The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, that was the (weak) joke.

I would like to offer a peace treaty for those two cities, but I'm not allowed in this game. This is my way of making that offer in a legal fashion; I emptied the cities' garrisons and offered peace to indicate I was interested in it. Obviously I would prefer keeping the garrison in place until he accepts if it was allowed.

Since I'm here, two other thoughts; if he does accept, I think I'll probably start pillaging those villages. And I'll put the weak garrison down in the mistake column. I think I had the spare troops to deter the attack. I couldn't guarantee holding it in the short term due to dtay's naval superiority, but all I needed to do was make the option look unprofitable for him.

[Ceiliazul]

Yeah, that was the (weak) joke.

I would like to offer a peace treaty for those two cities, but I'm not allowed in this game. This is my way of making that offer in a legal fashion; I emptied the cities' garrisons and offered peace to indicate I was interested in it. Obviously I would prefer keeping the garrison in place until he accepts if it was allowed.

I understood your "offer" perfectly. No worries.

[The Black Sword]

I took the 3 Gavagai cities and have now offered a cease fire. I want to stay flexible, so no 10t treaty.

Dtay's got airships and I don't think I'll have some of my own by the time the treaty is up, so I probably won't be getting my island back immediately. I have continued to pillage it to pieces though and Dtay appears to have forgotten he is able to counter-pillage.

I will have at least 10 Frigates in place by the time the treaty is up. I keep evaluating neighbours to make a conquest, but though there are some options, I don't think the plan fits with the Plastics rush and current cathedral emphasis. So my power continues to stay rather low for my size. I have quite a few half-built Rifles in the queue to upgrade to Infantry(waiting to get back into OR), but I'm not sure I need them immediately. Both BGN and Old Tourist have spiking power at the minute, I guess I have to hope that they don't have any easy targets left either. And that the Krovice-BGN war is a hot one.

I got another Priest from Basilisk Caves, which is fine, and I revolted back out of Pacifism. 3 more turns until something pops out of Hornshark, I have <5% chance of being screwed over by being an Artist. Otherwise, I'll throw a GA with Artist/Priest/X. I want my 4 person GA in roughly 30t time to build 3 Gorges Dam. I have 1 spare Priest, I'm getting a Merchant out of Pure Lake, which has been making use out of this Pacifism period. My NE city of Hornshark should be able to get 2200GPP for a high odds scientist in that time frame. That leaves the question open of where I'm going to get the artist from. Which is a tricky question, without an obvious answer. For the moment, I have 3 cities racing; Basilisk Caves(size 18, might need to drop some moai tiles during the GA), Shard(will have National Park soon) and Alethkar(massive food surplus city, but still only size 10), I guess Basilisk Caves is the most likely, but I'll probably need some heavy Pacifism use to get there in time. All GP afterwards should be artists.

That means no 5 person GA for me I'm afraid, it's just too hard to control with my current situation and culture victory attempt. It's interesting that with a certain path through the tree, you can open up a lot of Engineer and Spy slots in the late game and generating a high odds one is possible. The spy slots are on Communism and Democracy though, which can be hard to justify if you're not first there.

[The Black Sword]

Ok, I figured it out. Let's hope we don't get this 6% artist in 2t:


If not, we'll get a 2000GPP 100% artist out of here.

After scrying the future, aided by a National Park, I believe we can get an 1800GPP Scientist/Engineer here by at least T222:



2t for Hornshark, then 2 more turns for Pure Lake to get it's 2400 Merchant by T226:


Which means we'd have a GA in time for my wildly optimistic Plastics ETA of T228.

[The Black Sword]

I'm planning a T200ish update when I have some time, but I don't at the minute. Here's my demos on T201:


I've got 100% science on Steel, with 3 KTBs. These seem to hold up in general, I reckon real research goes 1. Aztec 2. Me 3. BGN and production goes 1. BGN 2. Me 3. Aztec. Of course, both of my competitors also have significantly larger armies too. I'm not sure what the situation is in terms of real food surplus, because they do have a lot more population than me, but it's surely in their favour. It might make for an interesting late game if this continues, with the 3 of us prioritising different things; hammers/science/culture.

I also find it amusing that I've been consistently top exports-imports for a long time too. That's probably to do with my large number of total cities, but also few really big cities giving trade routes back out.

Here's hoping for a MoM GA next turn to even things up.

[Ceiliazul]

looking forward to that report, and the sellout for culture!

[The Black Sword]

Er, whoops.

[The Black Sword]

Ok, let's do a T200 update before it goes even more out of date, starting with the foreign perspective.

In the last 2t the Old Tourists have embarked on a remarkably effective blitz through Pindicator's Chinese lands. I just took updated city counts, BGN has 66, they have 65 and I have 51. Nobody else makes it to 40 cities. They appear to have around 35% more land/population judging by other metrics. That really drives home the point that we have a Top 2, not a Big 3. Still, I'm the only other person who realistically has a chance here and my culture attempt should at least force a late game showdown. So, here are our Superpowers:

Old Tourists - Council of Progress



I think they're running the more traditional civ4 cottage gameplan. Heavily cottaged land, Financial, Free Market, Statue of Liberty and Representation, they like their tech. And a space race is primarily tech-constrained, so if they maintain the status quo, they should be the favourites for that. Of course, with as much land as they have, they put out a respectable amount of hammers too. We add a few more advantages to their list; they're capturing a bunch of nice wonders from China, including the second(no Wall Street ) best shrine in the world, they have another 5 cities to take from him and they will probably land the Pentagon. They've shown themselves to be pretty active in world affairs, instigating dtay's fall from grace earlier in the game.

Neighbours: I don't know too much here. We have the dying Pin for one, and I'm not sure why he teched Democracy over Rifling. More interesting is their long border with dtay, who is still very much a power in this world. How much of a grudge he holds could seriously affect their chances. They probably have a direct border with BGN in their west, which would also be a huge bonus for me. They have Dreylin to their north too, who might make for another possible conquest later. Dreylin is still missing Economics and it's already a case of Rifles against Infantry for him. So it should be possible to attack him and he has a good number of cities to take.

Path to victory: Bit more expansion, contain BGN as much as possible, stop my culture run and stay the path to space.

Boldly Going Nowhere - Russian Warlord



Utilising the RBmod philosophy - throw lots of hammers at the problem. I was saying BGN is in pole position at the moment, but I'm not sure that's true anymore. He still has about 10t before the ex-Chinese cities come out of revolt and even up the land difference though. He certainly has a massive hammer advantage, indicating heavily workshopped land. I reckon he has almost twice as many hammers as the Old Tourists, which will only be exacerbated as he reaches Assembly Line. Despite that, he's not set up for a Space win. Perhaps he could even the tech gap up with mass wealth building, but he doesn't seem to be prioritising commerce - as evidenced by Kremlin and Universal Suffrage, and to a lesser extent State Property, all converting commerce to hammers. So if BGN wins by space, it'll be either through bludgeoning his competitors into submission or a wave of mass conquest first. More likely he's going for the concession victory condition, and may Confucius have mercy on his soul for trying that on a map this size. His late game trait is Phi, and I wonder how much he's using it these days. Based on my own experiences, GPs should still be valuable for quite a while, particularly once Bio comes in. Pretty cool to see that Phi is the only duplicate trait in the Super Powers section too.

Neighbours: Apparently Krovice declared war on him, but it seems Ruff is in the way to me, so I'm not sure that's a hot one. He has a couple of tasty looking neighbours. I mentioned Dreylin in the previous section, though he's probably not an immediate option. Piling onto Ruff from the other side might not be a bad idea. HAK island to his North West is surely hittable. AT to his north is another opponent who still lacks Rifling, but he might be more difficult due to his more land-based empire. This is all speculation really, you can see how little information I have above, but with all the possible targets here, I'm sure some must be possible.

Gameplan: Convert hammers to army. Crush neighbour. Add me to neighbour list. Rinse and repeat. Might want to beeline something like Artillery/Combustion first to avoid dtay's fate.

The Black Sword - Northern Pontificate



I'm going for a cultural victory in a normal speed game after already generating almost 15GPs. I plan on emphasising a bit of a specialist economy until I need to turn off tech and focus on culture and production. Clearly I'm the 3rd place of the Super Powers. My advantages include the Mausoleum of Massollous, Apostolic Palace, Kong Miao, Philosophical and Spiritual. Lack of coal will be a major disadvantage over the coming turns. I probably can't afford any more conquests and losing 3 Gorge's Dam to the Aztecs might be lights out. For more information, see the upcoming domestic report.

Path to Victory: Beeline Plastics and build the Dam. Hold off the invaders long enough to go Legendary.

Neighbours: GJ and dtay, two of the other major powers left in the game. GJ border is very peaceful and has been for a long time. I think we've both benefited a lot from this. Dtay border has sparked recently. I'll likely stay peaceful for the moment but his land is the easy to take little pieces off, as opposed to swallowing whole, so we might start up again. Plako is running a lot of power for a civ his size to my south. Still, his cities are concentrated along the coast, and his land doesn't seem to border any other superpowers. An invasion might be possible later with a good fleet. I have a tiny little border with CH. I don't feel this is worth attacking, it will be culturally crushed, plako and GJ will get a lot of the rewards and it's pretty close to BGN. Like the rest of my neighbours, he's fielding Rifles. Finally we have the Gavagai vs WLP deathmatch going on beside me. Gavagai is too small and prickly to be worth attacking after WLP takes his stuff. WLP is not really an option at the current tech level. It will also take a long time to march through his land and take his inland cities, and then I have to wait for them to come out of revolt. The conflict is really slowing him down, so he could be a good option later. I don't think it's going to happen with all those caveats though. If I had coal and wasn't going culture then I could see invading that continent with Destroyers as the best choice.

Other Major Powers:

Dtay - Fallen Colossus
In a once-commanding game position but didn't seem to value naval techs enough and fell victim to a bit of a dogpile. Now he's left in a kingmaker position. He still maintains a bit of a tech lead due to the cushion he built up earlier. He also has a large army that was used to defend said dogpile. His current economic output though is below that of the other major powers. Still, as he recently showed me, he's a force to be reckoned with. He has no easy expansion paths left either.

GermanJoey - Quiet Builder
In game I mean, not out of it. He really took his time with his Persian invasion and since then he's been content to run a pretty skeleton military and focus on tech. The only techs he's behind me are military in nature; Rifling and Mil Tradition. In particular, he's got Assembly Line and a source of coal, so he's following my original plan, golden age to put up factories, probably beeline Artillery and then invade someone. He's probably the best placed of the major powers to improve his position, with possible conquests to his East. Fortunately for me, he does not seem to have set up a commando factory, despite being Aggressive.

Krovice - Lord of the Cannon
It looks like they got themselves to Free Market and Steel and went gun-crazy. I don't know as much about them, but they managed to prise a hole in the middle of dtay's empire which is pretty impressive. Now at war with both Ruff and BGN. Ruff appears to be fighting back though. I assume the BGN one isn't hot. I think they probably spaced their cities wider apart than usual with their Cre trait, because they've been doing more with less cities all game.

[Qgqqqqq]

Loving the update!

In their position, would you rather be BGN or Finharry right now?

[Miguelito]

noob question: what religious civic do you use for the research phase and which one when you set the slider?