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

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm logged in now and looking at the game, as Retep impatiently posted that he's waiting on us in the tech thread. All in due time, but there's the matter of this Scientist and these scientists (lower case s) to handle before I end the turn.

Right now we're running three specialists in Mister Love: two merchants and an engineer. If we add two science specialists in we'll generate our next great person in six turns, rather than the 10 or 11 it's going to take as presently configured. The downside of running the two science specialists is that it will raise our chance of another scientist spawning, delaying the opportunity for a third golden age. But that won't matter if we want to spend our current spare scientist on an academy right now. And I'd want to know that before I click the red button to end the turn because that's 47 beakers we're talking about this turn if we build the academy now. If we're going to build it at all there is no sense at all in waiting another turn.

Input, go!

[spacetyrantxenu]

As I'm looking through the cities I'm noting changes that I'm making. In Tyler I dropped a previously unworked cottage for a farm. That makes the city grow a turn sooner, so it will be one turn from growth next turn when we'd presumably whip the phract.

Changed Swamp People's tiles, gave up a grass hill mine for a farm, will be 1 turn from regrowth next turn and we can whip it.

I see your employment of a citizen in Revival to contribute the 90th hammer to this turn's phract. Nice.

I cry for poor little Dirt Road whose free merc specialist is a lowly citizen. I kinda wish I had built a library there now. Same with the larger city Suck Magic, but we didn't have slavery available as these two cities grew, couldn't get the infrastructure we needed built.

Waiting for further instructions. If you had your reasons for the previous tile configurations feel free to swap them back, I just made the changes from what's visible on the screen to set us up to whip at regrowth.

One other question, I didn't change the EP allocation you had set up but I have a feeling it's going to be tight this turn getting all the EPs to align like we want them to. I think we'll have maybe a one or two turn window with full graphs on everyone if we manage to get it this turn, because I think people are going to start spending more points on us now. I think we should spend 5 EPs on wetbandit, 4 on suttree, and 3 on retep. That should get us enough points to get suttree back and add wetbandit, and keep retep. Up to you if you want to make that change or not, I'm not going to fiddle with the controls too much while you're piloting this thing, that's how we ended up with half built markets and libraries. But let me know if you want me to make the change.

[Commodore]

Input, go!

Settle. +1 hammer per turn. A hammer into a cataphract a turn.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Input, go!

Settle. +1 hammer per turn. A hammer into a cataphract a turn.

Well we hadn't considered that option, and still aren't. But we talked it out, we're going to skip the academy for now. Our slider rate is going to be pretty low so adding a modifier in one city is probably going to yield us less beakers than simply bulbing with the scientist. Speaking of tech:




Suttree has been playing possum. All that gold saving he did while building up universities (and presumably Oxford) is going to be cashed in now. I'm guessing now he hadn't given up on his warmongering ways so much as he went into a dormant state while preparing for round two. Cuirassiers, anyone? That kind of makes attacking him less delightful. What's the point pounding on someone straight up in military tech? Let's see how soon he can get those buggers in the field, maybe we'll have Sisub consumed by then and he'll have to play nice with us. I don't relish the idea of having him for a neighbor, he's the absolute worst sort. You can be sure he'll make noise at all hours of the night and knock over your trash cans with a baseball bat, his dog will bite you and your elderly grandmother, and he'll declare war and attack you on any day the ends in Y. Love that neighbor. Love to KILL that neighbor. I guess let's get there first and then worry about whether to bring him a covered dish or a cloth with chloroform as an entree for our first neighborhood block party.

Anyway, so we'll have cuirassiers to contend with before too long. Oh well, we'll have pikes for that.

I tried to get graphs on everyone completed for this turn but it didn't work out. Freaking Suttree spent a bunch of EPs on us and so now even though we finally have Wetbandit's graphs for the first time, we don't have a full chart because Suttree's purple is missing. Right now I have us set to spend 10 EPs on Suttree this turn, hopefully it will give us a one or two turn window where we'll have his graphs and keep everyone else's. After that I think we can refocus our EP spending and maintain graphs on our immediate neighbors from then on. I want one turn with everyone's graphs for easy comparison, after that I don't care as much although it is always nice to have good information to work with. As for Suttree, I don't know what his deal is spending points on us now, he's had our graphs for ages and I don't think (though I haven't checked) he has had research visibility on us, so if he's just spending points against us in a Zoidbergesque ink release then that's pointless.

Anyway, here's one graph that I'm sure is bound to be noticed.




Even though Suttree messed up the complete set, that's us at #2 in soldiers.




We'll be #1 in a few turns. Phractapults ENGAGE.

[spacetyrantxenu]

While I'm spamming here unabated I'll mention that when I logged in to roll the turn I didn't move any units or change builds, and in the time after I rolled the turn until I logged out I just set builds in cities that didn't have any and didn't change anything else on the board (I adjusted EPs, I think that was it). Basically BGN is playing the turns so whenever this war starts I don't want to deal with anyone saying we double moved them. When I talked to him on the phone he told me he forgot to end turn, so our actions were basically done then anyway, earlier in the day when he logged out. According to Civstats BGN played several hours before the Sisub (Halvgud? Never know who it is) so if we're declaring war this turn (not sure yet) we can take the first half without double moving him although he could possibly raise a stink about my login after he played. Anyway blah blah blah if we want the first half I think we can take it since BGN played before the Reds. I don't know which half we want, probably whichever is up when BGN gets ready to play if we're attacking this turn.

Enough on the timer, what an annoying subject to have to throw out a preemptive defense for.

[Commodore]

Blood for this guy!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T173

They've been waiting a long time for us to show them how to love.



"Are you gonna save me? Can you save me? Are you gonna make me happy? Are you gonna make me smile? Tell me Mr. Love"

Oh yes. We're going to show you a thing or two about love. Be patient.




Love, love, love, love, love.... Yeah!

Ok, so the video is totally lame, but this is the theme that I was given to work with. Blame Xenu, as in all else.

Red is the path of travel for 6 phracts. Blue is the travel lane for 5 workers who can serve as combat road engineers. We'll see what we want to do up here.

It should come as no surprise to Sisub that we're gunning for him, so in the last three turns since our mass revolt to uber-ass kicking military civics, he has whipped...




Hmm.



Skip to around 1:28 for the relevant bit. The Hands of Stone are saying no más. No, we're not Ray Leonard here, we're much more slow and plodding than all that, but I saw ESPN's excellent 30:30 documentary on this fight and just thought of it. Anyway, Sisub hasn't whipped much at all, and his garrisons are unchanged. Has he thrown in the towel? We'll see, we're all lined up and ready to jump in next turn. The picture hasn't changed since the plan I drew last report, so go with that for a visual.

Speaking of boxing:




See what I did there?




More units incoming, with scheduled time of completion. In some cases you can see where I've very roughly estimated a second unit for overflow. We'll see if my math is any good. Probably it isn't. One place we're not whipping is here:




How's that for a nice city with basically zero food? We can 2t phracts until the GA ends, then grow it up some more to fill out all of the workshops.




Annnd the numbers. See you on D-Day.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Now that I have all of my troops in position, I'll sandbox and see what we come up with.

	LEARNING - 50%, flat, walls, full fortify (except chariots) - DEFENDERS NO PROMOS	THESIS - 20%, no walls, flat
Them	LB 2 axe 2 chariot 2 spear 2 archer	CG1 LB Axe Spear Chariot Warrior
Us	4 - 9xp Cataphract 1 - 7xp Cataphract 2 - 5xp Cataphract 1 - 4xp Cataphract 1 - 2xp Cataphract 1 - 0xp Cataphract FORKING: Sentry/Flanking I Cataphract - ~66%, 3.4 withdraw?? Combat1/MedicII Chariot	2 - 9xp Cataphract 1 - 5xp Cataphract 1 - no promo chariot FORKING:Sentry/Flanking I Cataphract - ~66%, 3.4 withdraw?? Combat1/MedicII Chariot

Anyone who is bored can feel free to sim along with me. (Brick, ahem, Brick).

[spacetyrantxenu]

Chatting while BGN does all his simming.

9:33:11 PM - BGN: we're really too good to be in such a shitty position in this game
9:33:31 PM - Xenu: map map map
9:33:42 PM - BGN: i've been impressed by suttree at times, but i think he's probably not as good as his play in this game
9:33:55 PM - BGN: WilliamLP is the next best player here
9:34:19 PM - BGN: I somehow haven't followed any of his threads/games
9:34:25 PM - Xenu: me either
9:35:31 PM - Xenu: why aren't we winning this game?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6jd3uWnN-4
9:36:15 PM - BGN: dear god
9:36:18 PM - BGN: do you understand all that?
9:36:22 PM - Xenu: no
9:36:25 PM - Xenu: but i know
9:36:36 PM - BGN: it's the map
9:36:36 PM - Xenu: soy el mapa, soy el mapa, soy el mapa, soy el mapa,soy el mapa, soy el mapa, soy el mapa, soy el mapa,soy el mapa, soy el mapa,soy el mapa, soy el mapa,soy el mapa, soy el mapa,soy el mapa, soy el mapa, SOY EL MAPA!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Well, this is a lot more straightforward than I had imagined. Alt+G both stacks (group stack), max out promotions on the combat line and send them in top to bottom until we get to the archers. If we haven't lost anything by then, we can get the 2xp combat1 and the 0xp phracts each up a promo on the archers, then finish the massacre. I'll individually promote after the combat3 guys, though, just to make sure I'm not overlooking anything obvious. But this is pretty much going to be a thundering charge unless the RNG totally abandons us. If we win the opening 72% and following two 88% fights with our c3 phracts, the rest is a slaughter.

At Thesis, I'll need to use the sentry phract, then we'll have to take a 72% chariot vs. warrior fight to finish it up, but we have two chariots available for this fight in most of the sims. The sim wasn't perfect, but all the advantages went to the defenders, mostly in 5% fortification bonuses on units here and there, as well as chariots getting +25% defense from me adding river crossings to both city attacks to simulate the full fortification bonus. So, we should actually do better on the real turn than we have in the sims, and the sims went quite well. I had more completely flawless (no deaths) runs than failures. The most common outcome will be losing one low odds fight, and we're set up to overcome that with the sentry/medic stack. We will cover both attacking phract stacks with gobs of trash units and can reinforce Learning with the phracts from the east if we need to, so we'll move that potential forking group after attacking Thesis and Learning. Looking good.

So, Learning first, then Thesis, then reinforcement phracts from the east. Cover up attackers with trash. hammerhammerhammer

Edit: Oxy planted a new city. 3pt score increase while logged in.