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[SPOILERS] This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. But Mostly Mine.
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Ok, maybe this explains what I meant, although I'm sure you didn't take my previous statement as a literal interpretation of wetbandit's circumference. First, I am no physicist, not even a bad one, but I won't let that stop me from running with any kind of metaphor. Generally speaking, gravity (caste?) wins every time, once you get sufficient mass, but it takes longer to overcome a temporary advantage that is momentarily stronger (weak/strong force, so slavery?)
 City count: wetbandit: 10 me: 14 Same screenshot, wetbandit's civics: all initial except slavery in the Labor column. I'll get bonus hammers out of Bureaucracy as well as Organized Religion, though only Bureaucracy will directly help me build units. OR will just more easily get me forges that will help build units.  I was going to count up the number of tiles I'm getting a golden age free hammer from but I don't have time. Count if you feel like it, or I'll just post the demos for T113 next turn. But even with this drop off, I'm sure to have a higher raw hammer count, if for no other reason than a higher city count.  The golden age spike is obvious, but you can also see I've led in hammers all game. This lets me assume I have a relative hammer advantage (I've prioritized them more than wetbandit) as well as a qualitative advantage (more cities/tiles being worked). I should keep a very healthy lead here over my neighbors.  I have built six forges and I'm building four more right now. I do not have any idea whether or not wetbandit has metal casting, but I think this is very likely another advantage right now. As many relatively new cities as he has, he's likely building granaries and units to the exclusion of nearly everything else, except maybe some workers as he has to keep up on improved tiles (something that I've not done very well on in the last ~10-15 turns: I need more workers too). In the end, with the nerf to whips in slavery, caste seems to be a better hammer producer in most cases. If I had a super high happy cap (or HR and a million warriors and didn't mind unit maintenance), and enough production to get me a constant series of 1 pop whips, slavery would be perfect. But you can't always count on a mega food surplus, so caste workshops are more steady. I also can't whip wealth to run a high slider. The crushing weight of gravity is meant to allude to me wearing down my local opponents over time with more hammers, and possibly gather speed as the hammer disparity grows until knights crash through the event horizon into a singularity of... ...wait, mack is going to win with a Nakor handicap. Nevermind. 
From the score increase, it looks like I got The Great Library when the turn rolled ahead prior to the reload.
T113
Well, let's just get to it:  Rather than wait for wetbandit to declare his intentions, I decided to force the issue. Sooner started, sooner done, which is important to me because I'm trying to keep enforced peace treaties staggered between wetbandit and Caledorn, which allows my meager forces to continue to be reasonably effective. Wetbandit may have preferred to build up a few turns longer and then move in, who knows. All I know is that I decided to stop building units because I want to win the game, not just this war.  We'll see how this goes.Cities: Graphs and demos:  Elsewhere, plako has a scout on my borders and (not pictured) offered Open Borders. Declined. He built GLH, so regardless of whoever else decides to open borders with him, and doubtless there are many, I'm not giving him routes. Also, and not for nothing, I don't want arguably the best player (apologies to Krovice) in the game scouting me.   Quietly, I'm up to ten cities with Taoism. I'll continue spreading domestically and internationally. And, based on this screenshot, and if anyone is paying attention at all out there, I can hear the vets in the lurker thread banging on desks and wagging fingers like WTFWUT? with my alt+click and no discernible military production. The axe that is completing is just leftover, unused build cascade from The Great Library that I'm going to dump into the National Epic. The axe will be nice too. I really don't expect things to get rough with wetbandit. One of these days, someone with nothing better to do is going to fight for real but while I do think that may eventually be wetbandit, I don't think it's today.   But in case I'm wrong, these guys better be up to the task of bailing me out. 
T115
AD years begin with failure, and success.   To be honest, I wasn't all that close, but it is still disappointing. I didn't get in a huge hurry to do this like I could have, but I think that deviating from more important buildings, forges mostly, would have been bad. But having a third free GS via The Great Library would have been really cool. Oh well. Most of the rest of the turn was moving workers around. Music and the free great artist at EoT if I don't lose that to a coin flip. After Music, in some order: HBR (430b), IW (345b), Construction (603b), and Machinery (1207b). I'd do Machinery first but it is comparatively expensive. Cities: Demos and graphs:
T116
After this, one more turn of enforced peace with Caledorn:  Not too much to worry about, it seems. I'm weak countering his stack at Obsidian, so if he pushed against Madison (single archer garrison, can't whip because I'm in Caste) and was committed, he could almost certainly raze my city in 3t before I could pull everything back to defend. But my defensive plan is to remain positioned to be threatening in a counter attack. So, he can probably kill a city, but I'll likely get at least two in return. I think I'll be ok. My scouting chariots show a complete absence of front-bound units, so I think the peace will last.  A tangled mess. A couple of wars, and three sources of Open Borders (Mardoc, plako, and me).  Dhal is looking to expand at minimum distance from his nearby city and in a position to touch second ring borders with me and Mardoc. I ran a caste artist this turn in East Entrance to pop borders a turn early and will continue with the artist for another couple of turns to establish cultural superiority until I get the work boat in position to net the clams on T118. I don't imagine I'll have a hard time controlling the clams, initially via culture and later, permanently via the sword. Also pictured here, I'll be chopping the grass forest on the hill over on Dhal's side beginning on T119 with the last worker to evacuate from mine/chopping duty on the Nakor shore.  Mackoti builds units, more news at 11. 4653 has plenty of potential. Cities: It really is about time to build some units.   If nothing else, I'll get some soldier points from techs and barracks.  More than anything else, I think wetbandit will respect the power graph going forward. I hope in the meantime that a high MFG will be persuasive enough and that he won't be tempted to go back to the ATM for more blood money. 
T117
 I still don't see anything remotely aggressive on the way to the border, so this must mean peace. Caledorn whipped once on his half of the timer, that's all. Elsewhere in the world, and after the screen shot above, dtay has whipped me solidly into first place, dropping 19 points during his turn. He was logged in, so that wasn't a city capture, just whipped pop. Someone better watch out. Krovice whipped 12 points earlier in the turn, so best case (I can dream anyway) is that Krovice declared on dtay and dtay shit his pants and whipped everything.  Worst case is that they both have Guilds already.  But no, not yet.  Cities: Graphs and such:
T118
Team Badass found me somewhere out there. I'm guessing they saw my trireme headed up the wetbandit-Q channel and then dipped immediately out of sight. Because they're super scared of my mighty trireme, ho-ho-ho. Or something.    Nope. Not scared of shit, those two. I'm guessing that one of the several recent Great Scientists belongs to them and that they've plopped down an academy and will be killing it on tech basically immediately. I really ought to read one of their threads to learn about their play, it is really solid. And 19 cities? Even with IMP/FIN, that seems like a lot. Definitely a contender to win, and almost certainly have played a better game than me to this point, absent any knowledge of their neighbors. They can't have been in a softer neighborhood than me, isolated as I am against the end of the continent and with lower third of the scoreboard neighbors all around except for wetbandit who is solidly middle of the pack. Job well done so far, guys. PB13 ending is probably bad news for us in PB18 since they'll have even more time to devote to this game. I'm glad I don't share borders with them.  Enforced peace with wetbandit ends in 6 turns. I'll have Construction in 3 turns and will need to get a couple cats made close to West Thumb in addition to stacking more units in. Caledorn did not declare war on me and appears to be, at least for now, uninterested in fighting. He has a pretty defensive troop posture now, so I'm shuttling units back to West Thumb for these guys:  That's a lot of guys to just guard a worker. Maybe he's moving on nakoti?   So the whale is netted but not within borders?  Or am I reading that wrong? I would assume it had been Q's since he is in that area but I haven't met whoever he may have fought. Also noteworty, Ruff STILL hasn't hooked up the stone on the island near his city over there. It's been forever since my scout was down that way. Odd. Cities: Graphs, demos, etc:
T119
Hello again, little friend!  My workers were continuing orders set on the previous turn that had not been cancelled. Try to keep the spy within borders in the southeast, I'm hoping to train xp on a few more barbs down that way. Once I get a HA out of Grant Village, one combat win vs. a barb should get me to 10xp to unlock the Heroic Epic.  Cities:  Not surprisingly, lots of people already have Construction.  Plako's scout is on Caledorn's deer tile, visible through the diplo interface. I consider this a polite request to either give me a free deer or to not scout me. If he moves the scout anywhere in my borders down here I'll kill it. I have plenty of trade routes and plako isn't the vengeful type to get mad about a lost scout. 
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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
