[Spoilers] Pindicator accepts his fate

[Krill]

QotM IMO.

[pindicator]

2 turns within 24 hours?! How do you guys keep up with this pace?

[pindicator]

Turn 138

Well this forums software has a wonderful new feature where if you hit ctrl-z it deletes everything you wrote and you can't undo it.  Here's my second attempt...

Guilds is in at end of this turn.  I'm probably going to push the econ side of things, though.  Knights would be useful for attacking StarDoor now, and while it's tempting to upgrade a bunch of the horchers, I want to use the money to push for Astronomy.  And again, I think I'm going to push the economy side of things and try to build Grocers and Observatories and Courthouses and everything.  At least, I'm going to push out the super-cheap grocers and then figure it out from there.

Besides, it's not like OT4E is going to attack:



Pushing for culture wonders in our border town is not what someone does when they want to push in and attack.  (It's what they do when they want to get a favorable border so they can come in and attack later in the game when the terrain favors them more.)  So I'm feeling pretty comfortable that OT4E isn't going to kill me in the near term, which allows me to try and build myself up in the best way I can.

(Also, Nicolae.  I have no words as to what's going on up there, but I really want to understand it.)

What I've done in the southeast with StarDoor, before bogging down lately:



When StarDoor started pushing everything into NintendoDS, I brought a pair of galleys along the coast with swords and took all his cities, all the way out to Far Toby.  (This composite was taken t137).  You can see why I really need to capture DS, though, as that will secure a lot more spots out east for me to settle.

On this turn I attacked his Spear from across the river with my crossbowman. It was a 70% chance to win, so naturally I lost the battle. I swear, this game it's been every fucking battle under 80%. So we moved the stacks up and 1 sword from the east because maybe StarDoor will attack out. But I didn't bring enough, as you can see:



Should have brought more catapults. Maybe we just bombard down defenses and take a turn to upgrade some horchers to knights first, I dunno. Or maybe I'll just throw them in and see what happens.

But ideally I'd like to take NintendoDS, hold the line there, and then fill in all this land with settlers. I have room for like 10 more cities still, and that's not even counting the stretch spots I can settle farther southeast. Mr. Cairo is down that way, not someone i want to push up against. I think I settle those spots while building economy, and then build nothing but knights, swords, and galleons and send all those units east towards the wreckage that North Korea has wrought.

You guys see what's going on over there? It's just madness. Kim Jong has sent his army out to capture all the cities that chumchu colonized -- so away from his core -- and at hte same time chumchu has captured one or two back, but at the same time chumchu doesn't really seem to be attacking back and instead is just settling more cities away from Kim Jong. Meanwhile Elkad has attacked and taken a city back in the east. DTG was fighting there too, but I don't know how, he just was. All this makes me think I need to take care that the Great Leader doesn't decide we're a good target to go towards. But he's still a bit tied up for the meantime.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Did you try ctrl y?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[pindicator]

Yep, but it did nothing. And then ctrl-z again which did a second undo eliminating what little text the first one did not remove.

[pindicator]

Turn 139

The more I think about it, the more I want to push economic buildings before aiming towards any type of invasion. This map is just so BIG. Which means I need more settlers of course.

Also, OT4E may not be building knights. He has Gunpowder and he's Ottoman, so I can only hope he's going for Jans. That would be wonderful if he was. I have enough catapults to deal with Jans, and slow movers give you more time to pick your spots. I imagine he's going for Nationalism next. That's honestly where I should be going... But I'm going to try and spam out cheap infra first and then follow up with using galleons to own the eastern shores.

Didn't try to attack StarDoor yet. I just bombarded and moved all the horchers up.

[pindicator]

My luck started good but then turned to shit:

CR1 cat vs axe (5%) - Loss, does no damage
CR1 cat vs axe (5%) - Loss, axe to 74hp
F2 horcher vs 89hp C1 spear (7.2% / 46.4%) - Withdraw, spear to 59hp
Shock horcher vs 89hp C1 spear (19.8% / 16%) - Withdraw, spear to 25hp
horhcer vs 89hp C1 Spear (7.2% / 18.6%) - Withdraw, spear to 74hp
C1 horcher vs 78hp C1 Spear (32.5% / 13.5%) - Loss, Spear to 16hp <--- GG born for StarDoor
C1 horcher vs 74hp C1 Spear (35.5% / 12.9%) - Loss, Spear to 42hp
horcher vs 78hp C1 Spear (31.4% / 13.7%) - Loss, Spear to 14hp
C1 elephant vs 80hp C1 axe (53%) - Loss, Axe to 42hp
horcher vs 80hp C1 axe (39.3% / 12.1%) - Loss, Axe to 12hp
C1 horhcer vs 90hp C1 axe (45.1% / 11%) - Win! FINALLY
CR Sword vs 72hp C1 axe (64.8%) - Loss, Axe to 18hp
CR Sword vs 54hp C1 axe (87.9%) - Loss, Axe to 19hp
94hp Shock horcher vs 59hp C1 spear (64.5% / 7.1%) - Win
C1 horcher vs 42hp C1 axe (88.4% / 2.3%) - win
C1 horcher vs 42hp C1 axe (96.7% / 0.7%) - win
C1 horcher vs 30hp C1 spear (98.0% / 0.4%) - win
horcher vs 25hp C1 spear (98.5% / 0.3%) - win
C1 horcher vs 16hp C1 axe (99.9%) - win
horcher vs 14hp C1 spear (99.9%) - win

And I'm 1 unit short


My own fault for not bringing enough siege

[pindicator]

turn 145

So here's us:




After taking and holding NintendoDS we got peace with StarDoor. I dont' want to push farther right now. I'll come back if and when I do, but I don't need to worry about him I think.

Kind of stretched out, but hopefully getting some Galleons in the water will help. Also, Engineering is high on the priority list. And Dropbox can die in a fire. I need to figure out new hosting, but for now I'm still putting things in that folder. Added 2 new cities this turn and there's still 8 more spots that I need to grab in my sphere of influence, so I've started a number of settlers to get those in. Without the GA my economy is back down to around 30%. I'm at 25 total, but OT4E is at 30. Need to catch up with him.

We finished up the golden age 2 turns back, switching back into Slavery and finally choosing a religion (went with Hinduism since it's owned by Elkad and has the largest share of my cities). I'm still pushing infrastructure builds, mostly wanting to get courthouses and grocers.

I did finally get that Astronomy plan to completion as well; on the last turn of the golden age:



So we have cheap Observatories as well as Galleons to build. And more knights. I need lots of stuff, really...

Withi the rest of the world, DTG has declared on Elkad. Great Generals for Elkad this last turn. And the shoe finally dropped to have OT4E attack NylesStandish. Only ... it's been 3 turns and Nyles has yet to lose a city. In fact, OT4E has lost over 10k power and this was what I saw in the events for the last turn:



I'm actually pretty impressed by Nyles. Hell, maybe I should be attacking OT4E myself... But I don't have the numbers of troops or the production to aim for that.

Demos because it's been a while:




And we finally did build Moai. Right as the golden age ended

[pindicator]

Turn 146

We met Mr. Cairo so that makes everyone -- finally! I actually had his city count right, so these are now official numbers:

• 30 - OT4E
  
• 29 - Mr. Cairo
  
• 25 - us
  
• 23 - DTG & picklpikkl
  
• 17 - chumchu
  
• 14 - NylesStandish
  
• 12 - Nicolae Carpathia
  
• 12 - Elkad
  
• 3 - StarDoor
  

Actually, I forgot to double check a couple of those, so hopefully that's all correct...

[pindicator]

Turn 154

The world has gone largely peaceful, with just DTG and Elkad fighting. Serious props to Elkad, by the way: after taking DTG's first hit, he has been able to counter and retake the cities. That part of the world has really bogged down in fighting: Kim Jong had ripped through chumchu only to lose cities to Elkad and DTG. Chumchu got wrecked but has spammed himself back up to a high city count (although his infra and tech are probably way behind). And DTG is kind of in my position on the other hub, except now he's run into an Elkad sized speed bump.

Meanwhile the big news of late is that Mr. Cairo successfully grabbed Liberalism first and snagged Constitution with it, and now is ahead of OT4E. He's the clear #1 in the game now, by every metric.

Updated city count:

• 35 - Mr. Cairo
  
• 34 - OT4E
  
• 29 - Pindicator
  
• 27 - Chumchu
  
• 23 - DTG
  
• 15 - NylesStandish
  
• 13 - Elkad
  
• 12 - Kim Jong Un
  
• 3 - StarDoor
  

And I'm not sure I haven't missed something, but with Paper in from our leaders I can compare my tech to theirs. (I don't believe that OT4E number is right though, I don't believe I'm that close to him. Must have missed something...). Total Beakers of Tech:

• 34,983 - Mr. Cairo
  
• 19,121 - OT4E
  
• 18,043 - Pindicator
  

If those numbers are correct it shows a serious bogging down of OT4E following his unsuccessful attack on Nyles. But more likely I'm missing a medieval or renaissance tech and he's actually about 4k to 5k ahead of me. It could also be that he's really garrisoned his border heavy against me, anticipating some kind of alpha strike from myself.

Better is to show some graphs; those give a good idea of where things stand and how much Mr. Cairo is ahead by:

GNP





MFG





FOOD





POWER

I'm assuming Mr. Cairo is tops in the demos.




I know he's tops in population, as I'm sitting at 230 population and make up about 15.7% of the world population. Meanwhile Mr. Cairo is showing as 21%, which means he could have as much as 330 population.

So what have I been up to? Mostly infrastructure. To be honest, I've had a rough month (seasonal depression sucks, and I really need to start doing something about it), and my focus to the game has suffered as much as my focus on reporting. In any case, I am starting to build up the galleons, and have 10 right now. The problem is the vast size of this map. It's like 20 tiles to get anywhere from my core, so these galleons are like investing on speeding up future projects. It also is going to be necessary for any war i want to fight out east. (Kim Jong Nicolae is the most likely candidate at this moment.)

With that in mind, after bulbing Astronomy I teched Engineering, then picked up Aesthetics and Literature to start building some National Wonders. Heroic Epic is being built in the hammer-heavy Torheven.




And I'm slowly getting National Epic going in Orandrad -- and that's one of my issues right now is not really having a plan as to where to get my great people from. Anyway, after Literature we are aiming for Nationalism. The +2 specialist from mercantilism is too good; in fact, it's probably why Mr. Cairo is winning, because he went straight for it on the way to Literature. OT4E is strangely not there yet, and still hasn't even gotten Pacifism. I probably should have aimed for it ahead of Astronomy. That's my current target., and I'm likely going to just eat the anarchy turns when I get there, because at 30-some cities we're looking at nearly 200bpt worth of specialists. (My break-even is around that.) I'm glad they toned it down in later versions of the mod.

As for my strategy now, I'm emphasizing my discounted buildings and courthouses. I'm not building many forges, unless it's at a spot with plenty of workshops. Workers are planting mostly workshops now, and while I'm not struggling to keep up with worker turns, it is hard for logistics in getting my workforce to some of these far-flung spots where they are needed the most. (For example, all the lands east of StarDoor's old core, which is full of jungle.) I've taken a lot of the cities that I wanted to in my next area, and have about 2 or 3 more in the near vicinity that I want to get, and potentially another 6-8 if I really stretch and try to contest with Mr. Cairo and Chumchu. Here's how I've grabbed cities towards Chumchu:




And how he's grabbed them towards me





But I think it may be better to focus my efforts on getting galleons and an army together. Which means, I probably shouldn't be building this:




But considering how much whipping I'm doing, I really think it's a good pick up. I also told myself that I needed to stop being so risk averse towards wonders, and so what if Ottomans are on the map. I have a legit shot at it.

And I'm building swords over knights right now. Because I can't delay Civil Service much longer and I really want to have as many "bullets" built for my galleons as possible.