[Spoilers] Boldly Going Nowhere and Mr. Cairo go to Florida. Hilarity Ensues.

[Mr. Cairo]

RR use 1/10 of a units total movement points per RR tile moved. It take 1.4 MP to get to your border then your final 0.6 MP to enter his territory.

Aah, I see. it's not 1/10th of a movement point but 1/10th of a unit's total mp's. That makes sense, actually.

Thanks

[Mr. Cairo]

JR4 and wetbandit look to be dividing Cornflakes between them. SD probably will join in as well. Hopefully as they increase their city counts they'll stop focusing on my still-distant culture victory and start paying attention to each other, especially if one of the three gets the lion's share of Cornflakes. I offered a DP to Superdeath, more to show that I'm not interesting in attacking him, and would team up wiht him against one of JR4/wetbandit if the need arises. His MFG is exploding, which I'm assuming means he's got to Industrialism and now his city count is starting to really show.

However, my economy still seems the strongest, despite everything. JR4 and wetbandit have seen their GNP drop as their power increases. A lot of my current army I've upgraded from older units, so I've been increasing my power without increasing my total unit count as much (I have no Muskets or Rifles left for example, and almost all of my current stock of Artillery came from ungrading Cannons.) I know it's less hammer efficient, but it has let me continue to improve my army while maintaining some focus on that culture victory. If I can retain that economic edge, I may still be in with a chance.


Also, DZ looks like he's about to attack wetbandit, or is preparing to resume the attack on me in 5 turns:


That is an impressive commitment to Airships. I can still kill Zairobi with Cavs should the need arise. I am thinking that if DZ does attack wetbandit, then I should go after him once the peace treaty ends.



Wetbandit also agreed to my health exchange with OB I offered, and with Public Transportation being built (and the acquisition of that Wines tile from DZ) I'm getting positive health once again. Unfortauntely, many of my cities have one less pop than they should if I had understood how health and growth is calculated when the turn changes. I had my oil connected with a Fort, so that any Ironclads I was building would turn into Destroyers in the queue once I had Combustion. I knew it would add unhealth, but I thought I could wait and see what the effect was and how I could mitigate it with different worked tiles before resorting to destroying the fort.

Unfortunately, it appears as though the game calculated tech first, so the unhealth was added to my cities, and then it calculated growth (or in this case, starvation). And since so many of my ciites has already starved down to their present state they had no food in the box and no health to spare, so a bunch of them starved the turn I got Combustion.

Oh well, something to remember. Especially unfortunate given I had already made peace with everyone by then and didn't need the oil right away.

[Hollybombay]

How would you rank everyones chances/ how they have done this game?

[Mr. Cairo]

Nothing much has been happening in the Greek empire, so I haven't been reporting anything, but this turn, something strange did happen.

I had been paying DZ 40 Gold/turn to keep him from burning another of my border cities there, he has enough Airships that he can do it with few losses and I'd need to commit a lot to defend it, I figured peace and OB with DZ was worth 40 gold/turn.

But last turn, DZ declared war on me, cancelling our OB, which had the result of me being ~50 beakers short of completing Electricity. But he didn't do anything, he just offered a peace treaty and 25 gold/turn, to me. I accepted of course, but I really want to know what he was thinking, going from OB and 40 gold/turn to no OB and -25 gold/turn. What is he planning on doing during the next ten turns that a peace treaty with me is needed?

In any case I went and settled near to the city he burned earlier, there are some good tiles nearby and I can rush-buy infrastructure.

If DZ wants to burn it all over again in 10 turns he can, but I'll burn one of his cities in response with some Transports loaded with Infantry that are ready to strike.

[Mr. Cairo]

How would you rank everyones chances/ how they have done this game?

SD needs to intervene in wetbandit's conquest of Cornflakes if he wants to maintain his land lead, either attacking wetbandit's armies while in Cornflakes' territory, or attacking Cornflakes and grabbing more land for himself.

Wetbandit needs to actually make something of the land he's taking from Cornflakes, he's been burning a lot of those cities and at least one of the cities he's taken is completely surrounded by DZ culture. He also now has a very long journey through Cornflakes culture to get to his cap. Lots of Machineguns makes that journey safer, but if Cornflakes throws everything he's got at wetbandit's stack, a lot of it will still die.

JR4 needs to do something if he wants to win. He's going to be first to Industrialism and Tanks, but his current army is inadequate, lots of outdated units, Rifles, Cannons, Catapults, Cuirassiers, even Knights. With Wetbandit engaged elsewhere both of us are able to keep our cities on wealth/research builds, and even though I'm still engaged in building Cathedrals in my culture cities, I'm not that far behind him in the Race for Industrialism. Especially now that I'm not paying anyone off for peace.

Now that I think about it, I might do what Wetbandit is doing and build/upgrade a few dozen Machineguns and invade JR4. Or maybe target his from the sea, since I now massively outnumber him in Destroyers. He's actually pulled his navy into a city, if I can burn that city from the sea, he'll be in trouble.

I'm getting closer and closer to that culture win. I'm using this period of low threat to finally get maximum Cathedrals in my culture cities. I have the religions/cities for 4, so with Free Speech that a 300% modifier in each of my culture cities. As long as no one intervenes I can still pull it off.

[Charriu]

What would be your estimate for a culture victory

[Mr. Cairo]

30-40 turns, less if I get lucky with low-odds Great Artists.

[Mr. Cairo]

I did get lucky, got a Great Artist at only 10%.

[Mr. Cairo]

Last turn (the turn the peace treaty with DZ ended) DZ sent me an iron-for-iron offer, and attacked wetbandit, taking an ex-Cornflakes city. The power graphs haven't updated yet but judging by how many of DZs units were injured, wetbandit may have suffered a pretty major loss. Now's the time to strike. I had assembled a bunch (7 in this case) of 6-move transports loaded with Infantry to try and burn Lords, JR4s Moai city, but he has too many Machineguns there. I need to wait until Marines for that attack, but in the meantime I still have the most powerful army and navy, and while JR4 is still building tanks, he's still massively behind in power, and wetbandit might just become a more tempting target.

So it's time to take wetbadnit out of the game. I'll burn one of his cities from the coast next turn, the send my fleet up north and try destroy his fleet and either burn more cities and destroy his navy, or tie up so many troops in those cities he can't fight back against DZ and presumably Cornflakes, and maybe JR4 and SD.

But, thinking on it, I don't actually want to kill him just yet, what I really want is for another dogpile on him that he holds off for a while. I need to keep DZ engaged with wetbandit, and entice JR4 to attack him, while not completely crippling him.

After Industrialism (eta 2 turns), I'm going to start saving cash for the culture slider, if I can keep everyone engaged in wars elsewhere, I can still sneak the win out.

[Mr. Cairo]

Messed up last turn and accidentally set my science slider to 100%. I probably instinctively set it there after setting the culture slider to 100 to have a look at that. So that's almost 1000 gold lost. Really annoying. I can only hope it's confused some people and made them think I'm not yet all-in on the Culture.

SD is amassing a ridiculous number of Battleships, no transports yet, and his main army is still far from our land border, but if anyone is going to attack me it'll be him. Wetbandit is probably only concerned with revenge on DZ, and JR4 also seems content to attack DZ.

At some point I might try and strike first, against anyone, really. SD is making that very difficult, but JR4 is not reinforcing his coastal cities, and once I get enough Marines, I'll be able to burn a few of them in a single turn, including Lords, his Moai city. I'm also positioning my main army so it can hit either of Wetbandit or JR4 should they get too far into DZ (who lost most of his army to an opportunistic strike by SD in the same city DZ wiped out much of wetbandit's army). That might be enough to convince JR4/wetbandit to concede. But I'm guessing that SD is not going to ever concede, and I'll have to actually achieve the culture victory to win. Which lowers the odds of victory considerably.