[SPOILERS]Prep, Coin, Concede

[Gawdzak]

Some screenshots, nothing too interesting.

Building Oxford, not great but it's the best spot I got.




Core cities:




Former BGN cities:




Demos:




Ichabod still teched Astro after Lib, so I had to follow him there. Which isn't a bad tech to pick up since I get the cheap observatories. The defense against galleons is of course important as well, and he offered peace as soon as I got Astro before his harassing caravels could do any damage. I accepted peace, since I don't want to worry about cataphracts attacking my coasts right now.

I really had to think about whether to contest Economic merchant with Ichabod, but it's probably not worth it. Dreylin is now a serious contender, and I'm now under a lot of pressure to not to be overtaken by him. So I'm just going to directly go Replaceable parts and Rifling and look for some opportunities to get aggressive. I did take a detour to Divine Right to pick Spiral Minaret.

Feels like I missed the ball here by letting Dreylin take out Brick before I was ready to do it myself, now he's got access to the weak Yuri as well. On the other hand, after teching 13 techs in 12 turns and building, I now have the score lead, let's see if it would last.

[GermanJoey]

Nice lookin' civ, thanks for the update.

Divine Right is for the Minaret? How much will that bring in?

[Gawdzak]

Nice lookin' civ, thanks for the update.

Divine Right is for the Minaret? How much will that bring in?

I've got around 20 of both monasteries and temples. So the wonder will be worth about 80 gold per turn.

I didn't plan the micro of the build at all, so SM will be a 5 turn build.

[Gawdzak]

Somehow got circumnavagation, I wasn't actively going for it. Not a fun of the mechanic in the multiplayer. Usually the player who get it is the one who got the luckiest with map trades and it's a bonus that really hard to counter. But map trading is banned this game so I will take it.




Built the SM.




Heroic epic is finally up, getting that 1-turn knights with overflow.




Also picked up Engineering, last of the surviving players to do so, getting that sweet known tech bonus, not that it mattered much at this stage.

[Gawdzak]

For some reason, I thought stack attack was the way to go. Big mistake...

[Gawdzak]

On the 69th turn of war:




What a grind that was. This is why they tell you not to pick a fight with a competent opponent without a tech lead. I built units until I went broke, and even then if BGN played perfectly or if I've gotten slightly unlucky I would have straight up lost the game.

The war was won about 40 turns ago when I took over his mainland holdings but I put off on finishing him off because I was focusing on economics. The war wariness was not a serious concern until the final few turns of the war.

Well, BGN, good game, you certainly proved yourself to be a tough opponent.

[Gawdzak]

It's late and I'm tired so real report will come later but here's some screenshots. 

Short news is that I declared on Cairo and took his Moai city.




He had a longbow and an archer and I had 3 rifles, 1 rifle died to take the city.







Power graph, this is why I decided to attack Cairo, his war with Ichabod is pretty real.




Demo:




I really have to question Ichabod's decision to attack Cairo here. He's got better targets in AT and Molach who are both completely checked out of the game. Most importantly, there's the huge potential for me to benefit from this war, considering Cairo is my close neighbour.

[Gawdzak]

3 cities captured this turn.




Cairo abandoned his cities, obviously trying to make a final stand some time later. 

I miscounted Cairo's civic swaps. I thought he could have swapped to Nationhood this turn, but he ended turn without any score changes (until I logged in ).

What really sealed Cairo's doom here is swapping into Bureaucracy during his golden age, where he got attacked by Ichabod the turn he made the change. Considering Nationhood's no civic cost compared to Bureau's high civic cost, the benefit is probably minimal. Just seemed a little too greedy to me. 20 PRO muskets/mace probably could have made a difference here.

As a tangent, this is another weakness of Spiritual. I know Cairo is not SPI, but GA free civic swap is similar. Despite having the ability to change civic at no anarchy, there's a still 5 turn cool-down period before one could switch again. There's been a few cases in recent memory where an SPI civ switched out of unit rushing civics and got attacked immediately:

Boak in PB27
Alhazard in PB35 (don't think this is too much of spoiler at this point)

Anyways, regarding the war with Cairo right now. The goal is to pressure his other front cities, with the exception of Pax Deorum. The city is stuffed with PRO longbows, I will just take it with cannons later.

Also that cow is finally in my borders now:




Looking at the screenshots again, it seemed like Cairo is farming over his cottages. I don't mind it really, farms and mines are the overpowered tiles in the mod. I will take those free workers also.

As for the future plans, I think getting the Statue of Liberty would be a big deal for me. I'm a little behind on the tech path to Ichabod and Dreylin since I don't have Constitution. I do, however, have an Engineer saved. My NE city is size 20 so GE gives me 900 hammers. With IND+Copper+OR+Forge for +150%, I just need 240 base hammers to complete it. I would like to save my GE for a later GA if I can so it depends on whether the other are willing to race me to it.

Steam power, OTOH, is also very attractive for the Levees, but SoL is one time thing.

I get Steel next turn, going to start the Ironwork in BGN's former capital. Should easily have 60+ base hammers later on.

Ichabod's coastal cities are also looking awfully exposed at the moment, I probably could have gotten enough forces to raze his capital if I wanted to. However, I'm not going to do that considering how strong Dreylin is. If I get bogged down in a war with Ichabod, Dreylin could easily come back and win the game here. His economy is no joke, he's doing 900 gpt while I'm doing less than 700gpt before I attack Cairo. Turns out Organized is prrreety good.

[Gawdzak]

2 more cities this turn. Couldn't get China Roses as well, since he stuffed just enough units for the number of units I had in range. He piled a good number of units in Anywhere Is. Cavalries gets around 60% odds on PRO longbows on a hill, I got a little lucky to only lose 2 cavalries on the attack.




Should get China Roses and another coastal city next turn.

Saw Ichabod getting 1500gpt and Dreylin 1000gpt, while I'm getting 600gpt. Really need to get the SoL to keep up I think.

Also AT razed a Ichabod city, not sure what that's about.

[Gawdzak]

Made an absolute mess of a turn.

First, Cairo reinforced enough so I couldn't take his coastal city amphibiously.

Then I spotted a few Ichabod galleons in threatening positions. I declared and sunk his galleons, and turned out they were mostly empty...

Considering I already declared, I decided to snipe one of Cairo's former cities from Ichabod...

Then I was moving a captured worker back to home territory but moved a whole stack of rifles backwards as well...

Finally, I decided to upgrade just 2 of my catapults to cannons, as soon as I clicked the upgrade button I got an out of sync error. I logged back in to find all my catapults were upgraded,which depleted the gold that I was saving for Democracy...

Really hope I don't lose the SoL because of this.