[SPOILERS] PBEM17 Lurker thread

[Ichabod]

he will be just a "toy" for malefic Krill.

But I agree with your points.

[Ichabod]

Malefic Krill is really toying with Dave (I can't believe he still plans on giving boats to Krill...):

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

Rego already has frigates... I don't see how the plan is going to work since they don't have a single rifleman yet.

[plako]

Oledavy's reports are excellent. I just don't quite understand why did he keep Stalingrad. Worthless city that is impossible to hold against Cannons. It doesn't seem like he would have really need it as a canal. Furthermore he will never get hold of that road tile leading to it because of the culture accumulated over the years despite of being Creative.

Now that he has kept it I think he should have given it up this turn and just tried to raze Far Open instead.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Kinda funny actually. The later games have had faster and faster tech paces generally speaking. A combination of everyone going farmer's gambit (in the earlier games someone usually at least took a rush civ - agg praets were in nearly every unrestricted leaders, etc) and overall lusher maps (compare say PBEM2 or PBEM3 to this game) seems to push the breaking point back further.

It will be interesting to see how the metagame adapts. Either rushers coming back in vogue (unlikely, as the non-rushers have the advantage) or maybe we start looking for less lush maps (unlikely, as well.)

Well, the two high tech pace maps were PBEM17 and PBEM19, where everyone had easily defended fronts during the early game to farmer's gambit behind and get into that exponential snowball sooner. I can't say it's a bad thing, as it gives an opportunity for all the late game toys to come into play, so that once high-mobility options appear the shit absolutely hits the fan.

Of course, kudos for these players to not kingmake and always find an opportunity to cut down tall poppies before their exponential snowball hands them the game early on.

[SevenSpirits]

Dave is astonishing. (Though he's cool and I like his updates.) He loaned StM a bunch of East Indiamen for FREE? Less than free - StM doesn't even have to pay nearly full price for any he loses.

That goes past stupid and borders on intentionally throwing the game. (With the caveats that it's clearly not actually intentional, nor does it appear at this time that it will cause StM to win.)

[Gaspar]

Dave is astonishing. (Though he's cool and I like his updates.) He loaned StM a bunch of East Indiamen for FREE? Less than free - StM doesn't even have to pay nearly full price for any he loses.

That goes past stupid and borders on intentionally throwing the game. (With the caveats that it's clearly not actually intentional, nor does it appear at this time that it will cause StM to win.)

Yeah, I had the exact same reaction. I'm not sure if its because they have a good outside the game relationship (they're paired in PB6) or because Dave is just out-to-lunch when it comes down to this stuff but its pretty amazing. Especially since StM seems far more likely than Dave to get big spoils from the war.

This whole last dogpile is just stupid anyway. Rego and Darrell were pretty much neck and neck and simply because Dave sort of walked in with all these bizarre preconceptions but is skilled at catherding there's a 3-on-1 on Rego. I've been rooting for nospace all along because of the early game actions, but given everything I especially hope they can take advantage of long term peace to win. I'm not banking on it though - I'd be surprised if Darrell didn't win at this point.

[mackoti]

Did darell got any cities from this war?

[plako]

Did darell got any cities from this war?

I think he only razed. He might resettle some of the land closest to him though.

[Gaspar]

Given that we can't comment in his thread, I'd say the harsh realities of being the navy builder plus relying on "goodwill" are coming down upon him. By the nature of the favors Dave has done Shoot, its absolutely reasonable for him to expect that Shoot should give him Plako. By the nature of who has the bigger army, Dave's screwed. But yeah, if I were Dave I'd be losing my head here. If I were Shoot, I'd tell him to go fly a dike.

[pindicator]

Given that we can't comment in his thread, I'd say the harsh realities of being the navy builder plus relying on "goodwill" are coming down upon him. By the nature of the favors Dave has done Shoot, its absolutely reasonable for him to expect that Shoot should give him Plako. By the nature of who has the bigger army, Dave's screwed. But yeah, if I were Dave I'd be losing my head here. If I were Shoot, I'd tell him to go fly a dike.

I am rooting for him to take plako. I'm having my doubts after the bloody nose that rego has given him, but it's not like winning that town will give him the game, and he's so intent on it that it feels like a moral victory that would help keep his thread going.