February 3rd, 2023, 18:39
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(February 1st, 2023, 10:04)Charriu Wrote: Two general tips when it comes to serfdom.
1. Roads are not faster to build under serfdom
2. Make sure you do all your worker turns when leaving serfdom.
Man, all the micro miracles a player could do with 1-turn roads...
Ginger moved his scout up to my axe. I will show him my friendly nature.
I've given up spending my EP on Ginger. I'm still putting 1 point per turn into him so I don't lose his graphs. I'm now putting 3 points per turn into Magic. I've got 8 points so far. He has 40. So of course, he is still putting all his EP into me. Why are all my neighbors so belligerent! Why do they want to hide their graphs? What are they planning?! I'm going to have to strike first or be first struck.
There's a barb in the North, but for the first time maybe ever in my Pitboss career, I feel adequately garrisoned?
We'll see. I've fallen to 3rd power, which is surprising, but I can hop into slavery at will now.
P.S. Magic Science landed Judaism. This leave Commodore with Spiritual but without any of the early 3 religions. We can hope that he gets some spreads of ours and converts. Our future shrine income would like that.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
February 5th, 2023, 09:29
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One worries about Tall Poppy Syndrome:
Compare my decent economic stats with my sub-median power... Spooky. My GNP looks silly but my capital is putting out 28 culture points per turn and I have another 4 cities with free monuments, so I'm still doing fine, but not as ridiculous as the stats seem at first blush.
Of course, I'm showing demos the turn I settle a city. What's a demos screen without a little finesse?
Welcome Geidi Prime into the greater HOSAV. Weird little city made possible by Serfdom. It brings our breakeven research rate down to a little under 35%, but that's ok because...
We've built our first cottage!
And we also have a granary! One granary and one cottage in our empire by turn 71! Nothing but success from here on out. I desperately need more military to discourage my neighbors, Magic Science especially. I've put a turn into a safety axe at Innistrad, e.g., in case I need to emergency swap to Slavery and 1-whip. The longer I can stay in Serfdom cranking out improvements, the happier I'll be. Ankh-Morpork's settler is going to be our last one for a while, which is a pity because I've got two more spots I really want to settle, but it's just too risky, I think.
While we're at a respectable 5 cities, Superdeath and Gav are still on three. At first I hoped this was due to war, but I can see they're at peace on the Foreign Advisor.
Gavagai is Industrious. Superdeath is Fin/Spi but has been known to build some wonders on occasion. Are they going for Lighthouse/Mids? I'd be happy with either one getting either one.
All told, I'm decently happy with where the HOSAV are right now. Barring no immediate attacks from the neighbors, I think we've got a good trajectory.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
February 9th, 2023, 06:59
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Poking my head above water for the briefest of turn 75 reports.
Ginger/Miguelito are funny:
Remember, they have 40 EP into Bing, 44 into Magic, and 184 EP into me. (And we confirmed this wasn't an accident when they switched off me long enough to get Bing's graphs and then return to spying on me.) They have a higher military, which is worrying, and somebody just researched Iron Working.
And after turning their scout back home, they've now returned to snooping on my borders:
We have no trade routes, so this Open Borders proposal is simply: "Let our scout get vision on all your cities, since our EP spending is taking too long." Screw that. I know some players (like Amicalola) believe Open Borders are the first step to trust, but this offer definitely isn't real. I've moved an axe to intercept the scout if I have to. If I see them stop (not decrease) their EP spending and if we can get trade routes, I'll consider it.
In the meantime...we need more soldiers. I don't actually think we're vulnerable. We've got good vision, decent garrisons, and hammers invested into safety units. But the Serfdom+low power number might tempt people. Don't want to inspire temptation.
Oh, built the Buddhist shrine for +3gpt, bringing my Mathematics timing down from 27 turns to 20. Tempted to go Alphabet first so I can build research. Man, I am missing being Fin/Org.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
February 10th, 2023, 01:51
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Joined: May 2012
I believe if you haven't explored a city, city visibility through EP can't grant you vision.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
February 10th, 2023, 03:09
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Correct. Espionage city vision (and inspection) only works on cities that are marked on the map for you.
February 10th, 2023, 06:00
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With this land you must rush for biology . Depreising brown.
February 12th, 2023, 09:41
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(February 10th, 2023, 06:00)mackoti Wrote: With this land you must rush for biology . Depreising brown.
The goal was to stay in Serfdom because the land is so poor, but today we swapped to slavery because...
I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Innistrad is crucial to my empire, so I was very worried Ginger had a force that could take it. On the other hand, it would need to be a pretty sizeable force, given how well that city could be defended.
Unfortunately, Innistrad was not the focus of the attack:
They're attacking Geidi Prime, which, as my incompetence would have it, is completely undefended. I think they're trying to leverage my vulnerability at Geidi Prime into concessions at Innistrad. It's possible that there's a second attack coming at Innistrad, but I have my doubts.
You can also see an absolutely horrific misclick in the above screenshot. I moved my galley in the lower left 1SE by hitting the "1" key on my numpad instead of an arrow to look around the map. This is disastrous. Instead of moving the galley back into Necromunda and upgrading its warrior, I delay the upgrade and have no military police for the city. Absolutely disastrous. Can't ask for a reload because I unfogged tiles. (And what lovely tiles they are!)
My axe defender between Necromunda and Geidi Prime should've been a spear but I was lazy. I also could have put safety hammers into a spear, but the granary timing was tight enough already. Perhaps more laziness on my part.
On Gingerlito's part, the scout is a nice touch, as is the angle of attack. I'd feel a lot more confident if that third unit wasn't there to mess up movement and maybe sacrifice itself to save a wounded chariot.
Here's how the South ends up at the end of my turn:
I revolted to Slavery and whipped Innistrad's axe (see! safety hammers!), Necromunda's chariot, and Geidi Prime's granary. I whipped the granary to reduce Ginger's capture gold. Next turn, if he moves both chariots into Geidi Prime, I can attack him with 2 chariots and a c1 axe. The axe has a 79.6% chance to kill the chariot on attack. If I lose this roll, I scream my lungs out, but that's just the way small-numbers, ancient era combat works. After the axe combat, my 2 chariots should beat his one. But any low odds roll could dramatically alter this war. (Hence why I really wish I hadn't fat fingered myself out of a garrison spear in Necromunda.)
I took pics of the Financial advisor before and after the Serfdom->Slavery swap, but the take away is just one sentence: we went from 17 net gpt to 12gpt, a 30% income loss.
We can talk about the broader geopolitics. Commodore is still at war with Gavagai. Don't know what that's about. He's lost power and whipped away 6 pop this turn. For the record, I was lulled into a false sense of security by the power graph:
Do you see that 5k power dip by Ginger? I had thought Magic Science had eaten a real unit of his and that their war was hot. Now I think that was a smokescreen. I've sent Magic a sheep for sheep. I can handle Ginger alone. It would be not great if Magic piled in.
It is customary when caught with one's pants down to complain that the opponent's attack makes no sense, but eh. This is fine. I feel very vindicated about refusing Ginger's treacherous little open borders request. I suspected that Ginger had made me his #1 enemy from turn 35 or so based on his EP spending and perhaps bad blood from PB64. I had moments of doubt: after all, the land between him and me is completely brown and probably not worth fighting over without Serfdom, while the land to his east with Bing is jungle grassland filled with pigs and gems. But I saw that he had given Bing fish for fish and wasn't spying on him. (I don't know the geography between Ginger and Magic enough to talk about it.) Oh well. He's our enemy for this game.
Two people have researched Iron Working. I don't expect an immediate Guerilla II Celtic attack, but it's a possibility. Pseudo-edit: No 10k power jumps on Ginger's graph, I think.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
February 13th, 2023, 20:33
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I've missed a couple turns of reports. Been stupid busy. (Sorry to folks still waiting on my EitB map).
I killed Ginger's chariot with my axe, barely. Axe survived by 1 hit. Ginger then accepted peace.
He has used this peace to pillage the city ruins and roads at my old city site:
This is baffling to me. He doesn't get pillage gold from this. He wants to delay my troops going back inside my borders, so I have to pay unit supply costs? Really? That's the level of enmity we have? Wow. I'm not sure what I've done to deserve this, but he's allowed to play his way, I guess.
I had a settler I could've used to re-found Geidi Prime. Instead I decided that intercontinental trade routes were much, much more important:
Except...
It's not a different continent. This useless iceball is a net drain on my finances and won't produce any units for defense. Screw me.
To make matters worse, this continent almost certainly connects to Commodore. (Checked with flying camera.) So if I do want to expand here, I make him unhappy with me, too. I still haven't met Pindicator. Decent odds he's a bit to the west in this fog?
Not a good couple of turns. Demos went from best in the game to scraping the bottom:
Ginger's attack was cheap and effective. Kudos to him. It dragged my development back to the pack. Now, without intercontinental trade, I can't keep up with the Protective, Financial, or Organized players. My land's too brown. Not sure what I do. What should our goal be, Josh Brolin?
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
February 13th, 2023, 21:17
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Oof, it's rather unlucky to have the game tell you "nope, this is not an island" in the face of the available evidence. Too bad Civ4 didn't keep the option from Civ3 where you could pack up and abandon your newly founded city back into a Settler.
February 13th, 2023, 21:29
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(February 13th, 2023, 21:17)El Grillo Wrote: Oof, it's rather unlucky to have the game tell you "nope, this is not an island" in the face of the available evidence. Too bad Civ4 didn't keep the option from Civ3 where you could pack up and abandon your newly founded city back into a Settler.
Sometimes I embellish for the sake of the narrative. Last turn, when I saw the size of the "island," I used the flying camera and realized it was probably part of the same continent. But I decided settling immediately was better than packing up back to some horrible, foodless spot in the starting area.
In ~6 turns, I'll have a worker and an axe over there to improve the land and possibly pacify the barbarians. From what little I can see in the fog, the barb city doesn't look appetizing, but if my empire survives long enough to tech Machinery, I see at least 3 grass hills and a flat grassland, which is more green land than I've got in my empire outside the capital.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
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