[spoilers] Boldly Global Warming - Viva la revolución Industrial!!

[spacetyrantxenu]

T337 - After working 12 hours today I have the pleasure of subbing for BGN in the first half of a war split, circa 1917 AD in game. I evidently let the first day of the timer run by without playing (oops), so here we go, let's log in and see how long this is going to take before I can go to bed...hey, OK, this is good?




I did the needful and kindly checked over the empire using the mini map, and didn't see where we had lost any cities. I can't pull up the event log so no idea if there was any combat or not, but in the interest of not having to play through long war turns when I have zero interest in the game, I'm going to accept the treaty. Peace in our time! (OK, we're about 20 years early on that one but whatever). Peace, like right now.



OK, so I don't know why REM offered peace but I'm good with it if I'm playing turns for a little while. It kind of gives me a chance to get into the game without immediately having to spend a lot of time digesting the tactical situation and probably making an early blunder by missing something a player with better situational awareness would have seen. Time to engage the plan, then. Ten turns of peace, build all the weapons, then see what happens. I get the impression we're not in the running to win this game but there's no reason we should die either. I mean, look how fourth we are:




Fourth doesn't scream die to me, so let's not do that. It does suggest let's climb up to third, though, since that's just so much more respectable. Not sure why BGN didn't already do that. Looking at the map though there aren't any easy geographic gains to be made nearby right now, and that's probably ignoring the military/tech situation here that suggests we'll be doing OK to hold onto our fourth place spot. Anyway, let's see how this goes for a while. We're going to be productive, build sharp objects, and try to kill anyone who tries to eat off our plate. Oh, and EVERYONE will pay their taxes. Or you'll be audited to death. #HailIRS

With the ground rules laid out now it's time to wander through the turn. BGN had mostly documented the worker movements, so no need to go through all that. I mostly managed to keep on track with the prescribed activities. Oil will be connected next turn, so next turn I'll line up a bunch of naval builds to upgrade to destroyers in queue. Big boats with steel hulls seem to be the latest fad, so let's get a bunch of those.

I checked EP allocation, looks like we have graphs on everyone, so I changed spending to go 100% against REM. Because hostility. By the way, who started the war? I don't really have much context for knowing whether a white peace was a win, loss, or neutral outcome. Whatever, let's claim victory, that's more fun anyway.

[Wyatan]

By the way, who started the war?

I believe you had a defensive pact with Pindicator that got triggered when he was attacked by REM.

OK, so I don't know why REM offered peace

Because he's busy winning the game and that extra front was an obstacle ?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Thanks for the info. As for being an obstacle, on one hand I don't mind helping slow someone down to keep the game interesting, but I don't think we were in a great position to reel him in right now anyway. From mostly on the outside looking in, it seems like the ship has sailed on us overtaking him in this game. There's not much to be gained by us taking the fight to him, because that probably just helps someone else win. I'm obviously not involved enough in this game to care who wins if it isn't going to be us, so I'm not particularly looking forward to spending that kind of time in this game. If someone tries to take our land, though... That's a different story. We're more Western Front than Eastern Front; dig in because every inch of ground is sacred, yielding is not an option, etc. There a reason I haven't signed up for a new game in a long time, and this is basically the reason. Usually sleep loses out when push comes to shove and I need more time to play long turns. So it would be nice to not have that happen here in a game I'm not really invested in.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T338 - Logged in, REM was offering us wines for open borders. No thanks. Everyone knows that Sir Topham Hatt doesn't allow cultivation of decent vines in Sodor, and the swill they import from Misty Island is actually unsafe to consume. The only fit purpose for wines of such low quality is to make waterboarding even less enjoyable.

Eh. OK, declined, the second trade offer was just for straight up open borders, no wines included. This is actually a more favorable offer as it doesn't risk importing toxic beverages into the Mossack Fonseca offices. Still, none of that.

The only micro note is that it looks like we can keep up 100% research pretty much indefinitely at the moment with 1.5 cities on wealth per turn. David Cameron flips between building research and wealth to keep the treasury out of the red. One turn building wealth gives enough cushion to build research the next turn. I'm not going to try to argue building research in terms of economic efficiency versus washing a wealth build throughout the empire or whatever. I just want to research Flight as soon as possible so we can build an air force. Building a modern navy began this turn. Destroyers roll out of the dry docks beginning next turn. By the way, Dreylin/OT4E have destroyers in the water already, as I spotted one this turn. This is a dangerous world. On a related topic, we're up to #3 in power. That said, OT4E/Dreylin are a good margin ahead at #2, and REM is way out in front of everyone at #1. Scooter is pretty close to us in power, though presumably he's losing a few units per turn while still at war with REM, so that's probably helping us to surpass him. Anyway, project build lots of units continues apace. Until next time....

[spacetyrantxenu]

T340 - Dreylin declares war on REM. Ronald Reagan is a dictator.




We didn't win the roll on the great person, got a second GE instead. No idea what to do with that. Would be nice to trade him for another great person with somebody but setting that up with no diplo is both dangerous and difficult. If someone had, say, a GA or GM hanging around in a city we could get the GE to I suppose we could gift ours and then hope they'd gift theirs back. Nevermind, just checked the tech thread, apparently unit gifts/trades are out of bounds. Guess we'll have to burn them on something pointless before the game ends. It'll be a long time to generate another GP, and I'd guess the game ends first anyway.

Workers are building out our rail network because defense. Cities are building units non stop because defense. Soon we'll be building fighters because defense. That's about it for now. Maybe Dreylin piling in on REM will make some kind of difference in the game but I'm not seeing it. We still have seven turns of enforced peace with REM so we're stuck on the sidelines even if we wanted to join in. Oh well, let them fight it out, I don't have time for long war turns right now. Although judging by REM's apparent inability to play anything but last, maybe he doesn't have time for long war turns now either.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I was looking at our trade deals trying to find a way to improve our health resource situation when I noticed we're currently sending 50 gpt to pindicator every turn. Is there a reason for this to continue? I assume it's to prop pindicator up in the ongoing proxy war against REM so I'm not too fussed about it one way or the other. But that cash would more or less allow us to break even at 100% science in perpetuity with only two cities on wealth builds. Then again, if it lets pindicator resist REM more it's probably an OK investment. The most useful function it serves us is probably to show Dreylin and Scooter that we're resisting REM even though we aren't at war with him at the moment, so maybe they'll leave us alone. And thereby I get to play shorter turns. Sounds good, I reasoned out the conclusion I wanted.

Three turns until we finish Flight and start spamming fighters. Which will be helpful because in three turns REM will finish Radio and, presumably, he'll begin mass producing bombers to help him take over the world. We've been building a lot of destroyers lately, but it's probably not worth much since REM has been building a lot of battleships and will collateral the hell out of any naval stack we can assemble, since we won't be able to build a high enough quantity of destroyers to own the seas. We'll at least have enough to make it dicey for him to go anywhere he wants, for now.

And on another topic, I'm not personally invested in this game and don't really care about the outcome, other than not letting someone capture my flag. But REM's slow play, playing last every turn, etc., it's already getting on my nerves. I'm not trying to get into the back half of a timer since he's the only player I'd be interested in declaring war on and we're still locked into peace for six more turns. Even so, he rolls the turn every time and that kind of thing just really makes me want to build a bunch of transports and sail around looking for cities to burn rather than worrying about defending what I have. PYFT dude. While I don't doubt such a plan would quickly get us conquered by someone if we sent every unit out on the attack, I bet we could absolutely wreck anyone we wanted to before they blunted the attack, if we were determined to not worry about defending anything when we rolled out on the offensive. So. PYFT and no one gets hurt, OK?

[Fenn]

Dulce et decorum est pro PYFT mori:
mors et mora persequitur virum
nec parcit segnis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

[Krill]

It is right and sweet to die to play your (fucking) turn:
Death follows the slow man
spares not the hesitency
of scared newbies

Sounds about right? I'll be honest and say I had to look up a few words. Mora, tergo...

[spacetyrantxenu]

That's awesome. But are you speaking from Owen's or Horace's point of view? Normally i would assume Horace but this game is weird with the industrial era start instead of the good old ancient one, so who can say? Either way, I'll write you down as favoring blood!



Preview edit: Krill swoops in with the translation for copious internet points. I'll put him down for blood too, because he's Krill.

[Mardoc]

That's awesome.

+1 !

I realize the QoTM was very recent, but it doesn't compare