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

[GermanJoey]

T256.

So much for lucky numbers. I logged in today to a flurry of diplomatic windows - looks like a true world war is starting. First window:




I was truly baffled about this for a long time, until I eventually realized it was a taunt. Ugh. More on this later.

Next, we had iron for iron from dtay. Looks like Gawdzak declared on him and took some island cities; unfortunately, because of other reasons, I can't help dtay. I eventually had to send him back "iron from him and world map from me" to try to say, sorry, you're on your own, I have my own problems.







Next window was fish for fish from Gav; sure, ok. Accepted.

The next window was this:




Well, hmmm, maybe, yeah, but first let me look around. And what do I see?




2metra is finally ready to throw his tantrum and it appears like he'll suicide his navy into me this turn. I knew this would happen eventually, but this is just a really unfortunate turn for it to happen. One or two more turns I'd easily be ready... I'm just stretched so thin this game, so thin... so close to tilting...

Anyways, he has moved within striking range; I thus realized Gawdzak's message means "haha I'm invading dtay (the 3) and you can't stop me because you're about to have a war on your southwest border! (the 1)" In total 2metra has 32 destroyers and 16 transports. On one hand, yes, 16 transports worth of troops could probably raze my three iceballs on the western edge. But, on the other hand, I have several battleships and a bunch of destroyers on hand, and about a dozen frigates I can upgrade next turn. (indeed, I believe my mistake here was finishing Biology with the last of my cash, as if I had 3k on hand this turn I would have no problem.) Battleships collateral, so I'll essentially have odds in every single battle. I really wish I had saved at least one promo on one of my 4-promo ships so that I could take Blitz and really clean up, but alas.

Of course, the real issue isn't the Portuguese but how Gavagai will respond. Our main naval stacks are almost identically matched; I'm bigger overall only because I have a secondary navy near Portugal. Both of our navies are bigger than Gawdzak's, but Gawdzak has a lot more tanks (plus bombers and fighters). So, I had to think about this for a long while. What do I do here? 2metra has been patiently waiting for the chance at some revenge on me for a very long time, and likely does not give a fuck that dtay is super vulnerable, with 90% of his troops in Commodore's land plus Gawdzak hitting him from the other side. My first thought: maybe he'll accept some recompense? I offered 170 gpt. Next thought: see how much Gavagai wants to take revenge on Gawdzak compared to me? I sent Gavagai's deal back, including a 2000 gold (him) for 230gpt (me) loan as part of the deal. Basically meaning, help me deal with my stupid Portugal problem and I'll be able to attack Gawdzak. However, he could very well decide to just take Maracana, which I had foolishly turned off troop production the last 3 turns in order to secure my cultural borders in the area (Gavagai has been running lots of artists or something on that border, almost pushing me back). If he tries invading me again, I don't know if I can hold both fronts. I either need 2metra to accept my offer or Gavagai to send the loan back. Gavagai did log in after me, but did not send anything back, so I don't have my hopes up. =/

Demos:




I'm gaining so much goddamn troops per turn now, truly a militant paradise. My stupid HE has to go back on naval production now, but for a few short turns it was even livin' the Agg dream, 1-turning Commando paratroopers as far as the eye could see.... *wistful sigh*

[GermanJoey]

T257.

Whew, existential crisis averted, DEFCON level stepped down from 2 to 3. 2metra did not attack, instead sending back my offer of 170gpt + fish for fish as 500gpt + fish for fish. No thanks dude, those little iceballs don't earn a quarter of my economy! He also moved back 6 of their transports to closer to home, leaving just 10 within striking range - 40 troops is not really threatening at all, perhaps they could raze one of my iceballs but that's really about it. In addition, Gavagai came through on the loan so I spent about ~1200 gold on upgrades - two more frigate->destroyers and a few more CG3 rifles->infantries now join the rest of my reinforcements. Within a turn or two, I'll have a bigger navy in the area in terms of # of advanced ships, and probably already have a stronger navy by virtue of having most of it being battleships. So, I'll be fine, other than losing another full turn on Gawdzak in the tech race.

The loan w/ Gavagai also works to keep him honest; maybe he'll still want to stab me in the back if Portugal attacks, but if he does now it'll be a lot less profitable for him. At the very least, I should be secure for 5-6 turns or so. Thus, I moved main naval stack closer to Gawdzak by 5-6 tiles; I'll need to see Gavagai move his as well before I go any closer than that though. I'm sure as hell not going to confront him on my own, as that would be a pointless stalemate.

My navy is pretty gigantic, 163 ships in total. My main stack has about 100 ships, I've still got 16 in my transport chain (shorted a bit), and my anti-Portuguese stack will be about 40 ships. The other scattered dots are ships in transit, joining up with my main SoD.




Demos:




I'm trailing within a turn of Gawd's power now... I think he's taking a bit of losses from his war with dtay. I'm not sure why he bothered with that, by the way, I don't understand what he thinks it will get him. I guess this will put a hard stop to dtay's ascension back to a place among the leaders? But, I don't think he would have ever caught up to us anyways, 40 cities can't match 60 or 70 no matter how efficient they are. Maybe he wants to eliminate dtay's reason to have sea power, so he can focus all his military in the west? But would dtay ever have even bothered to try sniping Gawd's island cities with inferior tech? Hmm.




At any rate, Gawd switched techs from Plastics to Rocketry halfway through. Rocketry gives him SAMs, and Cruise Missiles, and Attack Submarines. Attack subs seem better than Destroyers as far as ships vs ships are concerned, as they're cheaper, invisible, and get a bonus to subs (I wonder how many subs Gawdzak has, speaking of that?). However, they don't intercept aircraft and get 1 less move. I guess the move doesn't matter too much if you're stacking them with battleships?

[GermanJoey]

T259-261.

Been busy lately, haven't had time to update. The fact that every time I log in to PB25 I start to loathe everything related to MP civ, and also question what the hell I'm doing with my life wasting my time on this shit, probably doesn't help either. However, this game is still actually very interesting... has a very multi-dimensional chess feel to it, in a way. It actually makes me like MP civ again, lol...

Maracana finally hit semi-max size, hurray. (It'll eventually get up to size 19 with a supermarket, but that won't be for a while). The city now generates enough hammers to accumulate overflow on tanks, which is sick. I'll probably need to discharge the overflow on something big, maybe Apolloa or CR if it's still available, even just for failgold.




dtay and plako are WRECKING Commodore. He loses a few cities every turn, although somehow still manages to take a few back every other turn too? I guess he's really in his element here. Here's dtay's stack:




Tangentially, here's Gawdzak's eastern naval stack. Pretty decent, about the size of my western naval stack. Gawdzak gave dtay peace before he took all the islands, possibly because I started moving my navy towards him, heh. He still got about 7-8 cities from dtay I think; I don't remember now, and I guess it doesn't really matter. The situation is still the same between the top 3.




My portugeuse front has stabilized. 2metra has been trying to intimidate me into a "protection" payment like some kind of mob boss. First 500gpt + F/F, then 270gpt + F/F. He's spent like, all his income over the last dozen turns upgrading all his units to industrial-era. However, I have modern era units, and am no longer out-numbered on this front. So, when he moved his stack up to here, I moved my stack in range and put a single battleship right out front to dare him into approaching.




At first, I put my entire stack within range, but then I thought to simulate it out first. His 39 destroyers would get wrecked attacking my battleships, but actually he has enough transports (19) that he could kill a significant amount of my navy on the cleanup. So, I can't quite approach him yet. However, he can no longer safely approach me either - if I can get the jump on him, my battleships will collateral his stack down to smithereens. However, he sneakily built this extra fort here, which I'm expecting will be stuffed with ships next turn. He'd be able to jump in and out of this port to deliver troops without risking his navy, for whatever good delivering C1 infantry vs tanks and machine guns would do.




On T261 I got a truly stupid event. 820 gold for a mediocre yield tile and a resource I have three duplicates of, no thanks. Of course, if this popped in PB18, it would be game-shattering.




T261 made me do a literal spit-take, by the way. One of the first things I do when I log in to this game is to check the demos, to see how the differential between Gawdzak and myself has changed. Lately, he's been gaining back some lost ground, as my soldier gain throughput has dropped the last few turns due to all my infrastructure builds (Oxford, several airports, and a few other random economic buildings) I had queued up 4-5 turns ago. However, its still under 1M soldiers and we're sorta even again. Anyways, what really freaked me out was the rival-best MFG. On the previous turn, I had like a 100 hammer advantage here (and compared to Gawdzak, not Gavagai!), but now I'm behind by 470 hammers, WTF. That's an extra 2 and a half tanks a turn!




Well, it turns out Gavagai completed 3GD! Wow, he got that done really quick. The hammers he gained from this were way beyond my expectations. Did he only have, like, a few coal plants or something? Cripes. Just imagine how little chance Gawdzak and I would have right now if he had another dozen core cities. Well, he's back in the game now for sure. It'll take awhile for him to catch back up on the power charts... I think he's like, 3M behind Gawdzak now?




Here's Gavagai's main land stacks. It appears that most of the stack he attacked me with is here, which was a relief to see.







Gawdzak's main naval stack. His huge tank army is on these transports, all surely full. Only 1 carrier... all of his island cities near me are stuffed with 4 bombers a piece, the max number of planes one can have. He just got rocketry last turn, so I'm sure we'll see SAMs start to pop up soon.




My stack... I forgot to save a screenshot of, it seems. It's pretty big, although a little thinner than it could be because I'm pruning away all my old 6-move transports to ensure the entire stack has 7 moves.

Oh by the way, I finally built Oxford, wow. #sOsciencE #verYSliDEr What a piece of crap this guy is. I think I'll eventually coast to about 5k beakers/turn at maximum in total, but that's as good as I'll ever do without accquireing significantly more land. Well, maybe Labratories will help some too. Maybe 5300bpt, eventually? Seems optimistic.




Hmmm, tech. I saved up a ridiculous amount of gold, something like 12.5k. Gawdzak is up Radio+Rocketry+Plastics, down MS and Biology. Gavagai is up Plastics, down Flight, Fascism, and MS. My plan is Radio->Plastics->Computers I think? Rocketry seems pretty desireable too, considering the sheer amount of Gawd's bombers. Refridgeration could be a cheaper alternative to Rocketry (to let me simply outrange his bombers, heh) and it would significantly improve my economy as well. Hmm! Well, radio first.

[BRickAstley]

Oh by the way, I finally built Oxford, wow. #sOsciencE #verYSliDEr What a piece of crap this guy is.

Stop being so humorous! You're making me spit out my meatloaf.

[GermanJoey]

Oh by the way, I finally built Oxford, wow. #sOsciencE #verYSliDEr What a piece of crap this guy is.

Stop being so humorous! You're making me spit out my meatloaf.

lol, now you know how it feels to watch your neighbor's MFG go up by 600 hammers in a single turn...

[GermanJoey]

T263-T264.

I got an INCREDIBLE event, Wow. (155 gold) Its really funny that there's an event that gives like the same gold range in the ancient era, where its an incredible amount of money, almost like a free oracle. At this point, though, this is just basically change you'd find in your couch.




dtay, OTOH, got a pretty big event: +1 range on his fighters, like one turn after stealing flight from me, XD. That's a pretty great event, as his carriers can now outrange his enemies'. dtay also took Commodore's legendary city of Changes.




That's not to say that all is going well for dtay. While they were both logged in, as well as when I was logged in, plako launched some kind of surprise attack on him, taking two cities. I had an Explorer watching plako's main stack, outside of Ghost Story (which killed like 50 units and took the city, Commodore's last on the continent), but couldn't see where the action was. He didn't take any of dtay's cities while I was logged in, although he did birth a Great General on dtay's side. I logged in after the turn rolled, without enough time to play, and it looks like dtay accepted a peace treaty. I counted 49 cities on plako's side... with his crazily effective espionage economy and possible expansion path towards dtay, we could be looking at a "Big 4" in this game soon instead of just a "Big 3." Gawdzak's invasion of dtay seems to have backfired big-time. dtay, on the other hand, seems to be losing his last chance at relevance. He'll need to keep a huge garrison in his north while figuring out how to take down Portugal, his last opportunity to grow back to relevance. Hopefully, Gawdzak will understand his mistake and leave dtay alone from now on.

Commodore has just three size 1 island cities left. He popped in for all of about 30 seconds while I was logged in last night; I thus asked in the tech thread if he just wanted to kick over to AI, a small mercy since he might actually not die too quickly. (last time I looked, his islands were actually very thickly garrisoned, a dozen+ troops a piece). 2metra jumped in the war too, sending, I think, 3 transports and 5-6 destroyers (that's what disappeared from their main naval stack, at least) up to take the island above them, whose name I can't recall. The other two red islands are on the west side of that continent, so it'll be up to plako and dtay to struggle for them.

Demos and Power graph: long story short, I'm #1 in soldiers now because Gawdzak is back to running mass wealth builds to race to Computers, presumably for the Internet, then maybe Robotics? Very gambly for him, IMHO, in light of Gavagai landing the 3GD and now being able to outstrip him in military production in the future.







I already hit 5k beakers/turn, btw. Expenses look particularly bad right now because I'm still paying off the loan Gavagai gave me 7 turns ago, which is another 230gpt down the drain. I'm also not running any real wealth builds except in filler cities; I need to phase those back in.

I, OTOH, have a big decision in front of me now. Do I want to try to peacefully race to space with the resource I have, or should I try waging war again? This effects my tech choices and my builds, and I'll brainstorm about it here.

First off, I think I might be able to eclipse Gawdzak on tech-pace eventually, assuming we both stopped spamming troops, but he has a very big lead, on the order of 35-40k beakers or so. I think racing for space as-is might be a losing proposition. For expansion, I think I have two options. The first would be to conquer Portugal, possibly moving even past their island and onto the continent. These guys have been a big thorn in my side for almost a 100 turns now, even posing an existential threat (in terms of possibly inducing a cascading dogpile) as recently as 7 turns ago. And, goddamn, I'd be glad to be rid of them. I wouldn't even need to allocate much extra troops over here as I pretty much already keep 1/3 of my military stationed in this sphere. Not only would their highly developed cities be a great boon, but with them out of the picture I could descalate my military production by quite a bit since I'd really only need 1 big, centralized stack to keep myself safe.

To do conquer the Portuguese efficiently, at least without using my main stack, I'll need Rocketry. I've been experimenting with some modern military units in worldbuilder test games, and holy shit Cruise Missiles are so fucking good and cost-effective that it blew my mind. Tactical Nukes are pretty great too, about 2X as effective as Cruise Missiles in a unit-to-unit comparison, but at 4X the cost. A few subs loaded with missiles are an extraordinary threat, as they together have a range of 11 and do a fixed 33% damage hit on the top defender PLUS collateral twice at very high damage, with seemingly no limit, although they won't ever actually kill a unit. For just 50 hammers a pop. Sure, you lose the unit once it attacks, but in big stack-vs-stack battles you end up building a lot of units to attack once and die anyways - doesn't it make more sense to lose a 50h unit than one that costs 225h? On top of that, because Missiles avoid interception with a 100% rate, they seem to "waste" defenders' interception chances. Each intercepting unit can only intercept one enemy air unit a turn, and it turns out that if they miss, they miss. So, e.g., against a stack of 20 destroyers, 20 battleships, 20 subs, and 20 transports, I hit with 20 missiles and then my fighters and bombers could then further bombard the stack with. Or, of course, I can use fast-destroyers to finish off the stack the old fashioned way. The other key tech for me here is Refridgeration for its +1 naval movement. My subs will have range of 12 for a missile strike and Destroyers will have a range of 10, which is just bananas. As it is now, rival stacks just need to stay out of range of my battleships, easy as destroyers out-range battleships even with the circumnav bonus. Within a few turns, nobody will be able to stay in range of my stacks without risk of total destruction of their own.

My other option for war is Gavagai's western flank, which is, like, way way riskier despite a potentially way huger reward. Here, I'll have only a small window, in maybe 7-8 turns from now, of racing for Rocketry in order to use using mass missiles to break his stacks and dominate our inner sea. I think he's currently racing Gawdzak for Computers (he got Radio 1 turn before me), so Robotics would be the logical next tech for him. Robotics features the fearsome Mechanized Infantry, a 32 str, 2 mover that gets full defensive bonuses, unlike the Tank or Modern Armor. Cracking these things without naval/air support would truly be an excerise in pain. However, with enough Cruise Missiles and Battleship collateral, I should be able to crack his naval stack within 1 turn, and thus have time to swing around to the east to hold off Gawdzak's navy before it can get close enough to threaten me. At that point, just a small stack of fully-loaded subs and carriers would be enough support to get me through half of Gavagai's territory, at which point I could eventually win from the weight of sheer numbers. The key then is how to hold off Gawdzak, for which my plan would be again be Refrigeration's +1 movement to naval units. That'd give my ships +2 moves over baseline in total, and thus I'd out-range Gawdzak enough that he wouldn't be able to approach without leaving the initiative to me and getting collateraled to hell and back with Missiles and Battleships. (Bombers seem irrelevant for navy vs navy fights since Destroyers can intercept, and we all have like 50-60+ Destroyers in our naval SoDs). However, my southern sphere would still be vulnerable to Gawdzak's secondary army, the one he used to conquer dtay's island holdings. While I have a modest army of my own down there, easily big enough to stop a land invasion, I have essentially no navy and little air force, despite having many of my shipyards being located there, as my need for a large standing army to deter Portugal has meant that I send most of my other shit to maintain a big enough Sirian-esque fleet that neither Gavagai and Gawdzak can do anything about without it being their primary concern at all times. (and double-vice versa) On top of this, although my main stack is bigger, and will soon be far more dangerous, Gawdzak's apparently also noticed the power of missiles and has started adding subs to his main stack, and already has Rocketry for some turns now - for all I know these subs are already fully loaded. (see below). So, attacking Gavagai would likely mean that I lose my Furungy-sphere holdings with little guarantee of success elsewhere. Gavagai would not forgive a second invasion and so if I attack him it will truly be a battle to the death. So, in light of all that, I think this option is a bad one unless I somehow gain a several million troop advantage (e.g. Gawdzak and Gavagai both maintain lots of wealth builds for some time; future-era military isn't as much of a game-changer as modern era is to industrial era) Patience seems to have worked well for plako, maybe it will work well for me too?




I think that, either way, Refrigeration is the next best choice for me. It's a great military tech AND a great economic tech, as I have many cities where a supermarket will effectively add +4-5 food, some cities as much as +6, due to the crushing health maluses I get from factories and power. Refrigeration is also on the path towards Superconductors, one of the last remaining economic techs, as it enables Laboratory builds. The other important ones are Robotics (for the space elevator, usually thought of as a joke wonder but may possibly be very important here), Fusion (free Great Engineer), and Genetics (+3 health in every city). Everything else is either pure military or spaceship crap. Speaking of the spaceship, I still need to research what the optimal spaceship tech order is. IIRC the SP HoF community at CFC has this pretty well figured out, as settler-difficulty marathon speed space-race is a big competitive category over there. (which might sound silly, but the mode is really saying: how would you optimize for spaceship launch from 4000BC if you didn't have to worry about anything else?)

By the way, for reference here's a list I put together of the power/hammer ratio (how many soldiers you get per modified hammer you put into a unit) for various industrial, modern, and future era units. The standout thing to notice is that advanced ships relatively over-contribute to the soldier-rating compared to land and especially air units. If someone's got mostly battleships and you can sneak past them, then perhaps they don't have much on land. Of course, its a bad idea just to produce troops to inflate a number; you'll want your stack compositions to be balanced based on what you think they'll actually need to accomplish in a fight.

Assuming factory + power + shipyard, with police state and without:

Code:

Cavalry = 15000/125 = 120
Anti-Tank = 14000/125 = 112.5
Artillery = 18000/150 = 120
Infantry = 20000/140 = 142.86
SAM = 22000/150 = 146.67
Paratrooper = 30000/160 = 187.5
Marine = 28000/160 = 175
Tank = 30000/180 = 166.67

Airship = 4000/80 = 50
Fighter = 12000/100 = 120
Bomber = 16000/140 = 114
Jet Fighter = 24000/150 = 160
Gunship = 26000/160 = 162.5
Stealth Bomber = 20000/200 = 100
Cruise Missile = 6000/50 = 120
Tactical Nuke = 30000/200 = 150
ICBM = 40000/450 = 88.89

With Police State: (i.e. me)
Destroyer 30000/200 * (275/225) = 183
Transport = 16000/125 * (275/225) = 156.66
Battleship = 40000/200 * (275/225) = 244.44
Submarine = 28000/150 * (275/225) = 228.15
Carrier = 16000/160 * (275/225) = 122.22
Attack Submarine = 30000/180 * (275/225) = 203.70
Sub+3Cruise = (28000*(275/225) + 3*6000)/(150+3*50) = 174.04
Sub+3Tact = (28000*(275/225) + 3*30000)/(150+3*200) = 165.63
Carrier+3Figher = 16000*(275/225) + 3*12000)/(160+3*100) = 120.77
Carrier+3Bomber = 16000*(275/225) + 3*16000)/(160+3*140) = 116.48

No Police State: (i.e. Gawdzak/Gavagai)
Destroyer 30000/200 * (250/200) = 187.5
Transport = 16000/125 * (250/200) = 160
Battleship = 40000/200 * (250/200) = 250
Submarine = 28000/150 * (250/200) = 233.33
Carrier = 16000/160 * (250/200) = 125
Attack Submarine = 30000/180 * (250/200) = 208.33
Sub+3Cruise = (28000*(250/200) + 3*6000)/(150+3*50) = 176.67
Sub+3Tact = (28000*(250/200) + 3*30000)/(150+3*200) = 166.67
Carrier+3Figher = 16000*(250/200) + 3*12000)/(160+3*100) = 121.74
Carrier+3Bomber = 16000*(250/200) + 3*16000)/(160+3*140) = 117.24

[GermanJoey]

plako and Gavagai were commenting about Espionage economy, and Gavagai is apparently pissed that plako is stealing techs so easily. I couldn't comment there (here: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...n=lastpost) since that game is still running, but I'll say a few things here.

First of all, I agree with Gavagai that its just way too effective. I didn't care much when dtay stole a tech from me, because he's no longer in the running. But plako still is and in fact is becoming more so every turn, and it is ridiculous that he can keep up with us in tech in this way. About a dozen turns ago, he had half of Gavagai and I's cities, and less than half of Gawdzak. He's since taken many of Commodore's and settled even more in previously contested space, although I'd estimate a full 1/3 of his cities are non-productive. (current city counts, btw: Com/2, 2metra/19, dtay/31, plako/48, Gav/53, Me/63, Gawd/77) His total raw commerce income has still got to be something around half of what any of ours are. The big problem is that the espionage builds don't just provide stronger, cheaper multipliers, but also provide tons of raw EP. Thus, a city with a CH, Jail, IA, and SB gets (2+4+8+8)*100 = 44 EP per turn for free at 0% slider. Looking at just the Jail and IA, you get 24 per turn for 300 hammers plus a 100% multiplier. Compare that to a University + Observatory + Library, which gives a 75% multiplier for 440 hammers and no raw EP. The spy specialist is also stronger than a scientist, as it provides 4 ept + 1bpt, as compared to a scientist, which gives 3bpt. So, 1 EP shouldn't be better than 1 Beaker and either the multiplier, as Gavagai suggests, or the raw EP from those 4 buildings needs to go. (especially the courthouse - there's no reason Org should dominate espionage by default for the majority of the game) Perhaps the mission costs can even be scaled back again if we remove the multipliers - we should test it.

However, I also agree with plako that ep economy shouldn't be completely removed just because its viable. It does have many disadvantages too. For example, plako can't actually choose what he techs, and he'll likely never get a "first-to" bonus from a tech he steals, like a wonder or whatever. Ep economy also requires some specific, sideline techs (e.g. Communism, from which plako got neither the GS or the Kremlin, nor did he get the SoL from Democracy) and a huge amount of industrial-era infrastructure. A Jail+IA+SB costs 520 hammers per city, more than a factory + coal plant. Truly no joke. He's also got to actually get spies in Gavagai's cities and leave them there for 6 turns. (1 turn to move into it and then 5 turns to stand still). These spies have a chance to be caught every turn, which Gavagai could increase by stationing spies in his ~half dozen cities closest to his border to plako. In addition, he could also, like, just declare war on plako to stop him from delivering further spies. Gawdzak could theoretically do the same, and then plako would be left with a huge EP income and nothing to do with it. So, you can see, there's a big risk to ep economy too. Like, when dtay stole flight from me it was so freaking obvious. I spotted the bright yellow transport out of place, in the middle Gawdzak's waters, 2 turns prior, watched it roll up, and then watched it head back. Hmmm I wonder if there's a spy on it ?!?? A few turns later, flight stolen, wow what a surprise! But, like I said, I'd probably have just straight-up gifted him the tech if we had tech trading on. (another great reason to play with tech trading off, so that the enemies of your enemies can't do shit like this )

[BRickAstley]

If the ep economy is so easily defeatable (just declare war on the person doing it), do the EP multipliers/costs really need to be changed?

[GermanJoey]

Yeah, I think so, specifically because of situations of situations like I described with dtay, where I don't mind him stealing my techs. For example, plako and Gawdzak and dtay's enemies and don't want him to use his ep economy to get techs, so they could declare war on him to stop it. Not a big deal, dtay can't do anything here if they maintain a cold war. However, dtay could put spies on submarines and float them under the polar ice cap down here, where subs can travel but other units can't:




And pretty much continue to steal techs from me as much as he wanted, without plako or Gawdzak being able to stop him except with their own submarines, and that's only if they somehow figure out what he's up to, which is pretty unlikely.

It's kinda funny, all this Tom Clancy shit (spys on subs going under the south pole to collude on secret technology transfers) was probably what the Beyond The Sword designers always dreamed of, but it took a mod that heavily nerfed it and now intends to remove it completely to make it actually happen.

[GermanJoey]

T266.

Commodore finally died. I got to watch it in real time, trying and failing, once again, to chat with the stony-faced plako, as he stoically slaughtered his long-time foe. Seriously, I'm happy on the rare occasions he just says "hi" or "hello" back to me. It looks like Com should have bit it last turn, but trolled plako to the bitter end. This is what he had left:







That one city had like 2 dozen attackers or something, and what remained was a single rifleman, 4.5 health. "With my last breath, I spit blood at thee" indeed!

Refrigeration in, dozens of supermarkets queued. Oh, and by the way?







You say this railroad thing lets you move 10 tiles in a single turn? Not impressed. Needless to say, all three of my neighbors have since moved their navies way far the hell away from mine. I have about 350 units on just that first screen, by the way, between my main SoD (which scrolls for quite a while to show everything), my northern garrisons, and my secondary land stack.

Rocketry in 2 then its cruisin' time!