[SPOILERS] Louis of Aztecs - One of those industrious

[plako]

Few screenshots. I'll collect gold next turn and then run 1 turn with 100% EP slider that should allow me to steal Astro the turn after. EP points on cheetach have been a real long term investment started some 150 turns ago

[plako]

Few words about the competition. In the order of score that matches well for my perception of chances of winning. I think I'm now in top position

Commodore is in 2nd place and has been pretty indesicive concerning his next tech. It seems his current desicion is to go towards Communism, but we'll see. He collected some easy gains from island remains of Azza.

Serdoa has now consolidated Bricks land and is in 3rd position. He'll soon land religious trifecta and will be in a very good position just little bit behind the top 2. That is pretty good spot to be a bit under the radar.

Slowcheetach just captured a pretty irrelevant island city from Pindicooter. Seems to have been pretty big fights since both got a Great General and Cheetach's power did drop ~100000. He is mostly building military at the moment and his chances are rapidly decreasing. He needs a decisive victory fast to keep up.

Bigger got very good cities from Azza and is now climbing up soon catching up Cheetach in score. They canceled our happiness resource trades that was actually alright since I didn't need the wine. I just didn't want to cancel the deal myself since I could still use their Furs and didn't want to remind them about our deals via canceling. I re-offered spices and sugar for Furs. They have Sistine so might have plans to go for Culture win. However I've serious doubts it is doable in map like this having lots of water and no NAP's to protect you. Their chances of winning are quite low.

Pindicooter and Xenu are out of the race.

[zakalwe]

Just letting you know that I'm reading with interest, although I don't have much input for you.

Personally, I like your macro-level thoughts, with a game this big. In all honesty, I would probably just skim past any extended micro-level reporting, unless there's something very particular you're highlighting.

It's interesting how you're actively using espionage without bending everything around that particular strategy.

Anyway, looks like you're in great shape.

[plako]

It's interesting how you're actively using espionage without bending everything around that particular strategy.

I've been thinking this quite a bit. Full espionage economy is natural for pure hammer economies that are also usually behind in tech and can afford to build the Espionage infra. e.g. I think Serdoa is almost certainly going towards this or if he isn't he should.

With espionage you can potentially get techs cheaper than using normal research e.g. Astro costs ~4800 beakers, but with stationary spy I should get it with ~3000 Espionage points and if I would be founder of Confu even cheaper. Of course arrow + known tech bonuses make the real price of the tech cheaper via reserach, but steal price is still competitive especially for a tech like Astro not having any arrow bonuses. Also in Nationhood I'm getting pretty good EP modifier compared to my nationwide research modifier.

However this strategy is vulnerable to counter espionage mission. I don't think I can run freely Espionage missions for eternity. After few steals and other tricks opponents will definately start running them against me.

[plako]

Some oddities in trade routes. These might be caused by the trade route algorithm bug Sevenspirits revealed, but I've never really tried to understand what that was about. Currently I've cities of size 20 and 21 on my mainland and one would expect all my off-shore cities would have 2 trade routes at minimum on value 5 (4 from the actual route + 1 from Free Market 25%), but this isn't the case. Almost all of them have just 3 commerce value trade routes and using some random small cities of other nations and not my big cities that would give much better trade route value. Is this something new or also caused by the sam bug?

[plako]

I did steal Astro. Lost the spy in the process, but it was a real bargain i.e. ~2450 EPs. I didn't take into account that me investing heavily on espionage will lower the costs of a missions to other nations. As long as I've techs to steal this is best use of my commerce and in the process I potentially can get city visibility to all of my targets. This feature is utterly broken. I don't like the prospects how this affects to the end game, but I'll try to adapt.

[plako]

Now this is looking better for a nation being in Golden age

[Qgqqqqq]

At 0%?
Are you working a lot of specialists?

[plako]

Everything is visible in the screenshot i.e. 0% and my only source of Science are specialists. I'm mainly running Merchants, Spies and Engineers.

[Ceiliazul]

The magic of mercantilism. :-)