Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[Becko]

Yeah, the Duke made 150+ movies: that should last us at least a few more "border incidents". What would be a suitably provocative re-name for Hyperborea? In Harm's Way? How the West Was Won? Cheer Up and Smile?

Interesting reasoning on CS. I usually go for Bureaucracy sort of on autopilot, but I can see how that wouldn't be optimal for us just now.

I'm off on a three-week trip starting today. I think I've arranged wifi, so please keep updating, still! Subbing will be difficult though.

[The Black Sword]

Enjoy the break Becko, I promise not to nag you for turnplaying duties.

Here's some good news:







They retreated from the city, didn't even whip something in to spite us, and didn't pillage our wheat in Westward Ho. That is surprisingly nice of them. I'm having flashbacks of the Gaspar - Gavagai situation in PB16 right now, Lewwyn couldn't be a better influence than Noble right? Anyway, I took the city, set up the defenses as shown in the pictures and offered a peace treaty. We should obviously prepare for them to hold a grudge though, even if they're playing nice. I guess from their point of view, while they have enough time to stop our stack before it gets anywhere else dangerous, maybe they don't want to spend the resources?

[The Black Sword]

We got peace and it's time to start wonder-whoring. I started Paya and Zeus in Searchers and 3TS, two high production cities without much to build. Unfortunately my buddhist missionary failed to spread in 3TS but then on the turn roll I got a spread in Westward Ho where I had a missionary on route. So, no complaints. Both wonders are being built primary for failgold, so I don't mind if I lose them. Neither effect will kick in in the immediate future, though both are good so they can be delayed for a while. I do need to figure out where I plan to finish them though.

The future NE city of Quiet Man is not really an option I'm afraid because it's going to try for the Great Library. No marble and big cross forests to chop make it unlikely I make it though. There's not much defense against an Ind civ chopping it out in a new city but frankly, we need to put it in the NE location or it's not worth it. If fail, then a 1.25 fail gold ratio isn't good, but not the end of the world either. I figure we might as well try since we're probably getting to Lit first.

There is one massive wonder left that I haven't mentioned at all so far, being the Hanging Gardens. It's long past the point someone should have built it by now, it will be ridiculously good value whoever finished it. Why haven't we made an attempt? We were almost certainly last to Mathematics and I was sure it would fall by now. If it weren't for the 100h aqueduct tax I would have put something on it and been happy with failgold but I don't want to throw away 100h. I tried to find somewhere that could finish it quickly this turn and came up with squat so we'll continue to ignore it and hope Thoth isn't the on who lands it.

In addition to Hyperborea, we settled 2 new cities this turn and have another next turn. I need to figure out some names.





That's really all the contested sites settled. Now we just have a few backfill locations left and some weak border sites that I'm unsure if they're worth the border tension.

[The Black Sword]

Here's where we're building TGL:


and another wonder has finally come to fruition:



Overview:


I renamed everything too. GP coming in 10t for a shrine worth at least 30gpt. I'm thinking of trying for GPs in Hondo and Donovans too, before a hopefully super-powered TQM overpowers everything else. Unfortunately for Wyngas, I've come to the conclusion that's the only direction aggression makes sense in. I don't have any planned when the peace treaty ends in 10t, but if we do go on the warpath again, that's probably where we're headed. Someone also picked up HBR this turn, but since it wasn't them(they have alphabet) I'm not worried. We have no pre-reqs on Lit, so we're the first there.



Been whipping relatively heavily recently and Thoth's caught up a bit in food. Perhaps more worrying though is the land area figure. He might be able to pull ahead long term.

[The Black Sword]

Been mulling over a city specialization problem lately. True Grit is an absolutely fantastic production city and has been assigned the HE. But do we need a second city, with an entire BFC dedicated to production to push out late game wonders? None till SoL and Kremlin seem like must-haves though. The options:





I'm seriously considering re-purposing McLintock, despite the cottage development. I think whichever city has the biggest production should be the wonder whore, 2nd should take the HE. Alternately, I could just accept McLintock as a weak hybrid HE site and use True Grit for the wondering.

Here's our current production leader:



6 turns is the earliest completion date IIRC, whipping it in. I think I can turn on research and 2 turn Music next turn if I cash in my SoZ fail gold. Possible competition is Yuri and Commodore with around 250g gold stockpiles at the minute. What's the plan with this artist anyway? Another golden age is probably the only thing that makes sense. It will be quite a while before we generate a partner for it though.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, I've decided to continue with the HE in True Grit and I'll transition McLintock towards a production city. The potential wonders are so far in the future that I don't think I'll dig up current cottages at the moment, just put down production improvements from now on. Then I'll bulldoze cottages late game if they improve my wonder ETA. It's starting the Forbidden Palace now, going to chop those 2 forests in to speed it up.

Is there anything the lurkers would like to see or questions for me to answer? I'm not really sure what to report on in an empire this size.

I don't feel very threatened over Music, so I'm going to delay the SoZ failgold a bit longer. Dtay's the only player who has refused to put his tech at 0% so I don't have an idea of his tech rate. It doesn't cost much EP to get research visibility on him so I'm getting that next turn I think. That's also why I cancelled OB with him a while back too. His GNP graph looks pretty good while his culture graph is far below everyone else.

With regard to Oxy, he's doing very well with the lowest military in the game. This was annoying me for a bit but I decided that he's still doing worse than Thoth, so there's no point me taking action just to take him down, it'd have to benefit me too. Our border situation over there makes it very hard for either of us to attack, so I'm just going to take advantage of that too to beef up my defenses elsewhere.

Also, LewPar completed the MoM and the HG is still unclaimed. Come on Commodore and dtay, you have 1 job to do!

[Becko]

I'm reading along whenever I can find wifi, just wanted to say great updates! The production discussions are very edifying, at least for me, though I don't have much to add.

How do you think our incorporation of The City Formerly Known as Hyperborea has impacted Gaswyn's outlook on us and the game? Before the border incident, they might have seen us as less desirable to engage in conflict with, compared to e.g. Oxy. Or rather, they might still prefer to attack the weaker powers but now assuming that our mutual border is too big of a threat for that.

And on a wider scale, for how long would you like to be at peace, if it were entirely up to you? 15 turns? 50? The rest of the game?

[The Black Sword]

Gaswyn is taking the city loss really well from our perspective. They actually declared war on Oxy a few turns ago, but it seems they took peace with no city changing hands. Their city count was quite low after losing Hyperborea but it has rebounded a bit and the MoM is a really powerful wonder for this map. So I think they're still a contender and while that's the case they're playing rationally. And the defenses I'm keeping in place over there, 3 axes, 2 spears per city, and a road connection north to south where the rest of the army is sitting, are a lot more than they'll see elsewhere. They're keeping pretty similar defenses themselves in Quivira and the north tundra city too though. I've been using the 10t peace to get our border forests chopped, just in case.

As for ourselves, well I reckon this great artist means we want a golden age in the not too distant future, which probably precludes military action. I'm also expecting the tech rate to continue rising pretty quickly, which also makes military less appealing. Do we have enough land to finish the game with? Probably not, maybe Cuirs would make a good attacking window? I guess we will naturally put out a lot of military even without whipping though.

[The Black Sword]

Did you know you could fail-gold Missionaries?



I didn't.

Here's our current money-grubbing schemes:

Forbidden Palace:


Statue of Zeus, completed next turn:


The Great Library:


Shrine:


Would be nice to get IW and MC soon, a couple of cities are defaulting to wealth builds now.

Also, our rivals are being mighty trusting:



I don't plan on opening borders with dtay in the immediate future, maybe I should have attacked here.

I also had a quick glance around the map for aqueducts and couldn't find any. I have good coverage of Thoth, Oxy and LewPar's cities but pretty bad for Commodore or dtay who should be the builders.

[GermanJoey]

How much are you gonna get from that shrine?