[spoilers] Commodore and Dtay are Sitting Bull of Inca, somehow.

[Old Harry]

Well Alfie wins base commerce by 3 over zoo and 19 over Ottawa... bureaucracy and golden ages are cheating, right?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Well Alfie wins base commerce by 3 over zoo and 19 over Ottawa... bureaucracy and golden ages are cheating, right?

Yes. And so is having a floodplains grassland! I hadn't noticed that before. Joey, did you move your capital there or did Commodore just give you a river on every capital tile because he has a man crush on you? I never went back and read PB18 threads. Alfie had more rivers than my capital did too but sheesh! It's hard to beat 17 river tiles. Unless you're playing with the current mod and have (what is it? Emancipation?) whichever civic massively inflates towns now.

[wetbandit]

I never thought RB would be the place for such a discussion, but essentially:

[Commodore]

Scooter did move the capital when he spotted the oops of the grass floodplain, yup.

[GermanJoey]

I moved the capital, although Scooter did plant there with the intention to move the capital.

[Commodore]

I never thought RB would be the place for such a discussion, but essentially:

Dude, what RB have you been reading?

Totally not related, but HAK's golden age faded and here's the resultant demos (he's researching, we're saving):

Dem solja boys, tho.

HAK is definitely crushing poor Gavagai now, though. Tacape fell like a cheap thing that falls and holy Sid that's a lot of units.

Need cannon need cannon neeeeeed caaaaaaaannon!

Okay, so, forget zooming along Gavagai's roads; we're going to be plenty occupado with fighting the Holy Romans here on the Judge Peninsula. That's cool. What we do not need is for the blockade to continue; we lost four caravels breaking it, but now HAK needs to scupper along here. Galleys will be bringing a healthy cannon/musket stack over to ex-Carthagio.

Looks a little like the Eastern Seaboard here, doesn't it?

Retep is gone next turn or the one after; Donovan has finally learned to kick 'em, not just to tinkle in their direction. Bit of a Mexican Standoff here in On My Own, but I do think the Indians will manage to cap it before we can. If not, great, we are the champions. If they do...also fine, no more war weariness.

Farewell, Retep. This could have been over a couple weeks ago if you had just played your freaking turns.

[Commodore]

Dadgum. Dangit. Gosh darn it all to heck. One hitter short.

DZ retreated, it'll be okay, just another turn of war weariness.

[Commodore]

I'll do the massive turn 200 (one turn late) world state post later; news of the turn is another flawless victory unto *massive* infra hauls:

Also, at last, some honest-to-goodness population captured.

Donovan and Ruff are having a real war, it looks like...Ruff took two cities this turn...but we still don't trust the culturally-controlling Mr. Zoi to not gank our claim on the silks. So the hill line here gets pillaged until A Call To Duty can control its first ring; that'll probably take about 7-8 turns after coming out of resistance. Donovan still is our buddy because he's about to kill off the last Retep city, freeing up about twenty angry citizens from the hippy riots.

We also pillaged a couple towns, figuring that a silk plantation was "close enough". As a result, the 300 gold of pillage/capture get us Rifling next turn. All coming up roses there.

[Commodore]

Pitboss 25 Turn 200 201
Interesting times in the most interesting pitboss on the forum. Retep the Aztec is about dead, giving up seven cities to us and four to Donovan Zoi's Indians. Gavagai, scarred and hurting old bear that he is, is slowly dying to the ascendant Holy Romans, who are primed to control the entire Antarctic Circle. Demographics are a bit skewed at the moment as we do a full burn on Rifling and HAK gets KTB; Holy Rome's economy is definitely better than ours. But note with the MFG/CY, we're about to get a lot more hippies back working. I'm happy with the turn 200 status in demos.

Power overwhelming?

Our population advantage is real. Top cities screen shows the flowers of India and Holy Rome, of course, but they are dwarfed by the kings of the Inca. Cobra, our slightly squeezed and abused second city, is easily a match for any other world city, but the staggering giants of Warhorse and Cascade Point? Shatteringly vast.

And about to play with the Temple of Artemis! Yeah, I dunno either man.

Greater Inca should be a familiar sight to watchers at home; we're pretty proud of this beauty. Our original core is more than a little unhappy at the moment due to the wars and mass slaughter of Aztec units, but that'll be clear shortly. I like this general model for initial empire development; capital, second, third cities all cottaged, with the capital in particular focused on as the biggest super-city possible. Then the next few cities grow cottages for the inner set and are focused in turn on production, with lots of mines and workshops. Triplet does make me a little sad, being drafted painfully a couple times...should have let it be as light as its food tends to be. Still in all, this was a fine core to jump off from into defeating the rest of the world.

About to be down to only three opponents from eight originally, not bad.

Peninsulvania and the Nice Island are trucking along just as you would hope; here is where our early Colossus play is really bearing fruit. Not a cottage to be seen, but still the original five cities up here make some very nice commerce through fishing; that will of course go away when we cash in on Astronomy (probably when we need Physics) but the strong manufacturing backbone will just keep and keep. Deadman Switch needs a levee and then the Ironworks, it'll probably pay those investments back in non-insane time-frames, even before we speed behind HAK in the space race. Lynx, Giftie, and Odd Girl are technically conquests but they're getting up to core snuff at a pretty decent clip; Giftie will never be quite as strong as the other two because it is the most exposed but it'll draft us a lot of rifles over the coming centuries.

Still absurdly fond of this sector of the empire, I think largely because it sure feels islandy.

Of course the best production ground in the empire is former Celtia. I'm still mildly peeved at Retep's hilarious troll here, but in the end don't doubt that workshops have been great for this whole place. The reason we were able to stare down HAK's huge drafted army and still have doom stack for the Aztecs is this manufacturing hub; with wealth builds it's even been a pretty key economic component of the empire. Down south is uncomfortably exposed to Holy Roman navy and cuir incursions, but thus far we've been pouring no more blood into the region than they, so I'll take it.

Herdsman and Slave built us Great Artists too, recall! That's been nice.

The final region of Greater Inca is the newest, the still-revolting lands of former Azteca. I'm on the whole rather okay with Donovan taking the island for himself, even though that means anti-amphibious garrisons are needed all down the coast. Most of the cities, bless the sacrificial altar, came loaded with courthouses so this place is already in the black, and the numerous towns and villages the region sports will work better for us than they ever did for poor Retep, thanks to Printing Press. This region will be a second economic core for us, with the mass markets already giving us some help in the gold saving times. Donovan is a mild threat of course but that's why we station an army full of cannons here, just like on every single other border. :shrug: Seven Aztec cities, with two extra fillers enabled, made this a very tidy, profitable little war.

Regrow, make libraries and universities, ???, profit.

What is not going to be assuredly profitable is the titanic struggle for third place. India and the Zulu show the pain of middle-focus empires on this map; Holy Rome and Inca have done much better focusing on the edges compared to these “fat” two. Long-term Donovan certainly holds all the cards, given his recent painless absorption of the Battle Island from Retep, so if he's focusing on the place moving Ruff's offensive makes some sense. He has certainly profited in this first round! Long term this serves to profit HAK and us more than anything; make our Aztec winnings secure, lets HAK go gangbusters on Carthage...yeah.

Ruff has more tactical elan and the initiative, Donovan has more spirit and bigger size. Winner? The viewers at home.

One thing that would not make sense for Donovan and Ruff to do? Dogpile us. I don't want to give the impression that I'm underrating our position here; we're doing very well. But trust you me, HAK and Mindy are drafting us closely, and their long-term position is currently better than ours. They have a huge empire, of course sadly undergrown and overdrafted right now, but Organized HRE doesn't care about costs for anything. And he's now going to stretch literally around the globe as Gavagai dies. HAK's been scattershot, but he built himself a settler before Oracle and has been playing smart ever since. Truly impressive game, buddy.

Need another play showing the game-state, don't we?

Interesting times we live in. Power shows the build-ups of the Bronze Rumble-Buddies, of course. With HAK, the dreaded Shark Fin of Pain...isn't nearly painful enough. He's going to get Carthage soon.

Cannons are still awesome, Retep's hard-fought defense just kind of looks like white noise.

GNP charts are a bit depressing; behold our lead vanished like spit on a griddle. Printing Press is universal among Those That Matter, and military tradition is fast becoming ubiquitous. It's not completely dire, Aztec land is loaded with towns that will help soon.

One of these fools will discover Chemistry eventually, I suppose, then frigates will rapidly end our caravel fun, and Astronomy makes our GNP so much worse.

So, we gotta use our current advantages to get more advantages. And the reason I'm not dour? Manufacturing. We...have some advantages in workshops. And an incoming golden age spike.

Rifles and cannons and ironclads will be needing all these hammers.

Final graph, crop yield. HAK drafting away a lead, us jailing our people into happiness:

Our mood is overall thus hopeful and optimistic; if we can hammer Holy Rome under then we've got this. To HAK's credit, that's been true since turn 100. Might be true turn 300 as well.

[The Black Sword]

None of the pics are showing for me.