[SPOILERS] Rusten enters uncharted waters

[superdeath]

May or may not know that this is the mainland?

The star never lies

Capital could be moved, could be on a different land than all of the currently conquered cities, ect ect.

[Rusten]

Could perhaps send AT a fish for fish + make peace with Dark Savant offer next turn to get him to back off. Hopefully that will get the message across. I don't care all that much about the 2 island cities, he can have them if he wants them so bad, but that continent is mine. My people paid for it in blood.

[Raskolnikov]

Do it imo. I can't wait to see how he reacts! (as superdeath said, maybe he didn't realize where he was putting his feets on somehow... but if he did, he will rolleyes and get his ass kicked)

[Rusten]

AI diplo doesn't extend that far.




Obvious why it has to be this way. It would be pretty broken if you could just get peace with whoever you wanted through a neutral party. 

Commodore is my new BFF (together with TBW for, well... not being Krill). Be it through Commodore not logging in in time or just being a bro I was able to capture all the northern cities. Probably the latter as his entire fleet is far away. Looks like he wants peace. He's also signed up for a new game (PB49) and he has a tendency to do this only when he's checked out of whichever game he's in already at that point. Don't think he'll spend much time scheming in this pitboss.




Decided to gather up some more forces before moving in on Porto-Novo. The last thing I want now is to give Dark Savant an excuse to throw the rest of his units at me to slow me down while AT gets his capital for free. My stack has to be bulletproof. Next turn I'll go.

[Rusten]

To sum up that's 8 cities captured in 2 turns. The sacrifice was surely worth it.  This is why keeping the knights in reserve was so important. Firstly for the counterattack and secondly to clean up cities.

Looking ahead I'm now firmly in the camp of sitting on my assets and letting my enemies (OH) come to me. With railroad now completed I should have no trouble defending my home continent. From there on the plan is simply to be first to destroyers, first to tanks/battleships, first to bombers and first to space. Nobody can compete with my economy. Hopefully the game won't go all the way, but it might.

I see no reason to poke Commodore and make him involved in the game. The only direction I think I'll expand from here is AT if he proves to be a nuisance. 

If OH doesn't tech Communism next (and goes for the natural AL or rifling) I will go Lib-Sci Meth-Communism for my next 3. If he goes communism I'll probably slot in combustion first to keep my monasteries a few extra turns. Obsoleting those is not something I look forward to, but there's no way around it anymore. All of my core and most of former Ethiopia have monasteries, but former Persia doesn't as I knew they'd obsolete soon.

P.S. Never playing a PB this big again. Dedlurking one seems fun but it's just too much stuff. The sooner this game is over the better. Hopefully with a positive result.

[Raskolnikov]

Obvious why it has to be this way. It would be pretty broken if you could just get peace with whoever you wanted through a neutral party. 

Indeed. Makes a lot of sense. I got me wondering how it works in SP... do you remember? (ask the attacker? winning side?)

edit: how long is a turn in RL time?

[Rusten]

I think I average 2-hour turns, but a lot of it is thinking about the game and sipping
Going over cities individually and choosing builds is also very time-consuming but not very tiring and I don't mind that process. I expect turns to take less time after Mali is conquered and I start to turtle on my two continents.

In SP the winning side can be bribed to stop while the losing side says to ask the other civ. I think sometimes you can ask either side if there's no clear winner, but don't hold me to that -- I barely every play SP anymore.

[Rusten]

AT is actually making an attempt for the continent.




Now unless Dark Savant just has it in for me for some reason () that's a weak attempt. I fully expect DS to send his catapults and knights that way this next turn, especially since I didn't move my stack. No siege, just straight up rifles. He has some frigates to bombard culture, but still...

Maybe I'll drop off some units on that tile his rifles are occupying instead of Porto-Novo. Either way, he's not keeping that city. I will concede the 2 islands to him, those are not worth getting into a dispute for. He should settle for that, but hopefully Dark Savant will make the choice for him.

And the real reason I logged in, just wanted to share images of my new national wonders. 300 gpt from a single city at 0% slider. Feels good.
The cities will look even better in a few turns with emancipation and railroaded mines.







I kinda wish I had a city with all land tiles to put Oxford's in, but Leviathan is the best I've got. On the bright side I can swap the matured towns between the 2 cities depending on slider. At 100% science Leviathan gets to work them and on 0% Diatom gets priority.

[Rusten]

And I forgot to mention my civic plan. I'll start on SoL finally in one of the cities completing a coal plant and switch to environmentalism once the transition from windmills to mine+railroad is complete. The priests are going to be worth 2 hammers and 3 gold, which I'm fairly happy with. That's going to add up quickly considering I have nearly 60 cities on my main continent. SoL will add almost 120 hammers and 180 gold. Or at least 120 hammers and 120 gold (engineers) considering I might have been running the preist already anyway.

I am likely to get a great engineer within 8 turns, but I've not yet fully decided on rush vs. saving for golden age.

edit: correction; that's base gold (wealth), not gpt, from the priests. Big difference.

[Rusten]

OK, AT is officially taking the piss and annoying me.

Code:

04/16/2020 16:02:01    194    AT    logged out
04/16/2020 16:01:41    194    AT    finished turn
04/16/2020 16:00:50    194    Dark Savant    score decreased to 610 (-15)
04/16/2020 16:00:50    194    AT    score increased to 1424 (+8)
04/16/2020 15:54:24    194    Dark Savant    score decreased to 625 (-44)
04/16/2020 15:54:24    194    AT    score increased to 1416 (+22)
04/16/2020 15:50:02    194    AT    logged in

I've not logged in so I don't know the exact status, but this means that not only did he capture the capital and leave it with almost no defenders, but he also took the city next to Porto-Novo amphibiously (it was guarded by just 1 warrior). There's no way he's keeping these cities and I'm not talking about me here. Dark Savant can just walk back in and easily mop up his injured riflemen. The annoying thing here is that these captures and recaptures means that I'm losing out on all that juicy DS infrastructure, which will have been burned and pillaged in the process.

AT is playing this like DS and I are AIs. You can't do warfare like this in MP, it's completely ridiculous!