This is a Spoiler thread - Dreylin, PB28

[Zed-F]

Do you have an overall plan for progressing toward catching up with the leaders?

[Dreylin]

That's a great question Zed-F, and therefore in the manner of great politicians the World over I'm going to waffle on about whatever I feel like and may or may not answer your question.

So, the situation is this; wetbandit took the combo with the fastest expansion potential and used it to get a leg up on the game. He's maintained that position by scoring every major first-to bonus up to this point and just used Liberalism to grab MilTrad and enable Cuirs. My only comfort is that I don't share any sort of border with him at this point. From what I can tell he has functional control of both his linking islands, and an assault on another main island seems questionable before Astronomy, therefore Borsche and Yuris seem the best targets. I don't know what tech level Yuris is at, but he (mostly) held off a first assault, however Cuirs will make the second more difficult. Borsche is only a step behind on tech (unfortunately he fell short of grabbing Liberalism), but has been keeping a strangely low Power rating considering his neighbour. I wonder if this is what Krill hinted about in a non-PB28 thread about the diplo of this game.

Borsche is my neighbour and his best expansion opportunity is probably to take our linking island, but I've seen no evidence of intent to do so and we've been silent friends since he lent me his Horses in my moment of need. I've been meaning to offer him the Marble with an "available whenever you need" note, but I'm concerned that the Engineer won't build the whole of the Taj and I'd need the Marble for that one turn to finish it, so have held off. If I'd seen him grab Aesth/Lit, I would do so anyway.

So much for Island #2. Island #3 was rocked by the early war that saw Adrien/Mardoc crippled at the hands of Jowy. Fenn stayed largely out of the fray, but recently grabbed a captured Dinosaur from Jowy and then they signed a quick Peace. Jowy has been growing his way out of the delay and has a large army, so I have to think he's planning to finish AdMar off and secure the second third (so to speak) of that Island. I don't have tech visibility, so I'm guessing they are roughly on par with myself and the rest of Island #1.

So, to the most important Island.

Small early war that can't have gone as well as Whosit must have hoped - I think the terrain of the main Islands favours defense even more than usual. Grimace sat out the conflict, but didn't seem to take advantage of it in any way. I've commented before that he didn't seem to be able to take advantage of IMP, and he recently took two turns of Anarchy to revolt to HR & Bureau! I guess he needed the HR Happy, because he has also built multiple Colosseums.

Whosit didn't get Sailing until pretty late, but now is actively settling our shared linking Island. We have de-escalated our border, but I don't really trust the situation. He's camping the end of turn for an unknown reason (I may have mentioned before, but it was my impression from PB23 that he tended to do this). I wondered if he thought he was in a settling race, but he settled this turn and still didn't play the new turn. My somewhat consolation is that he seems to be waiting for Grimace to play rather than me ... though it make me wonder if he's requiring Grimace to declare on me before moving in himself. If I had any production at the moment, I think I would be building a few Spys to see what I could find beyond my borders - in addition to the bucketloads of troops.

OK, so finally reached back to me (I bet you wish you'd never asked). So why am I #2 on the scoreboard? The best answer I can come up with is because Whosit attacked. Bear with me; the loss of the expansion space on-Island directly led me to aggressively settle the SE linking Island. (Why SE not SW; because there's no food resource for my SW Ivory Island. ) I now have 6 cities on it (plus one each for Borsche and Grimace), which is more than double any of the other Islands. I think wetbandit is the only one who went after them quite as aggressively as I have, although Whosit is pushing at our shared Island effectively now (~50t later). Honestly I think I should have lost more in Whosit's attack, but appropriate application of Walls and mix of units put the attack risk out of his comfort zone.

Another factor in my recovery has to be M:II, ruler of infinite cheap buildings. The hammers saved on Markets, Lighthouses and Courthouses has more than made up for the hammers my Island-mates have saved on Barracks and Stables. Additionally the delayed Hanging Gardens really helped me to build back up after whipping my cities to the bone on defense. The Golden Age was also 100% the correct decision to get my Forges up and running; I imagine Whosit is regretting the Philo bulb.

Island #1 has been running at mostly tech parity up until a few turns ago. I spent my "bonus beakers" on Aesth/Lit, but only have the Epics to show for it so far. However, my current gambit has me falling behind in crucial military technologies and so I am currently at my most vulnerable. But let's not talk of that just yet...

One interesting dynamic of the game is that the first 4 Religions all fell on the same Island (3 to wetbandit) and the rest of us have pretty-much been doing without. I momentarily thought about adopting Confucianism (to the point of building a Monastery in Slate where it spread) but then decided the Hammer investment wasn't worth it. Right now I have Hinduism in 2 cities, Taosim in one, and only Slate with Confucianism. Still not worth it for me the investment verses Vassalage for the second promotion.

OK, I think I'll post this and keep writing in the next post...

[Dreylin]

OK, so what am I up to / what are my goals?

Well. So. Yes. Here's the thing; if the 3 Islands were at rough parity, then my course would be clear - avoid getting dogpiled, continue to tech upwards, then leverage M:II and Research Institutes to get to Cossacks and use them to conquer the home Island. That is also the safe option, but the trouble is we're not at parity and by the time I could accomplish the above I fear that wetbandit would have eaten yuris and be too far ahead to be caught.

So if I assume the above and still want to be able to win the game then I not only need to conquer my Island, but I also need to set wetbandit back a step (or more) at the same time. That calls for some calculated risk. My first thought had been to skip CS, grab Optics, bulb Astronomy and hit some poorly defended coastal cities using Galleons. However then I twigged that the Engineer coupled with an all-in research focus might give me the chance to gazump the Taj and cost him a MoM GA, while getting my own second GA on the cheap.

So the current plan, which I rate at 50/50 to succeed (and 95% to lose on a coin flip ). I'll be able to rush Taj on the 13th turn after he adopted Mercantilism. Assuming that was the first turn he could start building the Taj, then he would need a city with approx. base 30h to beat me (although that is a simplification since his first ~3t were in GA). I only have Arkose that can meet/exceed that, and wetbandit is running specialists, so I wonder if he can equal that anywhere. Also, he completed Parthenon a couple of turns later, and he may have delayed the start of Taj to work it in that city.

So 50/50. ish.

If it works, I adopt Mercantilism on t1 of GA, research to Banking and adopt Emancipation on t6 (I'd also consider building ShwedPay and grabbing FreeRel at the same time). Then proceed with the "take over own Island" fantasy plan using 100% of the GA production to build units.

If Taj falls, I switch to the Guilds-Banking research route while pushing the next GP out of Schist (<8t); kick the two-person GA and adopt Emancipation, then finish Nat and grab Merc. I'm still in good shape, but without the setback to wetbandit I feel far less confident that the game can be won from my position.

Of course I still need to avoid the dogpile...

[spacetyrantxenu]

You're no politician, you answered the question!

[Dreylin]

True enough, though I did wall of text it a bit so you might have dozed off before you reached it!

[Dreylin]

So Whosit played before Grimace, but Grimace rolled the turn and then didn't play the new. There's definitely EoT camping going on IMO (unless he declared war last turn), but I guess they might be trying to beat each other.

Bearing in mind the signals that are sending, I don't want to rush my turns, so I may request a pause tonight depending on how I feel when I get home (currently out and have had the odd drink).

[Dreylin]

Well, there's no sign of anything other than my raging paranoia. 4t until I can turn the builds back to troops.

[Dreylin]

30pt bump for wetbandit at turn roll could be Taj. I guess that might be a relief since Whosit is still camped at EoT. Maybe he just didn't have time to play two outside his normal window, or maybe he's using it to hide his research.

Although Grimace taking a 2min turn while ill makes me far less concerned on that front.

[Dreylin]

t153 -

All right, I'm going to turn off the paranoia for a little while (although I reserve the right to continue to grouse about EoT-hogging):


Whosit is only just about to finish Guilds, and those are certainly not wartime civics. Also I hadn't realised that Grimace was still short of Feudalism - which means of course no Guilds, although he does have Engineering. So quite possibly /they/ are paranoid about /me/!

After all, Grimace /had/ fallen a way behind:


Chugging along, but still well behind the front pair:


Decided to engage in some reassuring diplo:


Sent the same to both Grimace & Whosit.

Taj still available; if I miss it though I'm only 6t away from a second GP from Schist.

[Dreylin]

t154 -

Both of them took the trade, and I got this back from Grimace:


I'm already getting Wines from Yuris, but I accepted anyway.

Whosit has a Chariot incoming at Diorite in the far North, so I sent in my Sentry from Breccia:


So yeah, not sure I could handle that stack without losing a city....

2t to Nationalism so I switched a couple of additional cities off Wealth to Units. Next turn I'll probably be able to knock most of them off.