[SPOILERS] Shoot Plays Another Restricted Diplo Game

[Shoot the Moon]

I may just need to fully kill Sian so that this game can actually move. He's now had the save for 38 hours. Turn before, he had the save for something like 3 days. Seriously, Play Your Fucking Turn

[Shoot the Moon]

So having research alphabet, here's the teching situation:

Actually, not figuring out how to copy and past from excel well, so I'll just throw it up as a quick google doc for you guys. Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...TZtdlp5b0E

[Shoot the Moon]

Made peace with Sian as he had whipped enough spears (and a long bow in each city) to prevent my successfully forking Tuetones and his capital:



I probably could have forced him to cold-whip another spear in his capital by waiting another turn to offer peace, but war weariness had been giving me unhappy faces so I decided not really worth the cost.

Anyhow, that was from last turn. With the peace, I gained about five pop that were previously unhappy (war weariness) and can spread out all those chariots to be HR units. I'm not entirely sure how long the peace is going to last however...I still want to raze Teutones to get that cultural pressure off. I'm currently research guilds for that objective, but I also need some infrastructure improvement, so I'm probably going to do a round of whipping mints and courthouses before seriously building up. There's also the fact that musicman looks like a much easier target for those knights as he lacks construction, machinery, and feudalism. Not even having longbows or collateral (and being a long ways off engineering) makes knights absurdly powerful.

Anyhow, here are the demos from the turn after the peace:





Keep in mind, that is while adhoc (my main competition I think at this point in the game) is in a golden age. He's the leader in MFG and GNP (although to be fair he was slightly beating me in those categories before his golden age popped). I actually feel like I'm pretty close to being a near run away in this game (at the very least one on my continent). A third more population than the next highest, a 70 point crop yield advantage, highest land area (and still rapidly expanding onto the islands), second in mfg and research rate (and techs researched). Ad hoc's golden age may make this a closer game than that though if he utilizes it well to snag liberalism (which I'm not really targeting at this point although it doesn't appear anyone truly is so far) but I'm more using the opportunity I have on my own continent to secure my position there and seize more land.

I'm roughly planning a golden age for myself in 10-15t. I'm producing a GS out of one of my cities in that time frame. I'll likely also use that GA to switch into caste system to run a bunch of further specialists to quickly produce another couple great people afterward. I may though delay the golden age slightly until I have civics swaps I want. We'll see though.

[Shoot the Moon]

Time for an update. I just had a great engineer born, which I am going to use for a golden age. While in that golden age (as you will see) I am going to quickly produce another GS while in Caste. This, in combination with the economics GM I will be getting, will allow be to quickly chain another golden age.

Anyhow, here are pics before the Golden Age:



Overview of the my land from north to south:









Now for city by city:



































Now Demos (pre golden age):





And military:





Demos after golden age begins:



And I also did this for a 6t GS:



Anyhow, plan is to pick up economics, then probably printing press. Not really sure what I'll do after that. Sian has declared war on Musicman. I think I may just try to pick up some scraps cheaply there. Maybe quickly tech to either curs or cavalry and wipe up whoever's land looks most appealing. After that is probably to state property. No distance maintenance on this map looks great and obviously SP workshops look fantastic for newly conquered land. That's obviously quite long term though. For now, just building a tech lead while ad hoc squanders the one he had against Nakor (who just picked up gunpowder).

What you don't see from that screenshot is that thestick is going to get liberalism (we're actually 2t after those screenshots. The end of that turn I got research visibility on the stick, he'll finish lib eot113).

[Shoot the Moon]

So the stick is being annoying and sandbagging liberalism. I'm going to finish off printing press and then if he still hasn't picked it up make him pay...maybe with a surprise GS bulb helping out if he really neglects it.

[Shoot the Moon]

This was probably noted in Musicman's thread, but I just declared war on him. Not much to it except that the opportunity to take some easy gains presented itself after Sian and Musicman had banged heads against each other for a while.

[Shoot the Moon]

Just triggered my second golden age as I head for communism. State property is just too juicy to pass up. I am positioning myself so that the great spy communism gives me will immediately allow me to trigger the third golden age and quickly switch into SP. At that point I'll either probably polish off physics for the GS or go back to democracy if it looks like I can finish it in time to adopt US before the golden age runs out.

[Qgqqqqq]

Are corps banned?
Any progress on the war?

[Shoot the Moon]

Are corps banned?
Any progress on the war?

Yeah corps are banned, which makes SP incredibly obvious. I've captured three cities so far (one razed). The last major one on my front where the majority of his remaining army is (7 pikes, one mace and a cat) is going to take rifles to crack...but conveniently I have rifling now and a heroic epic city right near the front which can churn out 5xp rifles having just gotten myself a great general. The war is also made much easier by the fact that Musicman's road network is more or less no existent. Really really bad play by him actually--his lone front city is now not even connected to his empire (and I've already captured all of his workers in the area as my spies have confirmed).

In other news, Ad Hoc and thestick unfortunately made peace. I was hoping with thestick having rifles that might bog down and/or reverse some of the scarily large gains Ad Hoc has recently made. He's now tied with me in pop at 26% but has a significant land lead (22% to my 18%). Then again, I'll be in SP and US way way before him, so my land is going to be significantly more productive than his for the foreseeable future, and I still have more easy land to take than he does.

[Shoot the Moon]

Sian just declared war on me He hasn't even researched paper yet and he decided it would be a good idea to declare war on someone who is in a golden age (free civics swaps) and now just completed nationalism and already has rifles. Yeah, have fun getting destroyed by drafted rifles Sian.

He captured back to of his previous border cities that had been culture swamped and didn't even raze. Now he has five turns of them being in revolt to sit through while I have rifles at the door. Good luck with that...

Only upside to this really is that musicman gets to live a bit longer.

To summarize in smilies:
What Sian just did:
My reaction:
What I'm going to do: