[pb74 spoilers] Miguelito and Ginger bring about the end of the world

[Miguelito]

Foodsharing is great (missing out on it a lot is my biggest regret in this game), but why not found 1N then and even get an additional shared cottage? Does coastal even matter with this capital?

Well as I said, apparently we have differing perspectives

[Miguelito]

Donovan sent back clam/clam (as did MS a few turns ago). Since I have never been deceived by a seafood alliance, I sleep peacefully now.
GKC building up horchers and pointing them at us with the subtlety of a firetruck is probably meant to make us react and build spears when we'd really rahter build something else, before he'll wheel over to metal. Of course, we still have to build the spears.
So back to peace, love and watchfulness

[Miguelito]

Fun story with this picture. We always had considered bulbing Theology with an Obelisk prophet, and it and CoL were our last options for religion on this continent.
Then a few days ago on t86 I noticed a terrible screwup - Gavagai would get his Stonehenge prophet a turn before ours. That could have been easily avoidable, it just didn't occur to me that we'd be in peril. Now Gav is Huayna, so very plausible AP competition.
Turn after I notice that I was wrong again, he started getting GPP the turn the wonder appeared, meaning he'd be even another turn faster.
Doom and gloom and we start teching CoL, to get a religion at least. Then t89 appears, Gav's prophet is born, and.... no bulb - did he forget that he needs Meditation? With his recent conquest and previous 4 city empire it might well take him 2 turns, so we rush Monotheism and eke it out in 2 turns.
But on turn roll Gavagai shows all signs of camping the timer, having logged in briefly without finishing the turn, then sitting out his usual windows until he's the last - I took the laptop to work and when the turn finally rolls I connect within 2 minutes, confirm that the religion is still available and no +18 score for Gav, and bulb, and feel very smug about it.
Only later I found out that he had built the shrine the turn before. So I guess everybody's happy?

We also found Gavagai at the end of the island chain in the east. That is good for lots of lovely 3C routes, and a promise of lots of headaches in the future. We smartly built the Delay Astronomy wonder.

Since a GA should be 20 turns away even if we pushed for it we'll eat two turns of anarchy (we also pretty desperately want HR given our wide spaced dotmap). I was trying to time Monarchy so the OF from some whips would get the OR bonus, and he called me Dollar Store Spiritual. Yes I miss my dear trait.

Donovan's declaration on MS, letting metal resettle the two cities he razed from him and reconnect his copper, . But only good things can come from it for us, save one scenario where MS whips out an army (he has whipped a lot), both make peace without fighting, and then said army marches south... let's just hope they bash heads dutifully.

GKC now has 7 HAs pointing in our direction. It is very clearly a bluff; we're observing him the whole time, and he isn't even scouting us despite OB. But we still have to obey and build spears (not quite at the rate that he's building power of course). Pretty sure in a few turns those horchers go for metal; is there any point in trying to send him a warning message? Could send War with GKC + horse.

[Ginger*]

Sorry for the lack of reporting devoted readers. Miguelito has been busy recently and I cannot seem to upload photos.

Lately we've been discussing on discord how to approach GKC's buildup. I looked through the game event logs, and on turn 75, a great scientist was born. Lo and behold GKC shows a 12 point spike midturn 75 on pbspy. So he did bulb math. Which explains the ELEPHANTS, and CATAPULTS we are now seeing

Now we can definitely stop this with pure mass if it comes our way, we have the highest local crop yield and mfg. But his tech advantage would make such a war game ruining. Deterrence needs to be credible, so we've turned on the whip tap for more units. We finish Monarchy and will immediately start on math. 

GKC declared war on DZ, which is odd, my guess is he wants a peace treaty to secure DZ's neutrality in the upcoming war (makes me further suspect he's going in on metal instead). Now DZ was formerly world top power, but lost it all in Mali, maybe GKC hasn't noticed?  

However, the remaining question is whether or not to take the HR revolt as planned next turn 

[Mjmd]

Use imgur. Its easy to use and free. I want to see whats happening! You area of the world goes on streaks of silence and it annoys me!

[Miguelito]

I hate anarchy, but this might be as good a time as any to revolt*. But before we add as much power as we can because we're scared of GKC. Counting 10HAs, 4wellies, and a cat detected so far. The obvious play is to go after weakened metal, but he could also kill our game, no idea if kill us outright. So we have 6 cities finishing units as a sign of respect, then get into Monarchy/OR, then Christianity if the situation allows it.

*I'm lying, slightly. One of those cities gets founded next turn already, the revolt turn. At least it spends the two revolt turns with unimproved tiles.

[Miguelito]

I never thought I would do something like this, let's hope it works out somehow.
Also, spreads in France and Incaland are not bad, but I wouldn't mind a few more at home (I shouldn't complain, we've had 3 already, but I'm greedy, or desperate, anyways)

The hammer is pretty sure to fall the other way, meanwhile:

 
Not great, because we'll soon have a bigger hammer ready to fall on us. But for the moment it's a reprieve. We may have to rush Construction. (and as Ginger pointed out to me, we're smartly settling 4 new cities to make that "rush" ever sloggier)

[Ginger*]

I'm procrastinating the t100 update bc I don't want to do all the photos through imgur bc I'm lazy.
So the specific demos and geography of the land I'll leave for tomorrow.

How would I rate our position?
Backrow Bleachers to Plemo's AlphaCentauri Launch
We have the monk economy ace up our sleeve, but we still have to build the crap and have sacrificed a lot to get there. Realistically a main gap now is going to be great people. Gavagai and Pindicator, our nearest *big* rivals have already shrined their religions, boosting spread and earning a lot. Despite the AP we have no guarantee we'll have as much reach, especially given our shrine is 30 turns away or longer. That's not even talking about a golden age, good lord. Global top demos are disgusting and have been for sometime. We're baffled. I suspect top GNP might be Pindicator and not Plemo of the Hanging Gardens and Good Lighthouse. 

To focus on the local neighborhood, 
Magic Science has played a very solid game despite us burning his third city and having to crush Donovan's Horse Archer stack. He also just teched Calendar first of the C's, which is an odd choice, but maybe he's going for Mausoleum (still hasn't improved his marble). 
We currently share a mildly tense border, on land and at sea. We might be in a settler race for the island in the north since I've spotted a settler in Sikasso. 
(Luckily, we are first turn puller when the race was realized, which is now  . I believe the second puller advantage of warsplit is so great that the first pulling settler race is fair compensation, and why I typically vote against coin flips. Of course sequential > all.)

Donovan built world's top power of horchers, whacked two cities off of Metal, then swung around and lost everything in Mali. With Cre/Exp he's basically dead in the water, but for us he still remains an important counterbalance against Magic Science. 

GKC has played an interesting game, bulbing math into a construction rush, although researching IW puzzles me. He did however luck into a 5 resource capital and has been tying us for top demos on this continent all game long. He's about to eat Metal

Metal got an okay capital, better than ours, worse than GKC's and Joao. He settled on copper as is the civforum way, and built two axes before third city, one of which he hapazardly stumbled our way. Thing have been quiet and distant since then. His force of 9 copper melee and 6 chariots will not hold Wonsan against GKC's 10HA, 3WE, and 1-2Cats

The local continent is stumbling just like we are, which is good news, but we don't have the tools to eat them yet. We get math in 4turns but Currency is going to be a +10 turn slog. Then Construction is probably a prophylactic necessity, before we look at Code of Laws, or Literature and think about which way we take to Paper.

[Mjmd]

I need 1 photo with everyone's city count pretty please!!!!

[Qgqqqqq]

When will you have the force to eat them?