picklepikkl embarks on the Fool's Journey

[picklepikkl]

Well, I'm pretty sure my chances of clawing my way into the winners' bracket just went up in smoke:




greenline got SoL like I expected, but unexpectedly Jowy went for the dreamcrush. It's my fault for not thinking ahead and starting it the moment I got Communism, in which case I'd have had it by a mile, but I did think I had a good shot, given that Jowy's Pyramids-powered PHI Representation/Caste System juggernaut seems unlikely to get use out of it (I don't think he even has Democracy). Oh well. With this new development, I am officially ready to concede the game to Jowy and greenline at such time as other people are ready to end the game as well, so, lurkers, keep that in mind.

Jowy is also ruining my day in other ways:




I imagine his goal is to fight over tiles with greenline, but poor Strength's second ring has become collateral damage. That's an incense plantation and a flood plains Town I lost! Need that back.

Anyway, with my hope of gaining lots of value via Kremlin US gone, I decided there was no point in continuing for Democracy, and revolted from Nationhood into Bureaucracy. I'm going straight for Assembly Line now, which as I previously mentioned makes drafting less appealing, my GNP is awful after nearly twenty turns of war, and my capital is already set up with Oxford and an Academy for Bureau-power. I guess I shouldn't have risked the dreamcrush and just revolted to Bureau alone on my last turn of the Golden Age, but that would have meant increasing culture slider (due to WW and losing the Barracks happy) and missing out on the rifles I've been skimming every turn.

Speaking of Assembly Line: greenline, whose research I've been in the EP range of seeing for a long time, was not showing up for several turns now (yes, I checked my espionage screen, and I was over the threshold), and all of a sudden has 1t to Assembly Line. Guess someone else decided that infantry >> Dreylin. Let's see if there's anything left of the Thinkers when my peace treaty is up and I come for him with my upgraded battalions. I hope greenline isn't too annoyed about me peacing out and leaving Dreylin with only one front to worry about; he's been a real bro about this war, but nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

[picklepikkl]

Due to timezone awkwardness, we're on a 1t/2d schedule now, it seems. Ah well.

I continue to get culturally crushed in my north; it's a real problem, especially for the city I took off Dreylin. Oh well; at least with State Property's low maintenance and Corporation trade routes, it's in the black even if it gets stuck at size 1 forever.

Here's a Tarot update; I settled two cities and took two more, and the last has now come out of revolt, so I changed its name.



City 13: Death

When we last left the Fool, the Fool was learning from the Hanged Man how to let go. This puts them in good stead, because Death is the card of sweeping transitions brought about by inevitable, irresistible forces (and is thus appropriate, given the war we just fought). Death is a card of changes from which there is no going back, from the small (finishing and sending a turn) to the large (losing core cities to conquest). But old things can choke the growth of the new, and so Death is also a card of liberation: with the lessons from the Hanged Man under the Fool's belt, the Fool can embrace the elimination of the cruft in their life that is holding them back.



City 14: Temperance

The last few cards have been a roller coaster of emotion for the Fool: Temperance is the calming stability that returns them to equilibrium. Temperance is one of the most positive of the Major Arcana: it represents peace, balance, moderation, poise, health, and "having it together." Fresh off the grand and often terrifying changes wrought by Death, Temperance helps the Fool return to life and synthesize the lessons they've learned into a whole.

City 15: The Devil

What is the Devil? It is that which enslaves: the figures from the Lovers return (which is why the image is spoiler-tagged, because once again there is nudity), but corrupted and chained to the throne of the Satanic figure who takes the visual place of the angel from before. But the Major Arcana are about a spiritual journey: at the risk of sounding like a children's cartoon, the real Devil was inside you all along. The Devil is ignorance, hopelessness, and a fixation on the material: things that enslave your soul and keep you from reaching the heights that are your birthright. The Fool must learn not to be trapped by their assumptions or let themself be caught in an unhealthy situation; you are defeated when you believe you are defeated.



City 16: The Tower

Unfortunately, finding release from the Devil's enslavement is hard. Enter the Tower: sudden and extremely violent change. The Tower is the slap to your face that wakes you up and the phone call that changes everything. The tower is also, as I alluded before, about release: whatever is being held back comes spilling forth under the influence of the Tower. The Tower by itself is not positive or negative, though it is certainly deeply scary. But now that the situation has changed dramatically, somehow, for the Fool, and the carefully-constructed tower of their life has come tumbling down, it is now up to them to rebuild better than before.

[picklepikkl]

Holy shit:




Dreylin is some sort of god of war. To be fair, he inherited Sian's position just as Rifling came in, but Jesus Christ, look at that Power drop! That must have been a huge goddamn stack that got wiped when he took Thomas Aquinas back!

Luckily, he is eons away from Assembly Line: I'm pretty sure he has none of Steam Power, Corporation, Economics, or Constitution, and I'm not even sure if he has Banking. I built Research in several cities this turn to get over the hump; next turn my UB starts getting built, and then we'll see who's first in production!

(it probably still won't be me, but a guy can dream)

EDIT: See also, Jowy wonderwhoring it up. WE GET IT, YOU WON THE GAME, BUT TOURNAMENT STRUCTURE DICTATES THAT WE KEEP PLAYING

[picklepikkl]

Assembly Line in, industrializing hard. Unhealthiness is about to skyrocket; don't care, need Infantry (and Cannons; Steel is my next tech, then probably Railroad for the sake of logistics, unless I turn off research after Steel to upgrade all my front-line Rifles to Infantry).

Regarding the recent holdup: I can only assume that, given whose threads were active, something weird happened with the Dreylin/greenline war, but for the life of me I can't figure out what. Dreylin is currently teching Education, to which I can only say lol.

[picklepikkl]

Played my turn a few hours ago, before I had to run off to the dentist and assorted errands. Not much to report on, other than the big thing: Dreylin and greenline signed peace, and greenline is paying reparations to Dreylin. That stack crush I noticed on the Power charts a few turns ago must have been more ruinous than I thought. In that case, I formally retract my earlier willingness to concede to greenline.

Plan for now is to finish first-round industrialization, get to Railroad, and then crank out a ton of Infantry with Cannon support and a rail backbone to ship it on (also some Machine Guns for defense, and Pentagon if greenline doesn't beat me to it). Let's see how much I can get done before peace with Dreylin is up; most likely I'll wait until greenline's cooldown is also up, because Dreylin is a canny bastard and I can't beat him in anything close to an even fight, though possibly the tech advantage of Infantry will be sufficient. I'm not sure what my existing Cavalry add to a war based around slow-movers when my enemy has Cavs and Rifles of his own -- I guess I move them with the rest of my stacks and use them opportunistically or to finish off wounded? They do have that attack bonus against Cannon.

[El Grillo]

Exciting times! I'm really glad this game was able to continue, and I look forward to seeing your plans to compete for a top-2 finish

[picklepikkl]

Getting Pentagon would go a long way to accomplishing that; 2-promo Infantry out of anywhere with a Barracks would be amazing. But greenline got Assembly Line I think three turns before me and is in a Golden Age to boot -- on the flip side, I have +175% construction speed on my factories because I'm Organized Germany with Coal and Organized Religion (greenline is in Theocracy). I don't think greenline came out of the war with Dreylin with any gains -- he razed two cities? My conquered cities are culturally crushed, but it's more than nothing, and if I can push further against Dreylin then the existing conquests' tiles will "flip on."

(I also still can't see his research again, despite having the EP for it. This is very frustrating -- keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your "somewhere between the two" closest of all.)

Also, thank you for the comments; I'm glad there's still lurker interest in this game in general and in my thread specifically

[picklepikkl]

I founded The Star this turn to make use of some unused tiles near Jowy (including a sheep, banana, and seafood). It extends my defensive commitment, but at this point I don't really care; he's first in everything, and the game would have been called if not for the need for a #2. If he wants to squash me, he'll squash me (though at the moment his best offensive weapon is Rifles to my Infantry, I don't expect that to remain the case). Hopefully he doesn't feel threatened by a border city that doesn't actually steal any tiles, especially with how he is culturally crippling me elsewhere. Mostly, I founded it because my workers had run out of things to do pre-Railroad, and so improving all of The Star's land tiles was no problem (got it done this turn, now they'll split up and go build me a rail network). Pic spoilered for human nudity per usual:

City 17: The Star

After the rollercoaster that is the Tower, the Star is a moment of reprise. Of the House Celestial (three Major Arcana dealing with the Sun, Moon, and stars), the Star is the least concerned with human minutiae. The Sun and Moon are relevant to human concerns -- we live according to their cycles -- but the stars are just there. So too it is with this card; it represents hope, inspiration, and serenity, but not deriving from something of substance on human scale. Instead, the Star is the comfort one can take in knowing that the universe is vast, full of wonders, and ultimately unaffected by your petty concerns. Good to keep in mind in a tense game like this.

Also: Welcome to City 17.

On the foreign affairs front, greenline offered a defensive pact. I took it, on the grounds that refusing it might come across as hostile, and it makes clear to the world (where by the world I mean Jowy) that our interests coincide for now. It doesn't change a lot, since humans can always fight a phony war, but it's nice to have. Jowy finished Physics and is on to Combustion; I will probably coast behind him to at least Physics after I finish the massive Infantry upgrading I intend to do in the next couple of turns, now that Railroad came in at EOT. My first cannons are rolling off the lines, and both greenline and Dreylin are getting Steel of their own. greenline also beat me to Pentagon, which is a shame, but at least means that his troops will be more badass when he goes for round 2 against Dreylin.

[picklepikkl]

Reached Railroad and turned off research for a bit. greenline gets Railroad next turn, so hopefully he'll have the sense to fort up the Jowy border with Machine Guns (which seem defensively king until Marines and Tanks). Spending my ill-gotten gains on upgrades: I turned 11 Rifles into Infantry this turn, with more to follow on the next, along with the Cannons and Machine Guns rolling off my lines.

Every turn that passes increases my relative strength over Dreylin. The main thing I'm not sure about is how to avoid getting collateraled up the bum, though it seems that cannons are really unlikely to win many rounds against Infantry. I don't understand Civ 4's combat engine, though, apart from "relative Power makes you less likely to win any given round of combat and inflict less damage if you do in fact win," right?

Meanwhile, Jowy is getting Flight.

[picklepikkl]

"Cycle through active workers" (/ by default) sure is useful when you want to lay down railroads before unit moves.

In other news, Jowy is actually getting Electricity, and I'm not sure how to time truce-expiration. If peace is signed T0, is war able to be declared t9, t10, or t11? You know what they say, there are two hard problems in programming: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.