So I won the coinflip and will be able to get a third GA. Shitstorm incoming from further north, though. Hopefully only an emotional one.
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[SPOILERS] AlaePB1 - the ol' Nile blues
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Someone has -14 GNP, nowhere a record, of course, but still impressive. The only person to be in anarchy is Gavagai, so he must have some loan burden on him. I guess he went to the money market to complete Communism on time, for all the good it did him. He has 20 in the treasury, so I gave him 4gpt to avoid units striking, as he is about to launch an assault against Furj.
Edit: also adopted State Property. Still dead last on crop yield and MFG, but at least on MFG I am not that far from the next place up. Third on income with Gav in Anarchy. Disaster, but I look forward to how the anti-Dutch war pans out. Hum got Steel, which is a fairly deep beeline for him, so I assume he is joining in over land with Cannons. He also completed the Spiral Minaret to go with Sankore and generally has jumped up in the rankings. Zanth, by contrast, squandered his land advantage and is researching Military Science of all things. He has no Philosophy (no Nationalism), no Alphabet (no PP), no Astronomy. His economic civic is still Decentralization (!!!!!).
T201 Galley-based invasion has commenced!
Cripple fight go: Now, unless there is something cleverly hiding in the fog, and I've been monitoring comings and goings to make sure there isn't, what you see is the entirety of Znth's fleet on the theatre. There are no vessels in port in all these cities. He originally had 3 Triremes and a Caravel guarding the border waters, but in the view of my stack he split these, thinking I would sail north. This proved ruinous for him — of the remaining 2 Triremes (C2 and C1) the first lost a combat to a non-promo Trireme at 23.2% odds, the second won it's combat against a non-prom ship, but was then killed by my own C1, with my vessel taking no hits. Zanth now only has a C1 Caravel, the flagship for the theatre (embarassingly) and a Trireme, but I have 5 Triremes, of which 4 are fully healthy, and 5 Galleys. As you can see, he also doesn't have much prod in the area. On the contrary, my closest city can put out a Caravel every 2 turns, and in fact will do so until I get Astro. It looks like he will not be able to block my advance, after all I only need 2 turns to land now.
But really, Civ needs diplo — not being able to coordinate actions just takes away so much potential from this game. I wonder how one could resolve this without suffering the usual intolerable costs of diplomacy in the form of hours and hours of discussion. Clearly, 'trading window' is fine — so maybe we should think up a sensible list of formulaic trades that players should be able to send to each other, and respond with an accept/reject.
Just as a preliminary thought, I would include trades of the form: 1. Military collaboration 1.1. Attack/Defend + city name + with Y units 1.2. Buy/Sell + unit name + deliver to + city name 1.3. Cancel OB with X 1.4. Declare war on X tentative 1.5. Demilitarize + city name + coordinate1(relative to city, i.e. 3N2E) + coordinate2 + coordinate3 + coordinate4 tentative 1.5. Non-settle + city name + coordinate1(relative to city, i.e. 3N2E) + coordinate2 + coordinate3 + coordinate4 2. Money market 2.1. Loan X until Y with Z gpt interest (allowing proper loans, where you can repay the principal in a large chunk at the end, rather than have to prorate it from the turn you borrow) 3. General 3.1. ... + in/for X turns (allowing deals at planning stage, rather than in media res) And I guess I would agree that deals thus concluded are binding much like in the trade screen, that is cancellable only via a declaration of war and only if they are for a period of time. In fact, I would move all deals to the e-mail/PM correspondence of the above format, so that the trade screen and other game functions are only used to execute the deal concluded in the correspondence. Alternatively, if the trade screen can be modded to include a wider array of options, I think it should be. Albeit I don't see how the unit trades could work.
We are all clear for landing next turn, and Zanth entered into GA, so switched into Caste -- he won't even be able to whip the Grenadiers once he has MilScience next turn. I am saving Gold pre-Oxford, which will complete in line with a GA beginning, where I will go Astro -> Steel, and after GA Steam, Rail and Combustion. Need those Destroyers badly.
Hum got stone! And sold it to me for 5gpt. This means I can finish Oxford a turn earlier, and then really blast Kremlin. Completes in 12 without GA and lots of people working as merchants, once I launch a GA, might be able to do it even in 8.
On the Zanth front, he decided to take his Muskets out of the city to block my landing, giving them Combat. MISHTAKE. He did heroically kill a C1 Pinch rifle in the first combat, but then crumpled. 2 Muskets killed at a cost of a rifle, the other two Muskets are out of the city, city Garrison is Mace, Spear, Archer. I have 4 landed rifles, one with City Raider, another rifle on the boat and 4 trebs. Will bombard defenses down to 12% with three trebs, attack with 1, and clean up with rifles.
Meh, due to the delay caused by the channel mistake (see above), Zanth had both MilScience and gold enough to upgrade two Muskets into Grens. I figured that would be coming, but even in the view of a delay, once all those units were loaded up on galleys and two thirds of the way there, it made sense to try for an attack. I have 4 trebs, and simming shows that double bombard (60->28) with double siege attack gives me decent enough odds.
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Yeah, it's really heated up. Then we will have a nice little warships race — my tech is way better, so I'll have Astronomy long before Zanth does, upgrading a couple of Caravels to Frigates. We'll see how he gets any troops to that island then.
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