loving it. I am doing my best to emulate the old guard, because this place is exceedingly rare on the internet.

Thank you for your part in building it, I'm happy you're back. I'll do my best to uphold the RB spirit. It's not gone, by any means.

[Sullla]

The major doings at the moment seem to be over to the west of me:



I just recently planted a city down at Cannon Barrage to my southwest, which expanded borders via the Build Culture option. (Love that Music tech in Medieval start.) I have a low HP archer returning from the chokepoint, where I had a blockade setup for a long time, before oledavy finally broke it by moving up a mace and longbow. That archer actually killed a French longbow at 25% odds and delayed oledavy by two extra turns - I left the archer in place because even 1 in 4 odds of winning were worth taking the chance in that situation. The archer itself had very little value, aside from serving as military police in a core city (which I will indeed use it for!) oledavy appears to have a city on the yellow X to block off his end of the isthmus; based on borders, it doesn't look like it can be on the other two tiles. My goal is to prevent him from moving any further east, but I'll likely need a few more units in place to protect any city plant further forward. It's not safe at the moment to go past Cannon Barrage.

I also built a trireme up in the north and sent it to scout out this large lake to my west. Sure enough, I spotted borders out there, and found the French city of Aboukir Bay this turn. Based on its positioning, I'm still not sure if this is an island plant, or just some funky land geography. In either case, that trireme should be able to pillage any seafood resources connected over there, and I'm sure there's at least one or the city wouldn't have been planted. Controlling this lake is likely going to be a big deal, and I'm anticipating building quite a few ships here. I have two strong cities to the north on the lake (one of which is my top unit producer and will eventually build Heroic Epic), plus plans to build another city on the purple dot. If we do get into some naval action, I'll try to talk my team into going for earlier Optics (caravals) and Astronomy (galleons) tech choices. Our superior tech should allow me to control this body of water, and go on the offensive eventually.

That empty city reflects the different style of play that Speaker and I like to use compared to some other players. We are usually pretty conservative in our city plants, only expanding into territory that can be firmly controlled. Other players are much more aggressive, planting far forward in unsafe territory and gambling that their risk will pay off. Either strategy can be viable, and the Realms Beyond team used the latter in the Apolyton Demogame with Pink Dot to great effect. We definitely have fewer cities than Team 3 at the moment, but Speaker is pumping 2t settlers out of his capital now, which is helping close the gap, or at least stay relatively close. I am expanding very quickly from 6 cities up to 9, which will lock down my northern border. Once that's secure, I can devote attention to grabbing the huge southern hinterland, nearly all of which is safely in the backlines. That French presence in the southwest is the only real hiccup that demands attention.

Liberalism due in 2t, we'll grab Nationalism with it. I also finish university in capital in 2t, and can then start building Taj Mahal, which is essentially free to build. We can then go back and clean up the cheap medieval techs we skipped, and play it by ear from there. Team 3 finally discovered Engineering tech (6t research), and Team 4 finally discovered Theology tech (10t research!) We are making about double the beakers/turn of these teams, so we look to be in good shape...

[Sullla]

Bad place for an explorer to be:



Tibbers produced a knight, and the road network was enough to finish off this explorer. Tactically I think this was a bit of a sloppy move by oledavy; he had the explorer on the forested hill tile last turn, and then moved it NE-SE onto the grassland tile. Moving onto the first forest tile already gave him visibility onto my city, and he could have fortified there to deny me the tile and create all sorts of problems. Instead, he moved the explorer onto the flatland tile where it was easily killed. You should probably always assume that there's another unit waiting further back on a road network out of sight. Explorers are tremendous units for parking on defensive terrain and denying tiles - Speaker still has 2 of them in his territory! - so this was a wasted opportunity. Now I have a road on the tile west of Cannon Barrage, and a longbow in the forest to seize control of the defensive terrain. If nothing else, that explorer could have just kept moving east to uncover more terrain...

Up in the north, my trireme found a crabs resource at Aboukir Bay, which I will pillage next turn. I went and checked the rules, and coastal blockade is *NOT* banned for this game (I'm sure it would have been, but we weren't thinking that water would play much of a rule on this Lakes map). So that means I can completely shut down this water city, and force oledavy to build a 2 triremes to kill my own blockading one. By the time he's ready to do anything against me at sea, we'll have researched Optics tech and I'll be sending out caravels to start sinking his triremes. It's nice to be a research powerhouse sometimes.

Liberalism is due next turn.

[Speaker]

I finished my turn, but didn't hit enter. I am not sure what my day is going to be like tomorrow, but I am going out of town in the afternoon and won't be home until late, so please end it for me, Sullla.

[Sullla]

Well, it seems my New Year's resolution couldn't hold for even two weeks. Sigh. Since it seems like my presence here is too controversial right now, I'm going to recuse myself from Realms Beyond for a while. I'm not fully sure why so much hostility has sprung up around this game, but I think the best way to calm things down is to disappear for the immediate future. Signing onto these forums to read new posts has gone from being one of the high points of my day to one of the low points of the day, and there's no reason to subject myself (or others) to that. Realms Beyond is just going to have to sort itself out without me for a while.

It's really a shame, because I had a lot interesting stuff to say about this game. Ah well, such is life.

Thanks to all of the readers I've had over the years, it's been a pleasure!

- Sullla

[pindicator]

This news has made viewing posts on RB a low point of my day, too. I'm going to miss your micro insight, Sullla. I think reading your pitboss 2 thread was one of the things that drew me back to RB and certainly helped me improve my civ game. I'm sorry to hear that the situation has become unsalvageable for you to continue posting here

[darrelljs]

Realms Beyond is just going to have to sort itself out without me for a while.

Well I feel at least partly responsible . I've played several of your adventures, read probably all your posts, and played in a fun SG with you. Heck it was Cuban Isolationists that brought me to RB. I have to admit some of my criticism has been unfairly mean spirited. An apology is of little value, but I'll offer one anyway and hope this is temporary .

Darrell

[Ronald]

I know that Sulla decided to disappear for a while (very unfortunate, I liked his writings and insightful explanations), but it would be really nice if somebody could give us lurkers an update.

[Speaker]

Not a whole lot going on right now. I think the biggest news since our last update is that we did get Liberalism and took Nationalism with it. Sullla's tech rate is getting pretty scary, and I have sent him 4 or 5 settlers at this point, so he can just focus on infrastructure. I've been mostly making units to protect me (my borders are pressed up against neighbors on all sides) and Sunrise, for the most part.

[sunrise089]

Speaker has placed a sign in my land that says "BUILD UNITS!"

I fear Speaker so I'm just trying to do what the sign says