[SPOILERS] Don't mention the war

[plako]

Your jerk city is likely to be largely ineffective because those are established cities. :neenernee

Yeah, but that city collects Bananas+plains town that Mackoti has developed so in the end is more useful than the one Mackoti planted. It is just so unnescessary city for him. He could have planted it easily 1 tile east and keep us both happy. However I've cooled off a bit now. I'll settle that border city and see what happens after that. I also don't like the fact that Mackoti has ignored my chat pokes for couple of days. I guess we just play the end game to end peacefully unless Mackoti becomes active soon.

I had a chat with WK too and he is more or less given up so not ideal ally in war.

[NobleHelium]

Too late to go for culture?

[plako]

Too late to go for culture?

It would be pretty hard. I wouldn't be able to get that many Artists and Mackoti has soon Flight and Tanks i.e. not ideal moment to turn off the science. I'll try to catch up techwise. Mackoti is clearly focusing on military techs and not beelining to space ship directly so that is something that benefits me. I think I can also generate a 1-2 Scientists more than him so bulbing could help catching up a bit too. If everything else fails I can also invest on military.

Nevertheless I'm still waiting Mackoti to tell, if he still wants to attack WK and how that would fit on my plans.

[plako]

We've quite a situation in this game. Turns have flied by and we're already on T180. Mackoti is ~15000 beakers ahead and I'm not really catching up. We've dicussed about attacking WK on T190 (my NAP ends then), but there is a problem called Internet. And boy I'm glad it isn't banned. I surely would lose, if I build it, but it gives me a chance to distract Mackoti. I've tried to convince Mackoti to build it since it would give me a chance to catch up. If WK builds it, his position will become very strong unless we stop teching same techs and just build up for attack with full force. This should also give me options to catch up. Worst option is obviously that we ignore the threat and build up towards space ship while WK accumulates gold. Also if WK catches us up techwise he becomes a way more potential partner to turn around and change target to Mackoti.

All in all classic prisoner's dilemma that hopefully ends up improving my chances.

[scooter]

Any chance we can get a "state of the world" report at some point? It's hard for me to picture what happened with the elimination of Serdoa and how things look in the aftermath. Also curious on where you are tech-wise in relation to Mackoti and WK, and how you plan to win.

[plako]

T179

This is from the beginning of the turn I played couple of days ago. Currently I'm waiting Mackoti to put the save forward. Everything is directed towards research and I think I'm making ~500 beakers more than Mackoti with these settings on average. WK is quite a bit behind.



Mackoti has Combustion, Plastics, Industrialism and Radio over me and I've Supercondutors.



I think end game techs should be more expensive than they're. Building walth/research just makes pretty much all techs 1-2T ones. My biggest mistake might have been investing on Democracy and hammers during my golden age wehreas Mackoti just slow built them in few places while keeping 100% slider via building wealt elsewhere. That gave at least half of the lead he currently has.

Graphs:

So my primary winning condition is to catch up Mackoti and build a space ship before him. I'm not sure I've enough time so my plan-B is to initiate cool down and fight. I've done some diplomatic effforts to convince WK to join me.

Overhead shots

Victory screen:

[NobleHelium]

You've used three golden ages? Or just two?

[plako]

2 golden ages gone. We both will surely fire 1 more. Mackoti just will have 3 turns longer.

[plako]

I understand not playing because you're sick, but I think keeping the save for days just to think what to do is not very polite. We're not at war these turns are pretty easy to play out. I guess this is one of the reasons Mackoti is so good. He takes the time needed to make the big desicions. I pretty much always play the turn whenever it comes out no matter the diplo or game status.

[plako]

T180

Mackoti did put the save forward and is researching Fligth and seems to be gearing towards war after I told him I'm not intrested in fighting against WK. It could be that he is just building defenses, but I think it is more likely that he plans to attack and WK is probably the more likely target. As far as I know they don't have a NAP at the moment. IMO this means that I've this game won assuming Mackoti does not breaks our NAP and I should be able to do alright even in that case. I just need to invest sufficiently to my defenses. I think Mackoti would have done way better via contesting me in the space race. After all he is ~7T ahead of me techwise at the moment. That is not easy to catch up when we both could have rushed through the tech tree in under 30 turns.