[SPOILERS] Novice and SevenSpirits play Suleiman of Korea

[SevenSpirits]

So Mackoti declared war on us.

[pindicator]

So Mackoti declared war on us.

Yikes, how bad is it?

[SevenSpirits]

Geopolitics, man. I don't have my numbers to guide me through this.

Mackoti declared war, making no offensive moves whatsoever, and offered a 10t peace treaty straight-up. It was already obvious he was gunning for Lewwyn, but he clearly wanted to cover his backside, which is good by me since we would like freedom to intimidate NG and tech unthreatened. So we accepted the peace and re-offered OB. The OB are obviously meaningless at this point for trade routes (since we're both in mercantilism) so the war/peace shenanigans did not come at any significant economic cost. But I wouldn't mind having right of passage again. He's got city visibility on us; I'd like a bit of it on him, hehe.

Lewwyn accepted our map trade, woot. Now we can see all of Lewwyn's cities and quite a few more of Nospark's. So I sent him a revised warning message, featuring his two jungle cities that are actually under threat, iron and horses again, and this time (for lack of a "he has some other stuff too like trebs and a great artist" item), wine. No I don't think he can figure out what that means. But I want him to think there is something he doesn't know/understand, which is very probably true.

And finally, our peace treaty with NoRestForTheGaspar can be broken next turn, so we started negotiations. I asked for all three of our cities back, and also offered trades where we got any two of them back plus all their gold (93). Each trade also included OB and a map swap to symbolize cooperation, since we are not at war and I couldn't offer a peace treaty. These prices are meant to be negotiated down. I'd be pretty happy with one city back and a peace treaty right now, so we can keep making nice buildings until rifling.

Here's the only thing we are threatening at the moment. Because we decided to forgo engineering, we can't move out of the fog, hence the whole thing where we threaten them.



In range of that city this turn are three knights, 1 knight on a galley (to the left), and 2 chariots. They have in the city a spear and a bowman (which they could upgrade to a longbow), and next to the city, an immortal.

Anyway, so yeah, politics. Messy stuff, easy to screw up. Much simpler: racing. I am pretty sure Mackoti didn't get a tech last turn (I checked scores and population), so maybe he won't even be able to reach Nationalism in time to steal Taj. (But he still might very well be able to, of course.) Here is our own Taj factory. This turn it worked an unimproved grassland and built a scout.


Also, someone just got Compass. The first rumbling of the Colossus becoming a liability.

[scooter]

I suppose if one of their names didn't start with "No" we wouldn't have so many negative conflations about them. Suppose it was Scooter and Regoarrar playing as Babylon instead of them, to take some random folks. I guess we'd use these and others:

Scooterrrrrrrrrr
Rooter
ScootHorseArrarchers
GreatoWallaler
LowestScorrar
Arrartery
EgoScoot
GoScootAtSomeoneElse

Makes me wish I had more use for this habit.

Regoarrar, let's make this happen.

[regoarrarr]

Regoarrar, let's make this happen.

It's on!

[SevenSpirits]

Declared on Belugas (designation courtesy of Novice). Captured back Magical Tents. In the chaos of changing hands it became Magic Talents. The first attack was at 64% with the next two at 72% and 89% (amphibious). We got lucky and won all of these. This left a knight with nothing to do but attack and kill a nearby archer. Two chariots were left unused. I offered a straight-up 10-turn peace treaty. I don't think either of us will capture another city but we can sure trade some units and pillage each other and divert valuable hammers to military. I'd rather not and hopefully Belugas see it the same way.

Also this turn we whipped 5 Seowons and finished Liberalism. And got a great person. It was either going to be a scientist or engineer, and it was a scientist. This is bad if it means Mackoti ends up beating us to Taj, though good if he doesn't.



Mackoti declared war on Lewwyn. I hope things go very badly for both of them though I fear they will only go badly for Lewwyn.

After getting Paper (I think) two turns ago, Mackoti got (again, I think) a renaissance tech this turn which should be Education, though could theoretically be Gunpowder.

[SevenSpirits]

HeliumParty accepted peace. So fingers crossed on the Taj Mahal plan! I don't think Mackoti got a tech which means at least two turns for him to reach Liberalism (I don't think he has Philosophy... I've been tracking score increases since we teched it ourselves and while I could be doing it wrong I haven't noticed any Medieval tech go by since then).

The Lewwn-Mackoti front. Odd that no cities have changed hands yet - Mackoti's had 2 war turns. I suppose there's a decent defense and he's bombarding first to conserve knights?




Here's an empire shot. Lots of miners and fishermen.


We FINALLY got back Mackoti's graphs. Isn't it cute how our GNP fits inside of Mackoti's GNP?



Interestingly our breakeven tech rate has dropped from ~250 to 160. This can be attributed to our trasnsition to a big hammer/food focus post-golden age since we wanted to build settlers/missionaries/knights/courthouses/seowons/banks, the end of the wealth builds, major whippings of Seowons that don't do much right now at 0%, and firing our scientists in Attach Mimes (to grow 2 sizes and build Oxford).

[SevenSpirits]

Mackoti got a renaissance tech and I realized it's his first one because his city style changed. That means the one I thought was Education was actually Philosophy, and now he has Nationalism too and will steal Taj. This is also indicated by a worker about to finish a chop in his 6-forest city, which is also one of the few of his that has his state religion. So golden age plans were discontinued; workers' inclinations were returned from workshop building to farm building. We are still building the Taj though, both for the failgold, and to force him to build it asap, and in case he doesn't realize how fast we can get it. But all signs point to him building it in 3t, right before we do. I could complain about turn order, but while that is an immense general disadvantage, it's silly to blame it for this. He's had research and city visibility on us; he knows exactly what he's doing.

At the end of the turn we got alphabet. Here is what various teams have at the end of the 100th turn (namely t99).

Baseline (all techs that at least 3 of us have):
All ancient techs; Math, Currency, Code of Laws, Iron Working, Monotheism, Horseback Riding, Monarchy, Aesthetics, Calendar, Construction, Metal Casting, Machinery, Feudalism.

NobleGastro:
-Contruction
+Compass, +Optics
153g

Lewwyn:
-Calendar, -Meditation, -Aesthetics, -Horseback Riding
+Theology
429g

Mackoti:
+Civil Service, +Guilds, +Banking, +Literature, +Philosophy, +Nationalism, +Engineering, +Drama, + Music
39g

No.7:
-Monotheism
+Civil Service, +Guilds, +Banking, +Literature, +Philosophy, +Nationalism, +Alphabet, +Paper, +Education, +Liberalism
20g

(Red: 3 teams have it but not this team; Blue: Only this team has it; White: Another team has it)

[Ceiliazul]

(Red: 3 teams have it but not this team; Blue: Only this team has it; White: Another team has it)

Nicely done! Haven't seen the plus/minus tech laid out that way, but I like it. Also, looks like you're ahead by quite a few beakers over Mackoti

[novice]

Yeah, nice tech comparison, Seven.

Unfortunately it shows Mack about to run away. He's almost even on beakers and has a nine turn golden age coming up. If he manages to steal Economics as well, it's game. Otherwise, we still have a shot I suppose.

Game plan at any rate is basically teching up and hoping Mack screws up. Unless you count steamrolling Lewwyn as screwing up, I doubt that's going to happen.