The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)

[The Black Sword]

I've never been so happy to read Shakespeare before!

[Ichabod]

I've never been so happy to read Shakespeare before!

So, anyone has the appropriate quote for this moment?

[DaveV]

Maybe

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts

?

[spacetyrantxenu]

ROMEO
Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can,
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
That one short minute gives me in [victory's] sight.
Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then love-devouring death do what he dare;
It is enough I may but call her mine.

FRIAR LAURENCE
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder...

[The Black Sword]

O, had I but followed the arts!

- Twelfth Night: Act 1, Scene 3 OT/BGN




There's still 1 GA left to come, probably at around 95% odds in Basilisk Caves. Most of these guys are on board boats docked at my capital, on the off chance it confuses my opponents.

I'll be revolting back into Confucianism and Theocracy this turn. This will probably be my last unit building period but I may cut down a bit on the numbers. The only real defence to these EP attacks is more gold to cash rush buildings back in after they are destroyed. Even then, I can only really cash-rush at a rate of 1 every 2 turns, they can destroy multiple buildings a turn. I'm reasonably confident that my current army can hold off FinHarry anyway, so I'll probably just complete the units in the queue(I've built up a bit in anticipation of Theo) and then push wealth. And hope they don't catch on.

[ipecac]

It may be too late now, but just fyi BGN posted regarding the Synagogue sabotage that:

I've played both before and after TBS this turn due to the tech problem yesterday. To be fair to him, or if lurkers think it appropriate, can someone ask him to log in and assess whether he needs to make any changes? I may have impacted his CV date by sabotaging one of his +50% modifiers in Elensfar and he can get a 1t jump on repairing the sabotage this turn rather than waiting until next turn.

[The Black Sword]

Thanks, I noticed it when I unpaused but I didn't feel I should change anything since I had played before him(I thought). I sort of wanted to wait till this turn anyway, so I can get back into confucianism and see exactly what culture I'm making and what I need to do. So it's good.

Btw, what's also annoying about this is that I thought I had taken into account espionage. Poison water and foment happiness missions I could deal with and even sabotage improvement would be ok since I could use artists. Albeit, it's quite a bit more effective now on Weldyn because things are so tight(and a lot cheaper than I thought). I thought these missions were taken out, but it looks like I mixed it up with Sabotage Production.

Looks like you can't sabotage Broadcast Towers while I have the Eiffel Tower at least, so that plus Free Speech will always give me at least a 2.5x culture rate, 3.5x in Elensefar.

[The Black Sword]

Ran some numbers again. Still looking at around T268 without any interference. Weldyn might be a couple hundred culture off. Basilisk can hit 22k by T272 so 1 artist is transferable somewhere else if it's not targeted. Some of Weldyn's culture is also transferable via moving the Palace. Meanwhile Elensefar has a lot of it's culture coming from wonders and artists that can't be stopped. So, they should probably ignore Elensefar and focus on the other two if they're doing anything.

Is it possible to delay the cities 6t? If you assume they half my culture rate(by destroying 5 cathedrals) they need to do that by T262. That's before they finish the tech tree for near infinite EP points. They can do worse than that though by destroying other stuff beside Cathedrals. Also an extra proportion of the culture will come during starvation which would certainly be affected. And I'll need to stretch my gold totals through another few turn. Could get very tight.

On the bright side, still no sign of a land invasion taking place. Transports aren't moving back towards their continent for more troops. Maybe I should be trying to create more engagements to increase WW though ...

[The Black Sword]

It's the little things that make your day.




Like catching your opponents airforce in the hangar.

Over 10m soldier points this turn. Top is only 12m and I'm pretty sure that's not FinHarry since BGN's production is higher and he hasn't been in a grinding war for the last 50t. Meanwhile I have less pop and infra propping that up and the only other border to defend is with Joey. William and I are completely demilitarized. I doubt they can add much to their army until the spaceship is completed either, they want to be building wealth and space parts. Beginning to wish I hadn't taken such a defensive stance, but at the time, that's all I thought I needed to do. OH has some transports moving back toward his land this turn but I'd be more worried they'll be picking up spies than troops. Well, my fleet is moving back south to see what it can accomplish. There's barely enough time left for someone to sneak a fleet up to my north and actually do something. I think we're actually pretty even now in navy and airforce, though he has more transports and bombers, but bombers are hard to use. I'm looking to stop his transports, inflict weariness and maybe grab another GG.

I've been looking up espionage trying to see if there's any way to defend against it. The best info I found from Mack-Seven's PB7 thread .

As you might expect though, there's really not much I can do. Running counterespionage for an extra 20% interception chance would be nice, but of course when Krill removed that mission he only doubled the costs, didn't put in the extra intercept. The only thing I can really do is try to play a mini game of Battleship with my spies; try to predict where's he's landed his own spies each turn, put my spy on that tile for the extra 15% intercept chance.

I guess the base interception rate will be around 10%. That assumes they've only generated 50% more EP than me, which is actually pretty optimistic on my half, but it gives a nice round number. Once he reaches my cities he'll probably always have multiple spies on the tile, and I have one as well of course, for another 30% intercept. So, that's a 20% chance of getting caught passively and a 44% chance when trying to complete the mission. If they try to wait for the full 5t and a 50% discount then they're sure to lose a lot spies. That's something at least. Each turn I 'win' the Battleship game before they reach one of the cities they'll also have another 20% of getting caught, otherwise only 12.5%.

Interestingly, if I had OBs, like I did recently with BGN, that 20% chance goes down to 4%. Didn't realise OBs had an effect there. It seems to have worked, we already caught another of his spies this turn.

Also, literally almost the entire world is spying on me. BGN and OH are putting full passive espionage on me. WLP and Dtay have gone espionage economy and I'm the target. GJ has around 1k EPs built up earlier in the game. Even Molach and AT have a respectable 300EPs each against me, given their more limited production abilities and the fact that we've pretty much never interacted. Only Plako and Krill have left me alone. Although Krill still has enough to make me lose graphs on him. That's why I haven't posted any graphs for a while, it's just me and Plako on those screens. I guess all the interesting stuff is going on over here.

[The Black Sword]

Hmm, I just realised that I can put up Security Bureaus now that I have Democracy. They don't increase the interception chance when we already have a spy in the city, but they do add another 1.5 multiplier to the costs. Of course OT will just blow up the SBs first before moving onto the culture buildings, but at least it's a more cost-effective shield for those buildings. The big problem is that I don't want to put them up now, because that is a clear tip off to OT that I'm afraid of a spy strategy. Usually I assume people will make the best moves and try play from there, but in this case you'd have expected them to have started the spy attacks already if that's their plan. There's also some wastage in putting up 3 SBs when at least 1, probably 2 will be wasted. The solution to both those points I guess is to hold off on SBs for now, and put one up if some attacks start.

Screenies of the culture cities:







Elensefar is working the coasts because BGN possibly has the EPs again to poison the water playing after me. I checked my maximum wealth build capacity too. I think I can cover my expenses after the loan from GJ ends, and that's without starving any cities. So my entire treasury should be available for cash rushing.