Oxy changes his naming scheme to Community... and inexplicably doesn't get cancelled

[BaII]

A picture of our front with Plako would be nice, since I I would like to see what we have over there.

[Ceiliazul]

Novi-stats looks more and more like you're going to outlive Pindicator. Makes up for the undead Xenu, who refuses to give you that honor!

[Cheater Hater]

Okay, I'll do an update of the plako front next turn--I can tell you we have a bunch of units in those cities (SS, Krabbe, and Jeff) at least

Xenu should hopefully die soon--I'll get Frigates shortly which should let me push on his remaining city, and it'll looking like GJ should be the latest person to get attacked by the pirates--the interesting thing is that xenu apparently got a ton of culture in his city and has swamped one of plako's cities--if that flip happens, I could hurt plako a bit by burning that city without officially declaring war yet (and be able to do it under the excuse of wiping out xenu ). But yeah, the collapse of pindicator is amazing--he lost 4 more cities this turn, and didn't get any of them back. I'm assuming you can't say much about the process, other than "pindicator didn't have Rifles, FinHarry did"? As I've said a million times already this game, the key to surviving long in a chaos game is to make yourself an unappetizing target. It's for that reason I'm surprised HAK hasn't died yet, and why Ruff is still alive--I'm pretty sure neither one has Rifling yet (though I'm not sure on Ruff).

[Ceiliazul]

I'm assuming you can't say much about the process, other than "pindicator didn't have Rifles, FinHarry did"?

I suppose I cant say much, but ill say this.

Team Badass!

[Cheater Hater]

I'm assuming you can't say much about the process, other than "pindicator didn't have Rifles, FinHarry did"?

I suppose I cant say much, but ill say this.

Team Badass!

Of course, now dtay looks like he's going to ruin the party, declaring on FinHarry and burning a city--I told you (both here and in PB23) to worry about the third party entering the war!
Now the question is who to root for in this war. If I want to win I should hope the leader gets taken down a peg (and that would put BGN back in the lead), but concentrating power in the leaders is good for my overall place...and I kinda have a bias against dtay in this game for obvious reasons

[Cheater Hater]

Oh boy--T204 is a big turn, but I don't have time to write the report tonight
Pictures are here, but there's three big points:

• Today was the declaration turn against HAK, and I did declare, even with the other two points on this list
  
• plako upgraded a bunch of siege in the stack of doom to Cannons
  
• Krill has a bunch of Galleons in the south, and just moved up a bunch of scouting units into my territory
  

Oh boy, this is going to be a stressful 48 hours, waiting for one of the 500 shoes in the air to drop

[Cheater Hater]

T205, time to take HAK's city easily, then make peace. Let's see which unit he whipped into the city:


Wait a minute...that's three new units, including a CG2 Musket...
Apparently that Galley that's been roaming around for a bit had a Musket and Longbow in it, and combined with the Skirmisher upgrade and Pike whip I expected, this encounter has gone south fast. I probably could take that city, but I definitely can't take it this turn, and I'm probably going to lose units doing so--not to mention it looks like we could have a bigger problem soon:


I have no clue what's going on here, but what I do know is that Krill just dropped off 5 Rifles, 7 Cannons, and a Musket in my territory. This could be anything from a planned declaration on me this turn, but unloading without declaring was a misclick that Krill/novice didn't care to reload (but then why would multiple Galleons unload?), to a planned attack on plako in a turn or two (but then why didn't the second batch of Galleys unload? Unless this stack never was on Galleons in the first place and just walked through plako's territory?), to an attack on a neighbor (probably wetbandit over HAK, though both are possible).

Regardless of Krill's intentions, I also still have to worry about the impending plako stack of doom:


As such, I am aborting the HAK as fast as humanly possible--all of my units are back in Pierce (and thankfully they can unload this turn since they're in the city), I offered a peace treaty, and hopefully he accepts it know he can't do anything to be on the mainland since he doesn't have a big navy (or possibly even Astronomy--I forgot the tech picture this turn, or any foreign stuff for that matter, though that hasn't changed other than FinHarry declaring on Dreylin right at the beginning of the turn).

Not much else to say--the rest of the pictures for the turn are here, and I am currently taking applications for deities to pray to in order to get Krill to declare on plako (or at the very least, not on me ).

[Ceiliazul]

Thought exercise: what does Krill gain by attacking you?

[Cheater Hater]

Thought exercise: what does Krill gain by attacking you?

The obvious answer is more land, but I'm isolated from the rest of his position on my peninsula. If we assume Krill's been through plako's territory in some capacity (my guess is that all those mounted units came through there at some point, if there aren't more in there), he's probably seen the doom stack, and knows he wouldn't be able to hold any winnings, no matter how many troops are coming out of those Galleons (unless they're Infantry--which FinHarry has now ).

The question I'm having is at what diminishing returns starts setting in for number of cities with these massive empires. I think FinHarry has like 60-70 cities now after the pindicator conquests--even considering Courthouses and FP/State Property, number of cities maintenance is still growing exponentially. I feel like you couldn't afford to get domination on this map, even though it has a lot of water. I also don't know who has the shrines and how big they are--that's the only per-city scaling benefit left (and it's getting nerfed in SMEG).

[Ceiliazul]

The question I'm having is at what diminishing returns starts setting in for number of cities with these massive empires. I think FinHarry has like 60-70 cities now after the pindicator conquests--even considering Courthouses and FP/State Property, number of cities maintenance is still growing exponentially. I feel like you couldn't afford to get domination on this map, even though it has a lot of water. I also don't know who has the shrines and how big they are--that's the only per-city scaling benefit left (and it's getting nerfed in SMEG).

Turns out that 'number of cities' maint has a cap, at 7gpt for each city. This means that there is no real end to realized benefits of large empires, there is only diminishing returns during the early growth period. This was best explained by T-Hawk here. The applicable part is just a couple paragraphs down and includes a pretty line graph.

Note: the report is amazing and well worth a read for many reasons besides this one. It is probably T-Hawk's crowning achievement in civ4... and that's saying something!

Shrines are listed in the f9 screen