[SPOILERS] I had first pick and all I got was this stupid combo

[Oxyphenbutazone]

World Size Small

That doesn't refer to actual map size. Just the setting for maintenance and tech costs.

[Bobchillingworth]

That doesn't refer to actual map size. Just the setting for maintenance and tech costs.

Ah yeah, hacked mapsizes. That's... a little misleading as a descriptor of the map, though :P


Current game stuff-


I had hoped to hold on to my Great Engineer for a while, but:





Both my neighbors have like twice my power, and one is rapidly producing Knights while the other masses spears and catapults (???) on my border, so- it's Golden Age time. Saved myself a turn revolting into Bureaucracy and HR, which was nice. Most cities which have any decent production are now either producing military or barracks. I also captured the barb city to my south and settled the other two I mentioned having planned in my previous post. Jowy could raze the barb city if he wanted, but I'm thinking he won't declare- he surely wants friendship in case Mardoc attacks him, and he already passed up the opportunity to kill and archer and a settler or two workers, either of which would have hurt me worse.

[Bobchillingworth]

[Opens the save]

Oh God oh God please don't tell me I'm fighting to the death in two games, why have I not learned to stagger these things better, oh man it's finished loading, let's see... oh, nope, nobody has declared on me. Well, time to send my new chariot to see how bad Mardoc is going to whomp me:






Huh, that's... not very many units at all. To the event log!





... Whaaat?! Ahaha!

I'm guessing Jowy saw Mardoc building up and decided to attack preemptively... and lost a city for it.


Ah, well this is great. Please, fight forever you two. Get in a hot, horrible war until the end of days. I guess I could eventually jump in on Mardoc here if this really does drag on for ages, but he has been a good neighbor and there is so much land on this darn map I really have no reason to attack anyone except boredom and/or to be a dick. Domination is more-or-less physically impossible and conquest would be improbable to say the least, so peace forever. I am so incredibly glad I didn't go with an aggressive civ, I would have had so much steam coming out of my ears they could've used me to power a moderately large suburban community.


Less promising:





I'm not sure what stick's game here is. I don't think that's an aggression stack- a little too spear heavy. Kind of an odd defensive stack too, since I HAVE ALMOST NO MOUNTED UNITS. Sheesh, stick, you know this man. I know mounted units could attack your HG city in a single turn (well, until you culturally capture that tile I'm farming, which might be soon), but I'd have to research HBR, then whip a decent-sized force from scratch, and then move them into position. The settler suggests he's going to claim the fish resource to the east- whatever dude, if you want. He did get an artist recently, so maybe he intends to raze Zhaan, resettle, bomb, and fork me everywhere. I don't think there's much I can do in that situation that I'm not already, ie. building LB & researching Machinery.


I did take a 2-turn diversion to research Theology (and found Christianity). I want the Apocalyptic Palace to make up for my somewhat hammer-deficient terrain, and having Theocracy to revolt into would be nice, since all my best military cities already have Buddism.


I also finally built my Heroic Epic, in my Maoi city. Hooray, I guess. Someday I hope to build an expedition fleet there to start settling the Continent That Should Not Exist.

[NobleHelium]

I am so incredibly glad I didn't go with an aggressive civ, I would have had so much steam coming out of my ears they could've used me to power a moderately large suburban community.

...the Apocalyptic Palace...

[Bobchillingworth]

Hrmm, stick continues to move up troops. He now has something like 3 HA, 5 spears, 5 catapults and 2 axes in the area. I can understand why my actions might worry him- my power is rising, I researched Theology and he can see that several of my cities now have barracks. But I am trying to show that I want to keep our border peaceful, by only stocking my cities with LB. Well, we'll see how he reacts. I'll finish Engineering before my Golden Age ends, which will make reinforcing cities easier and be a big help if stick starts to move up knights. Plus I could build Notre Dame, for an even more ludicrous happy cap.

[Bobchillingworth]

Stick's army continues to grow- it isn't large enough to do much more than raze/capture a city or two, but I'm having to produce units when I would really much rather work on infrastructure, especially building more Buddhist stuff now that I have the AP. In an attempt to break out of what may be a series of mutual misunderstandings leading to a military build-up, I offered a sheep-for-sheep trade, since I can't force a peace treaty with a wardec without ruining a ton of very valuable trade routes. I don't think that stick wants to fight me- he has a much easier target with Sian on his flank, and he doesn't have trade routes with Mardoc (presumably because he doesn't want to boost the GL), so I'm surely much better as a trading partner than conquest. Plus I have near-military tech parity and about the same number of cities, so any war between us would be absurdly bloody. So I'm hoping the combination of LB builds + not adopting theocracy on the last turn of my golden age + a peace trade is enough to send the message that I don't want to fight, and am only building military because I didn't feel safe with both my neighbors having double my power.

[Bobchillingworth]

Well, stick accepted my Friendship Trade and moved some of his troops back:





I decided to delay a couple maceman builds so as to not appear to be taking advantage of his trust, although I'll need to complete them eventually. At the moment I'm building Monasteries pretty much everywhere, with most cities getting Buddhist Temples not long afterwards.


Mardoc's Jowy-Smashing army doesn't appear to be particularly large:






Aside from this I've seen a stack of 4 Knights and very little else. Mardoc's cities are almost all held by either a single LB or Vulture. On our border he has a few LB and a couple spears. I guess he's pretty vulnerable right now, and I do have Engineering for Pikes, but I'm still not seeing much of an incentive to attack him, not when I could spend the hammers colonizing the center of the map before stick snatches it all up, or sending a settling expedition to the Continent Which Should Not Exist. TBH I don't know why Mardoc is even fighting Jowy. Seems to me the tech spent on Guilds would have been better invested towards getting Astronomy as quickly as possible, then exploiting Organized Ziggurats with enough land for a massive second empire. I'd beeline the tech myself, except it will kill the colossus which is like half my economy right now. I guess he'll be pretty strong if he can kill Jowy (and probably Sian) and then consolidate- that will leave me as the smallest surviving empire.


But I'm also the only person even semi-competitive against stick right now (despite my best efforts at self-sabotage), and attacking Mardoc will forever trash relations with one neighbor (who I can't realistically eliminate) and make me vulnerable to attack from the other. Maybe I'd consider it if I was Byzantium or the Ottomans or my other neighbor was [insert pacifist player here].


Teching Drama next because I'm fighting a culture battle on both fronts and half-price theaters are really cheap. Unlocking Globe would be nice as well, I've got a few decent candidates for it. Going forward, I'll probably get a Great Prophet from my capital, because I'm dumb and haven't been paying any attention to my GP pool, which I might go insane and spend on a Divine Right bulb. Spiral Minaret will be a fairly quick build and provide up to +8 gold per city, with temples, monasteries and the appropriate commerce multiplier buildings. Also makes Nationalism a little cheaper. In terms of what I actually want to research, Nationalism is tempting but I think stick is researching that now- he can, anyway. So I don't think I can manage the Taj. Stick is ahead of me on the race to Liberalism as well- actually, he's probably going for that & planning on spending the free tech on Nationalism. That's what I would do, were I him. Might be that I can beat him to Economics, though. Would be awesome to do that- I could really use the Free Trade trade routes and the free Great Merchant could found a corp or something if we don't all concede before they come into play. To his credit Commodore went relatively light on the seafood for this map, but there's still more than enough (plus rice) to make Sid's Sushi ludicrously good. And I have a happy cap just begging for tons of broken BTS corp food.


Not sure when I'm going to find the time to slot in more military techs, after Guilds. I suppose Knights, Cats, Maces & Pikes will last me until stick starts fielding Rifles. I expect the calls for concession to start coming in from Jowy after Mardoc captures his capital, and Mardoc to begin echoing them once stick has advanced to the point where he's about an era ahead of him.

[Bobchillingworth]

Jowy really ought to build some boats, btw. Mardoc has zero naval presence as best as I can tell, and even a couple WC in a galley protected by a couple tremes would be enough to force emergency whips all along the Sumerian coast. Jowy still has enough cities that he can probably spare the whips, but I guess he has no way of knowing Mardoc's defenses are paper-thin (I'm assuming he's being badly outspent in EP).


Not sure what's up with Mardoc's CII, Medic Knight. I guess he found he needed more healing than expected, and so the top Knight had to burn a promo on it. He must be feeling pretty confident, moving his GG up like that. It wouldn't take much at all to kill those troops. Maybe he has a lot more further ahead.


I'm not pillaging the combat zone because it's not worth the fallout from being a dick :P

[Bobchillingworth]

Mardoc's little trickle of units into Jowy's core looks strange:






As do the Double Medics. And not upgrading the chariot for free into a Knight- I mean, all of his units look so vulnerable to a counter-attack, he must be sure that Jowy doesn't have much in the region, so why not get another hitter? Use of Trebs strikes me as being pretty odd as well, but I guess they're working. Roads and improvements have been pillaged to heck, AI-style. He surely must have a much larger force further up ahead.


Curiously, Jowy's power has rebounded to his pre-war level, which suggests he was running a paper-thin military in the area, and that Mardoc is probably busy bombarding his capital or something.


More units built by stick. Very annoying. Guilds up next, arriving in 3. HBR will only take a turn. Why hasn't he killed Sian already? Fuck, if nothing else it would literally speed up his victory, since we wouldn't have Captain Taciturn camping the save for 20 hours a day.

[Bobchillingworth]

This is awful. Sian held the turn for about 30 hours, and now Jowy is camping it for another 20+. It's not like neither of them has been around lately- not only are they regularly hanging around the forums, they keep joining new games. Sian's behavior is especially galling- not only does he hold the turn for 16+ hours every single round, but he went out of his way to settle a random colony on the Stupid Continent, ensuring that I can't even eliminate him in a PYFT crusade in anything resembling a timely manner. And man, am I tempted to just whip a pile of Knights as soon as I get guilds and march them through stick's land just to wipe Sian out. We're down at this point to a turn every other day, sometimes worse. Why do people even join these games if they're going to act like this? I don't fucking care that Sian (and now Jowy's) positions are hopeless, I've gotten eliminated from more than my share of games, and I have never held my turns just to spite everyone else who's actually having fun. I could understand if Sianowy are busy or whatever, but if that's the case they should have the decency to let everyone else know to expect slow turns. I strongly suspect they just don't care. Ugh.


Sorry for the rant, had to vent here or I'd be close to exploding in the tech thread, which would probably drive Jowy from the game.