Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[zakalwe]

Can privateers break the unbreakable peace? :aar::aar::aar:

[Rowain]

Can privateers break the unbreakable peace? :aar::aar::aar:

Yes.

Privateers are outlaws who ave absolutly nothing to do with this goverment.

What do you mean with 'Letter of Marque'? That's a fake really.

[SevenSpirits]

Yes.

Privateers are outlaws who ave absolutly nothing to do with this goverment.

What do you mean with 'Letter of Marque'? That's a fake really.

Yup, Privateers have the ability to attack without being at war. Amusingly, their other ability (hidden nationality) is ALMOST relevant here, since we and Mackoti both just got Chemistry. Unfortunately, everyone except Sian will be able to tell the difference between Greek and Egyptian privateers because of turn order. (E.g. if Luddicator gets their galley ganked between their turn 115 and 116, if the log says it happened in t115 it was Mack and if it says t116 it was us.) And even in Sian's case, if ANYTHING else happens in between (like Yuri getting a great person) he can discern which of us it was.

[SevenSpirits]

This game is suddenly moving like molasses.

[spacemanmf]

This game is suddenly moving like molasses.

Just when you're cranking the war handle too... Grrr...

[spacemanmf]

This game is suddenly moving like molasses.

Now it's my turn to hold the save for almost a day. Sorry guys. I'll have it done tonight. Just busy. (Probably Yuris can't get to it yet anyway.)

Busted!

[SevenSpirits]

OK, playing a turn of catchup. t114, attack on Sian is ON!



The Enterprise, piloted by a particularly keen-eyed traditional Egyptian cab-driver, did a bit of recon and reported that while Last Exile was still guarded by 2 pikes, a warrior, and a scientist with a giant mirror, Lupin III had been emptied as expected and was defended by a single (quite inferior Ottoman) cab-driver and an especially lazy great general named "El Cid", or, "The Turd".

In went the cavalry. (The kind who ride seagoing wooden horses and carry maces.) As soon as the first guy lands, the city surrenders, although the citizens are apparently quite miffed and promise to rebel for exactly seven turns. In it we find a granary, lighthouse, 118 gold, and a tome of +2 experience.



I drop off the other two maces in case his pikemen on the galley decide to come back. And I drop off two maces and a trebuchet on the sheep hill next to Last Exile. I hopefully request peace in exchange for Last Exile. I don't think we can take it if he just tries to defend, but Sian doesn't know we don't have more troops on the way, and maybe he'd rather just fight Yuri who ruined his game in the first place.



We also finished our first privateer this turn - sentry boats are convenient. His magical pirate eyes reveal a growing stack of catapults hanging out behind Pharsalos. I also note that Mackoti has whipped a Frigate just about everywhere.

I produce more units (including fulfilling a bafflingly large order of trebuchets), finish off Steel, and the world turns...

[SevenSpirits]

Sian accepted the peace offer!



Last Exile has such a startlingly large amount of infrastructure that I forget to rename it. Unfortunately it's only making 2 culture per turn from the library and is massively starving with only the first ring available. So OK, I whip a university for 5 pop (which will make the borders expand a turn sooner) and a worker for 2 pop (since there's still inexplicably a forest there and not enough roads). Maybe not the best call but I'm fine with it. Who knows, we may build Oxford someday. And we did need to get rid of a lot of citizens. And whipping from scratch for the Kremlin-owner is the same efficiency as whipping normally for anyone else, so that's nice.

These two cities are sweet, having 5 seafood (including 3 fish) and a riverside wheat between them. Incredible.

Also, hey, now those galleons are freed up to go irritate Luddicator from the south! Speaking of which, I pillaged a seafood of his and offed a galley with a couple of privateers this turn.

Oh also speaking of sweet new cities, our atlantean ones are really starting to come along expecially now that they've all had the chance to whip a granary/lighthouse in. Here's the best one (the one with triple food).




Now onto more serious things. War, for real! But not yet.

The turn opened with the unexpected message that our peace treaty with Mackoti was cancelled. Weird, I guess I understand deal cancellation worse than I thought I'd figured out. It still seems like a bug, so I asked Mackoti what he thought and he said he thought so too, so I agreed not to declare war this turn. He should get the first chance.

Instead I moved a bunch of units into position.


Here's Ariel's defenders (hover) and the stack 1E of it (selected).

They're facing this:


Basically Mackoti is threatening exactly one thing, and that is to attack Ariel. But I don't think he'd throw troops away on offense like that unless a bunch of navy was in port there, because he's going to need everything to defend. And in fact it seems he has positioned himself mostly defensively.

The only boats in range of our own naval stack are 4 0xp frigates - they aren't going to do crap against our top defenders (3 combat 1 frigates and an unpromoted frigate) with the 10% coastal defense bonus.

Meanwhile we are threatening a few things:
1) Crush his navy with our superior numbers (including a couple more frigates that were just produced in Ariel and Callisto) if he doesn't combine the frigates with his galleon stack.
2) Amphibiously raze Pharsalos. (No idea whether our actual forces are enough, but also he doesn't know what's in those transport ships.)
3) Dart forward and raze Thebes or Rhodes, both of which are very lightly defended.
4) Advance and threaten much more effective attacks next turn.


In the east we clearly have more frigates than necessary for the moment - no sign of a galleon first strike from him as I was careful to prepare for. So I guess we'll try to take over the water completely, at least.




Finally, demos. Remember how we were netting 400bpt? Not anymore! (Did tech monarchy with overflow though, it's super cheap and at least +1 happy everywhere and also on the way to guilds and rifling.)

[spacemanmf]

Nice invasion army. Can we have an F5 screen?

[SevenSpirits]

Uh, my turn to hold the save I guess. I need some opinions.

Luddicator has sent an incredibly large army (obviously all the units he could get there) of about 50 units through Mack's territory to attack us, mostly knights.

I already said earlier I had no desire to play a game with these people who show no common courtesy or respect for the game. But I managed to bury that and keep playing, as Pindicator seemed genuinely apologetic. Unfortunately now their actions in game demonstrate so much hatred and ill-will (from my view) that I can't stand to play, again. I try to think of another explanation for their move but it just doesn't make sense.

Let's compare relationships:

All game long, they've been rejecting our proposed deals and making mocking offers back at us (like 3 cities for OB). Recently we declare war on them demanding one minor city for peace and they literally spew hatred in the tech thread. They abuse city-gift game mechanics at us and refuse to fix the problem. Luddite never apologizes.

vs them+Mackoti:

All game long they've had a decent relationship with OB and several ongoing trades, except that Mackoti has been really mad at them for the aggressive city plants. So then Mackoti betrays them, declaring war and demanding at least four cities, two quite strong, for peace. They give him these cities. They borrow some gold from him, paying him back quite a bit extra in GPT. And now they wander their whole army over to us, with the likely outcome that it will be slaughtered and Mackoti can steamroll them some more. (Second most likely outcome that they get slaughtered and Mackoti steamrolls us, I guess.)

The only explanation to me is personal hatred, and it makes me really not want to continue the game. It's important to me to keep things cordial and friendly and this feels waaaaay past that to me.

Thoughts, anyone?