[SPOILERS] Patience is a virtue

[Rowain]

Thank god I'm really patient in this game.

I don't remember a game where you had not been patient.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Thank god I'm really patient in this game.

I don't remember a game where you had not been patient.

Plako, you've always struck me as a foe implacable and inevitable as one succumbing to the force of gravity. Like gravity, one may resist you initially, but in the end it always ends with the same soul crushing outcome: A black hole of Plako-win. Enjoy your inevitable suffocating victory.

Seriously. Go crack some skulls (In your own good time...). Good luck!

[plako]

Concerning city gift. dtay probably asked captured city back for peace. Good guess is that they'll sign peace one way or the other after the city has exchanged hands forcefully. This will also mean that Commodore will continue dancing his troops between me and dtay. After our peace expires it is probably beneficial to sign a new one again. There is no point fighting a war when you would take all the heat and someone else would collect the prize. At least Commodore is playing like true Tokugawa having a big army that will be obsoleted eventually.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Commodore does enjoy a good role play.

[plako]

Concerning the espionage removal discussion in RtR mod thread. I don't want to give any ideas to my opponents so I'll comment here. It is trivially easy to make tech stealing mission way worse via closing borders or investing to EP points yourself. Closing borders will remove -20% reduction and currently I'm getting -45% against most because they haven't invested much to espionage throughout the game. Removing even one of these effects and espionage wouldn't work very well. Also planting spies or the building thwarting spies is pretty effective. My spies were getting caught left and right by Commodore, when he had a counter spy in his city. All in all it is risky investment at best.

Here are some basics concerning tech stealing mission in my situation. Typical increases/reductions:
* Distance from capital +30% (I'm ready to move my capital to reduce this)
* Trade route -20% (Very significant!)
* Accumulated EPs -45% for most, but for dtau only -25% (Also very significant)
* Inside city culture 0% (I'm ok to let someone to capture my etablished cities and/or using spread culture mission. This will be significant in case someone starts capturing and keeping my core cities. Currently unsignificant)
* Stationary spy -50% (At this point of the game you should always have 5 turns to wait)


Assume tech cost 1000 => EP cost 2000

In best case senario this becomes 2000*1.3*0.8*0.55*0.5 = 572 EP point. Now imagine closed borders => costs are 715 EPs and assume I would be running espionage aganist dtay + closed borders => costs would be 1072 EPs. Last case would be totally unprofitable. I would had to pay more EP points than beakers from my techs. In tech stealing you don't get any known tech or arrow bonuses and spies are lost every now and then increasing the costs even further.

To be honest I think only tech stealing mission + passive effects are really worth keeping. I wouldn't really be missing any other mission, even if some of them are somewhat useful and reasonably priced in RtR. I just think this game is better, if there are means to convert EP points to science.

[Commodore]

So, are you up to tech parity due to their stubborn refusal to invest in counter-spies?

Alpha Centauri beckoning?

[plako]

I'm pretty much in tech parity with the leaders. I was actually 2nd to finish Apollo program. Some of the leading teams have been more intrested to build up army than focus on Space ship. Basically Gawdzak has gone all in in tech race and building up space ship. Gavagai is in the other end of spectrum and has been building a lot of troops lately (I've city visibility to pretty much every city in out planet). GermanJoey is somewhere between them. GermanJoey and Gavagai are at war currently. Both parties have razed at least 1 city. This makes Gawdzak a current favorite to win this. I'm militarily pretty weak that will make it hard for me to win via space.

[Old Harry]

Any chance of some pics of your espionage cities (or are all of your cities espionage cities?) and F1? I'm interested to see a full espionage economy in action before it gets pulled from the mod.

[plako]

Any chance of some pics of your espionage cities (or are all of your cities espionage cities?) and F1? I'm interested to see a full espionage economy in action before it gets pulled from the mod.

I was going to take some shots, but the game stalled. However here are something for you.

This is Intellligence headquarters. Scotland yard has been well worth it.



I didn't have enough trust to go fully towards cultural attempt so I need to be in the space ship race. I might be too far behind, but I still have the golden age in my sleeve in 7T after starving my National Epic city for couple of turns. Both Merchant and Artist are ok for me. I really hope other leading teams don't manage to get GA so it would give me chance to catch up. I had also alternative to focus on military, but having 2 teams ahead of me would have made it very hard to put me in leading position.




dtay and 2MetraNinga started to fight so I was confident enough to turn pretty much all of my cities to wealth.






My GNP looks weaker than the leaders. However 1 EP is more than 1 beaker so I think I'm currently on par in that. The problem is. I'm about ~5-6 turns behind Gawdzak in accumulated beakers.

Demographics. Not that impressive, but I'm still in the race so I guess these are sufficient.




I'm dominating top 5 cities. My cultural efforts paid out I guess .

[plako]

I'm annoyingly a little bit too much behind to have a real shot at winning. I guess I'll still continue towards finishing my space ship as early as possible and group my pitiful army and try to do some damage against the one launching 1st. I clearly should have focused on army when I recognized that I won't be able to compete in GNP.