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

[Gaspar]

Ok, who's got their secret decoder ring out for this one:





He also offered us Open Borders before this, which I declined (obviously I declined these as well.) Additionally, Seven gave us Banana for nothing, which, while not quite the firewood and livestock we were hoping for, continues his tradition of giving us everything.

[Ceiliazul]

Can I get a wide angle shot, or a labeled f5 shot of where his cities are?

Edit: Here's your latest empire shot:

[Ceiliazul]

...no idea what the diplo meant :-D

[Gaspar]

Little Mac vs Glass Joe - Round Two FIGHT:

Green HA vs C1 Spear @ 9.3% = LOSS (Spear down to 68/100)
Green HA vs C1 Spear(2.7/4) @ 61.5% = WIN (HA down to 2/6)

And just like that, bickety-bam the mothafucka's trashed and we go smoke a bowl.




95g for that.

Mike settled a city south of Le Havre when were scouting, and after the culture receded, we decided to take a little peek-see:




Oh you silly bastard.

Little Mac vs Glass Joe - Round Three FIGHT:

C1/Shock Chariot vs Green Axe @99% = WIN

And just like that, bickety-bam the mothafucka's trashed and we go smoke another bowl.

So, after 2t of war, here's the stats:

Our losses:

4 HAs

His losses:

3 spears
1 axe
3 cities
2 workers

Obviously, this is probably the high water mark of that tally, but hey, small victories. The real question here is why on earth he let this happen. I mean what was the point of him scouting our stack forever and ever? He knew what we had. If he had just been a little less zealous with the farmers gambit and put, say 3 spears in Caen and Nancy and then maybe sure there was one in the queue and whippable as well, we probably can't do much of anything. And if he was just going to hope - why bother scouting? So he knew which turn to bail on the game on? Makes no sense.

Anyway, here's the situation on the Scandalous-French warzone at EOT:




This is the end, my friend. We suspect he'll have two more spears in there next turn, which might make it more trouble than its worth to take the city. On that note, we offered him peace for Nancy. We probably can't keep Nancy, but we can use it to establish culture in the area for our other cities. Green checkmarks denote priority settles, blue question marks denote later, filler cities. Yuri teched Machinery this turn, so he can now build maces. Obviously, we're going to need a ton of military in the area to settle this, so continued peace with Gavagai is essential. Let's talk about Gavagai for a moment:




We just popped 4th ring at Plame. We did use an artist to make it happen a turn sooner, but sensing that Gavagai's diplo message was intended to say "stop fucking with me with culture" we fired him this turn. We are running many artists in Seward's to hopefully establish 3rd there sooner, which is critical to our defense. The yellow line denotes what we'd like to keep as a border with Gavagai. Yellow Highlighter denotes tiles we could easily take from him, but we're laying off. Its on him to get some culture in those cities, however. Anyway, as you can see, we have 4t left on the treaty. Gavagai took 2 cities off PersianAI this turn, so I suspect he's winding down there. He could certainly bring that force to bear on us, and if our HAs are all occupied in the French theatre, well, it could get ugly. We do have a fair number of skirms and spears in each city, as well as reasonable cat stacks, but I'd really rather not have it come to that without our hitters.

We're currently teching Civil Service, which is due end of next turn, 128. The original plan was to go for Calendar after that, but I think we might just have to tech Machinery next, because we're going to need higher base strength units to support defense on both the Aztec and French borders. The question after that is whether to go for Guilds, providing Knights as hitters for cat stacks or to skip it and head towards Gunpowder through Education instead. We also need to slip Aesthetics/Literature in there somewhere, now that we have a Heroic Epic eligible unit. Thoughts? Here's the tech tree, we have everything before this and nothing after it.









Pair of overview shots above. There's a settler aboard the Galley headed toward the sign for Moai city.

I think we're wrong about the map, btw. It looks like Seven has a whole continent to himself, so the only thing I can say is that Serdoa was hitting the crackpipe super hard when he designed the map. Here's demos from EOT.



I'll try and do a more focused domestic update next turn, perhaps.

[Ceiliazul]

What's that big stack of Aztec units in 'Neon'?

I agree with your diplo take, but honestly that yellow line is completely unsustainable. Berryl is a perfect salient, there is no reason for him not to use it. Fast forward to the era of knights, or cavs, or whatever, Seward and even Plame will always be 1t away from existential threat.

[Gaspar]

What's that big stack of Aztec units in 'Neon'?

I agree with your diplo take, but honestly that yellow line is completely unsustainable. Berryl is a perfect salient, there is no reason for him not to use it. Fast forward to the era of knights, or cavs, or whatever, Seward and even Plame will always be 1t away from existential threat.

2 Archers, 3 spears, 2 cats. He has a similar stack in Beryllium.

In terms of the border - certainly, there can be no question that there will be another Aztec-Scandal war. His move to secure a treaty with us by threatening Seward's which allowed him to plant Beryllium one south was a very good play on his part and it will always be a problem for us. I think the key is to keep detente and make sure we always have strong enough units to repel whatever he's bringing. On that note, opening a second front with France was probably stupid. However, when you consider we were the obvious target for Mike's rifles, then I think we bought ourselves quite a bit of time by moving the goalposts for that front closer to his capital than ours.

Nevertheless, whatever dreams we had of going on an infra binge are probably dashed and we should be constantly finding ways to tech the next military tech and go from there. I guess the question all along hasn't been whether we survive or not, but whether or not our people are speaking Nahuatl or French at games end.

[Gaspar]

Yuri did indeed accept peace for Nancy, after declining and spite whipping it once. We need a city name - here's the list for those counting:

XYZ Affair
Conway Cabal
Pickering
New Empire
Corrupt Bargain
Galphin Affair
Tenure of Office
Whiskey Ring
Credit Mobilier
Black Friday
Sanborn Contract
Salary Grab
Newport Sex
Ohio Gang
Teapot Dome
Hollywood Ten
IRS Scandal
McCarthyism
Checkers Speech
Spiro Agnew
Watergate
Nixon Pardon
Koreagate
Debategate
HUD Scandal
Wedtech
S and L
Iran Contra
Inslaw Affair
Sewergate
Thomas Hearings
Monica Lewinsky
Whitewater
House Banking
Post Office
PRISM
Plame Affair
Blackwater
Lawyergate
Jack Abramoff
Iraq War or WMDs
Wiretaps
Fast and Furious
Benghazi
IRS Tea Party

[Ceiliazul]

corrupt bargain seems a good one for a traded city.

[Gaspar]

corrupt bargain seems a good one for a traded city.

Forgot to strike that one, we used it already for the Silver city - the corrupt bargain is the inferior dotmap to not antagonize Seven... who has a whole continent to himself, I might add.

I think the current clubhouse leader is Credit Mobilier, since its a French name.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I think Gavagai's first diplo message from a few posts back is telling you to settle the sheep city in his face 35 turns ago.

No idea on the Iron/Iron + Bay of Pigs trade. Maybe he wants a city on that body of water? In which case, he should just build one. I dunno.

Nice smash and grab job on Mike. A few more spears would have been prudent on his part, for sure. Good job getting peace, too. I agree with Corrupt Bargain as the replacement name.

I think Machinery, Aesthetics, Literature, then on to Guilds. You're going to be building units forever unless Gavagai is going to be satisfied with his position after eating AI Bantam. Do you think this is likely? I don't. Also, yuris is going to want to make a better showing than what he's been forced to endure so far, so look for him to retake some ground in the future. Will he draft maces or wait for muskets? I'd guess maces unless you get some maces of your own in position quickly. Either way, you'll want knigs sooner rather than later. That makes any invasion a super dicey proposition this side of rifles. By that time, hopefully 7 has already launched his space ship.