[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[spacetyrantxenu]

Do we have any other chariots available to send south? If Sutree captures the shrine city he may stop his advance long enough to heal, then continue on to the capital. Maybe then he leaves the shrine city lightly defended and we can raze it with chariots. That would leave his army pretty far north (assuming Sisub doesn't do much damage to it or somehow kill it) and probably angry at us, so we'd have to be able to deal with it. I know most of our focus is west on Kuro but maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to consider intervention here in the south instead. The land is a lot better and there's the potential to have a very nasty neighbor on our border soon. I think it's time to order up quite a few axes and 3 or 4 spears.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

No response to your previous post right now, Xenu. I'll have a super busy day tomorrow and won't have time for this game. As of this moment, the new turn is set to roll 8:05a for us local time (EST). I'll already be an hour into my day. There's no sign of Kuro playing yet, so the clock may well run down. I'd like to give a warning to the other players in the tech thread, but not enough to give away any surprise that we may have vs. Kuro, so they'll just have to get mad or understand the situation.

Can you grab the turn before going to work? Pay close attention to loading/disembarking of troops. Generally, you should unload the chariots so they can attack from two moves away, and have everything else on the boats to either do an amphibious attack or land next to the city the following turn. We have 5 attack units and a settler, so everyone should be either on a boat or in position to attack (the chariots) when the turn ends. If you can't sort it out, just pause the game.

But...something tells me you've already gone to bed.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T119 - I forgot how late for work playing pitboss turns in the morning makes me. Photo time, ask questions and I'll answer later.

I offered Kuro a trade, 20 gold for Fred Wolsley. I hope he accepts it, it would save us a settler.




Southern empire overview, I don't know where that axe pair was headed but I turned them around. I want to take Yfen Kato, it is guarded by a chariot and spear right now, 20% city defense. We can handle that with three axes and a spear. If we can get a chariot near Sisub's capital maybe we can snipe a worker too but that's a bit risky. Anyway, he's in a lot of trouble with Suttree, I don't see why we shouldn't get some of the spoils.




Sutree took too cities last turn from Sisub. LOL, Sut? I know Sisub got caught with his pants down defending but there's really no excuse for him getting carved up like this. He had the population and production to build a good army, he just left all of it defending our border instead of quickly adjusting to the more immediate threat. Yeah, I know, if he had vacated the north we'd have invaded sooner (yup) but still, why not defend against the civ that's definitely attacking you instead of the one that might attack you? He tried to defend both fronts and failed spectacularly in the south.




He's basically dead at this point, it's just a matter of when and who gets the rest of the spoils. I'd love to get what's left in the north (Yar Tshes and Yfen Kato) and the Colossus city if possible, but no way we can beat Sutree to the Colossus city. The game is going to be more interesting when we're neighbors with him since he plays so aggressively. That's ok, so can we. But Sutree has a nice head start in power, he's going to be annoying for a while to come unless Sisub can kill some of that army. But I don't see it happening, he keeps spreading his forces out and getting picked off. He needs to combine into a stack and try to kill that invading army.




I turned on research for the turn, I think we can finish up Calendar over the next two turns. WilliamLP already has Calendar and has hooked up a few Calendar resources, so at least we're getting a small discount.




If you play next turn check city builds and overflow, I whipped the SW city for an axe because why not, no reason to grow to size 3 onto unimproved tiles and we can always use more military. We're pretty safe there vs. WilliamLP's stack, but I think he's going to build his city in an annoying place. Not worth fighting over it though. We have more important things to worry about right now.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

WillLP city should have whipped into a granary. The axe was a just in case he declared war on us move.

Should have offered Kuro more gold if you wanted him to consider the offer. I'd pay ~50 just to save the settler.

@Sisub: Wait, he lost his horse city? Sisub just had 5-6 units there that he sent to invade suttree. WTF is going on here? Let's just hand the game to him so we don't have to cover turns anymore... bleh..... Not happy with how that is turning out.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I don't see a reason to pay a lot for the city since we can kill it so easily. It's basically asking for a freebie, if he doesn't give it to us we'll take it anyway.

I didn't realize it was supposed to go into a granary, so oops on that one. Not a huge loss, we need a decent standing army in that area to pin down our western holdings. We're pretty safe over there now I think.

Yeah, Sisub is collapsing like crazy, which is why I think we should try to help ourselves to his northern cities. We're going to be neighbors of Suttree before long anyway so we may as well have the border be further down south.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T120

Time for a rant. If you don't want to read it, skip to the pretty pictures.

I'm pretty much sick of this game. 120 turns in and we're decently behind, despite me grinding my teeth through the turns and trying to get ahead. I think we've stayed within sight of the leaders, though not anywhere close to on par with them. My perception is that I haven't played badly with what we've had to work with, Slowzantium + IND/CHM, not exactly an economic powerhouse before you get to the sparse food and thick jungle. To be fair, I've also probably not played all that well, though I don't know what I could have changed, the map pretty much dictated some of our strategic choices and we've lacked happiness resources where others have not. Anyway, now I see the game leader eating up our southern neighbor who was graced with an awesome leader (IND/FIN) and awesome land, and our neighbor can't be bothered to put up a fight. Yes, it's a GREAT idea to leave all of your northern cities heavily defended to guard against the jungle when you are losing cities in an active war to a much, much stronger opponent elsewhere. On top of that, why don't you just send a stack of your precious defenders into your opponent's territory where you have to wade through culture-bombed tiles? Surely you wouldn't be better off defending an important strategic resource (horse) or hanging on to your awesome plains hill, multi flood plains, happy resource, corn city. I mean, why defend that at all? Giving your shrine to the largest civ in the game who also shares that religion is probably not going to impact the result of the game at all.

Why am I putting in any effort at all? Whatever. Xenu wants to declare on Sisu(b), which is fine by me. He also wants to bristle at WilliamLP, who I'm annoyed at because he's going to settle some bananas first ring on us. We can't fight everyone, but I've postured aggressively there now that we have ~5 units there, for whatever that's worth. Another rump city we have now, sharing a dry rice with a better city, all for a single happy resource (ivory). Meh. Also, declared on Kuro over that clams/sheep island.



Best guess is that Sisu(b) will empty all of his cities and invade us for no particular reason.



WillLP's land, and the events. Molach is playing very well. I want to get this chariot down to his territory to explore soon. Xenu, I've seen all the calendar resources hooked up. Sugar, silks, spice, and a nice looking gold resource too. And now gems.



Our mighty army of... work boats and settlers. I've circled in where we'll be putting cities in the immediate future. Also, I triple whipped a settler out of the cow/rice/clams city (before letting the chop go in). I put the chop in too, and I'll follow up with a 2t worker then regrow. The settler coming out of the capital I'm unsure what to do with it. It can either settle a filler city north of cow/rice/clams for a new clam, or it can wait ~7t for the galley to get back from fighting Kuro and try to stake out a new city claim in the north. Xenu, what's your preference? I really don't care right now.



War weariness? Wut? lulz. I checked, none elsewhere just yet. Fucking annoying. We haven't even fought that much, and we've been on the ass kicking end. At 125 AD, the peaceniks kept their fucking mouths shut when the army was kicking ass. Stupid...



I'm a poor loser, what can I say? Overall, very negative attitude toward this game because I've tried to lift this civ out of the muck and my efforts are getting me basically nowhere. Any criticism, constructive or otherwise, would be appreciated. I'm guessing I should have just killed Sisu earlier, but I'm not sure with what because our food surplus/production capacity have always been terrible. The decent crop yield now is due to the number of tallish cities that still have very marginal food production.

Xenu, you wanna stop being burned out on civ yet and take this sucker over?

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'd rather not take over but I can if I have to. I was getting used to a few minutes extra sleep in the mornings. Unfortunately judging by the post count we're still doing respectably enough. Pretty much whatever madness is happening in Kuro's thread and WilliamLP's steady output are keeping the race a tight one. That may force updates even if I don't feel like it, making turns longer to play and me later for work. Ah well..

Let me know if you want me to take the next turn, but Kuro has to play before I go to work or I'll need a pause until I'm home. He's been playing mornings lately which isn't super convenient... Maybe the war will end soon and move things along.

Speaking of moving along, that's a quick turn played by Sisub yet again. He plays 'em in under ten minutes just about every time, only one turn remotely longer than about 15 minutes since 100BC. Maybe he's a micro whiz and has it all plotted out in advance. I hope so... But he isn't whipping much while getting bloodied all over. One whip the last three turns that I could see. Not sufficient when you're losing your ass in combat. If we can get this Kuro thing handled I humbly suggest we help ease him out of turn playing obligations as soon as we're able to.

[spacetyrantxenu]

So this is annoying. As a result of new content filtering at work I'm in an unenviable position of having to balance my determination to access RB while at work with the compulsion to completely fuck the firewall rules as a penalty for management putting in its nose where it doesn't belong. Basically I can't access RB from work, I get the company splash page saying that category is blocked. So far I've tried:

*Browsing the site using the IP address instead of DNS (blocked at the outbound gateway)
*Setting up my own proxy server and getting the results above (can't log in, apparently, though I can at least browse around)

On the proxy server I set up I've verified that it works -- I set up my home firewall rules to appropriately route the requests into my network to the proxy server and then send the traffic back out to the Internet to go to the RB forums website. It works, as seen above, and from viewing live logs on the proxy device (Android tablet -- will stay powered on and plugged in during the day when I'm gone). It isn't great but it's functional. But logging in doesn't work right, I'll successfully enter my forum username and password in and get to the next screen (you've successfully logged in, taking you to back where you were, or whatever it says there). But then when I get to the next screen I'm not logged in, as in the screenshot above. I took that after logging in "successfully."

So, questions to anyone who has had to access RB through a proxy because management at work is retarded, or for whatever other reason:

1. Have you been able to make it work?
2. Is logging in a sticking point?
3. Did you have to resort to using a VPN to do it? -- I haven't gone this route, setting up a VPN connection into my home network for accessing RB, that seems a bit extreme to have to do. Not to mention that it would be a pain to only be able to access RB traffic OR everything else on the Internet. I like to browse RB as I can during the day but I don't want to stop, VPN in, and then browse....I'm willing to go as far using a dedicated browser (Firefox since I don't use that at work, most likely) for RB and just proxy that application, and leave everything else alone....

Probably other questions, but I guess before I dive too deep maybe it would be good to see what other people have done first. I know there are a million proxy servers available out on the internet but I'm not prepared to trust a random open proxy willy nilly. So does anyone have experience with this or have suggestions? Perhaps even to the extent of recommending a proxy server to use that can (somehow???) be trusted to not hijack my RB browsing session, play man-in-the middles, etc., etc. Obviously I'm not planning on doing anything sensitive on a public proxy server, just accessing RB so that I don't have to take matters into my own hands with the company firewall....

Plan B (well, C...plan B is just changing the firewall config and hoping the systems admin doesn't notice) is to use a cell phone to tether and bypass the proxy that way, but that's pretty disruptive to my work, even if I get the sketchy cell signal to cooperate.

Plan C (or D) is tossing all the PHBs off the balcony into the street far, far below and cleansing the firewall config, but I'd really rather not have to go that far. Some of them are liable to be quite heavy and I'm skeptical of the legality of that particular maneuver. So...suggestions!

Edit: Of course as soon as I hit reply I think of another option, Plan D (or E, or maybe B/C), requires a VPN, just remotely connect to the tablet and run the browser session directly from there since I know RB works fine from the tablet, logins and everything. I imagine someone has cooked up an odd scenario where it makes sense to remotely control a tablet at home from an outside network (RDP protocol or otherwise), so maybe there's software for that. I think I could manage a VPN connection to secure that. That sounds hella slow, though....

[NobleHelium]

Just RDP into your home computer and browse from within the RDP window?

[spacetyrantxenu]

That's basically option D that I threw in with the edit. My home PC throws off way too many BTUs to leave it on all the time, hence trying to use the tablet as the helper device.

But now that you mention that, I think I have an answer. I can just RDP into one of the work networks that aren't proxied (yet?) and just connect to RB from one of those machines, I'm sure I can either find a server with terrible security settings to use (that will allow outbound browser traffic) or just roll a desktop OS on a VM that no one will notice somewhere. Should suffice. Thanks.