This is a Spoiler thread - Dreylin, PB28

[Commodore]

Football fans?

[Dreylin]

Football fans?

Do you mean Football, the internationally played game where teams spend >90% of the game kicking the ball with their feet; or "Football", a dubious offshoot of Rugby played by a handful of countries where teams spend more time during the game resting than actually playing, and where just a handful of the team members kick the ball a handful of times?

Oh, Fenn declared war on Jowy...

[Dreylin]

t93 -

No reply from Whosit.

2 Axes have appeared in Shangri-La on the West Coast. This could actually be good news; if he's massing out here, then he may be planning to attack through Greywacke. I could quite happily sacrifice that nub of a city (temporarily) to buy time to defend the rest.

One last try though:


I also went and asked my new friend if he could spare his Horses for a few turns:


It's a long shot, but he's the only one (apart from Whosit) whom I've met that has their Horses connected. I have my Settler in place that could found either on the Horses or on the originally planned spot next turn; I think it's important enough for the next few turn to have them available, so I will plant on them if Borsche can't help.

No whips this turn because I have a lot of chops coming in to Greywacke and Breccia which will complete units and overflow will complete a second the following turn. And I committed another turn to Hanging Gardens, since nothing has shown up in range of Arkose yet.

Demos are not nice:


3rd Power, but sadly I think that Whosit is the one sat at #1.

[Dreylin]

Borsche comes through!!!


and he might get circumnav in return...

[Dreylin]

t94 -

Circumnav is not available. Looking again at the shot above you can see that it's more than one duplicated column, so total land tiles is greater than the threshold.

I open the turn to find myself at War with Whosit ... but:


He's made the same mistake that I did when I taunted him about my Axe while chasing his offending Warrior earlier in the game - although he likely sent this diplo before declaring war, but still it comes through with a Cease Fire. I take a look around and find his stack (visible in the shot above as well, but here are the details:


Well, I'm losing Greywacke, but I'll buy myself a turn by accepting the Cease Fire.

Edit: or not. Previous post spoilered below:

His Jags are all WoodsII by the way, as is one of the Axes. Great for mobility in the presence of Forests (and I guess "surprise" attacks), but maybe some diversity would be helpful in the longer run.

Well, with his stack in the West I think I can afford to complete Hanging Gardens - after all, that converts the invested hammers into Pop that can be whipped back into hammers again. So, new city:


Note Greywacke about to 1t another Axe ... oh, and borders pop at EoT too.

And another:


Although the effect is not ideal:


(now I need ~300g to research Currency at max)

A couple of Whips, but also chops/overflow/etc.:


One last try to see if I can buy him off:

[Dreylin]

Blah blah diplo blah blah

That's not good news.

Edit: I went in quickly to check some troop numbers for sim purposes, but didn't receive or initiate diplo.

[BRickAstley]

Both forms of football are awesome in their own way. The American one is more engrossing to watch though IMHO.

[Dreylin]

Both forms of football are awesome in their own way. The American one is more engrossing to watch though IMHO.

Well I do confess that I've never been a particular fan of either (i.e. watch big events, but don't follow a team during the regular season); I'm more of a Cricket / Baseball kind of guy.

[GermanJoey]

However, I was reading Joey's PB22 thread(*) and he made some interesting points on the subject during the post where he discusses why Gawdzak's late-game economy will falter compared to his (I think, I can't find the post right now).

Just a note...Gawdzak did not in fact falter and that economy roared to an impressively fast space win.

I know you just want to talk shit, and hence why you don't actually have anything to say about Gawdzak's economy (or probably even know a single thing about it, given how little he reported near the end) vs mine or Gav's, but his space race lead was more to do with the fact he didn't need to build any units during the last 50 turns of the game rather than his economy being very efficient. Both Gav and I would have pulled ahead of him before the end if not for our military conflicts. The fact that he was able to get up to like a 100 cities (all with Org courthouses) once he claimed all his available filler while Gav and I were stuck at 50 and 62 was also a big deal.

[GermanJoey]

* I found lots of parts of this thread very informative, especially the treatise on Filler Cities.

Glad you enjoyed it. Krill made fun of me for that post but I'm very happy that it was useful for somebody!!

Re: wealth and research builds in PB22: I think I talked about how Gawdzak over-relied on wealth builds in the Ren/Industrial era and underbuilt infrastructure, but don't get me wrong, I built a lot of wealth/research throughout the game too, and had been planning to convert all my cities to that in the endgame before Circumstances occurred. It's very very useful for getting to critical techs earlier, especially economic techs. For example I went Alphabet->Currency in that game in order to use a ton of research builds to finish limping to Currency. IIRC I also made big wealth pushes at Economics, Physics, Astro, Rifling, and AL? I feel like I'm forgetting something. Anyways, the tricky part is balancing now vs later, especially when big numbers are involved. 150 gold in 10 turns from now vs 300 gold in 30 turns from now is tricky to judge when techs cost 25k beakers and you're not actually researching anything that effects your economy anymore. That's not at all the case when Currency's +1 free routes are dangling in front of your face. In the classical/medieval periods your economy develops way more rapidly on a per-city basis. So, the really tricky thing to figure out is how you can still build infrastructure while still using wealth builds while not falling behind on military or whatever else you want to build. You only have so many hammers to go around, so it can be very tough choice how to allocate them!