Actually, you can kind of see all four cities on my screenshot, there is Brest hidden behind the unit roster.
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Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder
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Big report!
Part I: wars in the neighborhood Piccadilly captured greenline's continental assets; of course, he still has something like four cities on the islands that will be very difficult to reach. I sent Pic fish for fish offer and also fish for the war with Superdeath. I am fine with him getting himself busy over there. Scooter is losing his war. His stack got destroyed and the city of Bishan once again changed hands. Also, there is this: GT sneaked a chariot through my territory and burnt the city of Pool which was on my border with Scooter. I tried to warn him offering Horse for Pool but Scooter apparently did not understand me. Scooter resettled the city by now. I do not have any pictures for SD versus Plemo war but they are both reporting. Plemo took a city last turn but I do not expect any easy win for him. I lost SD's graphs but the last time I saw his power was on Piccadilly's level and Plemo uses the wrong tools: for some reason, he opted not to wait for Knights and attack with Maces. I have a feeling people from the German forum generally undervalue two-movers. In our previous game Plemo, I think, never bothered to research HBR until the very end, and GT here also does not have HBR. Here is what I know about the armies of me, Piccadilly and GT respectively: I know everything about myself, obviously, and for two others the info is on their main stacks: And here is the macroview: Observations: 1) Scooter got wrecked really hard. 2) Piccadlly stopped building units which probably means no intention to start any more wars. To be continued...
Part II: strategic crossroads
Until recently my grand strategy was built around the idea of getting Cuirs ASAP via Liberalism into Military Tradition slingshot at the expense of everything else. This plan suffered two serious blows recently: I lost Music race to Miguelito and a few turns later I lost Paya to Plemo. (As an aside, he used it to revolt to Free Religion and it was the same thing he did in our previous game. Fucking annoying. I needed Paya for a real reason and Plemo built it because of some idiosyncratic habit). Those were severe blows to my plan as I am now one GP short and need to somehow fit Theology into my very tight schedule. It forced me to reevaluate. I had to choose between two options: 1) Cuirs and Muskets by T154 with Nationhood / Caste / Theocracy set up. 2) Knights by T140 with Slavery / Vassalage set up. The attraction of (1) is not just good units and civics at a very early date. I would also have completed the transition to workshops from slavery and would be able to sustain the war effort for an indefinite time. This option promised very efficient use of bulbs: the plan was to bulb liberalism which is possible by ignoring Machinery. Finally, Taj would be pretty much guaranteed here. It is not given, however, that Piccadilly would allow me to do it. He is close to knights and as SD is preoccupied, he does not have much other concerns but me. Also, yes, I would have an excellent army but what I am going to do with it? Against GT / Scooter this is an overkill, I don't need anything more than Knights to conquer them. And against Piccadilly it would not be enough. (And I think this can be generalized: Cuirs do not have much of a niche if you have initiative. It is either your opponent has Knights or he does not. In the former case, Cuirs will not be able to kill him, in the latter - you don't need them, Knights would do the job just fine.) The attraction of (2) is that it would allow me to get this rather quickly: I have mixed feelings about this land. In terms of natural resources it is very good but Scooter and GT did not develop it much. GT in particular still has a city sitting between jungles - he never bothered to research Iron Working. Of course, having it is still vastly better than not having it but I see what kind of huge cities Commodore takes off Bing right now - and feel like I am going to get the short end of the stick. The drawbacks of the second option are that I can lose Taj (I don't think anyone can beat me to Liberalism unless something weird happens but Nationalism can be researched manually) and that it slows development as I will have to whip the Knights. In the end, I decided to go with (2) but in a slightly modified version: I am going to slot in Civil Service before Guilds. It would allow me to run Civil Service during the golden age and also build some maces before I need to move to knights. The thing is, GT researched Machinery (he has no IW, HBR and Mysticism) and now can research Engineering. So I will need to be ready for Pikes. To be continued...
I really appreciate the update. I'd be interested in any broader perspectives you had on the state of the game.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Part IV: the big picture
So, two things happened recently. Firstly, Miguelito teched Paper and traded his maps to me. Secondly, I now know Alphabeth and can see everyone's tech. So, now I can make some conclusions about the general state of the game. Currently, I know of two continents. One of them is fully explored, courtesy of Mig, and another one is only partially known because I do not want to open borders to Plemo and he blocks my scouting. Mig, the General, Hubabl, Donovan, and Magic Science are on a small continent to the west of me and all my other contacts (except Pindicator) are seen on my landmass. I also know for certain that Tarkeel is also somewhere here, probably to the east of Plemo and completely blocked by him. This leaves Bing, Commodore, Amica and Pindicator unaccounted. My current assumption is that they have a mini-continent of their own in the space further to the west of Mig's continent. So, here are some conclusions. Firstly, I believe that Commodore and Pindicator are going to eat Bing and Amica respectively and cancel each other out. I would not say they have no chances but the path to victory does not seem to be obvious in this set up: they are evenly matched and do not have any easy avenues of expansion besides each other. Piccadilly looks strong but his long-term position is hopeless unless he would do something drastic very quickly: he is going to be squeezed between me and Plemo and would be either split between us or serve as a buffer state. I think wasting time on Greenline was a mistake on his part, he had to think bigger (on the other hand - did he even know half of Greenline's empire was on islands? Would not be surprised if Greenline never allowed him to scout it). This leaves me, Plemo and Mig/Ginger as serious long-term contenders and I feel the latter two are misplaying their position. Objectively speaking, Mig/Ginger have by far the best chance of winning. Everyone else on their continent is pathetic, so they have a very simple path to victory: grab knights and go kill people, dominate the continent, chill, and launch the spaceship. Instead, they are doing stupid nonsense like stealing Music from me (seriously bro, wtf) and teching Paper (I know about Sancnore but it should not be his priority). Just last turn they started some random golden age without doing anything with their civics. If they ignored Paper and the entire Aesthetics line, they would be close to Guilds by now. So, they are best positioned to win objectively but given their scatterbrain approach to the game I feel anything is possible and the fate of their continent is not decided yet. With Plemo I do not understand why he decided to go after Superdeath instead of finishing off a crippled Tarkeel. SD has a monster classical era military and terrible tech, Plemo just needs to wait him out while killing Tarkeel in the meantime. I mean, of course he will kill SD eventually due to better tech but it will be a long, grueling process and he will most likely have to split trophies with Piccadilly. This is all especially puzzling given that Tarkeel has no other purpose in this game but sabotaging Plemo while with SD Plemo could have reached some sort of diplomatic understanding, at least temporarily. With all that said, SD makes a good effort to refute my conclusions: It appears he wandered his stack deep into Plemo's territory where it got wrecked. You know, when I logged in this turn, I saw a diplo message from him, asking for 100 gold to finance the war with Plemo (I am getting some sort of complex diplo from SD every other turn; I ignore everything, of course). Well, hell no, I am not going to give away my money if they are going to be wasted on inane expeditions of this sort. If this is how SD is going to defend himself, it could be that his demise will be much faster than I expect. This is all I have for now, I think, if anyone has questions or requests - ask. Also, a question for lurkers - do you want me to make a detailed write-up of what techs everyone has? Or occasional screenshots of the tech screen would be good enough? The End
While we are waiting, here are two random fun facts for lurkers.
1) Donovan's empire has exactly two cottages. Can Donovan be an alter ego of the legendary Attacko? He is old enough and the playstyle matches. 2) Mig built Hagia Sophia, of all things. I did not even notice it initially, but it fits nicely with everything I said above about their approach to the game. |
