Oxy changes his naming scheme to Community... and inexplicably doesn't get cancelled

[BaII]

Isn't there a hammer bonus for RP's? I think that is good enough to warrant RP and Plako can easily outtech so it might even be possible that by the time we finish rifling he is finished with infra and is prepping for an attack. I would personally rather have the tech already so we can just start drafting rifles. MT doesn't give us as many benfits as RP because we don't get that hammer bonus so it's better to get MT once we finish the rifle route. I don't think Education is a good choice here because we get access to very expensive buildings that provide the same benefits as a library. Not exactly worthy of a tech to research atm cause we're so behind and I don't think we have the chance to get Oxford up.

[Cheater Hater]

Yeah, Replaceable Parts gives some hammers, although I don't know how many mines we're actually working. RP was always the default choice, I just don't like wasting beakers

Are you sure plako can get to Assembly Line that quickly? Sure plako has more GNP and a slight lead, but he's really far away from Rifling--he doesn't even have Printing Press yet!

So when I do get Rifling, what should I do? How much should I push my power? When should I attack plako--ASAP, or waiting for an opening? Should I even be the aggressor?

[BaII]

Once we get rifles I would personally think that throwing everything on to rifles would be the best choice to delay the inevitable push from Plako. If Plako is showing signs of immediate aggression then we should try to look for openings in his defenses. If we do get Astronomy how much of use will Observatories be? If you are confident that Plako isn't going to be invading soon I think we get half cost obs cause of CRE.

[Cheater Hater]

Sorry for the lack of reports for the past week--granted, there haven't been that many turns, but hopefully we should be back on an upswing now that the holidays are over and that civs are dying again. I can finally get rid of the Azza tier on my rankings!
It's not only Azza though--Qgqqqqq, Bacchus/Gawdzak, Yuris, dazed/mackoti, Nakor, and of course xenu are all on their last couple cities, and a lot of them (Q, mackoti, sometimes xenu) have been a constraint on the turn rolling. Of course, Gavagai is the one constraint war probably won't be able to eliminate--maybe we could get another takeover/team-up like mine when someone else is eliminated?

Also, a fun fact; sometime between T179 and T180 I actually met Molach! That, combined with Azza's elimination, means I now know every living civ!
Of course, since Molach isn't particularly advanced (he has Monotheism/Education/Compass currently up on me, but notably no Gunpowder yet), all he does is clutter up my foreign relations screen:


Obviously the main two war groupings are the dtay dogpile (FinHarry and Krill/novice are still fighting dtay, even if the war's been cold for a bit--it's times like this I wish the Zulu were still alive so I could get intel on that war, even if it was just graphs ) and all the cleanup (me vs xenu, BGN vs Qgqqqq and Nakor, TBS vs mackoti, AT vs yuris). The one good thing is that even after all this cleanup happens and I'm near the bottom of the scoreboard again, the peninsula and my power ranking/draftable rifles should help me against anyone who tries to invade me--unless they invade me while I'm attacking plako, which is certainly possible.

My domestic stuff can be found in the folder as always (and I can post the previous turns' stuff if anyone cares)--the biggest annoyance is that xenu has moved all his sea units up, meaning I lose all my seafood and have to keep track of all my coastal cities. I actually get visibility on xenu's city next turn, so I could try to determine how many troops are on those ships if I wanted--though that would require graph math, which probably isn't worth it

As for tech path post-Rifling, I don't have a clear idea of what I want--backfilling Compass/Optics to get to Astro seems like a good idea (especially since I have cheap Observatories, something I forgot about), but I don't know how that compares with just going for Education--I wish there was an easy way to see how many people have Astro, and if I'll get the max discount (I certainly do for Currency, and probably do for Optics as well)--of course, we'll see how that goes after Rifling (which is still probably ~10 turns away if I were to guess, since I'm getting almost no known tech bonus on it).

Any more questions, don't be afraid to ask--I promise I won't ignore them like I did BaII's last post (sorry, by the way--PB23 got most of my recent attention )

[Ceiliazul]

Any more questions, don't be afraid to ask

Just one: "attacking Plako"?

[Cheater Hater]

Any more questions, don't be afraid to ask

Just one: "attacking Plako"?

I should have figured that statement would raise some eyebrows
Plans haven't really changed since the whole Rifling beeline started--attacking plako is the only way I'm going to make any progress, as much as I don't want to get into a huge war and spend hours on the game (especially since I also have PB23 to worry about). I have no clue how I'm going to actually execute the war though--plako has scouts in my territory and will notice any big military buildup (is there an easy way to tell if he has my graphs or not?), and he still has a massive power lead at the moment. We'll see how things are going once I actually get Rifling, since I know I'll need a bunch of Rifles to get anywhere.

[Ceiliazul]

If he has more than 40 EPs on you, and more than (iirc) ~50% of what you spent on him, then he has your graphs.

[Cheater Hater]

T183 pictures are here, main decision is whether to waste all the beakers by going for Rifling (9 turns away at 100%, and I think I can get there if I start next turn) or to backfill a tech or two (notables include Compass->Optics to chase away some of xenu's sea forces and build Harbors, and Drama to build Theaters to fight a bunch of culture wars I'm losing (and get the arrow bonus on Music eventually). For most of the cheap backfill techs I'm getting a full known-tech bonus (Drama is a notable exception; only 7 other people know it) and can research them without going more than 80% (near break-even; only a slight negative GPT), so it won't delay Rifling any more than one turn a piece. Still, it feels like plako's starting to move against me (he put a bunch of espionage into me, for instance, and I don't have his research anymore), so I might have to bite the bullet
Any thoughts BaII?

[BaII]

I think we have to bite the bullet on this one. After Rifling the choice of tech should be drama cause it cultural control would be nice to have on the border with Plako when he comes in.

[Cheater Hater]

I think we have to bite the bullet on this one. After Rifling the choice of tech should be drama cause it cultural control would be nice to have on the border with Plako when he comes in.

I think we get to have our cake and eat it too with this situation--Rifling takes 9 turns to research at 100%, but if I started it this turn, we would have just under 8 turns of 100% research available. Instead, what we can do is research one of the cheap techs at 50-60%, which gives us enough gold to easily get 8 turns of 100% research. After that, a combination of getting more GNP (from growths, especially at Jeff) and not needing 100% on the final turn (and instead only ~80%) should get us there in the default 10 turns, and we get an extra tech early. Of course, the question is, what tech should I be researching? When I played the turn earlier, I set it to Compass (since it has the maximum known-tech bonus, and Harbors add an average of ~6 commerce to our coastal cities along with the health bonus), but Drama has benefits too (it's cheaper, so I only need to run 50% science to 1-turn it and thus can run a higher slider on the last Rifling turn). I can log in to change it sometime tomorrow; any other thoughts on which tech is better if we can get it now? Drama also would mean we should be able to put Globe somewhere by the time we can start drafting Rifles; any idea where that would go?