dtay pb37 [spoilers]

[dtay]

Well as I assume most have noticed, Gav declared war and is taking my islands. I got astro this turn so should hopefully be able to start pushing back (in a defending my stuff sense, not really in a taking back islands sense), but meh, not good for my chances, a lot due to causing me to dry whip a ton.

The plan in my head was to leverage pro-LBs + castles (which are amusingly economical with the +1 tr and econ not being a no-brainer tech) to make all my shit super unappetizing, letting me delay astro ~10 turns more than was responsible (which tbc is like 1000 extra colossus beakers), as well as letting me get to an early nationalism. The hope was Gav/Krill/Coev would see that and leave me in peace. But alas. My hopes were getting up when Coev/Krill declared war, but gav came in. Who to be fair was the one I thought was most likely given his spiking power and refusing open borders (plus coev I could respond to on land), but blegh.

At this point economy has taken a substantial hit, I make about 3/5 gpt as I did 5 turns ago (was about +450 gpt with no wealth, now about +240) due to lost cities + whipped ciites + techning astro. That could come back a bit as yuri cities grow back online, but that at best will just keep pace with the whip schedule on all the coastal cities unless gav gives me peace. Like at this point I would probably ceasefire -> fish/fish and just not make a play back for the islands and hope gav reciprocates, otherwise GJ is just going to run away (he's probably at like ~70% to win atm).

Anyway, long time no update, but the recent turns were exciting enough felt worth reporting.

[dtay]

Some actual thoughts:

I got away without losing too much against gav. Lots of longbows and castles appears to have eventually deterred him. Honestly don't think it was in retrospect worth it for him, though I wish he had perceived that beforehand. He appears to be making up for this though (see below).

I think I am now a lock for liberalism. I put a turn of beakers into it last turn to be super careful, but GJ (or anyone else) still doesn't have paper, leaving them paper + edu + 1t of lib behind me. I actually think the turn of lib was unnecessary, even in the world where GJ had overflowed off of paper, then uses a great scientist on education, then techs Lib I'm pretty sure he at best would have tied me even if I had kept teching chemistry, depending on precisely how much overflow he went into Lib with.

But anyway, I both put a turn into Lib and everyone still lacks paper, so I'm 95% sure I can finish chem then overflow into 1t Lib (for lib in 3t) and beat everyone even if they bulb things, and 99% sure my ability displayed ability to 2t lib (well displayed only to GJ who logged in before me) will deter others from wasting beakers on paper trying.

This means means lib unto steel and cannon + ironclad + drydocks, all great.

In other news, Gav tearing into DS, so we will soon have a 3rd blob-civ. If I had to place victory probabilities right now it would be 54% GJ, 25% me, 15% gav, 5% Krill, 1% something else crazy. GJ still has a clear land lead, clear (large) production lead (matches my golden age), largest army, and will soon catch up in econ as his land comes online. I have an current beaker lead of a few thousand, better (for now) beaker generation, whatever I can accomplish with steel, and I guess 1 fewer thrown golden ages. Gav I don't think has anything he's clearly doing best in, but is close enough in the above catagories he could catch up with a stumble or efficient conquest. Krill is a step further back (no absorbed land), but is not egregiously behind and an extremely good player. Everyone else is both behind and small and not known to be extremely goood.

Sidenote - it is so nice to not be flying blind anymore with paper-tech-vision. People can see my tech too now, but pretty sure they all already could given my literally-zero investment into EP. (heh, I have castles everywhere which give +25%, but no city besides the capital has any base EP generation). Agg+Ikhandas* does that to you, really makes courthouses seem not worth it compared to any other commerce generating building. Like castles. I'm really starting to love castles.

*Strictly speaking Ikhandas don't actually reduce ROI on courthouses, though they do reduce the need for commerce-generating-buildings compared to other priorities. Agg though is counter-synergistic.

[dtay]

I think I f'd up and threw my golden age 1t early - if I had put 1 turn of breakeven into constitution I could have 2-turned it at golden-age 100%, then switch to Rep, then on the last turn of golden age be allowed to switch civics again and get into Theocracy.

Will probably cost me a few hundred beakers compared to that path. Oh well.

Still need to settle on future tech path after I get constitution and clean up stuff I skipped that is useful (Epics and Theocracy mainly).

[Commodore]

Can we see broad world shots? Commentary optional.

[dtay]

Sure, will do next in game

[dtay]

Shot of the center



My GG city, once I get into Theo will make 10xp boats with Theo+2ggs+Drydock. Plan is to settle 1 more GG here, then build westpoint to allow commando factory in the endgame. Other GGs will go to ironworks city. You can also see the hilarious barb spearman that I haven't gotten around to killing. Probably will finally do it with a random draftee soon hoping to get xp.



Southern border with JR4. Beginning to settle fillers as I now have Merc and soon to be Rep+Merc that makes them quite worthwhile. And can spare the hammers to make settlers.




Current and Former Eastern Islands. I might take these back someday, but they're hardly the priority. They're just not that good once you just consider them the same as any other city someone else owns, rather than my own former possessions




Western Islands. Borders gavagai, but we didn't fight over here. I sent 2 galleons over during the war and discovered basically uncovered cities, but then we got peace the next turn. Don't know if related, but quite possibly. 




Northern Border with C. Declaring war next turn, just completed 1 full round of drafts on every city. 



C border city. This will trivially fall, but based on his power level he has a stack of <something> sitting somewhere else





Demos - GNP exaggerated by researching a tech with high KTB



Yeah I haven't exactly build courthouses. But see that slight uptick in the slope at the end! I have 1!



Between myself, GJ, and C I bet this is going to be a naval conflict nightmare

[dtay]

To be clear - I[m waiting for C to go since i'm declaring war and he went before me last turn (due to taking taking a turn on both sides of the roll).

[dtay]

Took Zodiac spire. C tried to retreat the catapults out of it, but chased them down with my knights once culture dropped. Unfortunately C has a stack of 15 or something knights sitting off by the next city, which splitting off the two-movers dangerous. We have about the same number, except he assuredly has other random stuff converging from the fog.

I basically think he can't stop me if I slowly march in a giant stack city to city, but very much would like to conquer him faster than that. I suspect a navy going up his coast will be needed (unfortunately my navy is only now reaching C's borders, since most of it was produced in the south. At this point just constantly streaming new frigates out of every coastal city (all of which have drydocks).

[dtay]

More interesting times afoot - declared war on GJ!!! 

I really only did this because he moved 1 galleon into explicitly threatening position and 2 others into plausibly-threatening position (sitting in a city in range of a city I just captured). Moved my galleons into threatening position to fork a few of his islands, then offered peace. If he doesn't take peace I think I can raze a probably 1, maybe 2 cities next turn depending on how much he can reallocate troops with galleons. This is lucky timing too b/c his frigate fleet is pretty injured (probably fought C's fleet).

On the less lucky front, while I also took out a set of 4 frigates of his, at the cost of 5 frigates. IE - lost every single battle in the 30-60% range. Alas. I'll get some nice xp for the my frigates though.

Declaring war nuked my trade routes though, so had to put research builds everywhere to get rifling in 1 turn, (important since GJ has had rifling for a few turns now).

[dtay]

And Joey took the peace.

There's a bit of interesting psychology to that, if you think about it. the zero sum nature of the game at this point Putting aside the remote possibility that Gav or Krill can win, any deal Joey and I strike with each other is a bad deal for one of us, a result of someone's mistaken perception of what is in there best interest.

In this case, 10t of enforced peace. It lets Joey try to raze remaining C cities with effective impunity, but also lets me integrate C faster and safer and get out of WW.

It also saves us both a ton of naval warfare headaches and stress, so I guess that's positive sum lol.

My updated win probabilities are something like 60/40 for Joey and myself. Krill and Gav I think are basically out of it now.