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[SPOILERS] This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. But Mostly Mine.

Ugh. T248 was the last report. Here we go...

T249

Who even knows what was happening 12 days ago? Not me. Nevertheless:


How I know OH/Fin can get another GA: They've got all the GP they'll need. cry



With only 8 defenders, a nuke and a well positioned boat.... nope. Not in this lifetime. That sounds like too much work and too much mapmaking. Ahem. whip



Elsewhere, TBS is setting up his new Culture City #3. Not much I can do to this except some espionage shenanigans.



Spies for espionage shenanigans. If anything I maybe delay TBS one turn on his CV time by messing with his micro.



GNP is inflated because some other folks besides OH/Fin have Rocketry.
T250

Round number turn reporting extravaganza! The huge 34 player game made it to T250? OMG No way!!!


Great success! My agent has struck a terminal blow to the heart of the enemy!!



TBS hadn't played yet so I'm sure he effectively countered this. What's good for fixing angry faces in your culture city? Culture! But the mission was cheap so ehhh.









You can see exactly when I stopped building military and started running wealth in most cities. Aztecs aren't exactly killing it on new military builds either.





I'm not tracking what dtay is stealing. He's piling points up on TBS. He'll get some tanks and then?? Maybe revenge against Krill and/or OH/Fin? popcorn



Joey still puts EP into me. I've built A LOT of Observatory/Library/RIs. And somewhere along the line I got my 100 kills on LBs. Sadly, I may not get there on the cannons, but holy crap at the number of Rifles/MM killed! I'm proud of that. smug



I really should close borders with OH/Fin. Otherwise, day-um. eek









Writing this up several days later, I see a lot of builds not ideally suited to the short term, which is all we have left. The Three Gorges Dam is a boondoggle. That should have just been wealth all this time but screw it. I'm going to finish the build. Maybe it saves me building 3-4 coal plants in new conquests. I also wish I had started Apollo Program sooner.



I'll never learn. nope Anyway, I don't think Molach cares. I'm not going to put in a garrison. I think leaving it empty gives it a better chance of surviving in the same way that you have a better chance of surviving an encounter with a bear if you don't run from it. Trade routes!



Spitballing ideas of how to snatch a space race from Aztec. Killing a factory is expensive but would be effective. So would being a dick and revoking the fair trade aluminum but I'm not going there.



Just in case anyone else posts a T250 F2 and in case anyone else wants to compare. The numbers are so big that I don't even care at this point. State Property is awesome, but is it more awesome than Free Market? I can't say because doing math is anathema to me.



I've been thinking of paying WLP and Molach for a defensive pact so OH/Fin's trade routes will nuke if/when they declare war on me. I doubt the usefulness of this though.



OH/Fin have revealed the entire map via Satellites. I'm a couple of dark tiles from doing it the hard way. And they're also spending from their massive war chest now because they love the internet. It's like KTB, only better, and for tech leaders! TBS has also stockpiled gold for the great last push on the CV. I think his attempt will succeed or fail within a couple turns of Aztec's spaceship launch. Even if it succeeds though, I'm giving TBS third place. I just hate CVs. You shouldn't get the win if your whole empire is a smoldering ruin when the condition triggers. hammer



I'm sure I had a point when I highlighted this. I have too many spies in TBS land and not enough in position in Aztecland. This gives a good look at my increasing city visibility on OH/Fin as I continue to pile up the EP on them.





Oh. The point was to show my entire military, just not where I have things positioned. I should start building some cruise missiles for my subs.



Taoism has spread far and wide and a shrine would have been just amazing but it never quite worked out. I could build one now but I'm keeping fingers crossed for that final GA. ~90% odds to get it, but will it be in enough time to matter? Plako still has a GA/GE combo, either of which would allow me the 5th GP for a final GA. But I can't get him to bite on any diplo offers, nor to even make a counter. I haven't deciphered the plako code, and I'm not sure it is even possible.



Sure looks like a winning position here, except time is a precious short commodity. I still curse that I didn't finish Sistine when I could have.



Late but hopefully not too late, I'm dumping EP into OH/Fin. They're dumping back into me, at a slower rate. I probably won't be able to do more than ruin one or two buildings so I'll need to be strategic about what I sabotage to make this count.
More reports to come...
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T251





I get this pic from time to time when I log in. Weird.



For all the gnashing of teeth, Joey has been slow to fill out his trade route iceballs. These ones would even have had a food resource to share. huh Maybe he's concerned about AT's response? If so, he shouldn't be. He should have eaten AT alive a long time ago, especially after AT poached a couple of HAK's island cities. nod



TBS has turned on the culture spigot. This was ~22T as of T251.



21T and counting. OH/Fin are slacking. Time to get the bombers back into service and erode the food supply.



Where are the stashed GAs?? Killing those guys would really put a damper on things for TBS but I'm afraid they're out of reach.



You know, if I put that 2k mfg advantage each turn into units I could build up a strong enough force to dispatch OH/Fin while probably holding off Krill and Joey, but then TBS gets the CV. Or I could build up a force to help deal with him but then OH/Fin beat me in tech to space and my forces are halfway around the world out of position to deal with him. Or I could do both and hope that Krill/Joey decide to leave me alone. Can I build up enough to hold off Krill/Joey, prevent TBS' CV, AND stab OH/Fin decisively enough so that they don't beat my much slower launch date if I build units rather than wealth? I don't think so because in that scenario OH/Fin almost have to stop meddling with TBS to hold me off and I lose anyway. Of the three of us, who is Paper, who is Rock, and who is Scissors? My best guess is that TBS is Paper (winning a spreadsheet victory accountant civ), OH/Fin is Scissors (sophisticated tech edge civ), and I'm Rock (hard-headed, muscular civ with bashing tendencies but just a little too slow to come out on top). If I play Rock's game and take out the little scissor civ then paper pulls its trick on me and wins. If I go for paper I lose anyway because Scissors goes to the stars. If I do nothing (sit like a rock?) maybe Scissors shreds Paper but I'm still playing Scissor's tech game and Rocks are not known for their dizzying speed in a race. But I can't bash at Scissors without Lizard (Joey: Green [civ?], Poisonous) and Spock (Krill: Cerebral, Vengeful) having their say. It's a mess.




I just don't see a path for Rock without risking letting Scissors win a close race. As much as I hate it, trying to come from behind in a tech race is probably my best chance to win.
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T252




TBS hadn't played his turn yet so I don't know if this caused him to starve but it surely is inconvenient. mischief Unfortunately, the poison water mission is more expensive than the unhappiness mission, which is irrelevant anyway with the culture slider maxed, so I can't do this much more without losing visibility over here. I have to invest EP in OH/Fin to sabotage production in hammer cities to have a chance at winning via space.



I finally have some city investigate ability and I've found two cities where Aztecs are building spaceship parts. These aren't the ones that worry me though.



Also pictured building SS parts, Endive. With a little tile reconfiguration this can be a temporary hammer monster. One thing I have noticed is that I have precious few cities that are able to go full throttle, maximum hammers. My largest cities tend to be coastal. My strongest hammer cities are not the size 18-20 cities that can use every tile in the BFC and optimize them for workshop hammers. Most of my best hammer cities are in the 14-16 range. This is good, very efficient for a long-distance run, but not the best when every hammer counts in a sprint like building the space ship. Ruff has some large cities but I don't know if I have enough time to get them to the proper size to make a meaningful impact. Same for wetbandit's former cities. I can probably carve out one city from each of these empires to dedicate solely to spaceship production. If I can think to do it I'll try to post some domestic shots describing what I'm talking about here soon.



But my money is on Endive and Carrot being heavy hitters. One of them will likely end up working on the (Engine?) whichever one is 1600h and comes at Fusion. I need to get spies in place ASAP. Their tech path looks to be Fiber Optics (bye bye Kremlin when I follow, but I'm not rush buying much of anything anyway), Fission, Fusion. Estimated time 6 turns? Meanwhile I still haven't finished Apollo. Ugh.



On the last two screens I've drawn in a route for spies. I can see OH is building some and I'm guessing he'll send them north to my Iron Works city to disrupt my production of the Engine (or whichever piece is the 1600h part at Fusion). I've never attempted an optimized space race before. I should be leveraging heavy hammer cities to maximize overflow on the key parts but instead my heaviest hammer city is building Apollo and still has to add Observatory/Laboratory before starting on parts. I'll try to work those into a overflow chain, I should have several expensive buildings I can add in my IW city because it has been building wealth for a long time because building anything else would have wasted a lot of hammers by capping overflow. This kind of planning is where I could really use a teammate or dedicated lurker. I don't have the patience or stamina to plan after playing the turn.



It may be tough to pick it out on the minimap, but I've finally uncovered every tile, just in time for Satellites to have done it for me the easy way. That's Rock-- dogged, slow, plodding-- all the way through. nod

A GA for Free Religion and +10% tech would be so helpful. Come on!!!! I took a few minutes earlier to come up with a plan at Lamar Valley to try to speed out the GA. This is what I came up with but it is obviously not optimized because my output toward the end is lower than it is now before I start starving. I haven't lost any population yet so I still have time to optimize a better plan, even though this plan is now 3-4 turns old.

Code:
Lamar Valley

TURN -  GPP     -  FOOD -  # SPECIALISTS - LIKELIHOOD OF GP% (stays pretty constant)
T249 - 302/2800 - 26/62 - 12 GA; (size 21) [GA = 89%, GS = 11%]
T250 - 449/2800 - 19/62 - 12 GA; (size 21)  
T251 - 596/2800 - 12/62 - 12 GA; (size 21)
T252 - 743/2800 - 5/62  - 12 GA; (size 21)
T253 - 879/2800 - 0/62  - 12 GA; (size 21)
T254 - 1110/2800 - 0/60 (starve to size 20; 20 GA - 1 starving = +231 GPP)
T255 - 1330/2800 - 0/58 (starve to size 19; 19 GA - 1 starving = +220 GPP)
T256 - 1540/2800 - 0/56 (starve to size 18; 18 GA - 1 starving = +210 GPP)
T257 - 1739/2800 - 0/54 (starve to size 17; 17 GA - 1 starving = +199 GPP)
T258 - 1928/2800 - 0/52 (starve to size 16; 16 GA - 1 starving = +189 GPP)
T259 - 2106/2800 - 0/50 (starve to size 15; 15 GA - 1 starving = +178 GPP)
T260 - 2274/2800 - 0/48 (starve to size 14; 14 GA - 1 starving = +168 GPP)
T261 - 2431/2800 - 0/48 (starve to size 13; 13 GA - 1 starving = +157 GPP)
T262 - 2578/2800 - 0/48 (starve to size 12; 12 GA - 1 starving = +147 GPP)
T263 - 2714/2800 - 0/48 (starve to size 11; 11 GA - 1 starving = +136 GPP)
T264 - 2840/2800 - 0/48 (starve to size 10; 10 GA - 1 starving = +126 GPP)

Commence lurker thread chatter that shows me that you know that by T265 whether I get the GA or not it will be too late. In the meantime, I'm going to keep plucking away at deciphering the plako mystery diplo machine and see what it will take for him to sell me either the GA or the GE that he's just had sitting around for ages. AI diplo makes this easy! I demand tribute!! I haven't attacked when I could have and I've been a good neighbor. A little gratitude would be nice. shades

No, I don't really expect plako to give me anything and I don't deserve it just because I haven't attacked him. But I would LOVE to know what his selling price is but he's never made a counter. Oh well. noidea
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T253

Two things matter on this turn.



First, OH/Fin are starting to build up some boats and/or move others into position. Invasion or counter-invasion units? I think the transport completing in Asparagus tells the story. He's had a galleon dropping off spies (I assume because it has ended turn in my city just as mine have ended turn in his) and I am still weakly garrisoned on the coasts. I've opted for a more menacing posture toward Joey and Krill (in that order based on my understanding of their likeliness to attack me, validity of doing so for in-game reasons notwithstanding) and taken a flexible, less threatening posture toward OH/Fin. As much as possible, I have units either stationed in cities with airports or in range of cities with airports for a second (third, fourth, etc) turn airlift operation. This won't save coastal cities like New Forest or Everglades, but as good as they are economically they aren't important strategically or for the space race. The biggest loss would be allowing commando access to the cities that DO matter, but on this nearest island, former England, only the Iron Works city matters and I can stuff more units in there to prevent commando massacre. I'll do this if I see a sufficient number of troop transports to take out a coastal city AND have theoretical commandos to slash the interior. OH/Fin have some older galley/galleons around. I'm watching for those to upgrade to transports. If that happens, it's going to be a messy finish for us and probably a Care Bear Culture Victory for TBS. Oh noes

NOTE TO SELF: STUFF MORE UNITS IN IRON WORKS CITY TO PREVENT COMMANDO MASSACRE.

I'm also leery of commando paratroopers on the mainland but, again, most of my big hammer cities are not in commando distance. I just need to watch the capital so they don't send the whole operation up in flames. I'd also like to avoid losing my HE commando pump, but I don't know if I feel like moving all the units required to do this. Apathy is really starting to set in now. Defensive strategy: Body count city defense - stack old, shitty units in valuable cities and let the elite attacker pile up the bodies while the city survives. This is a legit commando countering force, right? I mean, if he has 50 commando tanks I'm in trouble anyway. But I don't have 50 commando tanks so I think I'm safe. This has been a relative advantage for me. Maybe I have enough commandos to hurt OH/Fin without weakening my overall defensive posture in the west? Commandos and non-commandos are equally strong on defense but can be decisive as counter-attackers in hostile territory. This merits study, but alas, probably won't be studied. Je suis fatigué. We all gonna die



The other news: Even in a golden age my demos are better than OH/Fin. If only I had another 50 turns to leverage this advantage. Then again, they're smart guys. If they figured the end would be another 50 turns they would probably have just attacked and eaten WLP. So it goes.
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Last thought on this brain dump day: How many of you would have cancelled Open Borders by now? That trade deficit is ugly and it is assuredly helping my Free Market tech savant neighbors more than it is helping me. So why haven't I cancelled borders yet???

Lurker with the winning answer can have a city named for him/her.
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(June 30th, 2015, 14:57)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: Lurker with the winning answer can have a city named for him/her.


In this era, it's a her.
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'cuz you're chicken? Bawk, bawk, buk-KAW!
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.

I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out.
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(June 30th, 2015, 15:46)Commodore Wrote: 'cuz you're chicken? Bawk, bawk, buk-KAW!

Half credit only. Poke in the eye aside, I know where you're going here but in this class you have to show your work. nono

I'll name a worker for you until you show your work more fully. neenerneener
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I would say that is a little more difficult dropping troops of spies (what is the collective term for spies) off if the OBs are closed / gone.
I have finally decided to put down some cash and register a website. It is www.ruffhi.com. Now I remain free to move the hosting options without having to change the name of the site.

(October 22nd, 2014, 10:52)Caledorn Wrote: And ruff is officially banned from playing in my games as a reward for ruining my big surprise by posting silly and correct theories in the PB18 tech thread.
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(June 30th, 2015, 15:14)Ceiliazul Wrote:
(June 30th, 2015, 14:57)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: Lurker with the winning answer can have a city named for him/her.


In this era, it's a her.

Forfend political correctness! Fie!! protest

No credit. Back of the line with you. Monocle
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