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

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

1000!

That's a little steep but would probably be worth it.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Derp, it was the thousandth post. But you'll claim that you knew that, that's what the sunglasses were for.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T197 - We have a bit of a happiness problem with the loss of the north. We're down furs (though we still control a source it is cut off from delivery to our trade network) and silver. I looked over the map and trade screens and found two good deals we could make. One is with Molach, he gives whales, we give silk. He has two whales in his culture but only one netted. I hope he takes the deal and connects his other source. The other deal I wanted to make was to trade away a spare dyes resource but...we've made two separate dye for gold trades, one with Oxy (can be cancelled but I don't want to) and a new one with Wetbandit (7 turns until it can be cancelled). That's unfortunate because we could have traded it for something else now that we need more happiness.

Well, we have a spare wine due to a trade with Oxy but no one really needs it, at least anyone who can give me anything. I'm going to try to sell it to William for his spare gems resource, he has three and is only trading away one right now. The deal won't help him but who wouldn't want a neighbor with a big, directionless army beholden via trade? Actually he knows a lot about our spare capacity right now since we have 15 highly promoted phracts in his territory. What's that you say? Oh, he has cannons, right, he doesn't care about our phracts, they don't flank cannons, we're basically heads up in power again despite what the graphs say.

We're short on food resources now, too, with some of our seafood pillaged. I resubmitted part of a deal that recently got cancelled with Oxy, he gives wheat, we give clams. And, gasp, I offered a deal with Suttree (whom I'm not sure we have ever traded with?), he gives fish, we give rice. Unless he's spiteful I don't see why he'd reject it. I imagine his Moai city needs more health. Speaking of Suttree, he has a great merchant on his east coast that looks to be boarding a galley soon. I imagine from its location, and his open borders with Retep, that it's headed to England, I expect to his size 18 capital. The best return he could get (if he didn't fear someone pulling a stunt like in PBEM17...) would be to send it to Wetbandit's size 24 capital, where the ToA resides. But to get there he'd have to travel through the territory of Oxy (hostile!!!) and Molach, or through Byzantium (hostile!!) and William. He doesn't have open borders with anyone but Retep, not that it matters for the great merchant, but it shows Suttree is still isolated diplomatically. That or he isn't interested in playing the trade game (or this game for that matter). Actually I'm not interested in this game either -- why am I working so much on these damn trades? Boldly, this is exactly why I wanted you to take over playing turns, you could dispatch a turn in 15 minutes without regret. I'm incapable. We clearly need a blazing turn timer, not 24 hours. Who cares if I miss 200 turns in a day?

In the interest in hurrying up and playing the turn I won't analyze or report any more possible trades. This has been a long enough and boring enough read already. Time to skip over the turn. Kuro offered peace, which I rejected just so I could look around. No reason not to take the peace though. With Boldly shunting the turns back on me the Adventure Stack is going back home, lest it get trapped between redcoats and cannons. Actually now I'm pretty worried that William will float cannons over to I Burn and take the city easily, despite our decent garrison. It's so obvious to use that city as a shield port against Retep's navy, he has no other safe way to project his naval power into the bay. I really wonder if we shouldn't try to sell the city for a few hundred gold. It's totally untenable where it is now. We can't reinforce it and we obviously can't hold it against either William or Retep if one of them sent a determined attack force. BGN give me a price, or tell me why I shouldn't try to sell it. Oh, I whipped the settler, who knows what we'll do with it. The only decent place I see to send it is south of Oxy and the game may well end by the time the unit gets there.

I realize now I'd be better off giving Cold Beer to Retep now and take a peace deal rather than waiting two turns for him to take the undefended city. We're paying 8 gpt in maintenance for that chunk of ice and getting 5 gpt back, with no contribution to the empire at all. Whatever. For 3 gpt I hope retep has a touch of war weariness somewhere (doubt it). At least he has to pay unit maintenance for the lone redcoat he's sending to take the city.

Nothing much interesting to report on the domestic side. A whipped settler, a whipped granary, and needing all these tiny cities in old Sisubistan/Suttreeland to hurry up and grow. We need to revolt to representation soon. Maybe when we see what happens with Retep in a few turns. If he doesn't offer peace after finishing his capture of the north maybe we'll need another round of whips to cheer him up about invading us. But probably not, surely he'll have cannons soon, as soon as he wants them anyway. He already researched Scientific Method so he's on his way to claiming the late game wonders now. I'm not doing a beaker count but Retep is at least 5000 beakers ahead of anyone else, ignoring how he got it. Maybe he finds a way to screw it up going forward but I'm not seeing it.

Techs:



Map:



Demographics:

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Suttree seems intent on playing last. I think perhaps he's just going to go for one more round of "fuck it, let's fight!". Is his power climbing?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Not sure but we have a ten turn NAP so he can't attack anyway. I think he's simply completely disinterested.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Not sure but we have a ten turn NAP so he can't attack anyway. I think he's simply completely disinterested.

Well, that suits me just fine. I'm completely disinterested myself. And it gets worse every time wetbandit/retep settle a new city. Retep settled a new one this turn.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T198 - I brought the Adventure Stack back into our borders, that shaved 12gpt off our defecit.

Oxy has renamed himself the Archaic Empire.




William has a GP and GA sitting in his capital waiting to be used. He's sending cannons toward Kuro's front and has pulled back his stack to two tiles away from the temporary capital. When the cannons get there he'll smash through and finish Kuro off.

Apparently I forgot to offer peace last turn, or Kuro refused it. I think I forgot to offer. Anyway I didn't offer this turn because the timing isn't convenient. We have a settler on a galley that is in Kuro's territory this turn. If I offered a peace deal and he accepted we'd need OBs to pass through, so I'll wait until the galley is in Kuro's old capital next turn (3 move galley) and then offer peace. Or stay at war, it doesn't matter either way.

I found Oxy's navy, he has a stack of about 10 promoted triremes and a galley with three moves, he spent a GG on the stack. I've been roaming around his territory wondering what happened to his dread stack of horse archers from a while back. He may be moving them around, or they simply aren't there. It would be hilarious if he has slowly ferried everything to his island city and is marching them all south through the ice to have a go at Suttree's two icy cities down there. Not sure if he's doing that or not, I have no way to get down there and check. But it would be funny.

I didn't grab the tech screen because I'm not going through the trouble of deciphering it anyway. But here's a final giant overview of the former expanse of our empire. As of next turn that little speck in the north will belong to Retep, if he doesn't raze it. Since it has furs he'll probably keep it.




I've basically stopped building military other than in our HE city. After retep takes the last city in the north we'll see if he offers peace. Either way I'm swapping out of police state and back into representation soon. But I'd rather he offered a peace deal first and at least keep up the pretense that I'm building military. At this point it doesn't matter though, so why eat the expense? He can't take us on land unless he's willing to build a bunch of cannons. And why would he do that when he can just come with bombers, infantry, and destroyers later? All the low hanging fruit is gone, I fully expect him to offer peace next turn. I'd rather he not continue the attack because I don't want to play long turns anymore. (Or write long reports -- I guess I have a habit of it).

Demographics:




If we ran 100% science our GNP was 5th, so that probably means everyone we passed is either dying (Kuro) or Archaic.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Oh, and evidently several of the trades from last turn went through, so we have spare happiness and health again.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Also, according to WilliamLP's amazing tool, we've won a thread domination victory:




Can I start the postgame thread now? NO? WHY NOT????

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Who is #1 in land area? Retep or wetbandit?