[No Players] Lurker thread, to lurk and chirp

[Rowain]

He never tried to befriend plako. From the onset he decided to befriend the guy with he lush land and fight with plako over tundra tiles.

[Bobchillingworth]

Man, these events really hammer home how weak base BTS Aggressive / Protective are; stuff like free Pinch is almost as good as an entire trait...

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Not sure what I'm supposed to do from now on. Long term, I won't have enough land to compete with Gavagai, and there's no easy/safe way for me to get more land.

Gawdzak got Physics which is actually very scary. Now, after the scientist is taken, prioritazing Physics makes sense only if you want to beeline destroyers. And... he should want them really badly if he is willing to skip Communism for a while. State Property will be a very powerful civic for his empire. Also, his GNP seems a little bit too high even for a golden age, I suspect he is building a lot of commerce. This is also a sign of a high priority which he assigns to research.
And this is something I would actually do on his place. Forthcoming equilibrium will work to his disadvantage and getting destroyers early will be his best chance to break it. I will need to think what I can do about this. Currently I'm leaning towards finishing Corps and then making a beeline of my own while building research everywhere except a few cities engaged in crucial projects. I'm not sure, though, if it will be enough.

Gavagai is ruthless and has the killer instinct. Gawdzak is creative, a little more talented, but somewhat less ruthless. Will he see his advantage and take it? His other options are not great. Attacking plako is a dead end, same dtay. Gawdzak's best way of gaining ground is not by gaining himself but by harming his closest competitors while he has an advantage and can do so at a relative discount. The question is whether he is interested or willing to endure a constant grinding war of attrition with Gavagai. I think he may choose the path of avoidance, which is probably a mistake. The land deficit is going to be very telling once Gavagai gets his empire modernized.

[AdrienIer]

Finally free to read and post here !

Just to answer a few things, I see this thread has been eagerly bashing our second city, but you forget that it was supposed to be the first step in a bold plan to seal GJ off on the chokepoint. The plan failed miserably but when there's a chokepoint between you and your only land neighbor you have to try something to gain control of it.
In hindsight we should have realized how fucked we were and settle all the (frankly subpar) land to our north.

[Krill]

To be blunt, you had no reason to do that: you didn't have anything on your side of hte choke point worth sacrificing, well, anything for.

[AdrienIer]

There was a horse/fish/incense/can't remember what else spot that we never settled because of the menacing choke city. Also it made us essentially harmless to GJ. But I admit that it might have been suboptimal.

[Kofiman]

Man, these events really hammer home how weak base BTS Aggressive / Protective are; stuff like free Pinch is almost as good as an entire trait...

Is there a similar event for rifles? I'd like to see Comm explode.

[Ceiliazul]

Really, his personality is the biggest X in my analyses. I think, I can understand Gawdzak, his actions were very reasonable all the time. But what this Joey guy is thinking - this I don't understand.

Seems to me GJ paid a convenience fee to put both his primary enemies at war while hes at peace. It didnt last, but thats still a good play.

Also, dtay is finally the second top tier player (after Plako) to realize how stupidly strong the spy economy is when youre not in the tech lead anyway. Good for him!

[Krill]

Espionage needs rebuilding...or probably just stripping out active missions.

[The Black Sword]

I'm pretty curious about the espionage thing. I thought I ran the numbers in PB13 that it didn't make sense compared to a regular economy. As in the espionage cost was only on the same order as the beaker cost after both 50% modifiers were taken into account. But it sounds like that's not true according to dtay.

The other thing is I was looking at the medieval period, not including the multiplier buildings like Jails etc. It's still a big upfront cost to build those though and you generally already have beaker multipliers already in place at that stage. So I guess it also comes down to how much value you get out of all the free EP you generate from those buildings.