[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

&

That's a very nice defensive victory against dtay. Was RNG favorable to us or did dtay just overestimate his odds (because that wasn't even too close to succeeding)? Anyways, getting so many enemy commandos out of the board without losing a fight/city is just great.

I didn't have time to check the odds this morning - I assume he overestimated, with 40% culture and lots of pinch Infantry in there he shouldn't have got odds, but he didn't win in the first 12 fights which sounds a bit unlucky...

And happy to see 2metra-XP-farming working decently as well. I have no strong feelings about how to deal with him now, city capture gold isn't really significant and the production power of those two cities isn't really either. One further option would be to take those cities, but return them as part of the peace deal, but maybe just leaving them with one defender is the most solid option. Perhaps 2metra sees that we just wanted to help him get rid of some unit costs?

Getting so many new commando infantries is really nice. I was wondering if we could use them already next turn and burn some of 2metras core cities, but those will have usage elsewhere too.. Apart from capitalizing on any dtay openings those commandos will very likely be the no.1 method of making warring with us painful if ever end up fighting with mack again.

If 2Metra doesn't accept peace then I want to commando his core while we still can. Him having Infantry, Cannons and Machine Guns is a little worrying. Luckily we've got about 30 destroyers that should prevent him sending units to bother us. If we don't do that then looking for opportunities to split dtay in half is the order of the day. I wish we still had that great artist... (Edit: also Mack still has at least one city defended by one outdated unit that we could hit if he is mean).

When will we have 50 commando infantries ready? I also wondered if we could surprise WilliamLP with a commando strike and burn ~10 cities? Just for the sake of scoreboard..

You want to make more enemies Fintourist? Really? Why can't you just play nice!

[Old Harry]

Sorry folks, i don't think this is going to work out. I underestimated just how much time it was going to take to barely manage an empire of this size - i think it's taken me half an hour just to cycle through cities and figure out builds/tile assignments on these 2 turns. And my schedule doesn't allow for more time than that.

Honestly, I think you need to call this. It's been a fun run and we all wanted to see it come to some thrilling conclusion, but pretty soon we're going to be propping up the corpse in a rocking chair in a corner of the room with its best sunday dress on, trying to convince ourselves it's still a person. Nobody else has volunteered to take scooter's civ over, and the only other power in the game is only thinking about how someone competent and with a lot of time to dedicate may ruin his chances. So just call him the winner and get out the shovels so we can lay this body to peace, please?

Or maybe you do that, retire the top two civs to AI and let the fun teams play their stuff out. I don't know where to go with my metaphor for that option.

Sorry Scooter, you were right. This thing is a beast. I'll happily help you end turns promptly so you don't have to be chained to it; I owe you that much.

Brick:
- I think the only folks whose votes really count in the PB13 life-support debate are Plako, Mackoti and Pindicooter
- Mack and Pindicooter have both called for an end
- The way this version of RBmod is set up means getting away from your competitors just isn't possible, so there isn't anything any of them can do to end the game before space, which is ages away
- So any chance of calling it a 3-way draw?

[Fintourist]

- The way this version of RBmod is set up means getting away from your competitors just isn't possible, so there isn't anything any of them can do to end the game before space, which is ages away

Aren't mack and scooter already pretty close to having necessary techs for space? I mean, we have mostly given up on economy, used a lot of gold for upgrades and are still getting rocketry ourselves. I think someone could go space in 30, latest in 40 turns? Obviously what should happen is that our 3 score leaders would actually compete for the win and the slower ones (plako + mack/scooter) would try to pile on whoever is going to be fastest to space (mack or scooter surely). But those guys have mostly avoided fighting each other the whole game, which has been a bit disappointing for us. (well there is surely a kingmaker aspect in attacking and I can understand that at this point RL time commitment is also a concrete problem) But actually this game would deserve a finish where the guys with top score would all actually try to win and not be happy with having a 2nd/3rd highest score...

The way I see it there is always just 1 winner and rest are losers. Technically being 2nd is worth nothing, besides winning I think performing well is what counts (which is not necessarily the same thing as surviving or having the highest score of losers when the game ends. E.g. if the game would be called now I think it would be wrong to say that WilliamLP beat dtay in this game - although claiming that dtay played stronger than WilliamLP would maybe be wrong as well).

Btw Brick, this post is not some kind of statement regarding how the end of this game should be handled. I'm just thinking out loud here. While I would consider ending this game early a pity I'm already looking forward to it: PB13 & PB18 have been running simultaneously way longer than I thought and it has somewhat reduced the team aspect of our playing (OH is running the show here and I have the turn-playing responsibility in PB18), which has been a lot of fun throughout the game and something I'm missing.

[Old Harry]

Turn 271

Lost 6th Isonzo to 2Metra (3 cannon, a cav and an inf to our 4 inf and Lunch the scout ) but signed peace only to discover that plako attacked him this turn too. I presume he made a peace offer due to pause shenanigans but we could have dog-piled him!

Making peace was probably the right move though. Just found a bomber and 13 tanks down in Mackoti's back lines. We need to be careful... I'll get our commando units into places they can do some harm in two turns time. Also a switch back to Nationhood for drafting looks sensible - we'll only have 12 Commandos. I'll wait to see if he attacks on t273. I have a feeling we should get another ten turns, but who knows? We finish Rocketry this turn so will start building SAM infantry (can they be drafted?)

Should we offer dtay peace?

On the space issue, Pindicator got the Internet this turn, so perhaps an end isn't far off. He and Mack can both research Fibre Optics. Perhaps Mack isn't going to bother with us after all, in which case we should definitely kill 2 metra or dtay. And actually - can we judge when is the best time to cripple Mackoti's space race with commandos? I'm still unhappy about losing Madrid to him...

[Ceiliazul]

Lunch the scout )

[spacetyrantxenu]

Are you guys going to build a Lunch the Scout shrine like TBS built for the musket hero?

[Old Harry]

Are you guys going to build a Lunch the Scout shrine like TBS built for the musket hero?

Oh, is that what he did? I did wonder what those cites were for.

5801 years just isn't long enough for a scout, so yeah, how about in ten turns time (if the game is still going and Mackoti is concentrating on space instead of eating us) we take out 2MN with Marines and commandos, then rename every one of his cities in honour of Lunch? I think that would be an appropriate response...

[spacetyrantxenu]

I endorse your plan to honor his memory! May he reign over the lands of his enemies forever, amen.

[Old Harry]

Turn 272

One turn away from peace with Mackoti expiring... A thorough examination of his lands with airships makes me think he's not planning anything. Unless he has his troops all stashed on the boats on either coast. In which case we're screwed. Anyway his air support would be the worry and I can't see anything, so I'm feeling fairly confident.

On the Marines/2MN thing - it'd be about 13 turns for us to get Industrialism right now, so we may need a cheaper plan or more money. We could see if Mack attacks next turn and switch to Representation and run lots of specialists and wealth builds instead of building units for a bit if not...

[Old Harry]

Turn 273 preamble

In another wild mood swing there are a couple of things that make me think Mackoti is attacking us next turn. One is the position of a Privateer, the other is the appearance of 17 Battleships, 31 Destroyers and 11 Transports off our east coast.

Presumably he has a bunch of two movers (likely tanks) on his boats that can now, thanks to the culture he holds on our southern border pick off our southern cities at will. Also if I was him I'd have bombers completing in all the border cities this turn.

If I struck first - this turn - I could burn a size 16 and a size 18 city. If not then we'll barely be a speed bump under the tracks of his blitzkrieg. But what if I'm wrong...

Any thoughts? I'll probably play for real this evening or tomorrow morning.