[SPOILERS] Emporium For Sale. We Don't Rent Pigs.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

One other thing, I'll be out of town Thursday evening through Monday night. Ceil, if you want to pick up the save if it comes around during that time, please do. I'm thinking I'll get it either today or tomorrow before I leave from novice. I'll do a more thorough turn report after the coming turn to let you know what's up, but more or less it's the same as it's been: blockade novice, try to improve economy, build units in hammer cities, and fret over what zak will do to my island.

[Ceiliazul]

can do, let me know any details.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T128

Handing over the reins for a long weekend of debauchery and (possibly) stomach wrenching, galling feelings of loss, remorse, rage, and regret if Georgia loses. I can't even bare the thought of what 0-2 would feel like. Certainly much worse than I'll feel after losing this game and being 0-2 on CIV MP. Is anyone else of the opinion that they'd be better off not caring about a particular athletic team/sport? I love college sports, football especially, and I'm a diehard UGA fan. But I get roughly 100x more angst out of losing than I do joy out of winning. Anyway, I'm sure we'll win. Either that or I'm going to be a raging asshole for the next four months until the season is over.

Oh, you're here for civ? Fine.



I'll start with the easy part, blockading novice. He only moved 1 tile this time, so I pulled even with my northern stack and combined most of my southern stack, all but one trireme, into a megastack of triremes. Is this the most triremes ever for a RB PBEM? I sure hope so. I wish having this many would cause a problem with the code and break the game, or the game would go into some sort of Terminator universe where the machine comes alive and takes action, eliminating the offending triremes. A black hole, sucking out all the blockading boats and the last 100 turns where we've blockaded back and forth. That ought to do it. Failing that, though, I'll just continue to blockade the holy shit out of novice.

Anyway, I've again drawn in the number of units on each tile. The purpose of leaving the southern boat off the stack is obviously to continue the blockade. I'm trickling down the other boats, but honestly, they're probably fine together up there, enforcing this blockade. My furthest north boat should stay there to make sure that novice doesn't push any others further into my land. I'm sure I've fallen into a trap here. Obnoxiously, I can't attack his 18 stack because it's on an ocean tile. I wish this was Civ II (or whichever one it was) where if you ended turn with a non-oceanfaring unit it would probably die in the ocean. Basically, keep the blockade going and keep the single triremes at least 2t away from novice's stack so we don't get whacked cheaply. I'd probably send the boat 2E of Void back north to clean up the trireme north of Deal. I don't want to have to build another boat if he attacks up there.



I'm blockading here too, because it looks like novice has withdrawn his triremes. To what end? No clue. He will probably bring them back next turn to chase away the blockade. Fine. Do as you see fit. Use punishing blockades if you can. Stay safe otherwise.



Zak's navy in port, being reinforced by fort. It's just another trireme/galley combo coming in the port. He also has 3 galleys in Lichtenstein, along with two knights, two Landsknechts, a longbow and a xbow. He'll pillage the pig next turn, then possibly get in position to attack the following turn. If he has extra units on the galleys, as he may, whip in whatever you deem appropriate, or walls. I have a galley SE of Great Bend that should unload two knights next turn, and you can rush them up to Deadwood. After unloading, return the galley toward San Antonio so it can fetch other defenders as they come off the assembly line. Orchestrate this as you see fit, I don't really have a strong plan. I hope zak will refrain from blockading.

This was interesting:



I've obviously left my workers exposed to his knights. I'm hoping that Ichabod will chose to play nice and reduce his garrison so I can maybe try my attack again later. I left the workers uncovered to appear as unthreatening as possible with this in mind. But, I left the two knights where he could see them, but where they can't strike his city, as a warning to not poach my workers. I'd be tempted to swap a knight for two workers and see how my luck went, but he's also hard-pressed by zak and probably needs all the units he can scratch up. We'll see how this goes. Probably I'm being too optimistic here. Drawn in red ticks by his unit stack are the units I think he unloaded off the galleys.



Crazy drawing here. The black is moves that should be made, unless novice dictates otherwise. Most likely, he'll continue to heal. I have placed signposts for "southern counterattack" and "northern counter". These are placed just far enough from the border for mounted units to be able to hit an invading stack. If you think this is ridiculous or have a better plan, feel free to move the units as you see fit. I've drawn in above where this stack can attack invading units. I'll need to actually produce a stack to do this, though, as I've just sent a couple knights off to the island to forestall zak's aggression.



Same deal as the last picture. Again, if you have a better plan for covering this front, have at it. The benefit of having both stacks close to the west is that they can reach Ichabod if needed. This stack is visible (I think) by zak's sentry knight on the hill across the water. Getting some roads along this line of tiles is going to be helpful to hide our stack.

Random stuff:



F1 before EoT. We added ~68k in power at EoT with these builds, moving us to second.



Economy. Unit cost is high. Let's kill some triremes???



Novice appears on the way to building caravels. Zak is sandbagging paper, has money in the bank, and...



...built ToA? Best guess is that he's using his stone doubler to failgold this and get some last minute, backdoor (untraceable) funding to power him to Liberalism. If so, good play!



Don't forget we have this guy sitting in LD. He can help spawn another GA. No moving him out of borders.

Other stuff:



Austin has been set up to finish the bank this turn and have very little GPPs left over.



I set DC to as many specialists as I could without jumping ahead of Austin. Check if you can add one more specialist this turn, or 1t a unit. I'm looking to max overflow GPPs here to get a third out fast. And then the fourth. And so on. Perpetual GA seems to be the best option for us for now. I rue losing the MoM.



This was before EoT. We're at a flat 50h now, so probably a catapult, then another knight if it is a 1t build. I'm trying to get out as many units as I can while in Theocracy during the GA. Probably we should stay in Theocracy after this GA ends, but I haven't decided 100%.



Taken after ending turn. My GNP was best when researching Philosophy this turn. Zak and novice already had it, and I only had one of the prerequisite techs.

Basically, that's all I've got. I'm wandering around from turn to turn without any real plan. I just try to set my troops in positions to maximize blockading pain on novice and be opportunistic elsewhere. Zak is putting on some pressure on the island, and I've done what I can to counter that, but Great Bend, Moai city, is massively under-defended. If zak moves his units from L to galleys, or you see the trio of galleys headed south through the fort/straight, reinforce Great Bend immediately. I can't lose that city and have any chance in this game.

Take as many turns as you'd like, and thanks for playing!

[Ceiliazul]

Oh, you're here for civ? Fine.

I've obviously left my workers exposed to his knights.

I'll be shocked if he doesn't delete those workers and a chariot on his turn.

Austin has been set up to finish the bank this turn and have very little GPPs left over.

A bank?? How novel!

I set DC to as many specialists as I could without jumping ahead of Austin.

Got it.

Basically, that's all I've got. I'm wandering around from turn to turn without any real plan.

Boo, you need a plan. I know this is the Glacier Bowl, but if you've got no plan, you're just waiting to die.

Take as many turns as you'd like, and thanks for playing!

Not in any hurry, but I'll keep the turn moving. Good luck Bulldogs (at least you're not the Beavers.)

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Man, novice must have discovered somehow that you'd be covering for me this weekend so he's gone to the mattresses: no turn until the 15th. He's running scared from Cyborg Ceil.

---

You're right. I do need a plan. Not sure where I can go ahead of my opponents right now, so the best plan is to take from Ichabod and hold the line elsewhere, if I can. Maybe nationalism should be the goal for now, but only 3 drafts per turn isn't gamebreaking. If you have ideas, I'm glad to listen.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Three units a turn is significant in a map of this size. Especially if they're not maces. How long until Gunpowder?

[Commodore]

And how badly would losing Bureau suck?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I really owe an update. I've been taking pictures as we've gone along. Just finished T131. I actually sent this save to Ichabod after only 4.5 hours, which is damned near a land speed record for this game lately. Blame global warming for melting the glacier, temporarily at least.

Well, the last turn I reported was 128, so I'm not THAT far behind on reporting. This game is just going that slow, I suppose. Anyway, the very quick version is that Zak is a clever player and has utilized forts and his circumnavigation bonus to really pressure me into having to make choices on where to defend on the island. I upgraded a few units in Great Bend and blocked an invasion force with my triremes, but it appears that this was just to draw off defenders from Deadwood, which Zak took with very few losses. I have recaptured the city, but this theater is going in Zak's favor. Also on T131, novice attacked my blockading triremes with upgraded caravels, all at around 78% odds. I didn't bother to check what the odds would be because I couldn't get my boats out in time. I knew this was coming, but decided to just blockade him as long as possible and deal with this eventuality when it arrived. I'm going to be eating blockades soon myself, as long as he leaves a couple of galley/triremes to do that bit of dirty business.

I will 1t Liberalism next turn, unless Zak does the same this turn, which he could possibly do. I can run 100% next turn, Zak only has 92g in the bank, but I'm sure he has a plan, he's been very sharp in this game. If Zak takes liberalism, I'll have to choose between Nationalism or following Novice to Optics and then to Nationalism.

I'm still on top of the scoreboard, but it does not accurately reflect our position in the game. I think Zak is clearly winning, and even more if he grabs Liberalism. I think I'm pretty close with novice, but he's about to make me feel some pain. At least it isn't so difficult to produce economy now as it was for such a long time. Until, that is, novice blockades me, and makes me whip off all of my Colossus coast. I had to dry whip Great Bend for a pike to defend this turn, but it's being blockaded by Zak anyway and would have starved eventually. I really don't have an idea of how to counter him, he has the initiative on me.

Pictures tomorrow maybe.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Does anyone want to take this game off my hands? I'm pretty much dying a slowish death and I'm sick of playing the turns. My interest in this game is hovering right around zero and has been for a while. Right now the tracker is at 51 hours, and it isn't all because RL is crazy at times. To be fair, I'm less interested than I was before zak and novice started chipping away at me, but even when I was doing just fine I didn't relish the turns coming around. I submitted my vote to Seven months ago that the game be called as a draw, but I'm willing to concede to anyone else if no one wants to take over. In the meantime, I'm going to try to grit through this turn and however many others I have to, but there is no joy in this for me, just dutiful community support. It isn't all about the winning and losing, this game is just not fun. Sorry for the doom and gloom.

I still mean to post up all the pictures I've stored in the vault when I finally get motivated to do a report. I will more likely just end up doing a pic dump instead.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Sorry you're not having fun Boldly

I'd be willing to take over, but I've probably read Novice's and Zak's threads too recently