New victory condition: first to 1000 posts or 17k views wins the game. Annnnd..... GO!
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[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....
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Last thing before I walk away from the computer for a while...suttree hasn't posted in over three weeks in this game. Is there any chance that he's just not going to bother to move because he won't win? I can't really count on that, I guess, but it would be nice. But we're not doing anything else in this game, so it really doesn't matter now. I'd seriously trade half of my cities (I get to pick which ones, of course) for an armada of galleons to take the fight to retep and let him know how war is done. But, wish in one hand, right?
How much population had left at stars above? If we're about to lose the city burn off the population. Whip random units until all we can whip is a scout and then do one of those too.
I'm ignoring the football game, don't care today. Both teams are out of it and kind of suck because of injury. I'll spend my effort cheering for better weather instead. Stop raining, mkay? Drove around Mt. Hood this morning and never saw the mountain because of the rain and fog. Grrrr.... Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon   Lost a couple of boats, made a few diplo begging for gold offers, built some units, moved some phracts south, muskets north, pillaged a road in the ice, continued pre-building windmills over the marble/silver (7/8 on the silver now). We'll finish those "improvements" if/when the cities are under immediate threat. Scorched earth, folks. Otherwise, nothing of interest until suttree declares. The only news is that WilliamLP did not move his mounted stack toward us, but actually back one tile into his city. Well yay.
WilliamLP accepted a deal to give us ~500g but I forgot to take a picture. I moved the GS further into his lands and then made the gift. I'll request another 300-400g this turn if he has that much to spend. Also, WilliamLP now has rifling.
 I accepted. I also sent a trade request for a few duplicate resources and Open Borders. Yes, he can scout our weak military situation, but he'll also find our counterattack force ready to smack him again. I hope we've taken the fight out of him. I'm trying to signal good intent and I'm open to giving back a useless city or two to keep the peace. Mechanics question: If I return a city back to suttree, will his borders immediately return to their previous cultural level and cover the corresponding tiles? That's really all that is preventing me from trading a couple of these cities. They have a lot of beaker multipliers, which don't help me at all.   Some scouting. Not much to do about it though. My grief in verse: A single transport, Glorious metallic hull, My kingdom for you.  A second would be fun too. Le Sigh...  I've decided that this is a defensive force, for now. Just below the interface you can see a signpost reading "fort", WilliamLP is building a navy in his lake interior. I've seen 2-3 frigates. Good, counterweight engage!  Declined. I think rather than being a serious offer, this is his way of telling me that my financial problems are my own fault because I threw down so many cities while waging a war. Fair enough, but what point is there to fighting if you can't gain any land? I didn't make peace with suttree for him to take all the land, so there it is, nothing to be done about it.  If Kuro is building up for an offensive, it will cause me to tilt and I'll just raze everything he has, at the cost of totally ruining my own defensive posture. I'm only willing to put up with so much misery to play a game. You can also see my workers setting up some windmills over the marble/silver resources. If/when retep gets up here, he'll have to spend turns getting those resources properly reconnected. I'm also pillaging roads in neutral territory to slow his advance over land. I can make this take a while, or make him bring more boats up here. Either way, I'm ok with that.  WilliamLP also requested some of these cities, chief among them I Burn. I could have accepted a gift of I Burn as it is under no threat of being taken, but I'm still getting good value out of unit production there. It's not falling without a concerted buildup, transport, and loss of units. I whipped Dirt Road for a new musket and then spite whipped a scout to bring it down to size. Xenu, yes, I have left some population in these cities. I totally flubbed the defense at We Steal. I should have started packing it with units 6 turns ago and made him pay dearly for the city. Stars Above was close to surviving its attack last turn (or two turns ago). Had I known it would go, it would have been whipped down too.  I'm hoping that the buildings die in the fire. Although now that I think about it, retep may not have enough troops on the beach to take the city this turn. He'll have something on a galleon, though.  I'm sad to see this one go. Two muskets (one no promo after the turn rolls) and a spear vs. three redcoats. I should perhaps have withdrawn the spear to the north to use against Kuro but I'm not logging in to do that. Another scout whip, and I moved off the food tiles to prevent regrowth at EoT. A size 1 shit city, coming right up!  Aforementioned GS gift. I was looking for 1000g, I'll settle for a bit less than that. WilliamLP is a decent sort, he'll probably accept my supplementary request this turn and we'll consider the transaction complete. And then he'll murder me with rifles in 10t.   Not much to say. Others are teching, we're not. Wetbandit should be on to cannons next. Actually, William must not yet have Rifling, as he can't research Steam Power (has Chemistry). Well, clearly not, that's Replaceable Parts sitting there in the "Can Research" column. I'm not doing so well with all of this.  We'll see how the GS helps him. Mostly more of the same. I did whip the grocer at Mister Love for 3pop. We need the gold and retep is going to pillage our fish sooner or later, causing us to starve. This should be worth ~30g/t IIRC. Honestly, I should have done this sooner.  You can see the perimeter of musket defenders. I've split the phracts into mostly a 1/3 north, 2/3 south defensive posture, with the southern group split to east and west stacks just out of reach from suttree should he invade again. We won't defend the cities with these units, they're solely for counterattacking. If suttree is committed and comes 100% at me, it really becomes quite hopeless, but I have a feeling that he's kind of checked out and won't bother.  Honestly, have you ever seen a civ this big at this point in the game that had such a shitty economy? I can't recall myself. If suttree doesn't invade when the 10t enforce peace is up, I'm going to eat a turn or two of anarchy and swap into some economic techs and try to do SOMETHING. What, precisely, I'm not sure. I'm too far behind to be of any importance to the outcome, except for how difficult I make my opponents' eventual conquests for them.
I don't have a lot of suggestions. I was going to ask if we could whip a few galleys in No Deliverance and build a quick fort on the cottage NW of the city and stage the galleys there to attack Papaya Molida, but all retep has to do is put a trireme or galleon on a tile SW of the city and there goes the attack. Similarly we can't attack out of No Deliverance to the SE because of the three triremes down there. On our turn we'd finish the fort and stack in galleys, but he'd cut off the diagonal and make it impossible for us to land. We just can't attack him without three move units, not by sea anyway. And I really don't see any point in marching all the way around to the north to attack by land, even if we got OBs with Kuro to do it.
Speaking of Kuro, that's an annoying little city he placed west of The Icebox. As soon as it hits level 2 borders it will steal the fish from previous culture. Not that we care now, that's retep's problem, but still. Did he build that city before or after we were at war already? If it was before...well that would have been ambitious to say the least. But I have a feeling it was after. But it's still a really bad city. It will be interesting to see what William does regarding retep's new ownership of the Table Scrap Islands (Magic Bullet and Dirt Road, mostly). I assume eventually William will take I Burn, as there's no way he'd let retep hold that island and have an easy attack option directly into his core. If it was me I would attack and raze Magic Bullet and Dirt road, to create an obvious DMZ between the territories. Beyond that he'd probably have trouble projecting power forward into retep's new holdings since his rifles won't do well against redcoats, and they'd otherwise be at tech parity or with retep a bit ahead. I have a feeling that William's chance of winning this game has slipped away and it's down to retep and Wetbandit, with Wetbandit horribly positioned to do anything to reel retep back in. This game would have been much competitive at this stage if the remote/inaccessible islands part of the planet had been cut away, so that Retep could have had a neighbor (a.k.a., a front to defend) to his east. 
Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
Ok, turn played with the timer staring down at us. I whipped some more cities, but only 1pop because we need our population more than happiness. We're actually fine on happiness. We'd be beastmode if we had Nationalism, which we could tech in probably 25t (or 10t if we mass built wealth) now that we sold off the GS. WilliamLP fired a golden age, so perhaps we've made the game more competitive by doing this trade. Well, crap, if that's the case. I want this game over with. But, I'm going out fighting. We're definitely going to be tough to digest.
 Ok, pictures and then I can think about more fun things, like basically anything besides PB11.  Last turn I triple whipped in anticipation of this happening. Good thing. Anyway, the grocer was needed. Now to keep stacking some hardy defenders in here and see about being able to mobilize more of these phracts elsewhere.  Since retep is sinking all of my galleys anyway, I'll make a few goodwill gifts to WilliamLP and see what he can do with them. Upgrade, unit transport, whatever. Just fight retep or you lose. Also, my sentry phract in the north discovered retep has a Frigate where he previously had a trireme. I assume he upgraded. Must be nice to have cash to burn like that.  A longbow in Dirt Road won a combat and got us the last 2xp we needed for a great general. I'm debating whether to settle in Beside You for 3 promo muskets/4 promo phracts or to wait and see if suttree invades and sprinkle xp for heals on a stack at a critical time. I've positioned 5 tiles away from Beside You to give us some options, just in case.  Events from the last turn, and Sisub's former shrine city, whipped to the bone and defended with what we can spare.  Defenders, and a long climb to a fourth GG.  You really want to fuck with this army? Please, retep, land all of your troops and we can have it out once and for all. Only pussies use boats to run and hide*.  *Note: I think retep has done just fine and has been tactically sound, other than telegraphing his punch with that ludicrous diplo "offer" to take all the islands off of my hands without a fight. I support his strategy of kicking his neighbor while he's fighting elsewhere and weakened. If he only knew how far behind we were...  We're total beasts. For turn 140.  So long, and thanks for all the fish. We'll see if suttree has a stomach for more fighting next turn. 
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