[SPOILERS]Specialist of Everything: JC of the Zulu

[Gawdzak]

A few turns ago, GermanJoey and Gavagai signed a defensive pact, which is pretty bad news for me. Gavagai is now the clear frontrunner with both land and pop advantage. He's behind a few techs compared to me and GJ, but the KTB will ensure the fact that he will not fall too far behind and eventually he will catch up once he develop his land a bit furthur (he's FIN too!). GJ's defensive pact is now making Gavagai feeling safe enough to be heading toward Communism despite not having Assembly Line yet. I now cannot punish him for this without losing a significant amount of trade route commerce to GJ. My trade routes to GJ is worth a lot because GJ have a lot of large cities since the mapmaker is pretty generous at giving him food resources.

Anyways, domestically I now make about 3300 beakers per turn on max science. Perhaps not quite up to the level of the super civs in PB13 and PB18 but good enough to compete in this game. I can now get destroyers in 4 turns. I have Railroad, Artillery and Fascism all researched to near completion, so I can easily chain overflow to also 1-turn Combustion.

I recently also got a low odds Great Engineer which I was not expecting, I could use it to rush the Pentagon to make sure I get it, but I think it might be better to save it for something else later like the Three Gorges or the Internet. 680 hammer boost doesn't seem to be good enough value to a wonder that I don't really need since I'm already in Vassalage.

I can't think of any interesting picture to show so here's a set of graphs:







Commodore










Plako sure loves his EP, not sure what he's planning to do with it.

[Gawdzak]

GermanJoey sent me an offer of 11 gold for 11 gold, I have no idea what this means. My only guess is that he's concerned that Gavagai just started a MoM powered golden age. It would be kind of funny if this is the case, since he signed a defensive pact with Gavagai and now he's expecting me to do something against Gavagai?




I noticed a few turn ago that 2metra was almost done building the Angkor Wat (city investigation yo), so I built some hammers into it for the failgold, because why not since I have the stone?

I also got the GG from Fascism. I noticed that I haven't unlocked the West Point yet, so I attached the GG to a knight to unlock West Point and maybe I can use him for a Commando later.

Plako is now actively spreading Taoism. I get the notification because I got the Taoist holy city from Furungy. Obviously he's trying for some sort of cultural victory. I think I figured out what Plako is doing with all his EP:




Pretty sure Plako is planning to steal Assembly Line from Dtay, who seemed to have checked out of the game at the moment after the war with 2metra.

My win condition is basically to hope to be able to win a space race at this point, though it's probably a long shot.

[Gawdzak]

I paid for the Military Academy, not sure if worth but it's cooler than getting 2 gold per turn.

Plako just stole Physics from me. Logically, I know it's not that big of a deal, but I'm still kind of annoyed by it, especially since counter-espionage doesn't appear to do crap. In response, I gifted Commodore a destroyer, hopefully he's willing to pay me some gold for it. I'm not going to do anything to Plako, so I will just help his terrorist neighbour. :P

[Ceiliazul]

He stole a tech against your counterterror mission? That must have been EXPENSIVE.

[Gawdzak]

He stole a tech against your counterterror mission? That must have been EXPENSIVE.

Maybe I'm just doing it wrong. I'm suppose to just sit a few spies in the city that he's performing the mission in, right?

Sold the destroyer to Commodore for 350 gold, pretty good deal for me since a destroyer costs 200 hammers so it's better than building Wealth. At his current tech-rate, Commodore may never actually get the techs to build destroyers himself before the game ends, so I guess it's worth it for him too.

Electricity is done, Industrialism next (5t). Industrialism costs 20k+ beakers, now that's EXPENSIVE.

[flugauto]

There is no counterespionage mission in RB mod. Having your spies on a tile only increases the chance to catch a spy.

[Gawdzak]

I got Industrialism. I forgot that frigates doesn't upgrade to battleships, only SotLs do.

I think I'm going to have to try to attack Gavagai now, it's disgusting how fast he's catching up now with his MoM GA. If I let Gavagai industrialize without disrupting him then the game is over.

Honestly, the best move for me to gain land is to attack Dtay, he doesn't have destroyers yet. I think I can take over most of his island empire with battleships and tanks. However, if I do that Gavagai will just run away/ backstab me.

I make about 2000 gold per turn right now that I can spend on upgrading a bunch of units. In contrast, Gavagai makes almost 4000 gpt in a golden age. Joey makes 2800 gpt in a golden age. Dtay makes 2200 gpt in a golden age.

[DTG]

Enjoyed reading this thread.

Outdated questions:

Do you think that you could have gotten the Pyramids before T82 (or whenever it was built) with an aggressive Stone plant? Or if that would have been better/worse for your game than the GLH?

I don't much like running Caste, but using Rep. Scientists to generate 3 GScientists is the quickest way to tech through to Astronomy (4 if you want Engineering) in base BTS. It looks like you have a lot of early Calendar resources, and if you are Organized, you will want to go to CoL for the Courthouses anyway.

Maybe 3 Great Scientists for Astronomy, a Great Merchant for CS/Guilds, and then work Workshops > Cottages?

[Gawdzak]

Enjoyed reading this thread.

Outdated questions:

Do you think that you could have gotten the Pyramids before T82 (or whenever it was built) with an aggressive Stone plant? Or if that would have been better/worse for your game than the GLH?

I don't much like running Caste, but using Rep. Scientists to generate 3 GScientists is the quickest way to tech through to Astronomy (4 if you want Engineering) in base BTS. It looks like you have a lot of early Calendar resources, and if you are Organized, you will want to go to CoL for the Courthouses anyway.

Maybe 3 Great Scientists for Astronomy, a Great Merchant for CS/Guilds, and then work Workshops > Cottages?

Realistically, I don't think I could have beaten Mackoti to the Pyramids at all. I don't have enough forests and it's hard to justify 500 hammers that early in the game. Considering how big the map is, the GLH is definitely the better wonder, intercontinental trade routes is simply insane. GermanJoey's Carthage definitely benefited from this as well.

I had to abandon my earlier bulb plans because an early Astro wouldn't actually do me any good, because I wouldn't have had the production necessary to leverage the early Astro bulb. I could have Libbed Astro as early as around turn 140 and even then I wasn't ready to attack anyone at that point: cities are still building forges and still many open spots to settle. On top of that, I simply don't have enough food to be working that many specialists. The GPs are just more valuable for GA than for bulbs imo.

Hope that explanation made sense, here's an obligatory picture about game:

[Gawdzak]

GermanJoey declared war before I was ready, so I declared on Gavagai and moved what I had into threatening positions:




Staring down:




Next turn Gavagai turned his ships around and wiped out GJ's fleet. I captured and razed a size 16 back line city.

Power graph:




I now have 6.4 million soldiers, rival best is 4.9 mil.