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

[Ginger*]

I logged in to have a look. I've been busy moving into a new house the last week so my civ time has been sucked up by 75 and trying to get the EitB mod to work. The good news is that Mig has done excellent work and concluded all our wars.

Taking stock, we do have a healthy number of rifles, but are down to 7 siege and 10 knights empire wide. Looking at unit statistics we've lost something like 47 knights this game. War has been bloody, and those 60 longbows killed have not come cheap.
Additionally, we still have MS to chew through, with reactivated culture and his stacked island, but that should be doable more efficiently now that we've unlocked Cannons.

Gav is currently saving at 1k gpt, although we dont know if thats sandbagged.
Our current gpt is ~350, although courthouses everywhere should give us maybe 130 with inflation, the rest of recovery will have to come from growth. World highest population is Commodore at cleanly double ours despite having only 10% more cities.

Pindicator has Steel but no RP or Edu or Nationalism. Gav and Comm both have Nationalism, Gav having Steam Power but not Constition yet, although Assembly line isnt far for him

[Miguelito]

Big question for me right now is do we sprint all the way to combustion right away, or do we do edu/economics(/ constitution/nat...?) first for a GA?
Gav seems to be on his way straight to destroyers and then we're at his mercy. Of course he can just keep conquering his continent while we watch helplessly (as long as we lack combustion)
On the other hand, while we currently still need to grow a lot before GA, we'd probably want it before we'd finish combustion.

Very hard to see how Gav doesn't win. Comm is invading Plemo, maybe not least to create a border. Not sure what pin is doing. He could just go for Tarkeel?

What is the oil event again? We need a scout/explorer right? Just remembered that destroyers require SciMeth otherwise...

You know, don't think it's a spoiler, pb75 looks like a much better map for monking... still good here, but obsolescence is haunting us this game again. First Colossus, now that.

[Ginger*]

I still think that without Assembly Line we simply wont have the production to make destroyers or good enough troops to be worthy of transporting. Yeah Gav doing naval fuckery hurts us, but I don't think that's a big threat, bc if he wants to kneecap the opposition he's much better off starting with Commodore. Besides as you say, Gav has no incentive to stir the status quo. 
But looming scimeth raises an interesting question of do we still build monasteries in our new conquests? yields pay off in 10 turns so probably still yes.

Re maps and AP, honestly I think it's just a question of city count and war timing. If you have a certain threshold of cities (>10-12?) and have no need for an early medieval rush, then you go for AP, it's a no brainer, the wonders are stupid strong altogether. Lowkey needs a nerf or meta adaptation for players to contest and react to it.

[Miguelito]

Magic Science was begging us to finally declare on him, so I gave in. Save the forests. Edit: please someone write the war dec into his thread cause he can't receive PMs since his quota is full. We go first.

I checked tile yields and Commodore has oil on two desert tiles. So, we could try with the scout we have and a few explorers.


Assembly Line is terribly far away, including needing Constitution for Corporation which I at least had forgot. I'm not even sure factories are terribly necessary for destroyer production, don't we have drydocks for that?
On the other hand, Free Market and the Corporation TR and Wall Street can't be delayed that long either, so... still saving gold.

[Miguelito]

Interesting question Gav.
For those unaware of the map, he's asking us to take over a rather barren island south of former GKC that Commodore cheekily settled.
It would be mostly inconsequential for either of our games, save for the bad blood with Commodore. So what does it mean?

Anyhow what Gav wants is Gav/Pin/Us vs Comm
And turn it into Pin vs Us and Him vs Continent

first and foremost, he doesn't want Comm/pin/us vs him

So I'm rationalizing this as keeping us busy with something that worsens our relations with Comm, making us not attack his islands or something silly. The issue is, I fear

that might be motivation enough to decapitate one of the trio

meaning us. If he doesn't see us on his team, he can preemptively take us out at rather little cost once he has destroyers (that's very soon) and we don't (for quite a while still). So, I actually went along:


20 turns is what I hope our destroyer timely is.

The situation is that this turn we took the last MS mainland cities and actually are leading city count now, although I guess briefly. But a majority of these cities is still between coming out of revolt and building basic infra. Probably, even if we're left alone completely Gavagai wins from here, or maybe Commodore. But if we're not during the next 20-30 turns, this game will become miserable for us. So need to do our best to motivate everyone to leave us alone.

Graphs, for more context:








Considering Kremlin, Commodore is surprisingly close to Gavagai! Which also has me feeling less bad about not joining him to take down the leader.



Also found this interesting, how long we've been stalling economy wise.



However finally Atlantis takes its rightful place

[Miguelito]

t200 empire overview:



We got Magic Science down to the last island city. There is still some garrison to chew through, so it'll be a few turns of moving and healing, but cannons are pretty good at the chewing part. MS actually has offered copious amounts of gold (first 450, now 700) for peace. I offered peace for 1k this turn, that would surely be more than that city would make for us for the remainder of this game (although Djenne is a nasty city, having blocked poor Kumbi Saleh's fish since forever)
Otherwise we will soon have eliminated each player from our continent. But it's still far from enough.

Anything you'd like to have shown?

[Amicalola]

t200 empire overview:



We got Magic Science down to the last island city. There is still some garrison to chew through, so it'll be a few turns of moving and healing, but cannons are pretty good at the chewing part. MS actually has offered copious amounts of gold (first 450, now 700) for peace. I offered peace for 1k this turn, that would surely be more than that city would make for us for the remainder of this game (although Djenne is a nasty city, having blocked poor Kumbi Saleh's fish since forever)
Otherwise we will soon have eliminated each player from our continent. But it's still far from enough.

Anything you'd like to have shown?

I want you to fully kill Magic Science to fulfill my OCD about player eliminations. I already had to deal with Scooter for ages in this game.

[Miguelito]

1. theo bulb
   
2. shrine
   
3. DR bulb
   
4. 1st GA
   
5. banked -> 2nd GA
   
6. banked
   
7. banked...
   

The last few have not exactly been desired, all coming at 20something odds from Atlantis' wonder GPP.
We have 2 prophet bulbs left, philo->education, which probably is still better than settling?
Probably save one for the third GA. It's pretty unclear if we have a use for philosophy; it saves a few beakers on Nationalism and we can do Pacifism in GA so we can roll more prophets.

[Miguelito]

We keep getting these messages.

Commodore is not wrong that Gavagai is a runaway, but:
a) is Commodore so much ahead of us that supporting him amounts to kingmaking?
b) what are we even supposed to do? Gavagai has SciMeth and Railroad, we are waiting anyturn for Combustion to fall. Comm might get there 5 turns or so after him? But he has no railroad yet. As you see, we haven't even started on it yet (and have no SciMeth and really don't want it, but maybe whomever we support in a war would help us out, if our supersecret oilobtaining mission fails?)
c) we promised Gavagai support. How sleazy of scumbags are we?

I sent Commodore him sheep without the cities. I support him focusing on Gav, and as long as he remains stable I doubt we'd stab. Pity him, he'll have to face the destroyers from wooden boats. But I genuinely don't think we can help much unless we throw our empires body as a speed bump.

Not sure what to respond to pin. How would he even fight Gav substantially? Not through open borders, seeing as he has attacked both Plemo and Tarkeel recently.

Both Gav and Comm have their other wars; Plemo took back cities from Commodore last turn; maybe Comm really should seek peace. Piccadilly impressively has our power rating but no tech but Rifling. I guess that means that Gavagai will have to throw a whole lot at him to make progress. (Piccadilly also has the problem of a considerable greenline rogue fleet to his north. Is greenline reporting? I should take a photo, it's fun).

[klops]

" Is greenline reporting? I should take a photo, it's fun"

It would surely teach him a lesson how to report properly, if YOU post the funny image in YOUR thread