Gaspar and NobleHelium - More Arguments About Buildings & Food.

[Gaspar]

Black coffee ftw.

[Gaspar]

Moving on, another mundane turn. Things are actually incredibly boring in China at the moment - our cities are about as big as it is worth growing them to/we are able to grow them to. Our workers are laying down semi-useless roads. 90% of our builds are long since decided. The majority of our near-term tech path is decided. So the turns go like this:

Noble: blah blah blah meaningless worker micro
Gaspar: yeah
Noble: do you think we should do this slightly different thing than what we talked about before?
Gaspar: no, let's stick with the plan.
Noble: ok
Noble: blah blah blah meaningless worker micro
Gaspar: *surfs porn*

And so on. The lesson of course, 11-city empire is teh yawns.

Highlight of the turn? Our galley has forced Commodore to cover his workers on the coast:



Overseas - more blood with Dave losing a GG and Mist gaining one. Yuri does a 3x revolt without a GA. He'll need to revolt to Buddhism next turn to actually get anything out of Theocracy.



Your nightly military update:



Constitution in @EOT. Next turn we swap Rep/Merc/OR. Fun stuff.

We're no longer #1.

[Gaspar]

Quick report as I'm tired.

We teched Constitution which allowed this:



Loss of trade routes certainly hurt base income but the overall combination of Mercantalism and Representation is a strong one and boosted our breakeven bpt output by ~20 beakers. That will improve as we get more multipliers down, though of course USuff and State Property are probably the endgame economic solutions. With the return to OR, we slipped off the heavy unit construction slightly, starting the additional 4 Universities needed for Oxford. I always forget what a tremendously shitty building Unis are until I need to build Oxford - 134h for the only science building that doesn't give specialist slots. Anyway, if you're going to have a Bureaucratic capital, there's no excuse for not getting Oxford down, particularly when you have stone, so begin it we have.

In the bad luck is also the residue of design department:



Pops the GP to do a Golden Age civic swap the turn after doing a civic swap. Also still hasn't switched to Buddhism. No reason for him to do anything else with that GP either, he already has the Buddhist shrine. Tough game, Yuri.

Nothing too much noteworthy beyond that, though we got research visibility (short-lived, most likely) on Commodore @EOT which shows him 1t to Rifling. This I expected, though Noble keeps underestimating Commodore's tech rate and is predictably freaking out after spending the first half of the turn telling me we should tech Music soon. Now he wants to build CKNs everywhere. Right answer - somewhere in between. We need to tech to Rifling RFN, but I don't think we need to panic. Will take Commodore a while to amass forces and we definitely outproduces him. If he whips/drafts himself silly, well that just means his tech rate is going to slump.

We teched Aesthetics this turn since it was possible to do it while saving gold to 1t Engineering next turn. We'll get Lit in similar fashion on the way to Rifling. We are blessed to live in interesting times.

Here's an overview shot so there's a picture this turn:



Demos:

[NobleHelium]

If you put a sentry chariot on that hill SSW of Cathedral, couldn't you be able to spot if units were massing 2W of Kiki?

Gaspar forgot to respond to this. Anyhow, this was a good idea, but we can't build Chariots anymore. And a Spy is cheaper than a Knight so we've built one and it will hang out to see.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 115.

Commodore has Rifling. We did a couple big whips to finish two Universities so that OR and Alcarnus can get back onto units. I think davy has decided to spend the rest of the game fighting Mistabod instead of trying to win, as evidenced by the power graph:



And as more evidence, davy's GNP continues to go down as well:



Commodore's war weariness has not gone up, so he's definitely not actively fighting anymore.

Other than that, the story is about the same as before - we're up to 28 CKNs and maintenance is ballooning. Need to get rid of some units soon. We finished tech on Engineering and will be doing Literature -> Gunpowder or Replaceable Parts. yuris did not start a Golden Age, but he did tech Machinery.



Oh and I found our GP counter in DO amusing:

[pindicator]

Commodore's war weariness has not gone up, so he's definitely not actively fighting anymore.

How do you spot the accumulated WW? I don't believe I've heard of this trick before.

[NobleHelium]

I discovered it accidentally a while ago.



You can also see your opponents' EP ratios against each other. You can't see your opponents' WW against you though, that's the annoying part. At least I haven't found a way.

[Gaspar]

Noble didn't mention it in the last turn report, but Commodore has a Rifle in Kiki:



Our spy's first foray into Holy Rome didn't tell us much, just a couple cats near the city. We predictably lost research visibility on Commodore after he dumped a bunch of EP on us.

There was some skirmishing between France and Byzantium as Dave lost a GG. He also revolted to Rep and OR. We think he might be trying some EE type thing as his EP gain overall has been increasing. Given that he has no cottages and spy spec slots are few, I highly doubt he'll have much success with that. Speaking of Dave, we have nearly all of his map unfogged now, so have a look-see at France:



In other news, no real news. We teched Lit on a semi-gold saving turn whilst building overflow. We will most likely tech Gunpowder next turn. That will be our 4th one-turn tech in a row!!!11 We'll commence chopping out the NE next turn.

Other than that, just projects get Unis down and get power up continue apace. Not much else to be said.

[NobleHelium]

Gaspar didn't mention that both Commodore and yuris teched Compass this turn. It's kind of bizarre - I mean Commodore may want to get circumnavigation but he isn't going to tech Astronomy until after Combustion probably. And what could yuris want with it?

[NobleHelium]

We can't play the turn yet because Gaspar is busy, but rival top power is now at 586k. Last turn it was at 648k, and that was before Commodore played and his power went up slightly at EOT, probably a bit less than our increase. We increased by 21k power last turn. So I'd say Commodore has lost at least 75k power, conservatively. Rival average power is now at 470.5k. It was previously at 485.5k. 15k power change across 4 people is 60k total. Commodore's WW has also gone up to 99 from 25 and Bravery has lost 2 population. Mist's WW has not gone up, and he also got another GG.

Conclusion: Commodore is attacking Bravery. Is he winning? I don't know for sure, but I think Mist is at least holding him off because the overall power loss was less than Commodore's estimated loss (Mist obviously built some number of units on his turn). Of course Commodore may have lost so many units that Mist is now top rival power, and we have no way of telling until next turn when we see the graph update.