[SPOILERS] This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. But Mostly Mine.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Ohio is collapsing! So disappointing. I haven't routed for Oregon since they let Blount back on the team.

A little short-lived enthusiasm on my part earlier. More RKO awesomeness is needed but seems to be lacking. Ohio State has this on cruise control. The Ducks need to find some magic quickly but I'm not holding my breath. I've never liked OSU.

[fluffyflyingpig]

You jinxed it. This is all your fault.


You must now atone with blood. Lots of it.

[Ceiliazul]

You jinxed it. This is all your fault.


You must now atone with blood. Lots of it.

I can root for that!

Actually, you've been letting plenty of blood... just maybe some more pics...

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

You jinxed it. This is all your fault.


You must now atone with blood. Lots of it.

I can root for that!

Actually, you've been letting plenty of blood... just maybe some more pics...

But...but.... More pictures???

Please correct the following errors before continuing:

The message you entered contained 74 images, while only 50 images per message are allowed. Please lower the image count in your message to meet the limit.

I guess only blood matters after all.

T175

Massive picture dump report. Earlier up thread, while I was maintaining a sandbox, I posted screenshots of each city each turn in what is probably the most dense thread reading ever. Sorry, but it was helpful for me in keeping the sandbox accurate. I haven't shown city screens lately except a little something to highlight here or there. In this turn report I'll dump each city screen so you can see what the empire is really looking like. That will be in the next post because there is a limit of 50 pictures per post.

But first, dtay asks for help:





I drew in current city counts, though several of my cities are of the filling space for trade routes sort. Ultimately I declined the offer. I want dtay to get taken down a peg and I don't mind if other opponents get a little stronger by eating dtay. I have other opponents to digest more cheaply than they will dtay, so any encouragement of fighting is good, until dtay collapses. Given his size and technological sophistication, I just don't see that happening right now. He has rifles, they don't. He may well have cavs, I don't remember now writing five turns later. Anyway, opponents could well make gains and still not be able to conquer him, leaving him brooding and angry, waiting for revenge against his aggressors. That suits me fine. Rejected! Also, I need the money to finish teching and upgrade my army.

Demos, graphs, etc:

Krill/novice are really building up some power. Perhaps dtay needs more help than I've assumed? I do not want Krill/novice in a very strong position, but I'm not willing to slow down my progress to see it happen just yet.



A Great Artist makes a fancy painting and is not used as part of a golden age. The world rejoices!





I think OH/Fin are the trade route leaders. In subsequent turns, my position as #2 in export/import continues, but with a widening gap. I think perhaps cheap-IMP Customs Houses are going up in OH/Fin-land next door.



I really like seeing two of my own cities.



I just realized I've captured more workers than I've built!







Still mostly focused on economy.





I've thought about nationhood but I just don't want to lose the population drafting. My economy is singing right now and my neighbors have a weak production base, naval cities, and I have galleys. I think I can continue to expand without losing population and losing the Bureau bonus. My capital puts out great beakers and I like that. Representation would be great with so many Research Institutes providing free scientists. I'm not sure if State Property beats Free Market for me. Maybe later when I'm building up for a serious war with a serious neighbor I'll need the extra hammers. For now, the economy seems more important.



OH/Fin have a great savings rate.



They've been at it for two turns now. I'll keep an eye on their savings/spending to see what their goal is. Kremlin would be tremendously helpful for them, making the SA whips even better. I don't have research visibility yet, but I'll be working on that soon.



I still have these guys stashed away. I've had them since the end of my last golden age. I'm doing well without them and trying to save them for when they will be decisive, either in getting my ass out of a crack if I get dogpiled, or when I can throw some factories down in a hurry and pull away from the pack. Right around factories you get so many new, vastly stronger units to build that I could pull ahead and fortify myself at the same time.



Chemistry after Rifling, for boats to protect myself. OH/Fin have Frigates so I need them too.



Too bad I don't have a shrine, but the RNG traded me the shrine for Taj, so I guess I did fine.



This would have been a good time to attack. But with Rifling so close, I'm very reluctant to risk my knights when Cossacks are so much better.

T175

Part two: cities!

The musket allowed enough overflow for West Point to finish the following turn.


































[snip a bunch of pictures]

[BRickAstley]

Ohio State has this on cruise control. The Ducks need to find some magic quickly but I'm not holding my breath. I've never liked OSU.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Brick, I've said it before. You're a bastard.

T176

Nakor stole my whale again!



And his knights have healed. I don't totally understand the two GG medics (on a LB??) but there may be a new strategy I'm not tuned into yet.



The end finally draws near for Azza. I took the opportunity to farm a few XP from some amphibious knight attacks, killing two axes and an archer. I don't remember if I did that this turn or the next though. Once Azza finally dies I'll get my fish! And some free quarry hammers for New Forest, which is decidedly deforested.



There's the stack. This ought to be just about everything he has, except his collateral stack. Cossacks are great, but this is a lot of cheap units with a very specific purpose: city defense. I'm guessing this is why Ruff's attack failed. I would do well to try to find a way to eliminate the threat of collateral and then try to find a way to kill these units outside of a city. If I have to kill them inside the city I'm going to spend more hammers on the exchange and that doesn't help me. I don't really need Q's land and it certainly isn't worth losing my highly promoted units. I'll need to be creative.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T177



First turn with Rifling and Cossacks are sprouting up everywhere.



And more in the pipeline. This is not impressive by RB standards by any means but I'm taking the slow, methodical approach. Seven or Mack would have probably had as many Cossacks finishing as I have cities but I'm building economy. Looking ahead, tech costs are very high and the only way to continue to tech at a reasonable clip is to continue investing in my economy. New cities are great, but tall, lean, efficient cities are absolutely necessary too. So established cities with most buildings complete get to build an army. Or, hammer cities with very little economic potential. But even these cities ought to get the trio of Library, Research Institute, and Observatory because trade routes are worth 15 base commerce now and will be worth at least 20 commerce as soon as I unlock Corporation.

The decision on tech path has not been made after Chemistry. There are several options and I may see where my opponents go first. Corporation needs Constitution which leads to Democracy. I still have a GE that could knock out a large chunk of SoL. This would give me ~30 free specialists from cities I already have and would grow if I conquer Q and/or Ruff. Combined with Representation and the free GS from my Research Institutes, this could be a lot of free economy. If every city got a RI (not guaranteed) and I ran all GS with the free SoL great person (not likely, GM is better for raising overall slider rate which is what the Library/RI/Observatory want, but for sake of easy argument) this would be ~30 x 18b = 540b/turn. More likely I would run a bunch of GM though.

Another benefit of Corporation is that it is required for Assembly Line, which I can clear after Steam Power. Early factories are crazy good and Infantry keep me alive and give me lots of cheap conquest options. By the time I get Infantry, whichever of my non-OH/Fin neighbors are alive are going to be fielding Rifles at best. This gives me the advantage I would need to finish consolidating low-hanging neighbor fruit at a discount rate (Infantry don't care about LB hiding in fortress hill-cities!) if I had not already done so.

Another option, more straightforward, is to go SM (and kill my beautiful NE city's GL and Parthenon combo) then take either the GSpy at Communism or the GS at Physics. GS have been easy for me to generate. The GSpy would be much more helpful in securing my four-man GA (I still have all I need for the three-GP GA) but I don't see me rush buying all that much. However, I would love to deny The Kremlin to OH/Fin. I would strongly consider this path if I were them for SA-boosted whips. I would need to go back and research Liberalism, which could set me back in the race (if anyone is going in that direction). I'm getting research visibility on my closest tech rivals in the coming turns. Formerly this meant following dtay but I suspect he's going to fall off the pace a bit, so I'll look to OH/Fin and Krill/novice, the latter team I believe is a bit behind me overall. They went for earlier Grens it appears. I could be wrong on that, I'm writing out of game right now and don't have a picture to refer to.

Other options include Steel (cannons/drydocks/Iron Works) --> Railroad, but I'm not pressed for military and I get a bigger boost to my MFG by going to Assembly Line earlier. Military Science is an option but I'm not worried over grens right now, I do not feel like I'll be imminently invaded and I don't have a way to build commando units right now, nor do I have a GG to spend on one. I have time to think all of this over.





This looks like a post-conquest artist bomb to me. Annoyingly, this dumps Grant Village off the top 5.



There's the evidence for the conquest GA bomb. Hooray for another GA that isn't going to be part of a golden age.



Nakor must have a lot of culture buildings in those two cities to flip this tile. He has third ring in both cities, I have third ring in Mammoth and fourth ring in Tower Junction, which has plenty of culture too. This is annoying me because I don't want Nakor to be able to see into Mammoth. I've put some ominous signposts down.



Nakor took Family Feud from wetbandit. It appears that wetbandit then slew the surviving attackers, all but the garrison left in the city which will either need to be reinforced, withdraw, or be killed by wetbandit. This is great (for me)!



Reinforcements may not be arriving. They're pretty battered. Since I'm playing after both Nakor and wetbandit, it could be that Nakor's stack wasn't actually wiped, but wetbandit had 10 damaged units that I can only assume were attacking Nakor's stack. Either way, I love this.



Still there, digging in. Up to 5% fortification bonus. I'm not upgrading fast enough to be ready before they're fully entrenched when I'm ready to attack, so I'm going to look for other options. I still haven't found the collateral stack. I'm not in any hurry. Time is on my side here.

[Commodore]

Can you show a super-zoomed out map of your region with conquest vectors in color-code?

[BRickAstley]

To be clear, I also hate Urban Meyer and don't want to have to hear about how zomg awesome Ohio State is again.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Yeah, I know. I just like calling you names.

While I'm here, Commodore, I'll get that next time I log in.