Nothing like the Prodigal Sons: The Odd Couple actually play as themselves.

[NobleHelium]

It was a good test whether Ichabod had died and made him arbiter of all pauses, which apparently he has.

What? Just to be clear, only expect me to act as an admin when someone asks me to. I won't be voluntarily trying to solve every single dispute (or whatever pausing the game means) in this game. If you need something, just ask or PM me.

You should know by now that randomly blaming people is much more fun than trying to find something productive to do about the issues that crop up.

I wasn't totally serious...

Draw + red for Flamini = fail.

[Gaspar]

t81 - Answering Questions

Its been sort of hard to report these turns in an interesting way of late since essentially what we're doing is shuffling units and crapping our pants at every sign of green so instead of a normal turn report, I'll attack Boldly's thoughtful post here:

It's hard to comment much, need more info.

What are our short (5-10t), intermediate (10-25t), and longer term goals? Ideas on projected settlement dates, locations, tech path, etc.? Any new map thoughts (probably not, no new scouting information). Estimate of how long it takes Gavagai to get up some SAs (he's saved gold for 3t it looks like) and the window we have before he could possibly swarm us with double-speed, whipped units? What we can do in the meantime to build up and then be able to counter (forges for better whips)? Estimate to Currency and possible estimate to get a galley out and plop a settler or two on our small islands for ICTRs?

Are blockades banned? I hope so. If we could spare the hammers, a trireme to scout the northern coast and rip up seafood would be cool. But probably those are luxury hammers that we don't have, given other needs.

I'll answer the first part last. So first question, settlements. We settled Teapot Dome at the gold this turn:




We are settling Bay of Pigs next, in roughly 8-9t. Thats tentative, however, because we made need to do units to deal with Gavagai instead.




Ideally the next settlement would be an island city, but we can't really project out that far because so much depends on this:



Gavagai lands CoL and likely Confucianism next turn, so SA and whips a-go-go are coming. Hopefully Confu doesn't found in Beryllium but I suspect it will.

Tech Path:

Our current suggested tech path is Mathematics (3t), Sailing (6t), Masonry (3t), Construction (18t). Sailing has to come first because we pretty much have to tech cats to hope to deal with whatever he's bringing. That means we might never get Currency or anything else interesting. The alternative is HBR after Sailing, which would take 12-ish turns. But we want Masonry I think, for the option to build walls in Seward's as well as the possibility of snagging a wonder if we get lucky with a GEng. Our GP is scheduled for t94 - essentially right after Masonry.

We're certainly open to discussion on this front.

I think one way or another I answered most of your follow up questions there. We'd love a Trireme, but its debatable if we'll be able to spare the hammers.

So what are our goals? Gavagai is FIN/ORG. His economy already well eclipses ours and its only going to get more severe. We'll have gold soon which will obviously be a big boost. We also have all of 1 Mint and 1 Library in addition to 4 cottages, only 2 of which are remotely mature. So there's a lot of room for us to improve even with just the techs we have. Obviously getting an Island city down would help. Currency would help more. Mids would help, GLH would help, Colossus would help a bit. But maturing our cities probably helps more than anything else. The balancing act for us really is how do we stay strong enough so that we're not whipping ourselves into oblivion while being able to beat off an offensive from Gavagai? Obviously Cats are pretty much always the answer to inferior forces. If you have Cats and HAs you can defend yourself for a long, long time, so once we have those two techs I think we'd probably focus exclusively on the economy. I just don't think Gavagai is going to give us that chance. If he gives us 30t before bringing an attack, we'll be okay. I suspect we have 10-15t tops.

So in sum:

Short term - Get Math, Hook Gold, Get ready to settle Bay of Pigs
Medium term - stay alive long enough to get key military techs
Long term - grow the economy, look for a way to compete

The problem is, every turn at this point, his advantage grows. Waiting might help us defend, but it helps him get further ahead. Eventually he's going to have many more build queues. His best window though might be in the next 10-15t. Sacrificial Altars are best when you first get them - eventually you don't want to be whipping so much because the cost of losing mature cottages and so on. If we can get a few more Mints built and cottages down, I think we can stay in the fight. But realistically, I don't see any way our people aren't eventually all speaking Aztec that doesn't involve everyone conceding to Seven before then. We have to get off the back foot, as anyone who has ever dueled knows is death, but I just don't see a way for that to happen.

Anyway, happy to get and answer any questions/ideas/otherwise that anyone might have. Here's a few overview shots:

The north:




The south:




Demogs:

[Lewwyn]

I feel like delaying currency is a mistake. But then I suppose you are only in a duel.

[NobleHelium]

Well we basically hate all the choices, and yes I agree it is a mistake on some grounds. But we're expecting the Aztec hordes to come flooding in very soon given the completion of CoL, so I don't see what choice we're likely to have.

[Lewwyn]

Embrace oblivion and prepare your virgins for sacrifice?

[Gaspar]

Also it looks like we got a TR connection with Seven from settling Teapot Dome.

Serdoa, really, I can't express how much I hate you.

[Lewwyn]

Also it looks like we got a TR connection with Seven from settling Teapot Dome.

Serdoa, really, I can't express how much I hate you.

Ah, the lamentations of your women.

[NobleHelium]

Lewwyn, stop fraternizing with the enemy!

[Lewwyn]

Lewwyn, stop fraternizing with the enemy!

But... I am the enemy.

[Brian Shanahan]

It was a good test whether Ichabod had died and made him arbiter of all pauses, which apparently he has.

What? Just to be clear, only expect me to act as an admin when someone asks me to. I won't be voluntarily trying to solve every single dispute (or whatever pausing the game means) in this game. If you need something, just ask or PM me.

You should know by now that randomly blaming people is much more fun than trying to find something productive to do about the issues that crop up.

I wasn't totally serious...

Draw + red for Flamini = fail.

And there wasn't a single scintilla of seriousness in my post either, just a late night attempt at humour.