[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah he can go fuck himself with an offer like that. Why not just pm us and ask for concession? He's yet to kill anything other than barbarians in this game, let's make sure he knows how to do that before his coronation. He should be able to take those cities since none of them can be defended but no freebies dude. Do your own homework, earn your own win. Did he actually think we'd give them to him? Doubt it. All that offer does is make it obvious what his targets are. Dumb.

The whole attack is dumb though. There isn't a need to attack us in a defensive-ish preemptive strike to keep us from coming after him later, we missed our window given his stacks of rifle defenders. He doesn't need our land to win. And we can't really threaten him anyway with the whole angry Suttree situation. I don't get how attacking us helps him win. Oh well, maybe he'll do something stupid and lose position somehow. Do the best you can and as always leave nothing the enemy can use. If he is about to capture a city whip what you can use, then kill population you can't use.

Sorry this happened in your turn set, my vacation has been fun at least!

[spacetyrantxenu]

Avatar update to reflect how PB11 makes me feel.

I like the new avatar, though. Fits this game perfectly. Someone let us know when it's over and we don't have to log in anymore, OK?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T186

I'm done building pointless cities, we're out of room down south.




These cities are very weakly defended, mostly ancient age trash. The proper army is camping up north, hiding in cities, to deal with retep. I can't defend both North and South well, and the North is much more valuable. This is entirely ignoring anything north of the sea, which I have written off and will only serve to feed us muskets from this point forward. Also, it looks like suttree hit fourth ring borders in his city south of Black Eyed Peas, taking the plantation that we do not yet have culture on. That doesn't help any.




More of this. And next turn, expect exactly the same. This is a terribly disappointing way to play.




Especially when this is the result. Losing money at 0% research. I suppose I should just whip the grocer into the capital but I don't feel like it. Let them all go on strike.




Big happy family.




Big, happy family with nice, shiny toys.




Big world. For some.




Where I want to be.




NOT where I want to be.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Quick and dirty sim.

Ok, so possibly I've overreacted sending the entire cataphract army to the north. I put together the most likely combination of units that retep will send against us. Basically, a handful of combat 2 redcoats, several combat 1 redcoats, and a smattering of unpromoted redcoats. Not a lot of variety in the assumed attack force. The short version of my sim is that he'll get terrible odds attacking into my 60% cultural defense cities going redcoat vs. CG2 or Guerrilla2 muskets. So, he'll have to land. And he'll have to assume that I'll have collateral available to pummel him. Which I don't, really, but what does he know? I have some, but not enough to thwart a full scale, D-Day type invasion. But, do I really see him making that kind of investment when all he really needs to do is sit back and tech? No. Not with these terrible odds coming off the boat. If only I had more collateral. I'll see if I can get some more catapults up here quickly and then redeploy some cataphracts back south for the wardec in 6t. If retep moves in strength, though, I'll just fight up here as well as I can.

My guess is that he'll just try to take the islands and iceball north. Which makes his diplo demand all the more perplexing. I mean, I'm just whipping units now that I may not have otherwise whipped.

I didn't mention this in the report, but there's an outside chance we lose our Moai city next turn. Retep has a galleon in range to strike. We'll have two muskets and an archer to garrison when the turn rolls. Should I turn on auto promote to get the promotion on the musket? Probably not, as I have a number of other units completing when the turn rolls. I don't trust the AI to get many of those promotions right. Meh.

[Zed-F]

So what will you do when you run out of cash?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Demand gold from William and wetbandit. They need to get involved. Ask for a large lump sum if they have cash on hand. But this is all really stupid. If I'm William right now I'm very seriously thinking about donating a navy or declaring war myself to prevent the runaway from getting easy wins against an opponent who can't possibly resist the common enemy.

Can we sell some of the island cities to William for cash? We're going to lose them anyway, maybe we can get better value than then simply being taken for no gain. And then if retep really wants the cities he'll have to declare war on other strong military powers. Would be great it we could sell a city to wetbandit too and force a was declaration against him by retep as well, but the borders don't make sense for wetbandit at all do I don't know why he would go for the deal.

But yeah time to beg/demand gold from everyone and see if any help comes in. We're doing work for everyone right now, they need to pay up.

[spacetyrantxenu]

... because seriously... Retep's tune would change in a hurry if our stack could land on his shore. That's the only way we can force him to give us peace, by threatening his cities. As long as he holds the high ground with his navy and we can't threaten him, he has no incentive to give peace.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Civstats shoes that it looks like we lost moai city. See what we can sell I Burn for to William. With our shipping lanes cut that city can't help us much now anyway. And hopefully all the little filler island cities are getting really small by now.

Damn this game.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

More importantly, today is the World's Largest Outdoor Pity Party.



Corso picked Georgia, so of course we'll lose. But it doesn't matter this time, so we'll win despite his pick. And, though it kills me to say it, go Vols. (-10.5 today, so I'm pissing in the wind here) . Also, Corso's "closer than the experts think" pick doesn't hold water when the line is Georgia -3 and he picks the Dawgs by a field goal.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

We Steal

c1 redcoat vs. CG2 musket 31.5% = WIN (defender 10/100)
C1 redcoat vs. musket 64.7% = LOSS
C1 redcoat vs. archer 98.6% = LOSS (redcoat 2/100...wow)
redcoat vs. redlined musket 100% = LOSS

Stars Above

redcoat vs. g2 musket 26.4% = WIN (musket 82/100)
redcoat vs. g2 musket (82/100) 50% = WIN
redcoat vs. archer 87.1% = LOSS

F1 much the same as last turn, scores of muskets on the way. Five turns until suttree can declare, so five more turns to put muskets into northern cities and move some cataphracts back down south. I requested 400g from WilliamLP, offering a couple of duplicate luxuries that he already has. He is going for Rifling and so will have very little (zero) coin to spare. I renamed our Great Scientist to Great Merchant and will make a gold request again once he is inside WilliamLP's borders. How much is a GS worth? Surely at least 800g.

If we run out of money, we'll strike. In order to avoid striking, we can change civics three or four out of five turns and swap religions as well on the odd turn. Or, better, we can just swap back into Representation/Caste and pay our bills and earn a little science. We're at the very tail end of diminishing returns on Police State now since we have so very little to whip. On economy, we're currently about 10 feet below the cliff's edge looking up, and standing on a rocky precipice kicking pebbles into the canyon below. Anything we whip at this point is pure pain and gets us even further from the edge, on the wrong side. Gravity is a bitch down here.

Edit: I guess I should say that we held at Stars Above. I promoted the surviving musket to g2 and it's in pretty good shape. I also ran a newly completed 9xp musket in from whatever that other city is three tiles to the north. And, of course, fucking misclicked when doing the promos. Now we'll have a g2/woodyI musket defending instead of g2/cg1 or g2/combat1.

Who cares, right?