This is a Spoiler thread - Dreylin, PB28

[Dreylin]

Now boys, no fighting in my thread please!

Alright, so no Destroyers ... yet. Going to need some number crunching (or more likely eyeballing) when I get back into the game to see how much of a reprieve this is, and how I'm best going to counter it. Unfortunately it's going to be a few turns before I get a good handle on wetbandit's new Research capacity outside GA - and it still could be quite straightforward for him to generate the extra Great Person for his 4-person. But at least it will be a regular length one now...

[Aurorarcher]

Wow, that's a very nice attack from the sea, Dreylin!

[Dreylin]

Well it's all over now. I've read through the threads of immediate interest to me, but I still have Arien/Mardoc & Fenn to go tomorrow evening. After that I'll log back into the game to take some post-game shots of the civ and key cities and then with wetbandit's blessing take a look at his situation and see whether my Naval force would have been wiped or the potential for more destruction was there. Post game analysis & map gripes thoughts to follow that.

[Dreylin]

End of Game -

Took 23 shots last night of the end game state, posted 1 in wetbandit's thread so that means 22 to go...

The real reason for me to raise ott:


Demos from end game:


Graphs:

And here's a comparison of builds:



Looks like I built quite a bit more infrastructure than wetbandit - cheap Markets, but also more than the minimum Universities because of the RI bonus specialist and Barracks during the Draft era for the Happiness bonus. Interesting that he built max 2 Stables.

I forgot to sort wetbandit's unit builds, but notice the Settler comparison - I put down quite a few fillers to get to my 49 cities.

Also 60 Muskets drafted.

[Dreylin]

Round up of some key cities:

My Gneiss capital; never saw Bureau, but 9Towns and some decent Emancipation Mines:


Granite was whipped to the bone in the Whosit defense, then worked that off as my main Settler pump. Spent a period at Cat source and finally grew into it's own tiles at size 11. Still building Siege:


Lynchpin of the north, Arkose built my few World Wonders and was slated for Ironworks:


Basalt, the Eastern bulwark against Grimace and then wetbandit, and a top notch hybrid city. Mostly building navy these days:


Ditto Obsidian, my sweet Moai city, which ceded all its land tiles, but still has 2 sizes to grow. Also still working off the very last whip anger:


My HE/WP city, Slate, source of offending 6-move ships. Currently only 90hpt into units:


Last of the main core cities is Schist. NatEpic megacity, currently holding back a bit:


Now out to the SE island. My 5 cities here ended up with a lot of excess food and thus it was my main drafting camp, then converted to Specialists as the Draft anger wore off. I'm highlighting Gabbro, as it will produce the next GP:


Finally, we have the contenders for the saddest filler city title; Monzonite and Peridotite. I leave it for you to decide:

[Dreylin]

And my final 2 shots are map quirks.

It's no FP Fish, but here's Fenn's my Forest Crab:


And one I spotted while looking at strategics through wetbandit's eyes; a strange glowing lake in the center of the Fenn/Jowy/AdMar continent:



I have some final thoughts to post, but it's getting late here so they'll have to wait for tomorrow.

[Dreylin]

I did promise map thoughts, but then got distracted by other stuff.

I enjoyed the map, though the Rock-Paper-Scissors arrangement made it kind-of hard to make progress. 1 continent had early war gains, but then stagnated as no-one seemed to agree who to gang up on. The other two continents settled into uneasy peace which wasn't broken until a) a huge tech lead, or b) a coordinated dogpile / underhand betrayal.

I liked the relegation of some resources to the contested islands - although maybe sending 2/3 grains over there was a bit much from a Health perspective - and the slight imbalance of early happy to facilitate trading. I do think it was a mistake to limit the map to one Precious Metal, for reasons that Whosit summed up perfectly:

I popped another silver. Wow. I needed another of those.

Then I looked at what rivals have. Guess who has Gold and Gems? Wetbandit. He popped both, in his core cities, apparently. OMFG, as they say.

In additional to the two that Whosit had popped, I had another Silver pop - directly next to the other! I wonder if the code for popping makes adjacent resources more likely. Anyway, that wetbandit had +4 to the Happy cap granted by the RNG is not ideal.

And I guess that's it. Thanks to everyone who played and to Commodore for the map; until next time...