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

[NobleHelium]

They aren't so bad when viewed from a normal perspective. And they're oh so informative.

I'm surprised nobody's taken offense to the repeated mentions of "building Jews" and the like.

[spacetyrantxenu]

"Build Jewish missionaries" doesn't fit on the sign. If anyone feels offended....

[spacetyrantxenu]

T236 - I played T236 late last night after I finished watching the Colts get eviscerated by the Patriots (on DVR delay). Too bad, I like seeing Tom Brady and Bill Belichick lose because the subsequent press conference is always entertaining with those two criers pouting through it.




When there's nothing new to report, post a funky angled screen shot. It's right there in the RB Reporter handbook somewhere. We'll claim this shot is from Suttree's perspective, looking at our empire from his vantage point. His might be a smoldering, patient type of wrath. He's amassing quite a bit of cash and hasn't researched anything new in a while.




I wouldn't be surprised to see him blow his cash on a mass upgrade of cuirassiers --> cavalry and then flood them across the border at some point. If he does it'll be pretty devastating. We still have our ever-pointy stack of cataphracts positioned in the south to counter any angry moves Suttree tries, but if he moves all in we'll basically trade stacks and destroy each other's armies completely.

The upshot of that would be we'd be even more powerless to repel a future attack from Retep or William, but that's the cost of keeping up with the pretense of trying for a CV condition. If we had been spending our hammers and population building power the last 30 turns we'd be much safer from attack, although completely irrelevant in the game. We obviously can't win, as the math doesn't work out for a CV attempt to have enough time to succeed, but it's about the journey not the destination, right? If we die along the way, well that's just what happens to most CV attempts anyway.




GNP is a near record for us, even though it's at 0% science. Ignore the fact that more and more of it is culture these days. I'm going to save cash while teching Education and Liberalism off specialist beakers. I'll put off swapping to free speech until we're done with our cathedral building projects, and there's no need to rush dropping OR for pacifism yet, so we'll hold the civics we have for now. When we do make it through Liberalism we ought to be close to done with cultural infrastructure and ready to start pumping culture and military like crazy. It sucks that nationhood is on the same civics column as free speech as it would be great to burn about half of our population drafting rifles while piling up culture in the three CV cities, but oh well. As everyone knows SPI is amazing at this time of the game, and we don't have it. Speaking of...I don't think we had the sense to mention banning Cristo Redentor in the pregame so someone is going to snap that up and abuse it before too long. Oh joy, the Win More button.

Anyway, I'll burn our cash in whatever way seems expedient when it comes time. If it's necessary to do mass upgrades to repel an invasion the first time someone calls us on the CV attempt, I'll do that. If I can burn it on culture slider, I'll do that. Not that this will be super effective, though, The cities we'll be pumping culture in aren't the most cottaged cities in the world, they're just...interior. Which is probably a more significant factor since we're so exposed along every coast. All in all this is probably the worst setup anyone has tried for a CV attempt on RB so probably it's more doomed than even the other failures.

What, there's another turn to play again?

[spacetyrantxenu]

T237 - Wetbandit is the first to clear the way to Rocketry, Suttree is still saving a wad of cash, etc.




William's stack that conquered Kuro is more centrally located in his territory, on the somewhat eastern side of his empire.




It could be adjacent to my westernmost city next turn if he declares war and decides this is the time to gobble me up. My military is horribly positioned to defend against William. I can't defend against everyone and he annoys me the least of my neighbors, and has been the least threatening so far. If he attacks I'll move the stuff that's been guarding the southern border up to kill whatever I can as he cuts me to pieces. I don't really have anything to counter cannons. If he attacks I expect I'll blow my cash researching Military Tradtion so I can upgrade 'phracts to cavalry and let the flanking begin. If I go crazy with that, though, he'll just add machine guns to the stack and make it a bloody mess. There's no winning a modern war when you're using medieval tech.

Followup up on the report from last turn, here's everyone's current civics. There sure are a lot of people who can rush buy things.




I'm still waiting for someone to be an arse and adopt emancipation, but no one has done it yet. Anyway, we'll have culture slider to counter that.

Demographics:




Fourth in soldiers and sliding. I'll be done with infrastructure fairly soon though and will build a gob of obsolete trash for people to kill later.

[flugauto]

What are your civics?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Representation, bureaucracy, slavery, mercantilism, organized religion for now. Will change soon as infra builds finish.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Retarded spoiler information in the tech thread. I'm not logging back in tonight, I'm going to bed. Boldly, if you're still up and want to swap every city to building rifles for us to whip next turn go ahead. If you don't, I'll do it next turn.

Retep....

Anyway, we were going to die at some point for trying a CV, but Retep's attack doesn't make sense. How does this help him A. Launch a spaceship, or B. Dominate William or Wetbandit? Go for it, we have a lot of population to whip into soldiers. But I'm not having fun with this anymore, I almost don't care about throwing the game anymore.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Bad public spoiler info + coordinated dogpile + tech thread = bad taste. End result may included loss of interest and refusal to play future games with Retep. Prognosis is terminal.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T238

"I have freed you from your hope. Be free to despair and embrace what will come, that is all the freedom you shall have. For you will all die like dogs and you deserve no better." -The Tyrant, 1640AD, first public transmission to the occupied provinces following the coup and murder of the Triumvirate.

In the long history of the Possum Kingdom, the empire had always been run by a triumvirate of leaders from three (two?) leading families. One dynasty bred the planners, one an unbroken series of brutal but steady governors, one a line of shadowy and reclusive figures of whom little was known, other than their clan held sway over enough lands and power that their membership in the triumvirate would be foolish to question. For over five thousand years these families had ruled the empire, through times of war and peace, times of health and famine, times of prosperity and dissent. Always, though, the empire held, against forces within and without, persevering and continuing the triple lines of descent among the Boldly, Brick, and Xenu clans. That all ended in the year 1640 AD with the rise of The Tyrant and the murder of the Triumvirate.



Historians (archaeologists, rather) would later attempt to unearth The Tyrant's origins, of course, but with the loss of nearly all the empire's primary documents, identifying his lineage or appearance is nigh on impossible now. What is commonly believed is that he hailed from the former province of I Burn, flung far to the northwest of the main body of the empire, a holdover from times of former glory when the old Byzantines were a regional power on the northern sea. In the time since the Sundering, when I Burn was cut off from direct contact to the body of the empire, its people had grown less Byzantine and more independent, mixed as their cultural identity and ethnic heritage was. For in times long ago the island had once (nay, twice!) been settled by more civilized peoples, only to be razed and salt plowed by the Byzantine conquerers of the Possum Kingdom.




After the second razing and near genocide of the local settlers, the conquerors decided to build a military outpost to prevent future incursions by outsiders. Though they had plowed salt into the earth, the outpost at first subsisted on fishing, although later they devised ways to earn a meager produce from the earth they had previously blighted. In time the outpost grew to a city, and then to a fully fledged province of the Kingdom, though its people were always thought to be a treacherous and false lot. Distance from the capital bred mistrust, mistrust bred harsh treatment, and harsh treatment bred discontent, handed down from father to son over the ages.




From an environment such as this it is not surprising that One would come to conquer the empire and bring it all to ruin. From its origins as the bastard offspring of the empire's appetite for conquest to its final role as the mother of the empire's executioner, Province 10 (née I Burn) oversaw nearly as much death as any other province during its day, and many, many more deaths in the long night of the empire's descent into annihilation.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T238

"I have freed you from your hope. Be free to despair and embrace what will come, that is all the freedom you shall have. For you will all die like dogs and you deserve no better." -The Tyrant, 1640AD, first public transmission to the occupied provinces following the coup and murder of the Triumvirate.

"...but with the loss of nearly all the empire's primary documents..."

What, did you finally delete all the signposts?

Man, what a total clusterfuck this has become. Whip 'em dry. I don't know that I would even bother with the culture stuff now in any city. Going for the CV is a total obvious move to anyone who looks at the map and now idiot retep has made it a public matter, stating explicitly when he intends to attack. If that isn't the definition of coordinated action, intended or not, I don't know what is. Fucking idiot.

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How much more tech do we need? Why didn't you swap into Nationhood? Would it have caused an extra turn of anarchy? This game. Man. I don't even what fuggit...