[SPOILERS - PBEM17] Kyan Does Dallas. The Orange Sensation.

[oledavy]

It turns out Krill researched astronomy to get to communism, netting Scientific Method on t110 and Communism on t111 . It makes a lot of sense: he already had Liberalism, State Prpoerty is arguably the best civic for a toroidal map, and he's approaching the end of his golden age. Not to mention the free Great Spy or first shot at the Kremlin.

Still, I'm a little miffed because I was hoping to get both Communism and Physics

I spoke to Krill and asked him if he intended to go for Physics too. I said I had a GS on standby and was planning to bulb most of SM and then go for Physics. He said it was not on his tech path and he would not compete. Physics will not only get a me a free Great Scientist, but opens up the option to build Airships for the coming war - which have no counter during the period after they first come online.

All things considered, I think it would be beneficial to delay rifling and instead work to state property in order to get my workshops and economy in gear in addition to netting physics. Instead of using Michael Faraday to bulb Scientific Method or build an academy, I'm going to use him and Du Fu on a golden age. The idea is to jump start me on the way to the techs I want, give me the free revolt into state property, and speed the production of Universities, Oxford, and East Indiamen. This golden age will not emphasize great person production, or even significant civics changes - and is more designed as a stop gap measure to keep my tech rate competitive until Oxford and get me prepped for the upcoming war on time. So, my revised tech path/micro plan for the next few turns looks something like this:

Gunpowder
Start Golden Age
Scientific Method
Physics (Partially Bulb With Acre GS)
Liberalism (Bulb With Physics GS)
Communism (Switch to SP)
End Golden Age

Other Player's Tech Paths

Shoot teched his way to Nationalism. He's not sure where he's going next yet, vacillating between heading for Steel or Military Tradition.

NoSpace got Gunpowder, Engineering, and then back-tracked to Meditation. I feel pretty sure they're headed for Philosophy and then Nationalism for drafting purposes next.

Rego netted Engineering and then Gunpowder. It looks like he's gearing up for a war and I expect he'll go for Nationalism/Rifling next.

[oledavy]

Sorry for the paucity of updates during the last couple days, my life has gotten a little hectic and will probably stay that way for the next couple weeks as I settle into college. Expect to see fewer updates from me during that time.

The big events of the last couple turns were diplomatic:

[COLOR="Green"]Dave,

Just a quick note as I'm a bit busy at the moment, but I'd be on board with going for Rego instead if that's what you guys want to do. He is just a huge threat to run away with this game at this point, and although he looks to be slightly harder to attack it should still be certainly do-able.

Shoot[/COLOR]

And just like that, Operation Sledgehammer has been cancelled and we've decided to dogpile the up and coming runaway civ. So, all my paint skills for the NoSpace invasion went to waste Still, I am happy we arrived at this conclusion. Rego has real potential to runaway with this game and I stand to benefit a lot more from a war with him due to his proximity than a war with NoSpace. The most troubling part of all this is that it conflicts with my diplomatic efforts over the last dozen turns or so to convince Rego he is the target and catch NoSpace off guard. Seems all rather ironic now
Things are quite a mess diplomatically, to say the last.

Rego is obviously convinced I plan to attack him, he has been producing cats and moving longbows into T-Hawk and Ilios. He built a caravel in Ilios and then did this:



Prompting me to send this:

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Rego -

Remove your sentry caravel from Alexandria by the beginning of turn 113 or I will declare war.

Regards,
Dave[/COLOR]

I wrote this response while angry about something else, and thus came away a lot more blunt than perhaps was a good idea if I want to ease Rego's worries. Seeing his caravel there just really pissed me off - sneaking it into one of my cities hoping I wouldn't notice it - after I told him I had no intention of attacking him any time soon. He wrote this back:

[COLOR="Yellow"]Apologies - when I originally signed the open borders deal with Kyan, I was not aware of any limitations on whether units were forbidden. I am assuming by your email that you would like our agreement to contain such a clause. Given that you do not have any units in my lands currently, if you wish, I am happy to agree to such a clause.

In either case, I have vacated all of my units from your lands

dan.
regoarrarr
inca[/COLOR]

I am silently kicking myself now at sending that hasty message

At any rate, Buddism spread to another city on t111, and I forgot to request a gold from Shoot. So I went ahead and requested 2 gold on t112. Here's the religion screen - Buddhism is the most influential religion in the world.



The HMS Prince arrived at his port of Samsun and I gifted it to him.



One of my other East Indiamen spotted a Straight Talking Galleon inbound for the island, I'm sure to settle it. I sent this long message to Shoot to cover a number of issues:

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Hey Shoot,

Buddhism spread to another city on turn t111, but I forgot to request one gold - thus, I requested 2 gold from you on Turn 112. Please go ahead and offer 2GPT in return because Buddhism will spread to a 12th city on t113. Here is the updated ledger:

t94 - 1 city
t95 - 3 cities
t96 - 3 cities (requested 7 gold payment)
t97 - 3 cities (requested 3 GPT)
t98 - 3 cities
t99 - 3 cities
t100 - 3 cities
t101 - 6 cities (requested additional 3 GPT)
t102 – 6 cities
t103 – 6 cities
t104 – 6 cities
t105 – 6 cities
t106 – 7 cities (requested 1 gold payment)
t107 – 7 cities (offered 1GPT)
t108 – 9 cities (requested 2 gold payment)
t109 – 10 cities (offered 2 GPT + requested 1 gold payment)
t110 – 10 cities
t111 – 11 cities
t112 – 12 cities (requested 2 gold payment for t111 and t112)


If your caravel hasn't already noticed, NoSpace has a galleon heading for the island you intend to settle - I believe with a settler on board. Nonetheless I moved the HMS Prince into your territory and gifted it last turn.

I have not had time to sit down yet and plan our war on Rego. However, it wil basically assume the form of a 4-pronged strike: you attack Sunrise089, Krill attacks Pindicator, and I attack Tatan/Nowitzkiville and Ilios/T-HAwk. Last turn, Rego researched chemistry, and can now research steel as well as build frigates. However, if I have enough soldiers I can easily cut off his iron on his tentacle. My refusal to renew our NAP has sent his paranoia through the roof. He's been moving longbows to his northern cities and last turn snuck a sentry caravel into my city of Alexandria. I told him to remove it or I would declare war - a bit of a hasty move in hindsight :P

With my cold war with Rego escalating, would you be interested in selling/trading me eight riflemen? The island cities I'm settling are far out of my way and close to Rego, not to mention my best unit at this point is a musketman. I want to stick a couple of defenders in each before the war begins so Rego just can't waltz in and raze them. Here's what I have to offer in return:

- Airships
- East Indiamen
- Gold

Do any of those interest you? If there is something else you would rather trade for, let me know and we'll see if we can hammer something out.

One a final note, as I plan this attack, I've realized my quaint little military of muskets and maces is not going to be enough to take on both the attacks on which I want to. If you're amicable to the idea: could you loan me units for my southern attack on Tatan and Nowitzkiville? Preferably rifles and cats. Right now I'm trying to limp along to physics for airships and then to Communism to get SP online, so I won't have any better units for awhile. My proposed terms would be similar to those for my East Indiamen

- Loan for the duration of the war.
- Promise not to use against the loaner.
- Gold repayment for each unit lost.

Let me know what you think!

Regards,
Dave[/COLOR]

As you can see, I'm trying to get some defenders for my new island cities, as well as get in gear for the attack on Rego. According to my penchant for naming things, I'm calling this Operation Mjolnir, my original name for my alternate strike on Rego

I settled the island city of Hebron on t111:



I love how due to trade routes it is actually giving me positive income immediately after being settled. The next three will be settled in the coming turns.

On getting gunpowder, I went into max gold and will remain it it for one more turn to prepare for my next tech push. As you may have gotten from my email to Shoot, both NoSpace and Rego researched chemistry last turn Krill got guilds and Shoot netted replaceable parts. Additionally, Krill ended his golden age, adopting State Property, Slavery and Free Religion. The choice of Free Religion instead of theocracy is interesting in light of our upcoming war with Rego.

I sent this email to Krill as I begin to plan out the war:

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Hey Krill,

Do you have an NAP with Rego?

Regards,
Dave[/COLOR]

As soon as I finished education on t111, I queued up six universities in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Edessa, Jaffa, Damascus and Sidon. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out the optimal time to go into my golden age. I plan to revolt into slavery for the duration of the golden age and whip the universities to completion. My debate at this point is whether to stay in slavery after the golden age - writing off staying in Caste System as a noobish move and a failed experiment. I do have the most population points in the game right now because of not whipping, but the ability to convert population into shields is just so powerful and my fishing villages suffer without it.

To those out there reading this, Slavery or Caste System?

[mackoti]

Its to early for caste system.And you dont have all the techs wich make the workshops monsters.

[oledavy]

Well, I dun goofed in a number of ways.

I kicked off the golden age, to try and push to physics. Then promptly discovered that there is no way I can net Liberalism, Scientific Method, Communism and Physics by the end of this golden age. The techs are just too expensive for my economy to research quickly at this point in time. I'm not even sure I can grab communism and revolt into state property before the end of my golden age. It's going to take me a turn of saving and another turn of researching to finish off Scientific Method. At that point there will only be three turns left in the golden age. Furthermore I finally got tech visibility on NoSpace again and saw that he is one turn away from finishing Scientific Method, undoubtedly for physics as well. I doubt I can beat them to it unless I beg Shoot to fund me. Furthermore, this all pushes me even farther back in terms of grabbing rifling and sticking it to Rego. I'm a little distressed at realizing all this. I'm unsure of what my tech path should be now. Krill recommends I give up on scientific method and head for rifling.

I double revolted into bureacracy and slavery. I'll revert back to nationhood at the conclusion of the GA. Damascus doesn't have enough pop to draft for awhile anyway, which brings us right to the other very painful thing I did last turn.

I whipped 24 pop away to get all 6 universities up by next turn and get started on Oxford - destroying my population lead. The break-down:

Jerusalem - 4 Pop
Damascus - 5 Pop
Edessa - 3 Pop
Constantinople - 4 Pop
Jaffa - 4 Pop
Sidon - 4 Pop

I had been growing all these cities out for the last dozen turns or so with the vague intention of doing this. Still, I can't tell you how painful it was to do it and push myself from 2nd place to 4th place in score. Drastic, but I'm really starting to fall behind in GNP and this was an emergency measure to get it competitive again. Rego will have Oxford up soon as well and I do not want to be caught behind the snowball on getting six universities and Oxford up. All these cities have been reconfigured from max growth and will grow next turn- and should be up to their previous population in ~9 turns if my math is right. Still, I now have the smallest capital in the game now

Other than that, not much happened on t113. All my settlers for the Southern Isles have been embarked, so I should beat any settling effort from NoSpace.

btw, I've had more than enough EPs to have research visibility on NoSpace and Rego for ages, does anyone know why it would take until now to get it?

I'm feeling at this point in time like I've really squandered Kyan's good setup.

[Gaspar]

Re: research visibility - no way to hide/obfuscate this in a PBEM (as opposed to Pitboss ). So that means either they're saving gold without a tech selected (unlikely) or they're researching a tech at the end of turn without future techs queued. So if you're running into this problem for several turns... well, you do the math.

[oledavy]

Tech Update:

Shoot - Rifling
Rego - Drama
NoSpace - Scientific Method
Krill - Constitution

Yet another detour from the path to rifling for Krill. It makes a lot of sense to net universal suffrage and get a first shot at the Statue of Liberty. However, I can't help but feel he's derailing our chances of victory in the progress. Ultimately he is looking out for himself first, which when you're planning a coalition war, is annoying to say the least. I have already invested nearly ~1100 hammers into this war, I'd wager a fair bit more than anyone else (since you can draft rifles like no tomorrow, and Krill hasn't drafted a one yet). So yeah...Dave's being played for a sap. Meh, its too late to turn back now and the only way I can win this game is leverage this war and my hammer advantage into a military and a commanding lead - that was the entire idea behind the hybrid workshop economy anyway.

So, the East Indiamen building programme is winding down, I have built 23 already, with nine more coming along that will pretty much finish the build up. The division will look something like this:

Krill: 12
Northern Front: 8
Southern Front: 4
Shoot: 12

There's a nice mix of 2xp EI's in there as well. And this should give each enough to complete his war aims.

The biggest problem at the moment are these:





So yeah, I will not be able to maintain naval superiority, and cutting off Rego's iron sooner rather than later is now a huge priority

[COLOR="Green"]Ok, here are my thoughts:

First off, I think I should probably be the one to go after T-Hawk and Illios. I would see you going after Tatan/Nowitzkiville as you mentioned, but also Sciz/Bato. T-Hawk/Illios is just so close to my core it doesn't make much sense to me not to attack it from my side (especially if you don't have rifles, as transporting my rifles literally 360 degrees around the world to get to the other side of T-Hawk/Illios will take a while). In essence I agree that we need to cut off Rego's iron as soon as possible in the war, I just see an attack coming from my mainland as better suited to accomplish that than an attack coming from a tentacle arm which has much less of a production capacity.

Next, I think I could sell or trade you some riflemen for your island city's protection. I would probably look to get one or two EIs for my own (to maintain my own islands) and then after that probably airships are most appealing. Feel free to offer terms of that.

I would be willing to loan you units for your attack on Tatan/Nowitzkiville. We'd have to work out how many you need and when. Also (and I hope you agree with this assessment) I think getting rid of Rego's iron would need to take priority over that for everyone's safety, so that I think should be prioritized over me getting forces to loan for your Tatan/Nowitzkiville attack.

Shoot[/COLOR]

I haven't responded to it yet, but with that email from Shoot we have our basic attack plan in place:

Targets:

Shoot: Ilios, T-Hawk, Sunrise
Dave: Bato, Sciz, Nowitzkiville
Krill: Pindicator

Ideally, one turn of war will turn Rego into an 'also-ran' and remove him as a threat. Provided I can actually take those three cities, I'll raze Bato and Sciz and keep Nowitzkiville. I think I'm going to trade 4 rifles from Shoot (one for each of my island cities, and loan out 8-12 more for the attack on Nowitzkiville. Sorry there aren't any maps this time If I get a moment I'll mock some up so anyone lurking can see what we're planning.

I micro'd some cities and was able to complete scientific method in one turn. I'll save gold next turn before pushing for another tech, the real question now is whether to go for physics or communism. Would welcome any input on that. Perhaps I should go for another tech entirely.

I must admit I am feeling rather blue about this game at the moment. I feel like I've been played for a sucker by the other players and have been conducting terrible diplomacy on top of that - all for everyone to see in my thread. With my GNP falling behind and Rego and now Krill running away with the game, I need a major victory to make me competitive again - something that will prove elusive in a war with Rego. Yes, we can probably reduce him to an also-ran status by a well-timed strike. However, the bottom-line is that I need more land. I also shudder at the thought of Krill capturing instead of razing Pindicator and running his own priest economy (sankore + minaret). He has about a 2 tech lead on everyone and that can only improve as time goes by. So yeah.....

[oledavy]

Time To Re-Examine This Game

Alrighty, defeatism post over, now time to figure out how to try to win this game against all these experienced players. I'm going to approach it like I would a chess problem, ignore the game to date and instead focus on the immediate issues.

Bottomlines:

1. Building up a navy has put me behind the curve in terms of economic development. So, I need to conquer land to make myself competitive again.
2. I have a massive navy that I need to use somewhere, not using it is throwing away my advantage and putting me even farther behind.
3. Shoot is the only one I can count on at the moment, as I believe it is very unlikely he is plotting behind my back.

This Leaves Three Possible Targets:

Rego
NoSpace
Krill

I feel a little disingenuous that I consider attacking everyone and made a firm commitment to only one other player. But meh, I suppose that is how the game is played: Keep all your options on the table and don't make many friends.

Rego is the most likely to win this game using his priest economy snowball. However, Krill is only slightly behind with his 4,500 beaker tech lead thanks to an early Oxford and the liberalism snowball. NoSpace has slipped to last, though they still do have a sizable tech lead going for them.

Vulnerability of Each (Least to Most)

1. Rego
2. NoSpace
3. Krill

With his frigates and proximity to rifling and steel, Rego is going to be a tough nut to crack. I'm beginning to think more and more that a war against him will turn into a pure slogfest, with great difficulty in making significant gains. NoSpace is close to rifles, cannon and frigates as well, but also has a large existing army of catapults, muskets and knights. Krill is by far the weakest, since the best he can draft is muskets (thanks to his tech path) and his small standing army.

Existing Diplomatic Relations

Rego - Icy
NoSpace - Icy
Krill - 'Friends,' by which I mean him dicking around on our coalition war

Yeah, I fucked up the diplomacy in this game big time.....

So, where does this leave me?

..........

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Shoot,

Would you be available to talk between 10-11 CST tonight?. I have some urgent matters to discuss regarding PBEM17.

Dave[/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Novice and Spaceman,

I have a number of important issues I would like to speak to the two of you about over email (or chat if you prefer) ASAP. However, first I need a confidentiality agreement: that whatever we discuss stays between our respective civs and does not get spread around.

Regards,
Dave[/COLOR]

Can any of you guess where this is going?

[oledavy]

I had a very long chat with NoSpace, which I won't repost here because there is no way anyone will read through the entire thing.

tl:dr version

We're attacking Krill, reeling him back in from his lead.

I have now officially subscribed the the Scooter school of diplomacy

I still need to get Shoot onboard with this. I'm sure he's going to love this - switching targets again and jumping in bed with NoSpace. However, we're all trailing in this game and it makes sense to ally against one of the leaders. Bottomline: we're going to end up with a 3v1 or 3v2. We need to make sure we drag Rego back too and don't let him run away with the game in the meantime. However, I think I've already done a good job of getting him to end his farmer's gambit at least - if my shoddy diplomacy did nothing else. Basic idea we hammered out: I contribute East Indiamen and Airships, NoSpace contributes Cannon and Frigates, and Shoot Riflemen. NoSpace will trade cities for riflemen, then support a war against Rego by loaning/trading them back. I will launch strikes against Krill in my north and west with my own drafted rifles when they come online - this should give me some promoted units and my first GG. It makes the most sense that NoSpace control the mega stack because they have the Circumnavigation bonus. I'm a little wary of them pulling a PB2 stunt, but am willing to take the leap of faith and give them this army (plus they get to pay maintenance and supply).

I've conjectured the best time to cancel the 10t cooldown NAP would be after Krill goes on t117 - this is my estimate of his teching plan:

t115 - Saves Gold
t116 - Starts Democracy
t117 - Finishes Democracy

So, if we cancel then, he has no gold saved up and minimal overflow from Democracy, so he loses a turn heading for rifling/chemistry/construction to mobilize his own military.

Thoughts anyone?

[Mardoc]

Thoughts anyone?

I like fireworks .

I've no idea if this is a solid plan or airy nonsense, I haven't been following this game closely enough to have an opinion, but as a lurker I always approve of wars .

[oledavy]

Long time, no post

My apologies to anyone who was reading along, things have just been really crazy in my life lately.

After a two week hiatus of doing the bare minimun to keep the save moving, I am back. I'll be doing a big post after t121 to bring everyone back up to speed. Currently, I am waiting for responses to the diplomatic feelers I sent out earlier today to try to figure out where things stand - as far as going to war.