Zara, The Newly Minted System Lord(TBS)

[The Black Sword]

T112 report

Shanghai fell, costing me 3 muskets for his 4 defenders. In addition, Nanjing grew to size 2, allowing me to capture it instead of raze. I've been working under the assumption that dtay wouldn't allow that. I think this is a pretty good indication that he's checking out of this game now.

Behold my prize; Atlantis!



I've got to rename these Chinese cities, I'm leaving Azza's and dtay's naming schemes in places in cities where they have christened them though. Mulling over the possibility of a National Park here too.

I hunted down and killed a Galleon fleeing Atlantis, in addition, there was another fleeing Haven which appears to have disappeared after I cornered it. I think he deleted it. Btw, Haven was his stone city, so hopefully that will delay The Kremlin a bit. From what I can tell dtay's fleet now consists of 1 Galleon, 1 galley and 1 trireme and he's just completed Chemistry. In comparison I have 10 Frigates and ~7 Galleons. He's also quite outnumbered in ports.

On the inner sea, the defenses in Liann Jiun were not improved last turn, so I got my city raze in the end. I don't imagine I'll push any harder at Osiris, just keep the Galleon hanging about to force him to keep it defended.



On the other hand, Albion's new garrison was more than adequate to force a retreat of my Knights.



I don't really see much more gains to be made in this war, though I wouldn't mind taking some of his island cities, that might not be realistic. I think I'll stay at war for another few turns, to keep the pressure on him to whip outdated units during his GA. During that period, I'll still do my best to hurt him. 3 Galleons full of 9 Rifles, 2 turns after Rifling comes in and a further 2 Galleons from Atlantis with the veteran muskets to try make something happen on his islands. On the mainland I doubt I can make any gains and I'll be happy maintaining the status quo. When he's about 2t of GA left I'll probably offer peace. If he has checked out I'd prefer a peaceful relaxing finish than always war. I'm also back up to 2 war weariness unhappy again, so there are material benefits to peace.

Here's the current state of my island harassment:



On tech, if possible I'll turn research off for 3 turns until Oxford comes in. If dtay goes for Mil Science though, I'll probably have to go straight there myself. Otherwise I imagine Steam Power would be my next tech target, for Levees and 50% worker production. I haven't really evaluated my economic options after Rifling properly yet. Biology looks tempting, with my heavy emphasis on farms, but it is pretty expensive too.

I had all that written before playing T113, where dtay had built 3 Frigates, researched Mil Science, and offered me a 10t peace treaty. I think he had 5 golden age turns left at that stage and I still had ~300k power advantage. After much consideration I accepted. I'm a bit unsure about the decision, on the one hand, I doubt I can make any further gains and it saves me researching Mil Science(could have got it in 2t). On the other, maybe I should be continuing to leverage my current military advantage and my drafting ability, it should cost him more resources than me to match that. I went with peace in the end though. I'm thinking of throwing my GA 5t from now and use the last 5t of peace treaty safety to benefit from Bureau/Caste. Not finalised though, because all my cities are still growing quickly.

I've also been thinking should I or dtay be using this peace to take land from one of the other 2. I think the answer for me is no, dtay would surely jump in once the 10t are up and that encourages player no.3 to do the same. Additionally, Dhalphir is the only player during this game I consider a friend, so I don't really want to attack him when the advantages are debatable. BaII is just a terrible target. He has 1 island city that would be really easy for me to pick up and then it's a naval invasion with no land border. Even if the war goes well, the other 2 will pile on from either side and get a similar amount of land that fits better with their defenses. On the other hand, dtay might see this as an opportunity to take over BaII while I can't interfere and catch up. I'm not too worried though, his forces aren't particularly offense-orientated right now and the difference in their power isn't great. On land, it's Knights+cats vs Knights, CKU, Grens not a super advantage. Dtay only has 1 galleon in the water at the moment so it would take him a while to use his advantage there. So, I'm pretty confident BaII could hold out the 10 turns necessary for me to get back involved.

[The Black Sword]

Ex-Azza land recovering nicely:


Oxford up in the capital:


Break even is only 50% so I will grow on farms and work the scientists I think rather than grow cottages.



Stacking the drafting in anticipation of the Globe.

2 new cities:



Demos:


Dtay just finished Steel, so no tech pre-req, can't remember if he has tech on or off. My own GA is in 2 turns when Steam Power comes in, GA hammers going into the Levees. I'm looking at 4GPs and researching Steel myself next. Hard to see myself losing from here assuming I don't screw anything up.

Steel opens up Ironclads, allowing me some counterplay vs SotL and allowing me to skip Mil Science. Building cannons will be great rather than rifles which are already really easy to draft. Additionally I'm really light on collateral atm. In addition I'll probably immediately start some Drydocks and the Ironworks. So it seems like a good tech for me. Considering heading toward Combustion myself afterwards, with a sidetrack to Biology. Getting Bio during the GA isn't too important because I won't want to work food tiles so much.

[Commodore]

Ouch. Grow that cap man!

[The Black Sword]

Your fault Commodore; giving me 2 crappy riverside grass cottages.

Actually, it was whipped for 4 pop for a university and max overflow to Oxford, still recovering from that. I'm not in Bureau though and have no Academy, so it was just like any other city pre-Oxford.

Curiously, examining everyone else's capitals, me and dtay both have 2 riverside grass, while the others have at least 5. Clearly a correlation between that and score. Also, all 3 people with Riverside Sheep picked Fin, the only people without it, me and Azza didn't. I wonder how much affect that had.

[Dhalphir]

Congratulations on a game well played TBS!!

Did you have any designs on me as a conquest target at any point in the game? It felt like we mutually decided to have a friendly demilitarised border very early and never really stopped that.

[The Black Sword]

Thanks!

Apart from the very early game, I had no designs on your lands. At that stage, I was trying to decide who'd be better to try take land off in the future, you or Azza. That was a tough decision, Azza had a massive cultural buffer and a border with dtay too. Then Azza pretty much made the decision for me though and I pretty clearly needed a friend with enemies everywhere else. I agree it was very beneficial, it may have left a sheep roaming free and cost us a little bit of grassland but I think it was well worth it.

Near the end I was beginning to wonder again should I attack you(I was just re-considering everybody really). It was pretty unclear to me how successful that could have been though and I had enjoyed our previous co-operation so I decided against. It feels nice to have friends sometimes .

Btw, I don't think I documented it in my thread, but I noticed some pretty iffy worker micro from you at times. Most clearly, I remember you taking a very long time to improve the copper by UNATCO, even after it had expanded borders. Additionally I saw a couple of cases where you had 2 or 3 workers moving onto a forest to chop it(at a time when worker labour should still have been at a premium IMO). Maybe something that could be improved in the future. GG in any case, it was good playing with you.

[Dhalphir]

Yeah, my play at the end of the game is so far ahead of my play at the beginning that it's silly. When this game started I hadn't even joined PB13 yet - now that's over and I'm doing PBEM55 too - a lot of questionable stuff has been fixed these days.

That specific copper - if it's the one I think it is, I didn't improve it because I didn't have a unit spare to guard workers and didn't want to give you a tempting choice.

[BaII]

Also TBS why didn't u just take that one island city I had. It was practically free.

[The Black Sword]

I was a little bit annoyed when you settled it, because I was planning to settle there myself and it was clear you couldn't defend it. I think I decided to let you grow it for me for a while. The diplo incident wasn't worth a size 2 city.

[The Black Sword]

Here's the last report from the System Lords.



Dtay's golden age had just ended and I began mine, giving me some fairly dominating demographics:



I was generating 4 GPs during my golden age:






3 for my 3 person GA and 1 to bulb Sci Meth. Then the plan was to research Biology and head on to Combustion and try take the rest of dtay's islands and control the seas for good.

My 2 most important cities; Oxford and the HE:


After hitting size 14 I was going to stagnate for the GA, working hammer tiles or specialists. I was expecting not to go into Bureau for my next GA and get a GS out of here.



Nirrti had just hit it's target size and was now loaning out it's corn to use up the excess food. I'm really proud of this city, I never expected it to be so important when I settled it.

Here was my Rapid Response System:



At least 2 Galleons full of Rifles sit on the Fleet Stage tile, there is another galley stage in the north. Then through boat chaining I can unload 6 rifles in any of the front island cities in 1 turn. In 2 turns I can reinforce the my land front with dtay by unloading inside Freemantle. Here's my forces stationed over there:



Highlighted is Sobek's garrison, Freemantle has a similar one.

Overview shots:




Azzaland was recovering very nicely, particularly Hawthorn. Only half of my cities had Taoism so I was going to switch to Buddhism and spread it everywhere, putting Wall Street up in Hawthorn. In addition, Freemantle and Sobek were destined to be commerce sites, the others mostly hammers. Collingwood was going to get the Forbidden Palace. Atlantis:



A couple of other screens:

(Also missing Music, Theo and DR).

There was still a lot of courthouses to be put down in the latest cities and savings to be made in city maintenance. I was still considering whether to go for SP or stick with Rep.


14 workers(3 stolen) for 29 cities!