[Spoilers] When Commodore is 64

[Krill]

You ever tried winning a culture battle against a Cathedral? It's a bitch. A Pavilion is 50 hammers and requires nothing else to set up AND provides artist slots.

It's the least important of the three factors, but it's still there. Which I said at the time.

[Commodore]

Pavilions are pretty much just kind of okayish. But China is still easily fourth or fifth best civ in BtS.

...or Wetbandit could, you know, just opt to attack out very splashily. This smells of tilt a bit, but I shan't complain; that's a lot of dead horse archers for a single dead knight.

Great General could have been a problem, but wasn't.

Various and sundry knights and chucklenaughts go in (now have a solid core of 6-7 Guerrilla III chucks), and bink's few remaining defenders perish. Which is nice. What's a bit concerning is that there is a solid gap here opened now where Flugauto can cram in a troll city to steal the real food; Stonehenge is typically sufficient for most of these, but I need to pop 3rd ring fast here.

Or else just murder Flugauto, that would also suffice.

The barbarians wax strong; this conquest has doubled my cottage count up from “embarrassing” to “barely functional”. Obviously moving forward the real tech rate is going to come from Rep scientists; ignore the fact that the heavy whipping sprees have my cities small and angry. I'm going to miss the HR happy, but that's an addiction I really need to wean from. Need some manner of tech progress that isn't just capture gold, much as that's on theme.

Big an' primitive, just the way we like it.

Yuri got himself Paper, so you can see here the incoming Liberalism run before it happens. Just so long as Flugauto can force him to cash in before slingshotting something truly absurd, I'm okay with this. Although this screen needs to get watched, because what is truly dangerous from Yuri is Astronomy.

Wetbandit is food, and the rest are “there but for the Pryamids go I”, make no mistake.

That was the turn before. Last turn, that was fun...I took ripdoyle by storm, although a potential retake is in the offing if Wetbandit's galley (hidden by the message) is laden.

Re-retaking is a breeze, don't fear.

Then runbad was taken by the poor fat waddly bits of my initial invasion stack. They've been nice and scary, but hard to actually use. At least they've sucked up collateral.

Should just call this town LAKEFOOD.

I figured that was it for the conquest, but since I had these two 3-move knights...

Morale knights early are a terror, children.

...and boom. That's all for Contitental Azteca, folks! Now just three island cities to slowly consume.

Damnfino. The naming scheme of our damp thieving friend has been as annoying as it is inexplicable.

Yikes. That, kids, was a what we call a Blitz. What was once a sea of green is now a smoking pile of barbarism. Good job boys!

Special thanks again to the three morale knights; couldn't have done this without you guys, you've all been great!

[Commodore]

   

[Commodore]

And yes, that is me losing 6gpt even at 0% science. We're not exactly eggheads over here.

NUMBERS CONFUSING!

[Commodore]

   

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I like your fancy bumper sticker where the barbs ought to be showing research.

But a representative government in a stratified caste society? Eh, what happened to hereditary rule of the barbarian warlord enslaving his people to rush great works into the world?

[Commodore]

Well ours is a simple caste system of three tiers; me, warriors, wenches. And the representation is likewise tiered; my vote (infinity), warriors' opinions (anything they ask for that isn't mine), wenches are silent. Unless the warrior is also a wench; then she is welcome to ask for anything except for more clothes.

We have the best society in the world!

[Ichabod]

Did you use this one yet?

[Commodore]

Biggest upshot I have from that poster? Six million went a long way back then.

Flugauto finally cancelled the fur trade we had from a long way back, so I've begun ringing the phones out east to see if anyone is interested in my excess happy; that includes ivory as of next turn because I don't need Yuri's anymore, and as you can see spices are now a thing. Going directly to Drama now for some slider goodness; it's a loss in commerce but every unhappy citizen turns into a +3b, +3g merchant so I think it's worth it. We'll see how pavilions compete. War weariness and motherland unhappy are about to go away once I waddle my navy out to kill Final Azteca. I also already have a settler ready, so I'm going to settle those whales post-haste too.

Consolidation unto Nationalism for Mercantilism. Easy solution is easy.

[Commodore]

So here's a silly thing; witness LT's stack of weirdness here...it's either the weirdest-ass attack I've ever witnessed, or, much more likely, it's covering his worker cottaging. This is just...let me innumerate the wrong here:
1. It's turn 139, 580 AD. Five (four and a twitching corpse) players remaining. WAY LATE to be planting a cottage.
2. It's me, dude. I've never ever sniped a worker late game like this on a whim...I don't believe in doing small injuries, it's petty.
3. Those units would be so much flatland meat if I wanted the XP, actually makes it more tempting.
4. Roaded tile is one south, why not foolishly cottage that one first?

All those sad, unhappy faces.

Geopolitics really are about as good as could be expected. Flugauto stares grumpily out at me from his southern position, as you can see, finally making knights. I should burn at least this forward ring of cities, but I'm feeling oddly loath considering the fearsome existence of catapults. Meanwhile, Flug's dispassion is Yuri's reward; I'm trading my second gems for Japan's spare dyes now, so pavilions are an even better buy. I'm glad to have even one crack in the embargo, most everyone should probably be giving me Flug's stink-eye.

Wetbandit is 2-3 war weariness and 3-4 mother land sorrow, that's all right now.

Nobody seems particularly eager to actually suck it up and mass a huge army, thankfully. Yuri is in between white and dark green but still hopelessly ahead on EPs. I need to wrap this up in a reasonable timeframe, but despite the short-termism this power imbalance would seem to indicate, with the 'mids, MoM, and double the next nearest boffin's land area time is actually on my side, believe it or not.

Not even going to glance at the GNP chart, of course...