[SPOILER] Darius of Ottomans - Vets - Krill

[Selrahc]

So are you planning to kill everyone at some point?

[Krill]

Pretty much. The hardest part is starting the war and making headway against sunrise or Cyneheard, after that the next player should be significantly weaker and further behind in tech. Right now Cyneheard looks weaker than sunrise but that isn't taking into account Cyneheards' gold reserve. I think Cyneheard is the faster techer but sunrise is ahead by a fair amount (Paper, Edu, Philo, Nat but back Fued, Guilds, Banking)

[spacemanmf]

Do we get any overview piccies?

[Krill]

Next turn when I can change the tech slider after OU just finished, I'll post some pictures.

[Krill]

Cyneheard is taking 2 turns to tech Paper. I'm slightly worried that I might have gone overboard on teching here. It's taking me 2 turns to tech RP which costs 3 times as much, so something is amiss.

Food for thought for you. Bureaucracy and an academy would be worth about an extra 170 bpt to me right now, never mind the the amount of time it would be there to benefit me. How do you compare that quantifiable benefit to the benefit of Vassalages' +2XP scaring off Cyneheard and sunrise? How do you compare the benefit of the early GP from henge against an early GS academy when I expanded so fast and the early academy would have, well, sucked? How do you compare the fact that I stayed out of Builder civics and in war civics when I was building, and I'm about to use the builder civics to power a war machine, and that it has worked well so far, to the other players more orthodox strategies (Academies and Bureau) that have let them fall behind? And don't forget, diplo played no part in this, but psychology did.

[spacemanmf]

Nice teching the capital. And that's without an Academy or Bureaucracy. Wow. Are you heading for a GS soon?

I find it amusing that you are building purely infrastructure at the moment in an AW game.

No settlers, though - you're happy with your current lot, are you?

As for the various comparisons - are you essentially using civics as bluffs in this game?

[Krill]

Nah, I reckon the rest of my GP are going on GAges from now on. Since the majority of my lands are full of cottages, plus I'll have US for the extra hammers eventually, they are going to be rather powerful. However, it depends what pops out because I'm not expecting any GS to pop except at very low odds (25% in 2 turns, Thank You, 40%, No Quarter, 10% Lemon Song) so the most likely GS for me to get is from Physics, which is a fair distance away (30+ turns) by which point I want to turn on rush buy and buy that army of mine.

I'm pretty much happy with my current bunch of cities because I have very little land that I can make use of. The only land that I could possibly settle is between the sunrise front and my capital and it lacks food res. I count maybe 9 tiles i could use? And only 4 of them are grassland. Could be a half decent draft city, but I don't want draft cities, do I? Actually, there is another city I could plant next to Cyneheard, and I think he would leave me alone, plus it has a fish res, but once I get rifles I'm going to draft 3 for the western front and finally irrigate that damned corn.

As to the civics, it's a lot deeper than that and I don't think I'm the best person to explain it. It's not a bluff, because the others know exactly what it does, and they both have sentry stacks in my land that can see CG2/G2 LB. They know that I'm not really beatable during that phase of the game, at least in a manner that helps them. But then they both take the peaceful civics, and fail to keep up. Why is that? Possibly because Vassalage lowers unit costs so it is easier to keep the slider higher, whereas Bureaucracy/Academy combo needs a high slider but they invested in troops, expanded, couldn't keep the slider high for whatever reason and so couldn't make the enough bonus commerce and beakers. Or maybe they just slaved away cottage working population?

Perhaps their neighbours invaded them, pissed them about, whatever because they were in "peaceful" civics and deemed to be easier pickings? That cost them development opportunities, growth, tech etc. It gets very difficult to discern action and reaction after a while.

[zakalwe]

Thanks for updating your thread regularly with lots of interesting thoughts. In return, let me just bombard you with a few questions.

You mention that psychology plays a role. How do you think your reputation outside of this game has affected things?

Also, would you say you ended up with more land than everybody else purely out of skillful fast expansion or did the map and the lay of the land favor you in some subtle (or obvious) way?

What do you think the others are up to? Do you expect an invasion at any point or do you expect to make the first offensive move against your neighbors?

[regoarrarr]

What do the "a" signs mean, and for what purpose are you keeping the indicated forests?

[Krill]

The "a" signs are all of my towns. I only have 10, and they are going to go from 2/0/6 to 2/1/8 shortly. My economy is no where near maxed out yet, even if I'm at about 90% of max useful pop.

I doubt my reputation has done anything. sunrise knew me from before RB and Cyneheard knows not to underestimate me from PBEM5b,so I expect both of them to play...conservatively, ut if they see an opening exploit it, and truthfully both have.sunrise razed my third city (yeah...I was really far behind at one point) and Cyneheard almost bled me dry before I just stopped giving him units for free.

I think I got a lot of land from the map. If you check out my northern border it is close to midway up the map. But I did rush to the east to hold that border next to sunrise, and even though I got a city razed I still managed to hold onto the spot, which if anything shows just how badly sunrise managed to understand the importance of that land. He is IMP, had military control over the land and gave it away. And Cyneheard perhaps did the same thing, not settling the gold fast enough.

I'd say the east definitely favoured sunrise, I had to settle way too far to the east to get a defensible front line due to peaks, food and coastal locations, which you can see by looking at the gap in my minimap directly to the right of my capital. Against Cyneheard I think the map is pretty much OK, you could draw a line anywhere and it would be defensible on both sides.

Finally, I don;t care what the others are up to. I still have research visibility on all other players, sunrise is getting Mil Trad for Cuirs, Cyneheard is teching Paper in 2 turns, Darrell is dropping like a rock for some reason and is about to get GP but so are Kylearan and Whosit, who lack CS, which I finished 30 turns ago. They can try and invade if they want but invading teh guy with the largest pop, with NH and the ability to draft Jans and then rifles is generally what I call "stupid". I'm effectively invincible short of a 5v1 now IMO. I think Cyneheard is more likely to try and eat Whosit, and Darrell die to sunrise so they can catch up with me in pop. And while their armies are away on the other front, here I am, generating 400 gpt without banks, markets or grocers, NH, Rifling in 3, NH, Cannons in 8 total if I want...

Oh, and I want sunrises capital. Take that and the game might as well end.