Team [REDACTED] as [REDACTED] of [REDACTED] [SPOILERS]

[Azarius]

Turn 171

I am so lost. Playing only occasionally early was fairly simple as what is going on is fairly simple. Later on when you aren't even sure what is happening in the game as a whole it's much different. We're 2nd in score, and 2nd or last in most demos. Top score and gnp is perp of the seas, who has the least amount of cities by a good margin. We are also at war with them, but as best I can tell it's not a hot war as we have no forces near him or he us. We don't have a ton of forces in general actually. Fiddler is also at war with perp of the seas. We were building research in a good chunk of cities and running 100% to hit taxation. I am using the great engineer we had in the capitol to build the pillar of chains there. Republic is a new civic in eitb that sure looks nice, but I think that maintenance may kill us if I leave city states so I didn't swap. If I was smart I would have actually checked the difficulty the game is set to as I have forgotten. I'm used to single player on deity where maintenance can be a nightmare, but if it's something more reasonable we may come ahead with republic. Going to keep trying to settle the second continent and work on getting more of an army/navy.

[RefSteel]

Diplomacy

Violin clown looked high and low
Free to say hi.
I could not find one, but
He sent the message anyway!

(And before I came back, believe it or not even rhyme!)

[Azarius]

No turn again tonight it looks like, but I had to post anyways because I am annoyed. I posted a report with a picture and everything for 172-174 and it's not here ><. Maybe it was eaten as I posted it and it said so in the screen that pops up and I just failed to read it.

[Azarius]

I am out of town for the holiday weekend and will be without access to a computer with civ until Monday night most likely. If the next player up wants to start partway through my set to keep the game moving tjats fine by hme. I thought this set would bw done but the turns have sat for long stretches a couple times this set. Maybe none would even notice if it didn't move for 5 days again.

[RefSteel]

Diplomacy

If you ask why - I am good!
Sounds heavenly chicken juicer!
Sorry for the late response
Too many days, I know, grow
Facts I do not know if it's the way of help
This will stop the pirate, I think.
Classes help such fraud, I know,
And run out of money updates
Who would forget things like that?
Can not you put them in the right hat!
What we offer can be ordered:
A little knowledge of its fleet,
In the case (after coming here
To overcome; This is what I fear -
I hope your grief if I)
Pirates Send them your way.
And from that knowledge in
When you send Translation
Most of the rhymed as
I agree that it is difficult.

[RefSteel]

Diplomacy

You will receive in-game request me
To send free magical life -
Charming well, but the painting business
To keep your people happy faces.

If you accept, it will help
Forces Navy to kill the clown with little noise.
We have to kill them, you know
Whenever I try to strike blow.

I sunken galleons loaded here
Today - so do not be afraid!
We have the opportunity - with the help of a minimum
You, our friends in the Far East!

(Or maybe the west, the world is round?
Who cares? Essentially, the plan is sound!)

[Azarius]

Turns 175 -178

Finally have time for a half decent update. My appreciation for the really good reporters has grown considerably after having tried to keep up with it myself, and I'm only playing 1/3 of the turns .

Except for a couple cities that are finishing forges or shipyards, military being built almost everywhere. *Except for a carnival I just noticed after posting the screenshot of our new blockade ><*



As you can see, our power is still woefully inadequate. A fact that Sea Perpentach has definitely taken notice of.



Mostly frigates and caravels, with the Black Wind and a pirate or two thrown in. They mostly have longshoreman promos so not much cargo space to be had, but some. He may be following that up with an invasion force, or it may be meant to interdict us from interfering on his continent. Our picket lines of ships have mostly been killed off, lanun+cirumnav+longshoreman+possibly fair winds means his ships can move an absurd amount compared to ours and just ran them down. Sea Perp has also began exploring our second continent.



Maybe he'll get eaten by a bear. Second continent is fairly light on real military. One iron golem, a couple wood golems and then it's a smattering of animals hunters and a couple warriors. I can't justify sending more over though. Given our relative power levels, we need what we have at home for now. What we have over and can build there is sufficient for cleaning up small probes, and if he sent a large force there we couldn't get enough over to matter. Especially if he moves ships in between the two continents soon, which seems likely. Also as you can see in the screenshot, we finished Kithra.

On the lighter side of things, we have a giant spider currently popping Bradeline's Well in the territory between Sea Perp and the Fiddler. Here's hoping for either something useful that does not have to be brough to our continent because that's not going to happen, or something truly horrible that goes rampaging in Lanun lands.

[Azarius]

Turns 179-180

Buildup continues. We have over 50% of the soldier points of #1, so go us. We're a long way from being able to project power well still, but we don't look as naked as we did. We also took over the #1 score spot. Popped what looks like the last goody hut on the new continent, got a map for my trouble . A tech bump could have certainly helped depending on what we got. C'est la vie.

Sea Perp continues to skulk around our shores with ships I can do nothing about currently. Several frigates are in the oven, but given his move speed advantage we aren't likely to get too many naval fights not of their choosing. So far he seems content to blockade us everywhere he can, no landings so far. I've reinforced where I could for our coastal cities. We just don't have enough to go around atm, and I am loathe to spread it out too thin, so have concentrated units in the older copastal cities around the capital. His ships came from the east, so that may be where he would send any invasion from. I also do not think he has had vision of our western cities on the main continent. If he does get frisky over there before we've built up more, it will just have to be a crumple zone. I really wish I had more of an idea how the conflict between those two is going.

I feel like we're in a good position as long as their isn't some D-Day force headed for us, because we still don't have that much of an army, and golems are just so slow it's hard to react.

Thus ends my latest turn engineering the crazy train. Dave, I believe you're up next, unless Qg has changed his mind as far as being skipped for this whole set.

[DaveV]

Got it.

[DaveV]

I'm back in the driver's seat for turn 181. We're still alive; that's about the best that can be said.

Somehow we lost control of the seas, and much of our coast is being blockaded:







Although we're first in score, the graphs show just how misleading that is:







... and most of that power is an enormous number of bears. Expenses are bad:



The log seems to indicate that the blockade is a pretty new thing.




We're still in slavery, which seems kind of pointless. The competition is in much better civics:



We suck. What to do about it? We're about to claim the great engineer at Machinery, and I can put our mud golems to work converting all our mines to windmills for break-even hammers, +1 food, +2 commerce. It looks as though the Merchant is still available at Mercantilism, which would be enough for a 2-man golden age. I converted an Earth node to Air to compensate slightly for our disgusting naval movement disadvantage. I deleted a bunch of bears; they're really not a good unit for this stage of the game. I moved a couple settlers north to settle coastal cities that should start out at least break-even in commerce (we had four settlers sitting around, and the path to the southern continent won't be open for a while):




If you look at the minimap in that shot, you can see our three remaining boats moving back home from their parking places in the West Ocean. Finally, I founded a city in the desert on the southern continent: it seemed like the settler was in a reasonable spot for a city. It would still be good to grab the wines and copper down there. We're having some happy problems, especially since the pirates pillaged our pearls: