PB43 Postgame

[wetbandit]

Thought it would be easier to post thoughts in one thread here rather than try to read comments in every person's thread.

[Mr. Cairo]

I am curious about the state of people's finances, not right at the end, but in the build-up, before Cornflakes was fully conquered. I'm wondering because of a post I read in SD's thread:
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid720681
The bit about how I was paying around 50 gold/turn for peace to each of wetbandit, JR4, and DZ while still making 1000+ gold/turn while saving cash and having the most power.
And one of JR4's last post before the game ended about losing gold at 20% on the science slider.

I know I had the only Shrine in the game and the religious trio of wonders, which helped a lot in my expenses, but I was wondering what kind of infrastructure did people build in their cities?

Pretty much all of my cities had the full set of gold and science multiplier buildings: Grocers, Markets, Banks, Libraries, Universities, Observatories. Only my little cities (Athens, Sparta), and Vanillaisis (which was actually my main hammer city, which is why I built so many Wonders there and it became one of my Legendary candidates) didn't have all of that (altough I ended up building a Uni and Academy there just for the extra culture). I know my GNP in the demos was on top for most of the last 50-100 turns, but I don't know how much of that was Culture.

I also wonder if anyone was noticing as I spread all the different religions throughout my cities to build the Cathedrals, I remember worrying about that, not wanting to trigger a dogpile, and so doing it gradually, instead of all at once. Or was my culture attempt already obvious by then?

[JR4]

At the final turn, finances were.. terrible. We were losing gold at max tax. And that`s not a good sign. It shows how expensive it is having units outside of your borders. Also, this game had a pretty high difficulty level and emperor maintenance is no joke.

@Mr. Cairo: I think that your culture attempt was fairly transparent and I had been aware of it for a long time. The F8 screen clearly suggested that you wanted to try for a culture win. Actually doing something to stop that was a different matter, though.

[superdeath]

I had full EP vision for a long, LONG time so i was of course fully aware, but unable to do anything about it due to my inexperience with modern warfare and my complete blank-wall look at airships.

All my cities except for paris ( a size 18 city with 5 production ) had basically every building built due to my... uh... workshop economy. Only buildings i didnt build were due to the Health problems.

[Donovan Zoi]

Re: my finances, I flat-lined my economy and research during turns 80-100 by building many cities but ignoring Cottages early on. I honestly spent about 20 turns deadheading to Alphabet so I could start using production to get back in the tech race. Things got a bit better when I was second to Economics and Free Speech (after wetbandit) but I always found myself about a crucial tech or two behind the leaders despite my best efforts to catch up. Teching got tougher as time went on, so I opted just stop researching altogether and put all my resources into modernizing my military. This was going great until I was met with the kill-or-be-killed nature of Tanks and allowed myself to become a mark on a very crucial turn.

When I went to pick up tech again, it pointless because most of my trade routes were at various percentages of the 150% peace bonus. Definitely something to learn from going forward. Still, it was great to have the game extend to the point where we could get our hands on a lot of new toys we typically never get to use.

[wetbandit]

Hey I started a thread and didn't post. I suck. Work and pandemic.

I was losing gold at the end of the game when I had my army, but the focus was solely on building units for the last 50+ turns. I didn't run many wealth/research builds, which was a mistake in retrospect to not get Mil Sci and have the option to get commandos. The tech costs for anything beyond industrialism was prohibitive.

I think my latest mistake was not moving on DZ or cornflakes earlier when I had comparative advantage in machine guns and siege tech (cannons/arty).

I believe in cornflakes' thread there was a theme of discussing the ebb and flow of the game in the context of offline responsibilities. It's certainly no excuse for not winning, but I definitely know my performance and attentiveness to the game is affected by offline events. Hell, I even asked for a sub early on in light of a 500 mile move and I think I messed some things up during that time, such as being subject to getting bullied by Elkad (and paying a huge bribe for peace).

I thought the game was interesting and that this type of map would be more fun in an AI diplo setting. I definitely thought the map could use better distribution of health resources as I found myself diplomatically constrained by not having access to wheat and wine. The wheat was killer once factories and coal plants went down.