The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)

[The Black Sword]

I'm back.

Thanks a lot for taking over Yuri. You saved us from a potentially game ending 3 week pause. There's no reason to apologise for Frontline, the game's very time consuming and complicated at this stage and you were jumping straight in.

And thanks for the update too. I'll try take my time over this turn and figure out if we still have a shot. The turn order should be a bit nicer, and IMO a bit fairer, to us with them bombing our improvements each turn.

[The Black Sword]

[spacetyrantxenu]

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, specifically, I think I could win an always peace game from here. I guess the Old Tourists could launch a space ship around T270 and I could get the extra artist out before T280 if left in peace. Travel time FTW!

Is it worth 3 months of 2+ hour turns where I probably lose in defending anyway ...

[Commodore]

Never give up! Never surrender!

[yuris125]

If you feel that you don't want to play those 2+ hours turns, I can keep playing. Although it wouldn't be fair I think, if I finish off your game after you spent 230+ turns getting into position with a winning chance

Can't say I did the math, but my estimate for the 9th GA was T275. You do need to enter the full starvation mode at the right moment though

[The Black Sword]

Thanks for the offer but it's fine. Even if I was totally out of contention I'd play on, it's just a question of bare minimum effort or actually try to win.

The problem with that great artist date is it requires Pacifism, which is really expensive these days. I think we have a better option for that money ... Democracy. Cash rush some Cathedrals and Basilisk Caves will sing. Painfully obvious in hindsight as usual but what can you do.

Unfortunately I've already revolted us back into Free Market/Theocracy so we need to wait 5 more turns for another revolt. It's not too bad, we do need the Free Market money ASAP. 5t of Representation beakers will get us half way to Democracy and it will cost us 3k in potential gold savings to finish it off. We should have about 9k gold left from these 5t and I'm hopeful we can then swap to Free Speech for the rest of the game. Which is under 20t, or a T270 finish date by some quick numbers. That's getting 18k culture in Basilisk Caves and bombing it with 8 artists. I guess we'd need to build about 500gpt to cover it. There is a reasonable chance of missing our great artist rolls(the lowest being an 80% in Elensefar right now, which has been getting prophet points all game) but there's not much we can do about that right now I think.

Another option I've been considering btw is moving the Palace to Basilisk Caves to speed things up, but we'll see how much Weldyn needs Bureau itself.

That doesn't sound like a bad plan, and I think it's reasonably hard for FinHarry to interfere with. 25t is only 2 months, so I guess we'll give it a shot.

[yuris125]

Makes sense. I actually thought we needed Universal Suffrage, but with no slider invested in science, didn't think we could research Democracy fast enough to benefit from it. Like your plan. Best of luck, will follow!

[The Black Sword]

I found a use for that GG too:


2 culture per turn!

I finally noticed the aluminium situation:


I think I'm allowed to be a bit pissed off about this. BGN didn't feel he had to fix my much bigger map imbalance(coal), why should he help FinHarry with theirs? I don't know how he could have communicated that he wouldn't break a coal deal with no diplo but he obviously didn't even try. Looks like we finally have a relatively secure source now, it's only 50t too late.

I'm getting a lot more Rep beakers into Democracy than I initially thought, through stunts like this:


Note though that FinHarry will be doing the same thing soon, which will improve their eta. I also missed that they already have Computers, which will improve it again. A T270 Launch seems very pessimistic right now, I guess we should try sell out as much as possible on the culture attempt.

For reference:




The Aztec fleet:


And a change in our own military policy:

[The Black Sword]

I have no turn to play, so I'm left to make up silly posts like this. Our players as wesnoth factions. There's not much left to say about the game really I think, everybody knows what they have to do. But I'll answer any questions if you have them.

Old Tourists - Drakes



Fragile units for their cost but they have lots of mobility and hitting power. Hit like a sledgehammer but they don't like protracted fights and the defense depends on dancing out of range of retaliation.

BGN - Orcs




The solution to every problem for the orc general is: more Grunts. Interestingly, the general dynamic of an orc-drake matchup is that the orcs have the early advantage but they have to kill the drakes quickly or they'll lose the long game.

TBS- Knalgan Alliance




A very defensive faction that lives in hills and mountains. Spend our time refining our stonework.

Dtay - Undead



They still remember the glory days.

Krovice - Elves




Their borders haven't moved in millenia, but parties will venture forth to hunt orc.

GJ - Loyalists



I'm running out of comparisons.
Army has access to a lot of specialists units, good relationship with the Knalgans.

That's the main 6 factions, but I guess the others deserve some pictures for surviving so long.

WLP - Clan




What do you expect for Mongolia?

AT - Mermen




Roman feel to these guys portraits.

Plako - Trolls




Always a pain in the ass to kill.

Molach - Naga




They're green?