[PB25 Spoiler] General Flauros leads the Creole Calabim

[GermanJoey]

Blugh, Donovan and Adrien are keeping a turn-split with us and won't withdraw their choking axes from around Creole Osceola. They're really getting under my skin here; if they doesn't back off soon I'm going to just kill their stupid units and assume I have another PB22 Korea situation on my hands.

[GermanJoey]

T65.

Now a chariot to deal with. *rolls eyes* Well, I guess that's just gonna be the nature of this game. Cramped map, high tensions, etc. I still think they'd be better off building some workers and settlers than this garbage.




At any rate, I've got a chariot of my own now too. If he doesn't move that axe out, I'm just going to kill it - I am absolutely not fine with an enemy axeman being garrisoned in the middle of my land like that.

[GermanJoey]

Le T68 boat rush.



I'm like top power in the world and I'm getting boated on a filler 4 tiles from my capital in the ancient era. What a cramped, imbalanced, and unfun map this is. People don't know what to do so they're acting all kinds of stupid.

[GermanJoey]

Well, I offered Elkad my ivory and he accepted it and turned his boat away. This sucks because my capital was starting to grow onto cottages but now I'll have to whip it down. =/

[GermanJoey]

Map trade with HAK uncovered most of the world map. Holy shit. Did anyone look at this map before it went up?!?? All I asked for was "something not too gimmicky" and yet here I am, center of the map and soon to have 6 neighbors while everyone else has only 3, the only guy with any jungle in his territory at all, and a lot of it at that,, and already I have cities with BFCs overlapping my capital touching THREE DIFFERENT NEIGHBORS IN THREE DIFFERENT FUCKING CARDINAL DIRECTIONS. then I think, ok self, don't go on tilt here. Maybe Harry is giving the more experienced players a harder time, as Gavagai's situation is pretty fucking terrible too? It's annoying, its unfun, its stressful, but maybe you can still optimize your way out of this box. But then, I get to Commodore's territory and he has FOUR (!??!??) different ancient-era happys, as a Pro Inca civ no less, seven cities (only 5 visible but I know 7 from the tracker), shitloads of river everywhere, and enormously more space than any other civ. What the fuck?

Harry, what the hell is this, how did this map get so skewed? It is fundamentally flawed. I remember that you never asked to be mapmaker and I was grateful that you stepped in to cover for wetbandit, but all we needed was some sort of standard roll.

[GermanJoey]

I'm thinking back here and the only game I've played on this site that had anything resembling a "normal" map was PB20, which I complained about a lot would have been fine if I had my starting BFC moved NW 3 or 4 tiles and an ancient-era happy available to me. But then PB21, PB22, PB25, and PB26 were all really fucked up maps. At least PB22 has the advantage of being on a really big map, so the early imbalances tended to smooth themselves out for the most part. Here, its just like, a fucking disaster. 5 neighbors and boxed in by T74 and a border with fucking Commodore looming. Not even my capital is a safe backfill-like area in the ancient era.

[GermanJoey]

Joey gets tilty.

[Ichabod]

You can do it, mate! Gotta keep focused! Go for number 1 again.

[GermanJoey]

I don't know man. I don't know! What do I do here. Do you know? I know, I'll stream-of-conscious rant, because there's nothing like bulimically puking your emotions into a textbox on the internet to win you friends and influence people.

First, here's a couple pictures. No specific comments, I'm just not up for it right now.


















I logged back in later, by the way, to straight-up send my map to poor 4-city Gavagai, recently bullied out of his 5th city spot by Borsche, so that he can see Com's holy city and massive pop and hopefully conclude that whatever fucking reason he has for delaying the oracle (he founded Judiasm ages ago) he needs to finish those chops ASAP.

Anyways, going back to ranting now, I think the easiest way to take over my continent is to stop expanding and just rush knights, but then if I do that Commodore's gonna get a foothold on this island and then one day I'm gonna login to find that he did some crazy bullshit involving a GG 5 mover galley carrying an amphibious commando horcher and a great artist to somehow instantly culture-flip my capital. How did he do it, not even he knows, but he'll attempt to describe it anyways using perfectly metered iambic pentameter in italicized text and some throwaway images from GIS. And as much as I really do fear that happening, I feel like I have to drive my borders right at him or else he'll just run away with the game. I mean, he's got dtay there to perfect his economy and wisely council their beeline targets, and since his half of the world is so weak, they won't pin him in at all. How do I know? Well, first off, HAK and Grimace look like they're somehow in a blood feud already, since they're both still at like 4 cities and HAK's settled ten kinds of all up in Grimace's face; retep has more than that, being Imp, but since he isn't at the top of the scoreboard depsite being Joao, I'm guessing he stopped trying like 40 turns ago after hitting some kind of snag? Oh yeah, and by the way, their continent has only 4 while ours has 5, another ace bit of map balance. Next, it looks like Donovan, Elkad, and I are all almost identical power, at about 90k soldiers, and Borsche is only a bit behind from eyeballing his graph. Gavagai is nearer to the average I think. However, the average power is like 73k and the weakest is 63k. If the 5 of us are above or near the average, what does that say about the other 4? That they're all probably around this 63k number, roundabouts. 27k soldiers is like, 3 axe, 2 spear? That's 165 extra hammers that Com gets to put in settlers, workers and terraces, or, alternately and more likely the case, that this power gap indicates a lot more turns, and I ain't gonna calculate how many, of worked cottages compared to more worked mines and whips and hammerish crap like that. The map I got is outdated, but I still can see that he has a size 8 and size 7 city (lol 4 ancient happy resources!) so I'm guessing this vertical growth means that we're talking cottages. Gavagai still hasn't popped Oracle yet and Com has the Hindu holy city, so there's a chance that with Oracle going so late and Com likely having so many cottages, he could Oracle something fucking crazy and end up with Guilds before many others even have longbows. And does Commodore know what to do with Knights? I don't know if Commodore knows how to brush his teeth in the morning, but I sure as hell do know that he knows what to do with knights. Oh, and by the way, he's Phi, I just remembered, so on top of these cottages and commerce resources, he truly could pop a GS any turn now and oracle somethiNG REALLY NUTS. If not that, have an Academy built before I start working my first scientist specialist.

So. the question is. Can I manage to keep expanding towards Com while keeping pace with Donovan and Elkad's nonstop military spam and yet not crash my economy ?!?? Will Commodore manage to get Guilds before I turn my slider on again?!?? Will Com manage to produce more great artists than all great people I'll produce all game ?!?? Place your bets!

[GermanJoey]

Krill, I see you posting in that lurker thread. You're posting something something about Torodial wrap aren't you. You're probably saying this is all my fault for letting Com insist on Cylindrical in the first place! Arrgh!