i was logged in at the same time as brick today, and he suddenly started laughing, because he just realized now, 3 turns later, that he stole that marble from me and thats why i was asking for it back... 
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[PB26 Spoilers] Joey and Donovan play around in the muck
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pindicator whipped like 80 pop points away and so now im in first place.
 he finally stopped insisting on the turnsplit with whoever it was, so hopefully the pace of the game will pick back up again.oh yeah, and i finished the MoM. is that important? next i'll grab a market, quay, and courthouse before going back to wonders again.
June 23rd, 2015, 01:27
(This post was last modified: June 23rd, 2015, 01:36 by GermanJoey.)
T124.
Pind closed borders with me, HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm...... I saw him building up to my south last turn, I should be careful since it is less defensible than my north. I better keep my horcher stack centralish... I'm #1 power now, but Pind is pretty close to me. Thoth is right up there too... speaking of, he fired a golden age this turn, bringing him up to 388 MFG... still over a 150 hammer short of me though.  His GNP is extremely high though, far higher than mine despite my culture edge and the fact that I'm at break-even research instead of saving gold. Scary.Tech status: long story short: thoth has a big tech lead, pind and i are next and roughly tied, krill and plako are kinda behind. thoth, krill, and plako have been able to tech guilds for awhile now but are instead just saving up huge hoards of gold for reasons I can't figure out. I'm the only one with paper so I'm the only one who realizes that they're all saving gold pre-guilds, right? guilds is 5 turns away for me, fwiw. i could drop that down to 4 with a wealth build or two, but when I tried, for some reason, wonders kept popping up in the top queue spot? weird... I finish the AP in a couple turns in Banana Bread, which has been building it off and on when it's had too much overflow to finish a WE without waste. The new AP seemed pointless to me before, since it just gives you a free temple in each city and I already have temples in 9 of my 14 cities, but if I plant two more fillers then I'll have enough temples to get 2 additional cathedrals somewhere (each cathedral requires 4 temples) , which is a pretty huge deal IMHO. all I need after that is to head over to music and get some conservatories up too, which will enable me to swap into Police State + THeocracy and thus finish the job of breaking SMEGmod completely. Numbers and lines:
June 28th, 2015, 06:23
(This post was last modified: June 28th, 2015, 06:24 by GermanJoey.)
T129-131:
A timeline in demos: That last demo is just for fun, swapping around some tiles just so I can say I had over 1000 MFG on T130 in a standard speed game, HEH. Which, of course, doesn't include the +50% military unit bonus or the +85% wonder bonus. For comparison, Thoth, the #2, is also in GA... and to understand how freakishly broken and monstrous Thoth is, my PB25 MFG in a GA was around 250ish, and the #1 other than that was about 150ish, on the same turn as this game. The story here: T129, popped a GM, threw MoM GA; T130, revolt to Police State. Krill buffed Police State in RtR to ridiculous extremes, another change (along with the Moai buff) that doesn't make sense to me since Police State was already very strong before. Now, in addition to the +25% Military Production and the -50% War Weariness, it also gives +2 hammers and +2 commerce to Barracks, Courthouses (???) and Monuments (??!?!???), oh, and by the way, I have Stonehenge. Right now, a new city with a Granary and Barracks gains 8hpt and 4cpt just from civics... and people said corps were broken. So yeah, ~1500 hammers per turn in the early medieval era. What does that look like? Have any of y'all ever shotgunned a beer? Done a kegstand? Or, for the kids out there, just sprayed a whole can of whip cream into your open mouth? To experience PB26 Germany is this same sort of thing.  I was hoping this city could 1-turn five wonders in a row but then Thoth landed The Great Library last turn, dammit!!! I don't think I've ever even had a modern-era Ironworks city, with factory and coal plant, be able to consistently pump out this kind of production.  I have to unload overflow into this wonder because of a micromanagement fail on the turn before, when a queue-upgraded horcher was 1-hammer short of finishing a Knight, heh. Lost a bunch of OF this way too... basically like lose 2 whole knights. Micro matters!  I have no idea what I do about this city's overflow output... just set it to build wealth forever? I have a few other cities that can 1-turn Knights, and a few other cities that will be pretty close to that, once they finish their Police State courthousen in the next turn or two... but I really wish I could put 100% of my hammers towards military. But, its simply impossible. Internationally, almost everyone turned on tech at once and got Guilds and Engineering at about the same time. I'll 2-turn Engineering myself after I pick up Literature, and then I think I head towards Education for my cheap-Philo/Ind double-Oxford. Pindicator is still my biggest local threat with the best traditional civ... lots of land, #1 CY, very solid MFG (~350ish per turn, eyeballing the demos). Game-wise, he's my least ideal target as our front has multiple choke-points on both sides. However, I'm also strongly considering wardeccing him simply because he takes 22-25 hours to play EVERY TURN, which is driving me crazy particularly because he's also been enforcing a turnsplit with someone for like 30 turns now without ever declaring war on anyone. No matter how you look at it, this is just camping the timer. I can't even figure out who he's camping the timer on! It's not CH, because he often plays his turn at the same time as CH (when I complain in the tech thread). Is it me? But then I play my turn right after he logs out all the time, and same goes for Brick... so why can't he come in and play another turn without making us wait another 22 hours? Does he just not care about the game? His comments in the tech thread make me think that, but then why hold the turn timer hostage for so long if you don't care? That's just dragging the game out! C'mon man, don't pull a suttree! Thoth switched into Theology (and Standardization), which is interesting. OR and Theocracy are both retardedly powerful civics in SMEGmod and its tough to tell which one is better. Thoth's peak-MFG dropped about 60 hammers this turn, but I figure he has at least 2 Cathedrals so that's probably most of it. (specific production modifiers, like the HE, Ind's wonder bonus, bonus from marble/stone, etc, don't show up in the MFG total) As a reminder, here's what the two civics get you in SMEGmod: Organized Religion (high upkeep)
Theocracy (medium upkeep)
Long story short, OR will give more hammers overall in a big empire (especially with forge/AS mixed in), but Theocracy gives ~+1 promo, maybe, and consolidates production in just a few cities. I think for Thoth, who already has Music, Theocracy will be a big upgrade, but for me I'm having second thoughts, at least on switching into it immediately (once I can make Ren-era units Theocracy is 100% the way to go, although FR looks appealing too). Why? Because my Cathedral cities already make too many damn hammers. All of my cities have Temples (from the AP) and nearly all have Monasteries, so here's some examples of how it breaks down for me: City with Granary, Barracks, Assembly Plant, Colosseum, Monument, Temple, Monastery, Stable: OR: 11h, 6XP/8XP OR+PS: 18h, 6XP/8XP Theo+PS: 11h, 10XP/12XP City with Granary, Barracks, Assembly Plant, Colosseum, Monument, Temple, Monastery, Stable, Library, Courthouse: OR: 15h, 8XP/10XP OR+PS: 25h, 8XP/10XP Theo+PS: 18h, 12XP/14XP City with Granary, Barracks, Assembly Plant, Colosseum, Monument, Temple, Monastery, Stable, Library, Courthouse, Market, Cathedral: OR: 31h, 9XP/11XP OR+PS: 43h, 9XP/11XP Theo+PS: 23h, 16XP/18XP So, Theo really only gives me +1 promo on knights in some cities, and way less hammers overall in the cities that will actually be producing most of my units. I decided to stick with OR for a little while still, and maybe step into Theo when I can build Rifles or at least cuirs or something.
Hmmm, decisions, decisions. Do I go with broken option 1, or take a risk and try to go for broken option 2, coming back for broken option 1 later?
So, at EOT I'll be 1T from Liberalism. Surprised? I 1T'd Education (!) with the help of overflow from Alphabet and research builds and instantly put up 6 universities. I now make 1450 beakers per turn at 100% science at a 13gpt surplus!
My two options for lib are: 1.) Option 1 is to tech CS -> Nationalism -> finish Liberalism, and Lib Constitution in 3T for Jails. Jails give +4h and +4c per city under Police State, in addition to the +6e. Which is just, like, fucking insane. I'd also get access to Mercantilism from Nationalism, which will give +4h, +2b, and +1g per city. There's also the Taj, of course, so I'd get to continue my GA for another 36 turns guaranteed, pretty much. This also opens up Corporation, for the +1 trade routes and the SoL, and allows me to tech AL immediately if I want to. This is by far the best economic route I could go for; I could leverage this into a pretty insane tech lead I think, perhaps having Infantries out before anyone else has Rifles. 2.) Option 2 is to tech Banking -> PP -> Rep Parts -> Gunpowder -> finish Liberalism, and Lib Rifling in 7T for, well, fucking Rifles. And then, like, go comp stomp Pindicator. This option is riskier, because a.) the tech cost is like double the above route, b.) Banking and Printing Press give me NOTHING because I'm running a 100% slider with wealth builds and have a grand total of two cottage-type buildings. Actually, maybe 3. Rep is OK because it enables Breakwaters, a new building that upgrades quays to also give +1h per water tile. Not bad. But, it's not worth 11k beakers if someone pulls some kinda crazy bulb bullshit ala Mackoti in PB22 and snipes Lib out from under me. However, having rifles would be REALLY AWESOME because I currently have four cities that are unable to build units without wasting literally hundreds of overflow per turn. Rifles are both expensive enough and dominating enough that I won't feel so bad about wasting overflow for a little while. My motivation here is that I have research vis on Pindicator and it appears, to my great annoyance, to be beelining Astro. That's bad news for me because I really, really, really don't want to get Astro myself because it obsoletes Stonehenge (+2h, +2c, +1 culture per city under Police State) AND the Colossus (+1c per water tile). Now, I could handle Galleons OK with just C2 Caravel spam, PB22 Portugal-style, but of course the real problem is that Pind would just be a short hop away from Frigates, and I don't have enough ports to handle those with Caravel spam. I'm still leaning towards option 1 but we'll have to see how the next few turns play out. I have a solid research edge now but my rivals aren't all that far behind; at least plako and thoth can research Education and both have a huge amount of gold saved... it'd be a shame to waste the opportunity that Lib presents by being too greedy.
July 5th, 2015, 15:03
(This post was last modified: July 5th, 2015, 15:07 by GermanJoey.)
T138.
Welp, Mr. "I will be sure to ask for a pause if I ever need one" finally whiffed a turn, one turn before I invade him with a dozen galleys full of Knights. I hope he gets this next one, or else's gonna be really awkward. I decided to go with the CS->Nationalism->Lib->Constitution plan:
 KTB comin' atcha... I honestly don't understand why every other civ has CS considering that Vassalage is SO MUCH better. Like, insanely better, to the point where I don't think I want Bureau even if I can set up a quad-capital with two Forbidden Palaces and Versailles. You don't even need CS to build maces now! Why is everyone bothering with this turd! If Nationalism didn't require it CS as a prereq I would have ignored this tech until the end of the game for sure. Graphs: By the way, my capital's already popped 5th ring borders. 
Pindicator: last to play for over a month straight, always plays in the last hour or two of the timer, enforces a turn split without ever declaring war, and makes a big self-righteous post about how I don't need to pause for him. Goes on a 3-day trip for the 4th, mentions it 2 weeks beforehand in the tech thread, posts no reminder when he goes, complains we don't pause for him. Christ.
July 7th, 2015, 20:19
(This post was last modified: July 7th, 2015, 20:20 by GermanJoey.)
Pindicator now blames me personally for not waking up in the middle of the night and pausing for his sub when he never posted that he had gotten a sub at all. Ok.
I sent him a PM rather than defend myself publicly because so many people got mad at me when I tried to discuss issues related to the game in the PB25 tech thread. I still tried to be nice in the PM - pointed out that "hounding him" isn't a good way to describe nudging him 4 times to PYFT in the tech thread over nearly a month-wide window isn't really "hounding him," and pointed out that he never reminded us about his trip nor even mentioned that he had a sub, etc. I'm even the one who suggested that we reload even though it affects me the most. (why couldn't he just ask for it, or PM xenu without being prompted?) I'm sure this will do me no good at all. |
