[Spoilers] Boldly Going Nowhere and Mr. Cairo go to Florida. Hilarity Ensues.

[Charriu]

As far as I remember the DP only triggers, when you are being declared war. The attackers (wetbandit) DPs don't matter, because he's the aggressor.

[Mr. Cairo]

As far as I remember the DP only triggers, when you are being declared war. The attackers (wetbandit) DPs don't matter, because he's the aggressor.

ok, thanks.


Logged in the next turn to see this:


Which I was going to reject in favour of 50 gold/turn. But then I looked at the bottom right corner to see that JR4 had cancelled our defensive pact AND open borders. I realised that SD might not be willing to accept a DP with me, even at that price, if he knew what JR4 had done. So I accepted it. I also stopped upgrading this turn and turned on tech. Steel will take 4 turns. I've got a few more Coal Plants and Factories coming online. JR4 also cancelled a trade offer which was getting me pigs (but not another exchange of health resources). I offered the same deal to wetbandit, I don't know if he'll accept, I'll have to look around elsewhere. But I can also build Aqueducts in cities that need them, and see if other players are willing to trade. I can always windmill a mine or two if necessary, but most of my cities have Grocers, so their health isn't an issue.

So, 1000 Gold is a pretty steep price to pay, but it will keep me safer for another 10 turns.

[Mr. Cairo]

SD cancelled our DP when I stopped the payments. So I sent it back to him offering 50 gold/turn this time. We'll see how he responds. Still, only JR4 is trying to match me in power, everyone else is just teching, with their power remaining flat.

JR4 is keeping pace, but isn't able to catch up yet. He is building a lot of Ironclads for the Eastern Sea: six so far, to my eight. His all have C1, whereas 4 of mine I promoted up to Nav1, while the others will get C2. The benefits of the Pentagon: 2 promo boats right out of the Drydock.

I built West Point a little while ago, not in the most ideal city, but one with hammers enough to almost make a 3-promo Cannon/Cav per turn.

Once I get Railroads I'll be making Machine Guns out of near every city to stay safe.

Finally, there's my capital. Which just completed Ironworks. Which means it's base 43 hammers is now run through a 250% modifier, 275% when building buildings. Overkill for most things, including units. But it'll let me build Wonders very quickly. Eiffel Tower being the one I want the most.
And it makes nearly 700 beakers/turn while I'm teching, and it doesn't even have an Observatory yet. Once that arrives it'll be 744 beakers/turn



My best bet is to get to a point where enough of the other contenders (JR4, Wetbandit, SD) don't see a good chance of defeating me and concede. If they all gang up on me I'd lose, almost certainly, but that requires someone to make the first move, and trust that they then wont get stabbed in the back by their erstwhile "allies".

[Mr. Cairo]

It really is me vs. the world now:



But that's ok:









SD is starting to build Cannons now. So I set two of my cities to building Research and shaved a turn off of my Railroad ETA.

Here's my current tech path:

might swap Physics and Combustion
After Physics/Combustion I need to decide whether to go straight to Industrialism and Tanks, or Artillery first, to unlock Destroyers and Artillery. It'll depend on what JR4 does tbh. He just finish Mil Sci, for some reason. If he goes for Artillery next, I'll have to as well, I need to keep naval superiority on the Eastern Sea. Wetbandit is actually the tech leader, he just finished Physics. But his power is a flat line, so I'm not as concerned about him as I am about JR4 and now SD.


edit: Also just realised that Artillery unlocks Anti-Tanks, so if wetbandit rushes to Industrialism for Tanks before I can get there, then Artillery at least gives me a half-decent unit to defend against them.

[Mr. Cairo]

My score went down on the turn roll, so I can only assume that my a city starved because someone cancelled a health resource trade. Well, it was bound to happen eventually, I had just hoped to avoid actual starvation by changing an improvement or two in the affected city(s).

[Mr. Cairo]

Railroad is in and I've got the path towards the JR4 border done, so I've moved my units down from there a bit. Next turn I'll have the path towards wetbandit and I'll be able to combine my stacks and react to any attack with my entire force.

I actually would rather had done it the other way round, because wetbandit just moved a bunch of his Cavs away from his border with Cornflakes, where I'd been keeping an eye on them:

But unfortunately my workers were mostly up there anyway. And even if he did attack this turn (unlikely based on the power graphs), I can build the railroads over to there next turn.

Also building Machineguns in most places, although JR4 has been piling on the Ironclads, so I've got to keep up with that.

Here's the power graph for the enitre game so far, just for fun:


SD and wetbandit are just now starting to see more significant power increases (their lines look a lot more flat for the past little while in the 50 turns view), but I'm still way ahead in GNP and MFG:





Diplomatically, I decided to test the waters somewhat a offered a DP to Cornflakes. Especially with wetbandit moving troops off of his border. I'd like to get some resource trades with him, but so far he's not been very forthcoming, but at least he hasn't cancelled the OB.

I also just got a Great Artist, which will come in handy no doubt.  

I plan to stay at 0% science until Sci Meth is in. Upgrading for the next two turns and saving for the two after that. I'm not looking forward to my Monasteries obsoleting, but it's necessary and I've delayed it long enough. With 2 turns of gold I should be able to tech for quite some time, hopefully pulling ahead of JR4 and wetbandit.

Finally, a mystery. On Superdeath's turn I lost a tile's worth of score, but I can't figure out where, or how. He didn't found a city or anything (like Cornflakes did a little while back) since his score didn't go up. So I don't know. I'll find out when the game ends I suppose.

[Mr. Cairo]

Wetbandit declared on me, then JR4, and now DZ. Fortunately, that last war declaration happened after I ran a great merchant into his territory for a nice 1700 gold, which let me upgrade a bunch of cannons into Artillery.

Meanwhile my cities are starving now I've lost the resources I was getting from wetbandit and JR4. Which means my hammers and techs will turn, I also only have OB with Cornflakes now so my trade routes are suffering. And on top of that I'm at least 40-50 turns from a Culture victory. Especially since two of my culture cities don't make much commerce and therefore turning the culture slider to 100% isn't going to help much.

Now I'm just waiting for one of them to actually attack. I can crush pretty much any stack that runs into my territory, but the cities near DZ are quite vulnerable. I expect to lose them tbh.

There's pretty much no chance of me winning this now, but I plan to hurt whoever does begin the actual fighting.

I think SD has the best chance, he has the most land, and that's what really matters now.

[Mr. Cairo]

Can someone explain why this doesn't work? Don't railroads only use 1/10 of a movement point, surely I the Cavalry should still have some movement points left after moving onto that grassland tile in DZ territory?

Also, massed Airships are brutal. Despite a few interceptions, all my units were damaged when he attacked with his Arty and DZ didn't lose anything. I knew this was coming but I hoped at least to cause some damage. I really should have just evacuated most of the units in there ages ago. At least the Infantry.

Anyway, I had been trying to see if I could still pull off the culture win, but even with my cities building Culture and all have ~200% culture modifiers with 100% of my commerce going to Culture, I would still be 50-60 turns out. So, yeah.

I think the lesson I can take from this is that managing your civ well and ending up with a decent economic/tech/power lead without also having a corresponding lead in land is a recipe for disaster. If I had either been successful and conquered DZ, or more likely, not attacked DZ and the dogpile of wetbandit had been succesful, my chances of winning would have been so much higher. In retrospect I realise that this dogpile was inevitable and as soon as I started to get ahead in GNP and MFG and Power (and Culture) my chances of winning dropped to 0%.

So really, land is all that matters, and so I'm going to call it now, unless he makes some terrible mistake, Superdeath will win this game, because he has the most land.

[Krill]

RR use 1/10 of a units total movement points per RR tile moved. It take 1.4 MP to get to your border then your final 0.6 MP to enter his territory.

[DaveV]

Someone in another thread said that if you have different types of units stacked together, it messes up the pathfinding on railroads. Do you have something else stacked in with your cavs?