T237 - Recent discussions about the end of the game notwithstanding, I don't really have a lot to discuss right now. Here's a vague empire overview shot, showing not a lot going on.
The most newsworthy bit it that Commodore's failure to hold Dominoes née Papa John's has screwed me over royally in the city I bought back from him, Bad Fish, and in Sad Fish next door. He had control of the city just long enough for me to build a work boat in Sad Fish, move it into position on the clams, and reconnect it. That same turn the Zulu recaptured the city. Goddammit....
Now I can't even pillage the nets. And this being no diplo I can't demand a work boat back from them. I don't have any hopes of capturing that city myself so I'll probably have to spite pillage the nets one of these days since that's all I can do.
And yeah, I'm working on getting the SNN travelling correspondent boats back into ports to be refitted and reloaded for less news coverage and more news making. I have enough knights standing by in Blue Fish to do whatever work needs to be done at the three or four target locations. Fellas, it's a one way journey, none of you will be returning home. You will all die on the battlefields of old India fighting the Zulu invaders. Make a mess, die, and make
mighty Portugal proud!
I don't have a count on how many turns it will take to get everything in place, but I'm going to guess it's around ten turns from now. That's an eternity with the way the game has gone lately, and who knows, it may well end before then, but I'm committed to the attack and have been for a few turns. I just had a few last castles to build (wtf Xenu, why are you building castles???).
It's too many turns until my next great person will spawn to kick off another golden age, so the swap to theocracy and (possibly) vassalage will come fairly soon. I have to decide on vassalage, probably need to test to see if it is worth doing it. It's going to eviscerate my economy to abandon Bureaucracy, but I'm not researching anything worthwhile anyway after Printing Press. It isn't like I'll ever make it to Astronomy or anything else useful, the techs are just too expensive. So maybe I can save some cash on unit expenses and get the +XP bonus of vassalage. But what does that get me that bureaucracy doesn't? Other than +2 xp per unit, it sounds like I'd be lowering expenses some and lowering research output a lot. But when the research doesn't matter that much how do you value it? I have no idea. I guess bureau is still better though, since vassalage will only get me another promotion on mounted units (knights) and every city other than Blue Fish is building non-mounted since knights cost too much to build anywhere else. So maybe vassalage isn't worth it. Like I said, I still need to think about that one. But theocracy over OR is a 100% necessary change now, it will give a second promotion to every non-mounted unit I build and lower costs. Sold.
I don't have another screen shot for this turn, so demographics:
Back to 6th in power, so Commodore has been killing Zulu again. Other than that, still fairly solidly in 6.7th place.
Any requests for info? I still have graphs on everyone except Plako for now.
