[PB22 Spoiler] Joey and Borsche puke on the funny pages

[GermanJoey]

Some numbers for the numbers guys:



That's a 5 to 1 ratio in hammers, power, and units!

I've gotta heal up a couple turns now, which is fine because I've gotta wait on some cats too. I figure that what's gonna happen now is that they'll stuff a million CG2 Longbows and pikes in the holy city, so I'll probably just walk past it and take out the rest of their civ while I wait on the production of another dozen cats or so. Then again, I should have 4 cats total ready immediately, so I could get Bombard II on them and knock down the 60% cultural defense after just 2 turns of bombardment... gotta sim that, probably. There's also a good chance that they'll pull out of the city completely though, to cut their losses to just that and save their capital... that would be more convenient for more me in the short term, certainly, although I'd also like to just get rid of these annoying guys completely.

I offered mack 5gpt for stone for some walls on my furungy front; 5gpt was what he bought my last spices for when Gavagai invaded him, so I think he'll be agreeable to the price.

[GermanJoey]

T160.

Ok, the big news of the turn is that it looks like retep is taking over for Mackoti, which means the game will be dying within a few turns. I guess that Gawdzak had the correct strategy after all, to pump his score as high as possible with high-value techs to end up in first place when Caledorn finally takes the game down?!??

Adrien nicked my WE but couldn't kill the pike, which is fine. I'd much rather have a 4-promo pike than a 2-promo WE, if I had to choose. His C1 Trireme north of CD won a 50% battle vs mine, while his unpromoted one near ZP didn't fancy his odds vs C1 one, and so decided to instead... blockade my fish, for some reason? Why, just out of spite?




These guys don't know what they're doing... it's like, if you gave a gun to someone who's never fired one before and told them to defend themselves. Now, instead of acting rationally when they find themselves in a tense situation, they close their eyes and just start firing wildly in a panic at whatever direction they think might be dangerous. Well, whatever, what a mess. I had planned to set up ZP to 1-turn a catapult via overflow, but realized could set it to a Trireme instead:




Since this trireme only does me any good to guarentee me victory against their trireme, I figured I'd take the 50% odds this turn on the chance that I wouldn't need to build another. I won, cool. I have a 4-mover, produced from my HE city in response to Gavagai's naval buildup, coming down to help with the one above 3CD. He can still raze the workboat if he wants to, I guess.

Speaking of Gavagai, it looks like he's truly just building a workshop after all... still don't entirely trust this, though. I guess it's alright as long as we still have at least 2 jungle tiles between us...




I wonder if Mackoti wants a sub because Gavagai declared war on him again? Its really disappointing to me that Mack is leaving, but that would be at least a silver lining. I was really counting on Mack to keep Gavagai pinned down while I have war troubles far away... retep is no slouch of a player, but a sub totally throws into question the entire diplomatic metagame. I've built up good relations with Mack, giving him OB for ICTR when noone else would, giving him beneficial resource trades despite no benefit to me (and him back to me), etc. On the other hand, Gavagai and Mack had some serious bad blood due to Gavagai backstabbing him a dozen turns back. Will retep care about any of that? Probably not, since the lazy bastard hardly cares about much of anything...

edit: logged in to pause for retep and Mack declared war on Gavagai, and Gavagai gave him instant peace the same turn. Ruh roh... either they just agreed to carve up HAK somehow, or else Mack just gave permission to Gavagai to invade me. Mack, what gives! I gave you those burgers!!!

[GermanJoey]

T161.

Game is back on... Krill took over for Mackoti and declared war on HAK! I think Gavagai has to attack HAK nowish, or else cede all that land to Krill...

Mack did not sell me stone, too bad. I asked from Gavagai instead, maybe he will.

[GermanJoey]

T162.

heh. not much of a turn...




Interesting tech situation... Gawdzak and dtay both have Gunpowder+RP! dtay is Commodore + DNF's problem, but for me, it looks like I'll need to get Optics->Astro next to keep myself safe from Gawdzak (who, by the way, switched into Nationhood + Theocracy in his last turn of Golden Age)... maybe something like Optics->Astro->Gunpowder->Chemistry->MS? That sounds about right. I don't think I need any other backfill tech urgently, and Gawdzak is way too close to Galleons+Rifles for me to compete toe-to-toe with him on both land and sea. Better to just spam all kinds of ships up in his face. Man, like hell am I gonna let you treat me like an AI from some single-player islands map game!

In the south, REMAI's remaining forces aren't looking like much... if they don't reinforce this city this turn, I can take it tomorrow using just 2-movers. (wishful thinking, of course)




Gavagai refused my stone for gpt offer, instead countering with a request for 18 gold. I have no idea what this means... my best guess is that he's saying he needs stone for 18 more turns, who knows for what, and then I could have it. *shrug* On the off-chance it was a loan request, I accepted. If I misunderstood, I trust him to send it back. I wonder what he's doing with it? Maybe he's taking a crack at Sankore? He's got a pretty good spread of Judaism... OTOH, that's usually a wonder you only care about when combined with the AP and/or Spi. What else uses Stone that's available? Angkor Watt? He's already got a shrine, so that's just another Spi+AP building... Is there something obvious I'm overlooking? Why has it been so hard buying stone from players with their Moais complete when mine is too? I just want to build a few fucking walls for slightly cheaper here, people! I tried asking from plako instead, this turn. If that whiffs too (edit: I logged in to check, and it did), I think I'll try DNF AND Krill AND Gawdzak all next turn. My walls near Furungy can't complete without Stone before the peace treaty expires...

HAK asked for Iron for 5gpt, so I countered with 6gpt and 28 gold, the closest I could get to 9gpt - the same price he insisted on charging me for sugar. I ordinarily don't like to haggle on small amounts - I consider it petty - but if you consistently haggle me over nickles and dimes, as HAK has, I will haggle back... just out of spite, I suppose. (edit: it turns out he accepted).

[agent427]

I've forwarded your capitalist sentiments to the rhizzone... expect a tankie hit squad at your door any day now

[agent427]

The Jewish Cathedral uses stone as well

[GermanJoey]

I've forwarded your capitalist sentiments to the rhizzone... expect a tankie hit squad at your door any day now

[GermanJoey]

T163.

Free Market increased my gold saving rate from like 450 -> 740, heh. Some shots:

ToA!



And to think that when I settled this city, I thought it would just be some filler turd.



5cpt internal routes.

REMAI's garrison is obviously way too hearty to hit with just 2-movers now. That said, I'm not sure what to do... I'm gonna try baiting some of his units out. I've got about 35 units around the frontlines, trading them straight up would be just fine.




Demos at break-even:




IIRC I closed the food gap to within 10 food last turn, before my anarchy. I'm very curious as to who is ahead of me in MFG... IIRC, nobody is in a golden age at the moment, so that number is legit. Maybe plako? I have a lot of forges but I bet he has more. He's also got a hell of a lot of land. I'm up to 3rd in land area but my number is still only 2/3 of plako, heh.




He has 29 30 cities, dtay has 28 29, and I'm at 28. Commodore looks completely out of settling options except to either hit plako or dtay; his settling choices early game really put him behind, both because its shitty and slow and because placing jungled grassland rivers near Commodore is like dangling crack in front of a crack addict. It is unfortunately likely that Commodore will chase after plako, as it seems that he's already used an artist bomb at Peace Talks, here, significantly heightening tensions between them:




I guess their earlier war Commodore's offense with the goal of taking this little penninsula that he shoulda settled ages prior. Too bad for plako, although his border now looks super secure.

[GermanJoey]

T165.

Man, my brain is so fried today. Been sick with the flu from hell, slept like 3 hours last night... figure I should write this up now just to help me focus on the turn. Cause, like, ya know, I might call in sick to work but I'll be God-Damned if I'm not taking my turn when its up.

I upgraded a trireme near MCG last turn to a Caravel; will be a 6-mover next turn via battle-won XP, very nice. I only had enough cash to upgrade that trireme last turn, but I upgraded 3 more this turn too. I didn't upgrade my other trireme near MCG because I'd like to use it to blockade somewhere, maybe their capital.




REMAI didn't take my bait, too bad. I bombarded this down to 13% this turn with a trio of Accuracy cats; I'll be able to hit with 4-5 cats next turn, depending on whether I bombard again or not. I have no idea if this is worth hitting... gotta sim that out first. If this city gets heavily reinforced next turn, I might just offer a peace treaty. I want these guys to just fucking die already SOOOOOOO BADLY, but I'm not willing to wipe my stack over one city.





Gavagai still has not declared on HAK, nor has he declared on me. I wonder if HAK is maintaining a tough garrison on his front with Gavagai, out spite due to their past conflicts, while Mackoti/Krill/DonovonZoi (did Krill get a replacement??) is taking undefended cities for free? Anyways, Gavagai and I traded maps last turn, and I now suspect he'll want to REMAI's land north of their capital, to cement his control over this huge area. It should be pretty much free land for him, as I'm confident that Korea is pooling all of their units down to stop me. The more I think about it, its for sure the right move to make... I've wanted this land for ages and in some sense feel that its mine by Divine RIght or Manifest Destiny or whatever, but I'll be hard-pressed to argue against English "facts on the groundwhen/if I push over there - " - that is to say, if, by the time I push Korea off this penninsula, all the land up there is white, there'll be very little I can do then unless I want to start a huge fucking war with the #2 power. Hmmm, is this even coherent? I'm half fucking delirious right now, lol...







I also got a map trade with plako, and it seems the cities he's been settling lately are all internal fillers, nothing yet on our big continent so far. Gawdzak refused map trades that I've offered him, but I've been checking him out with a workboat and it looks like he's got some Knights scattered around. He popped a Great Artist last turn, or was it 2 turns ago? I wonder if that has anything to do with his sub request in the main forum... perhaps it was a low-odds one that was supposed to be a GS, popped out of his NE/TGL city? Like, maybe his strategy was to bulb Astro w/ a GS while teching to Rifling, draft rifles (he ended his 16T GA in Nationalism) while cash-upgrading some pre-built galleys, then dump a big stack of Rifles and Knights on my shore? But now, without the GS, I can beat him to Astro and box him out with higher XP ships. Hmmm...

I hope nobody else subs, I feel like it really cheapens the game we've played up to now when contender civs peace out if things aren't going their way.

[GermanJoey]

Some sims show that this is absolutely not worth attacking right now even without factoring in more reinforcements from them, ugh, what a waste of time this push was. I said that I'd need Rifles and Galleons to take these guys out like, what was it, 30 turns ago? and it turns out to still be the case now. I guess I got my hopes up when their stack got wiped so ridiculously, but I suppose one should never underestimate the power of the dry whip.

I razed a village and sent them a peace offer for 200 gold, the idea being that y'all either give me this cash and live a little longer, or I'll wring it out of you the slow way while terrorizing your coasts.