[PB22 Spoiler] Joey and Borsche puke on the funny pages

[GermanJoey]

Certainly does feel like that's the way the wind's been blowing...

[GermanJoey]

T220-T221. (Screenshots are from T220)

All remains quiet as I finish my first factories and coal plants. My industrialization here will not be as fast as PB18, I think, due to having fewer cities that can match my big 6 from that game despite having twice the total number of cities in this game. L dot O dot L dot. Still, I will have 3 coal plants done on T222, which is a start I guess. I also hit 4k beakers per turn!

In this update, I'll just show some of my neighbor's lands and garrisons. I think I've done a pretty good job scouting this game, much more so than other players, and that's doubly the case right now as I have more than a dozen airships trawling around the edges of my empire.

First, Gawdzak's HE in his central core. He has almost nothing garrisoned here besides a rifle or so in his southwestern coastal cities, and a couple infantries near his border with Gavagai. I don't understand why he can just leave these units here, as there's no way for him to know where my fleet is (it is outside of his Privateer's 1T scouting range) and Gavagai has a huge navy and land stack right nearby.




OTOH, here's Gawdzak @ Furungyland; combined with his fleet (unchanged since my last posting about it), I think I've come to the conclusion that the greater majority of his military power is down here. If Gavagai declared war on him right now and I pinned him down here, he would lose his entire core no question. I think that means he's also convinced of the reality of our prisoner's delemma, and is betting that we won't try anything until he gets his destroyers. He's probably right.







Next, Gavagai @ Northern Korean Penninsula. I wish I didn't have to cede this area to him, but it is better that I did. I wouldn't be able to match this garrison without leaving myself vulnerable to Portugal, and I think he respects that I did not try to overstep my actual sphere of influence landgrabbing this area due to his offer of a military pact. My 5 cities here (6-7 after I finally get around to the filler spots) are extremely strategically important for protecting my holdings in Former Korea simply due to the geometry of the coast.






Gavagai's core garrison. Note that he has two supermedics, one for each stack!




Finally, Portugal. They're still acting suspicious:







A bunch of ships (30+) went missing on T220, which made me panic a bit, but I found them 2W1S of InsideOutside on T221 via a Galleon approaching from the south. IIRC He has a total of 31 Carracks, 3 Ironclads, and 6 galleys in total in the area.

[GermanJoey]

My 5 cities here (6-7 after I finally get around to the filler spots) are extremely strategically important for protecting my holdings in Former Korea simply due to the geometry of the coast.

Expanding a bit on this point, as it is easier to see the situation on a minimap. With my holdings on the northern peninsula, I only have to be concerned with asserting control along this line:




As opposed to this one, the case if Gavagai controlled this peninsula instead:




As the peninsula essentially forks my entire core.

[GermanJoey]

T225.

Very brief report; lots of things going on in game, but I'm very busy IRL. Life's been hectic, truly.

Hmmm, where to start. Gavagai popped a MoM GA and got RR before Communism or AL; I think that was probably the right choice. His CY dropped drastically, down to my level again, suggesting that he is going for another GA after this one.

Gawdzak did in fact tech RR and Artillery until they were near completed, and then 1-turned (!) Combustion last turn. He has oil already connected somewhere, but I saw no queue-upgraded destroyers anywhere and I can see just about his entire empire via airships. Frigates cost like 380 gold to upgrade to destroyers IIRC, so he only has enough gold to upgrade 2 right now. I suppose that's all he'd need? Anyways, his main fleet is still stationed near former-Furungyland, though Gavagai pulled back his huge stack of Frigates into a port. Gawdzak also sidelined to get the Fascism general, damn. I wonder if he'll go for Paratroopers next, or for MS to get the Commando and Blitz (for his destroyers, yikes) promotions?

2metra and dtay signed peace; I guess dtay got spooked by Gawdzak because dtay's power is completely monsterous right now, perhaps a million soldiers higher than 2metra. It's kinda funny, Gawdzak, Gavagai, and myself are top 3 in score, tech, land, pop, etc but are 6-5-4 in power, while dtay, plako, and commodore are each about 800k a piece higher than each of us in soldiers, yowza. My excuse is industrialization, but for Gawdzak, who's had his factories and coal plants done for awhile now... I guess he must have been building a lot of wealth? That's the only way I can explain his huge tech lead. This peace is not good for me, I'm really not ready yet to tackle any Portuguese aggression, at least not without considerable wealth spending on upgrades. Destroyers are still 6-7 turns away for me... I don't think I can afford to delay that too much.

[GermanJoey]

Hmmm, 2metra is still maintaining a turnsplit despite having a peace treaty with dtay. Is he simply dedicated to terrorizing the turn timer or perhaps...? My spider sense is tingling here... this guy has me really paranoid, I've read some of his past threads and he constructs weird narratives in these pitboss games... and he took an hour and a half to play his turn today after taking only 15 minutes the day before. I only had a minute to login and check the game status after the turn flipped, but his fleet looked still unmoved and his gold reserves dropped by only a few hundred (still ~4800 banked IIRC), suggesting that he is teching something. He just got AL a few turns ago and I've already seen a few infantries near his island. What's with that, if you just got a 10T NAP with your blood-fued rival, wouldn't you want to take the chance to get some coal plants up? Perhaps he is worried about me, but I've caught some spies of his in my land the last couple of turns so he must see that I don't yet have infantry of my own on that front. (most of my units are on ships at any rate, although he wouldn't be able to see that)

At any rate, I'm completely baffled as to what he's up to. He's got 10 galleys and 28 carracks on hand off the west coast of his island guarded by a pair of ironclads. That is a lot of fucking unit-carrying ships and I still don't understand why he has more than 2-3 of them. They have to be for me, right? Dtay has frigates and galleons all over the place, there's no possible way 2metra could expect an amphibious surprise attack to work on dtay. Thus the only purpose of these ships must be to invade me, thinking that even if I have 6-7 frigates/ironclads on hand, he'd still be able to deliver like 75% of his attack payload. Which, you know, isn't that bad of an idea except for the part where there's no way he could actually gain anything from it. My mainland is nearly finished with railroads and coal plants, and thus even if he could successfuly land and take a couple of cities, he wouldn't be able to keep up with my superior production logistics. Any successful invasion of the northern penninsula, on the other hand, would simply be re-taken by Gavagai, who would be more than happy to consolidate control of that area without actually breaking routes with me.

So, like, what is he thinking with these stupid wooden boats? They're driving me crazy. 1585AD and still no Astro; they're down Liberalism, Astronomy, Scientific Method, and Physics compared to me. I could have Destroyers in 3-4 turns, I think, depending on whether I want to burn through all my gold or not and whether I want to pop my 4th GA immediately. (currently leaning towards yes, I need to finish catching up to Gawdzak in tech, although that leaves me in a much weaker position for a space race)

Other happenings: Gawdzak got the Pentagon, damn, that'll let him switch out of Vassalage into Nationhood for the end-game. He's got about 3.6k banked, about + ~1600 from the previous turn. I didn't have a chance to fly my airships around before I had to go back to work after lunch so I don't know if he upgraded any more frigates, but I'm guessing not. If his gold-saving rate is only 1600gpt that's good news, mine is like 500 higher than that... I bet our break-even bpt is still similar though.

Gavagai suprised me by getting Combustion, not AL, after Railroad, but I can now see that is the correct move. He has a lot of gold banked and a huge GA-powered bpt... Gawdzak would need to cripple him within 2 turns of a war-dec to successfully take any sizeable piece of territory, even if I joined in too, and that's assuming that his fleet could approach without getting spotted by an airship, or else Gavagai just finishes Artillery and the attack stalemates the next turn. I dunno, I'm feeling more and more pessimistic about my chances of winning as each new turn rolls...

Anyways, I'll have some domestic news when I can actually play my turn a few hours from now!

[GermanJoey]

T225-227.

Life's been hectic lately... this report's gonna be a bit scatter-brained, mostly domestic focused.

Mmmm, so, first off I got stone from dtay for 15gpt and used it to slam down West Point in 4 turns flat by starving the city a bit. Don't forget about that extra bonus food that you get for free from a Granary! If your city has grown to max size (as this city has, as all extra food @ Biology will be converted into either workshops or engineers), then you can use that food as a turbo button to finish important builds or techs a bit faster. e.g., getting a coal plant a turn earlier, and without overflow, could mean an extra 30 hammers, while finishing west point a turn earlier means an extra commando infantry. Now, I just need to find the time to research Military Science... I wonder if I still get the KTB from Donovan having it, even though he's dead now? AFAIK, he's the only one to have it at all this game.




Here's another example of using banked food to accelerate production, in this case of a coal plant by a full turn. It'd be nice to grow this city more but I really can't afford to skimp on production right now; I gain 36 hammers in total at the cost of 8 commerce and whatever extra commerce I lose in the future from having a smaller city.




Overall industrialization is nearly complete now, and man was it slow, at least compared to PB18. I had more cities with greater than 40 raw bpt in that game, as we rounded T200, despite having more than twice as many total cities in this game. Yeesh. Anyways, I have 4 Levees (), 25 Factories, and 10 Coal plants complete now, with like 5-6 coal plants completing within the next couple of turns. 4 or 5 more are still finishing their factories (I decided that any city with at least 16hpt would go for factory+coal plant) and 1 city (the Korean city of X) is still building a levee. The stats screen says I've built 38 forges, but I think I actually have closer to 45ish since some Korean cities came with them; I've got another 5-6 of those in production as well, mainly fillers and newer captures. Maracana finishes its coal plant in 3 turns; I had to delay it by 2 turns to build a library and build culture to pop 3rd ring borders, as Gavagai's culture was very close to pushing mine off of a floodplains watermill, an important tile for that city since it doesn't actually have a food resource, just an oasis and floodplains. I estimate that Ironworks will be another 7 turns after that, as I want to finish growing the city to at least size 15 at the same time. T237 Ironworks feels really late, but at least the city will be pretty good after that, hopefully able to anchor down my whole western sphere the way my HE does for my northern/central sphere and my Moai does in the south/east. At any rate, I really need more workers here, I have sadly decided to bulldoze all of its towns.




My underestimation of my relative production compared to my similar-yet-not-quite-the-same PB18 civ led to a really big mistake that I've been struggling to correct these last half-dozen turns: having far, far too few workers available to build my railroad network. I had, IIRC, 22? 23? total workers on the turn I got the Railroad tech, which, I thought was more than enough since I don't have any remaining unimproved tiles (other than the occaisonal bare turndra hill that needs a windmill), and few tiles whose improvements I have marked to changed, but I now think I needed to have closer to 40, 35 at the least, considering how spread out I am. Furthermore, most of my workers were concentrated near my frontiers, e.g. in former Korea and Scandanavia, leaving me just 3 for my core. Like, 22 workers is 11 railroad tiles a turn, and yet my empire is like 60 tiles wide and 40 tall? Terrible, terrible. I've been producing 2-3 additional workers a turn since I finished my coal plants (I decided it wasn't worth delaying those), but I still won't have a completed backbone from Dominic Deegan to Soccer City completed for at least 4-5 more turns in total. Workers on my southern continent should be able to help now, as the backbone from Ray's Toilet to Nidaros will complete next turn, IIRC. In contrast, Gavagai has shitloads of workers railroading everywhere (I don't know how many he captured from Donovan vs how many extra he built to clear all the jungle from HAK's land) while Gawdzak's land appears to be completely worker-free. So, once again I am the middle-child.

Other micro/macro disasters: I had to raze my workshop at my Moai so that the city wouldn't starve down a level before I could build a public transit. I actually need like 4 public transits in total, to my surprise. One in GoatKCD (size 21), one in Groooming (size 22), one in Maracana eventually (IW + inland), and one in Klurfville. (no fresh water there plus loads of floodplains).




93% chance of a GA... we'll find out in a few hours how the dice rolled!




I think that's mostly it domestically, I'm mostly just building lots of infantries and cannons (for queue-upgrade to artilleries) in anywhere else I haven't mentioned. My city count is IIRC 61 now, Gavagai 58, Gawdzak 54... 2 more fillers to go for me. Please ask away if you have any questions.

Other stuff:

I wish I got this event 150 turns ago, heh, but I'll take what I can get. I got about average gold here.




2metra's nonsense... I have track and tally this stuff every damn turn since he moves his stuff around a lot. I'll have an airship down here soon to make this a bit easier, maybe I should have delayed the factory in 3CD just for a little more peace of mind over here.

[GermanJoey]

Oh, one last thing. Fucking, arrgh, fucking plako decided to cancel our OB's this turn, immediately re-offering. Well, uh, ok, sure, but somehow this causes me to lose like 100 commerce per turn? Ugh, what the hell? All my routes in my biggest cities look to be about the same, I don't know where this lost commerce is coming from.

[AdrienIer]

I can't remember if you mentioned it but did you build a shrine in MCG ? And how much is it getting you ?

[GermanJoey]

No, unfortunately I did not make a shrine. I really wanted to put one in earlier (say, T125) but a T200 Hindu shrine is just a waste of a great prophet. I have maybe 40ish Hindu cities? So you figure, maybe 60 Hindu cities worldwide tops? No shrine, grocer, or bank in MCG, so I'd have gained 30*60 = 1800 gold from a shrine by now. That's.... OK I guess, but GP are too valuable as a golden age component due to the fact that they're pretty much impossible to generate at this point. I need four different great people, and caste only allows three different types. I'll start the GA next turn; I probably should have done it this turn, but by the time I finally decided to do it I was just too tired to re-micro all of my cities again.

On to the turn, I had some bad news when I logged in today - I forgot that factories get extra unhealthiness from Oil, and some of my cities are now getting hit hard by unhealthiness with the advent of Combustion.




Many should be OK without any further infrastructure, and most others will be fine after just building an aqueduct or grocer. However, my Moai will permanently shrink to size 21.




What a pain!

Speaking of, 2metra moved some of his fleet down 2 tiles. What does this mean? I don't know!




I think that, with 100% slider, bonus GA commerce, and maybe some research builds, I can finish Artillery next turn....

[GermanJoey]

By the way, I finally got around to counting how big my empire is: 59 tiles wide (30 to the west of GoatKCD and 28 to the east) and 40 tiles tall (26 above and 13 below), yowza. I wonder how that would look superimposed on the PB18 map?