Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[SevenSpirits]

Woo hoo!

Needless to say: this gets my vote. It's tempting to wait for Rifling, though, for a unit which has odds on everything everyone else has got. That could be done in 13 turns, right? You can be building frigates and cannons in the meantime.

I think we should just crush people ASAP now. We could have done this much earlier if we'd had access to Iron, but we didn't, so we kept going. But having sea superiority and muskets/cannons vs knights should be a decisive advantage especially considering our approximately 2x whipping advantage with police state, state property and the kremlin.

Mackoti pop (with/without forge) -> 25h / 20h
Our pop (with/without forge) -> 48h / 40h (...or 53h via the draft)

If we wait for rifles we'll give our opponents time to catch up by spending golden ages and great people, and e.g. Mackoti will be able to get chemistry and match our frigates. Plus I think it's bad form to delay just to win more. I have no desire to bore or dispirit our enemies to death. Plus, rifles are overdone!

[spacemanmf]

Ok, I look forward to musket/cannon driven dominance. Sheer numbers can win the day!

[novice]

Steel it is!

[SevenSpirits]

OK, I played it.

As I posted in the tech thread, the save came back to us without most of the things we did t107 having been done. We still picked communism and changed civics and got gunpowder thankfully, but almost all our units didn't get to do their moves, and our cities were configured non-optimally.

I'm pretty irritated as you can imagine, since I spent a lot of time planning and executing our unit logistics for the previous turn. I used some boats to move units over where they could defend Yuri in a pinch; I used some boats really cleverly to get several boats into position to attack Code Geass in three turns. And of course we also did a lot of careful city micro and, you know, used our workers. (Since we've been cancelling most of our worker orders every turn, we lost a number of badly needed worker turns. We only have 13 workers for 25 cities, and we're needing to replace a bunch of improvements with costly watermills and workshops right now too!)

So we lost all that. But luckily (but perhaps also disappointingly), most of it doesn't matter. Yuri captured Code Geass at what looked to me like really unlikely odds. I guess maybe he still had a lot of promotions left to heal? And in Operation Make Sure Mackoti Can't Take Yuri's Stuff news, Mackoti left his galleons on the same tile, so we're not pressed for time. We can afford to eat the rest of the lost turn, so we did. If it had done something ridiculous like spend all our beakers on Theology or build something other than the Kremlin in Titan, I would have pleaded for a reload, because that would have had a large material impact on the game.

So right, the turn. Tech rate can easily be made to exceed 400. Therefore I lowered it a bit, working coasts over specialists in a few places. The rationale is we'll still get Chemistry in the same number of turns (by t111), so let's turn that spare GNP into front-loaded growth. I tried to do some logistical stuff but I did so fairly halfheartedly. And I just realized I forgot to redo the Io merchant (we hope) transportation plan. So we'll need to figure that out next turn.

Luddicator declined our offer of 100g (theirs) for nothing. They offered us 1gpt + crab. I accepted for the 1g (pretty sure we're only getting 1g, might as well take it. We're in a position where we can write off every opponent as a permanent enemy. Luddicator has seemed to want to fight all game anyway) and asked for 49g more. If they decline that too I'll make an extremely unreasonable demand for a lot of cities. There are two outcomes I am shooting for, a) they give us money and/or b) they build more defenders.

Tentative timetable:
t109-111: Tech Chemistry
t112: We can build privateers/frigates! Start some.
t113: Finish Kremlin
t114: Swap to PS/Nat/Slavery/SP/Theo, whip stuff
t115: Build more stuff. Mackoti can declare war.

We could also consider chopping the fur forest to speed up kremlin and the civic switch by a turn.

I guess we should go all-out tech for now, while we are still in Rep/Caste, eh? Not worry too much about food? We do want Steel in a timely fashion.

[SevenSpirits]

Novice pointed out we could get Kremlin a turn faster by hiring a couple citizens. Sold!


See what happens when you give the proletariat the means of production? They can't even feed themselves.

I kept us at 0% this turn, and configured our coast cities with libraries to work scientists this turn over commerce coast that would turn into gold. Next turn and the one after it's as high a science rate as we can muster, and the cities without libraries will work merchants over coasts. We have a lot of spec-running to do since we're going to lose caste/rep in a few turns and still need to reach Steel. Luckily this was helped along by getting the right great person!



Woot! He can ride the invasion express galleon chain to Sian's northern island, and pop himself for 1273 gold just before we (might) attack. That pays for more than half of Steel on its own. I (very roughly) estimate our tech rate will be cut almost in half to ~220b/turn with the civic swaps, but with the merchant haul I think Steel will still be a 4t tech.

[SevenSpirits]

Man, I always forget to post diplo stuff. Luddicator declined or generous gift of -49 gold. I demanded three of their cities this turn (former fierce cities, as though it really matters).

I also demanded that mackoti give us "galeon", the island that Luddicator fake-gave us for peace.

Btw that chariot that razed the empty Luddicator city has been pillaging two improvements a turn and netted us a healthy sum of gold, probably about $50? from 6 pillages. But it's out of things to destroy now.

[SevenSpirits]

So, the merchant! Turns out that with some galleon chaining he made almost the entire trip in one turn. Faster isn't possible since he can't do the trade mission on the same turn as getting on a boat anyway.


This is how boat travel actually works.

It was a quiet turn, punctuated by a generous offer by Mackoti to sell us the city of galeon for a ridiculous amount of gold, which I declined. I reassigned a lot of citizens that were previously fishermen to go play chess and sell things to each other. This resulted in some localized food shortages but I don't see any problem with that. Who cares when our economy is so good?


2.5 times as many people living on only 1.25 times as much food. How's that for efficiency, you capitalist pigs!

Here are some scenic shots of our empire.

Io, where careful central planning has recently resulted in the birth of one of the greatest persons in the world, living in the greatest country in the world. In celebration, the citizens of Io have been given just enough food that they won't starve to death.


Ganymede, that most shining beacon of military prowess, now producing a well-trained squadron of musket-men every turn. It's also where we bury our rich people.


I don't even know what's supposed to be so great about those greek lighthouses. They're not even painted pretty colors. Also: note the capitalist pigs in the bottom left.


Our empire as viewed from Titania on North Island.


And from the south.


Finally, look! It's the home of Comrade Rowain the Whale-hunter. To the left, the whale he's been trying to hunt.

[oledavy]

Also: note the capitalist pigs in the bottom left.]

Great Post

How many tiles did you move that GM in one turn?

[Rowain]

It's the home of Comrade Rowain the Whale-hunter. To the left, the whale he's been trying to hunt.[/SPOILER]

Great post And thanks alot that the whale is not white

[SevenSpirits]

Great Post

How many tiles did you move that GM in one turn?

The distance between his start and end points is 20 tiles. He also moved a few (3) tiles horizontally himself to board the galleon at the outset.