The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)

[Ceiliazul]

Nicely done!

Actual artist chance will be less, like 4%, but that won't help you sleep better tonight...

[The Black Sword]

Connected my second oil this turn and offered it to Dtay for free. No strings attached, he's the Old Tourists' main neighbour* so I want him to be strong. He's just got Artillery but is missing RR and Combustion.

However he appears to have popped a coal. Or maybe I was blind before, but I don't remember it. He wants to keep 1 coal to himself for Power and the Old Tourists can trivially disconnect his other source, so the loan would only be temporary. We also have an additional option. Plako just got Steam Power, so his newly acquired coal is available but he doesn't have factories up yet, so he doesn't need it. Another temporary option.

Why is this important? I'm currently researching Radio for the Eiffel Tower, having determined that ET -> 3GD was better than 3GD -> ET. But the Old Tourists are probably going to beat me there by 2t. I think I can beat their best build time by two turns for a coinflip but an extra +100% in my Ironworks city would push me over the edge. I'll hold off on asking for the loans for the moment to give them less time to react. It's possible plako and dtay will be too afraid of repercussions to do anything but I doubt my enemies want to expend too much resources on them with me still around.

Today's GP non-Lottery is a 100% Artists in my NE city. Got the scientist last turn.


*I don't think the BGN border will militarise until I'm dead, though I could be wrong.

[The Black Sword]

The late 16th century marked the last golden age of Wesnoth. The kingdom's influence was manifested in its three Great Cities.

Frontline stood for the Wesnothian commitment to peace and integration.


It marked the location where the 3 cultures of the empire; Inca, Khmer and Native met, instead of being a hotbed of unrest and revolution however, the city thrived. It's people took on their own identity, and travelers from across the globe came to the diverse shows of it's renowned theatre.

Holy Elensefar was a beacon of hope and faith.


The birthplace of Confucius, the shrine to his memory sits at the very heart of the city. The Sistine, the magnificent cathedral, lays out his wisdom in its mosaics. And to the south sits the Palace where his following is carefully nurtured. Truly Wesnoth is built on twin pillars of state and church.

Finally we come to Weldyn, known as Eldest.


Here lies the greatest concentration of population in all the kingdom. Representatives are sent from across the land to the Senate that resides in this city and its university is responsible for much of Wesnoth's learnings.

But while the people of the Great Continent rejoice in this time of plenty, a shadow hangs over them. For the Wesnothians are a peaceful people. Two terrible wars have they fought, in which many died and more wept. Two nations have fallen to them. But twice those nations showed that peace was impossible.



Now Wesnoth alone among the nations of this world proclaims the creed of Pacifism. But the three Great Cities of Wesnoth sing out its culture to the world. The world hears and is jealous. Rumours abound of a growing Aztec fleet in the Patriot Strait.


Spies from the Kremlin know more about the state than its government.

*Picture Redacted(may be edited in)*

In the East are the Turks, our friends for a millenia. However it is oft said, that through friends lies weakness.


Yes, truly this was the last golden age of Wesnoth.

[Ceiliazul]

Good stuff, keep p it up!

Goes the tech picture look, any changes to the plan?

[The Black Sword]

Old Tourist are up Flight and 2t on me. I'm hopeful that Valath can still land me the Eiffel Tower. Dtay seems amenable to giving me coal, but I didn't have the (385) gold to accept his re-offer, having spent it on the turn roll. Hopefully he accepts my 40gpt offer next turn. I'm not sure how long is left on his peace treaty with the Old Tourists though. I'm sure they have city visibility of Valath, so they can see what's going on.




I haven't really decided what to go with next turn, either Flight or Industrialism -> Plastics. I'm thinking the Dam is probably worth it, since I can be delayed with poison water missions and I'm continually increasing my hammer base but we'll see. The GA was a bit underwhelming, it'll still take most of the GA to get to Plastics and I won't have the GA hammers to build the dam. Maybe a loan could help a bit there.

[The Black Sword]

Minor victory this turn:



There's a big stack of destroyers and 5 move transports just behind these guys. They probably thought I couldn't kill this front stack without exposing myself to the destroyers. But nine 99% victories later, we cancel borders with dtay and teleport ...




2 moves left to get back inside the city!

Not a huge loss for them but the galleons at least were valuable and the frigates make good fodder, particularly while our destroyer numbers are so evenly matched.

The Eiffel Tower:



I only need to hold the coal for one turn, losing it next turn shouldn't affect my eta. Would have been impossible for them to react if I had the second half of the timer but hopefully they don't notice for a turn.

[The Black Sword]

I landed the Eiffel Tower! The delay in Flight hurts though:



You can see I have a couple of Intercept 2 Anti-Tank(50% intercept chance) to defend a bit but they're forking multiple cities. I should have built the Bunkers earlier. Last turn FinHarry had fortified 8 bombers on the Hearthstone island but they declared war on dtay to cancel our coal deal. I put some hammers into 4 coal plants IIRC, figuring it would either force them to that or I'd get some use out of them. I guess dtay will probably declare on me this turn so he can regain his single coal source for his factories.

Anyway, I had to give up Yasodapura this turn. I wonder if they'll head around into my backline or stay where reinforcements can catch up. Long term my goal is to give up the southern coast and keep them out of the Arctic but if they go in now I might get the opportunity to get rid of them.

I also managed to lose a tile on the Joey border:


I thought I was the one going for the culture victory? I don't know how he's managed to get so much culture in here all game, it can't all be build culture. More importantly, he gifted my 3 CG3 infantry, which I assume means he's giving me a safe border.

[The Black Sword]

The Old Tourists gave me a turn of respite, so here's the plan for the rest of the game.




Getting our first artist roll of 9 soon. If it's an engineer, we might be able to grab Broadway with it. Most other artist rolls should have a smaller chance of screwing up. We'll also try get another gold loan(roughly 1k necessary) to 4t Industrialism. Then we pick up Fascism and save gold for a couple of turns. And yes, this mean no 3GD for me, better to finish the game quickly. I wish I had realised that earlier, a couple of my factory builds where pretty terrible in hindisght. Anyway, after that it's 100% culture and it doesn't matter so much if I lose cities, that just reduces my expenses!

The second artist roll will come from Shard, my National Park city:




Possibly the only National Park in the game? But it was built around T200 and it will have gotten me two GPs from T200-T240 from a pretty mediocre city location.

This guy is the big bottleneck in my Artist generation and it's the reason I needed to run such heavy Pacifism during my GA. It will begin the time-honoured starving artist tradition on T234, I will revolt out of Pacifism when my GA ends T238 and it will finish the 2600gpp artist on T240.

At this stage all 7 of my other artists farms will be sitting just below the 2600 threshold. Then 4 locations Kesorak, Basilisk Caves, Silverhead and Alethkar will start starving to get the 2.8k, 3k, 3.3k and 3.6k GPs. It's a bit unfortunate that I can't do this starving during my Pacifism/GA period but Pacifism has still been pretty useful, despite its cost, allowing me to work all my GA tiles and still get up to that 2600gpp mark.

Finally we'll be left with 3 other cities; Hornshark, my NE city, and two of my culture cities, Frontline and Elensefar, to get out 3 more Great Artists at 3.9k, 4.2k and 4.5k. I'll probably go for Hornshark first so I don't have to defend it. The culture cities will be working 12-13 artists and having the starving period down from size 23-24 so they can easily get 2k gpp inside 15-20t.

After the GA we'll revolt from Rep/Vass/Caste/FM/Pac to PS/Nat/Caste/FM/Theo while we save gold. We'll have finished our tech needs, so no need for Rep and the number of specialists should start to decrease as our GPs come out anyway. I currently get around 700bpt at 0% slider btw, mostly running artists or engineers. Instead Police State will hopefully make up a bit for the lack of Power. And of course I'll draft to the bone, since who cares about population anymore?

During the final run in then, I'll probably switch to Bureau/Free Speech. While starving the cities, I can probably make 1500 culture per turn in Weldyn and Elensefar and 1000 in Frontline.

You never know, this plan might actually come to fruition some day! Here's an overview of my territory with these cultures cities that have to be held. Black circles are artist generators, red boxes are the 3 Great Cities.



Generally I've felt an impending sense of doom building up over the last few turns but as each turn ticks by, the end date gets a bit closer.

We got some good news on the BGN front this turn in fact. You can see the little Borg cube he settled in Joey's icecap in the top right corner. I was pretty afraid he'd cash rush and air-lift two units per turn into the place and I didn't think I could get over there fast enough to shut him down. But Joey's declared war on him and he's doing the job for me. And for some reason BGN changed his stance this turn and agreed open borders again. It's been a pet peeve of mine for a while that he's closed borders with me and not the Old Tourists. Mind you if he tries to use my territory to attack Joey then that's getting closed again, GJ's been really nice to me recently and I need to consider if I should gift him something back to reciprocate. I'm thinking some aircraft since he doesn't have flight, but how useful would one aircraft be? BGN is also finally eating wetbandit after doing nothing for almost 30t. He's really stagnated since my T200 update, despite constantly having the most hammers and the biggest army. I'm still not sure what's up with the Krill war, since they're so far apart but I guess that must be something to do it.

Another neighbour who's been kind to me recently is dtay. I expected him to declare war and cancel our coal deal to get power back. He hasn't though, perhaps he still holds a bit of a grudge against the Old Tourists, but I appreciate the gesture in any case. Apart from landing the Eiffel Tower, which happened before they cut his second source, the coal isn't really doing much for me however. My Ironworks city of Valath is makes so much hammers that it's just building gold(275gpt) rather than putting out a unit per turn and wasting overflow. My 4 other coal plants will barely pay themselves back by the time he gets the chance to cancel. And I have to assume he'll cancel then. There's not much point putting others up and I only put those up to force the Old Tourists to declare war on him and remove their bombers from the Hearthstone island. The coal is also causing a fair bit of unhealthiness. So the coal is definitely appreciated but I'm afraid I can't really leverage it over such a temporary period, which has always been my problem with trying to get coal from a trade.

Finally, here's a picture of my current stand off with the Old Tourists:



I don't really have time to describe all my thoughts about this. I saw they had at least 3 GGs before the war and I know they have a penchant for xp-gathering and have had plenty of opportunities to do it. Trying to predict and defend all possible moves each turn is tiring. The combination of bombing improvements, city visibility and second half of the timer is also proving pretty annoying but I guess I can't really complain when a turn goes by without them actually killing a unit. They have a 5 turn headstart on Industrialism, so I'm pretty sure I'll have to give up some cities on the south coast to amphib tanks and marines. Hopefully I get battleships quickly enough to stabilise the WLP strait. I guess this is the point where they really need to commit to building an army to kill me.

[Ceiliazul]

Absent from that fantastic update: a projected win date!

All good stuff, those tundra cities must have been ice sculpture mecca for ages to get even one GP out of there

[The Black Sword]

a projected win date!

Surely the lurkers already know? You have investigate city on me too after all.

That's an invitation to guess, in case you were unaware.