Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[spacetyrantxenu]

Pffft. You call that a good exchange? You lost seven units and only got six cities in return. Obviously an unequal exchange! TBS lost zero units against pindicator and got how many cities' worth of land? That was a brilliant move on his part!

[Gaspar]

Where's our convo? It had much more swear words.

Its as if you answered your own question. Mostly I thought the conversation where I was explaining what happened to someone who wasn't paying attention was more illustrative to the lurkers than the one where you and I take turns agreeing with each other and bitching.

I wonder if TBS made out better than Thoth when I got rushed.

Edit: /Reads chat. /Realizes how many brilliant insights he's giving to the conversation.

Yeah, I think for a long time I was fixated on other stuff but once I really thought about it - this more than anything is what decided the game. Thoth got more land out of it than TBS but TBS spent zero extra resources taking that land.

Hey. Popping in to say I discovered this thread a couple days ago, and it's been a great read.

I think its worth recapping the two wars we've fought recently.

Lost: 5 Knights a Horse Archer and a Maceman (570 hammers)
Gained: 6 cities, 3 with full buildings intact and no turns of revolt, plus burned one other city.

That feels almost mackoti-esque.

Very impressive, that. I'm rooting for you!

So yeah, its basically between Turkey and Rome for 2nd place.

...for second place, apparently.

BTW, after this, I'm going to branch out to just generally any fictional cities so if anyone has anything they like, feel free to suggest. The naming scheme feels a little Commodorian honestly, with the sheer volume of obscure references so I almost decided to change it entirely but instead I'll just open this up a little bit to be less random.

Now, as to this, your naming scheme reminded me of the Paradise faction from the bundled-with-BtS Final Frontier mod, so I checked out their city list. Apart from the generic 'Paradise,' there are 7 names you don't already have:

Xanadu
Nirvana
Kurnugia
Duat
Empyrean
Tian
Kobol

None of them are all that special. Xanadu is a real city (Shangdu) romanticized in poetry; Nirvana is less a place than a state of being, which is fine for a Hindu-Taoist empire, I guess. Kurnugia/Duat = Tartarus. Empyrean/Tian = Elysian Fields. Kobol is a Battlestar Galactica reference, I think? Anyway, you can pick and choose what you like. Maybe save Duat for a city you take off Ramses? (Come to think of it, hell is an apt descriptor for that barbarian iceball, too.)

Long time no see Azoth! Glad you've enjoyed it. There was a little blip in the middle when the dog days of crashed economy and surging Mongolians got us down but I think mostly we've managed to put together an entertaining thread, which ultimately is the most important thing. Eat that, TBS!

I appreciate the city name tips. Even a little pseudo duplication is fine at this point - I'll definitely put some of those to use with the next batch of cities.

Pffft. You call that a good exchange? You lost seven units and only got six cities in return. Obviously an unequal exchange! TBS lost zero units against pindicator and got how many cities' worth of land? That was a brilliant move on his part!

This might be the most Xenu comment ever.

[spacetyrantxenu]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[pindicator]

I wonder if TBS made out better than Thoth when I got rushed.

Edit: /Reads chat. /Realizes how many brilliant insights he's giving to the conversation.

Yeah, I think for a long time I was fixated on other stuff but once I really thought about it - this more than anything is what decided the game. Thoth got more land out of it than TBS but TBS spent zero extra resources taking that land.

This may be the biggest under rated cost to doing an early rush against a neighbor. You're handing his other neighbor almost as much benefit in space but without the cost in investment that you're putting forward.

I'm noticing this in pb18 especially (and obviously can't get into details), and it was not something that factored into my calculations because of the incomplete data you have in the early game.

I guess I would say not to blame Thoth too much, there's just too many unknown unknowns at the beginning of a game.

[Lewwyn]

Looking at TBS pop going down... I think we gotta trip the golden age to speed up steel.

[Gaspar]

Looking at TBS pop going down... I think we gotta trip the golden age to speed up steel.

Well, he's going to finish Taj this turn or next according to sabotage production so that could just be whips before his GA.

[Gaspar]

t156 - A New Start

The biggest news of the turn is, as Lewwyn mentioned, TBS whipped away a billion pop. I'm expecting him to finish Taj this turn or next while Commodore will finish AP this turn or next. I can do C&D when I'm interested.

Anyway, I basically had a super lengthy conversation about this with Noble. And basically if we're giving TBS credit for being a very good player, he's going to attack Oxy and not us. To wit:

2nd in power (only a couple units difference) vs 5th in power
Guys spending 4 hours on war turns vs Guy spending 10 minutes on war turns
Guy with Jans teching Steel vs guy who can't build a two-mover outside of a chariot

The only reason to attack us is emotional reasons and TBS hasn't shown any behavior in that direction. That doesn't mean we stop preparing but it doesn mean I'm not throwing a panic GA when my only ace in the hole at this point is MoM. So the plan is thus - we save gold on Steel while we wait to see what TBS is going to do, we 1t Banking the turn before Olympus comes out of revolt if TBS hasn't shown pending aggression, we fire GA turn Olympus is out of revolt and swap Caste/Mercantilism/Pacifism. Banking is a necessary tech because we're already getting no foreign TR - both Thoth and Commodore are in Mercantilism. Also screw Thoth and his random blasting EP to make us lose graphs and constantly scouting me via OB that I get no benefit from anymore.

Anyway... not really a lot to say about this turn, we did buildery things while redistributing units. Our main issue right now is at Hogsmeade. Because Oxy inexplicably built no libraries, it will take longer to get Hogsmeade to pop 2nd ring. Therefore we're going to lose all the tiles I marked on turn roll:




That's going to make everything around there awkward for a bit - at least until we can get into caste and use Artists to push the borders to their proper standing point.

We're planting the city to set the rest of the border with Oxy next turn:




Other than that, I think I covered everything last turn so here's a couple shots of the parts of the empire I haven't been talking about:






And demos:




I'd really like 20t to sandbox if you wouldn't mind, TBS.

[Gaspar]

t157 - Eye of the Storm

So my predictions were spot on vis-a-vis the opponents:




I didn't predict this, however:






Yeah, so it looks like most of last turns whips were Universities in OR so he could build Oxford during his GA. This turns whips, those are Cavs in Theology. Look over there, TBS, over there. Look at all that easy, free land you can get from Oxy who has shit for military and what he has is on my border. THESE ARE NOT THE OTTOMANS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR.



(There's like maybe one of person reading this who will get the reference from the picture.)

Anyway, prospects of Dick Van TBS tripping over us notwithstanding, the rest of the turn was pretty mundane. We agreed OB with Oxy at the price of Sugar. Our 5th sugar is easily worth a worker turn so that was a no brainer and we actually did get a couple TR from him so that's good. We'll almost assuredly cancel in 10-ish turns when the culture situation is mostly under control. We settled Purgatory this turn on the border:




Beyond that just the continued procession of units eastward and the continued building of city defenders/catapults in the event of a counter-attack by Oxy/the end of the world from TBS. Not much else to say. Baltia comes out of revolt next turn and we'll settle the linking city between it and El Dorado. Workshops are going up all over the south which will soon be an actually productive part of the empire. And we wait for the other shoe to drop.

[Lewwyn]

I didn't predict this, however:

Ah yup.

5 bucks says TBS war decs us and offers peace for Q or something douchy before then turning and demolishing Oxy with a secured 10t peace treaty.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

He tripped over an ottoman. I see what you did there.