[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[Ceiliazul]

If you've ever read my game reports before you may be able to guess where I'm leaning...

I thought Mindy was the bloodthirsty one! Not that I mind another war...

[WilliamLP]

Hmm, I sort of wish ambitions beyond the continent were more realistic in this game!

Obviously, any move against either TBS or Harry/Fintourist is a ridiculously bad idea and non starter. The only exception would be an iceball island I could try to snipe from TBS in the far north, but I'm diplomatically and practically prevented from doing that... just a few destroyers mobilized could give me quite a bad time right now.

Harry has gifted happiness and provided a peaceful border, and I'm really not interested in trying to make any moves resembling king-making.

So the only other possibility is Molach. The trouble is, it seems like he and AT have had the sort of peaceful relationship that allowed them to catch up, at least vs the middle of the pack. They're almost caught up in tech vs me now. And Molach is a smart guy and more than a capable defender, even PB11 showed that quite well.

I do know I can beat him to Combustion + Artillery and if he's not paying attention, his whole navy could be sunk in one turn from the fog. And I do have a lot of Galleons, probably far too many. But to what end, this? He'll certainly have a full rail net up by then and probably the best I could hope for is dominate the seas (which I already do) and maybe swipe his Moai island city. At this point in the game, one city or a few are meaningless.

Being pretty far in the tech lead I'm pretty sure Harry / Fintourist can win space, and probably nothing can stop them, maybe not even a fully coordinated dogpile from Boldly and the other 4 next contenders. I don't have a feel for how long that will take from now. And are we actually going to see stacks of Modern Armor + Mobile Artillery + modern air support? That would be something indeed! At least with physics I can spend my turns patrolling with some airships pretty soon.

One thing I should explore is the conflicting rumors I've seen in other threads about how effective an espionage economy is when you're down in tech. Would Harry or TBS be annoyed if I started spending lots of EPs and running steal missions? I kind of doubt it since it's not really rational to be annoyed: It doesn't actually hurt them, it's just an alternative form or research. Of course "should" and "will" are different things, but both of those players seem pretty dispassionately rational. (Which I think is a good thing.)

Another interesting issue, if you accept that diplo and reputation matter a lot in a no-diplo game, which I do: do you play diplo against the civ or against the human running it? And is there any sort of duty to honor the relationship from a previous person when another takes over the civ? I mean, of course literally there isn't, it's a game, but in terms of something more like what feels right? I think not really. I think if Yuri were taking over for TBS for good, I'd be much more inclined attempt to snipe island cities. And if Darrell had kept control of HRE the whole game, would I have felt bad about a sneak blitz attack over the coast, when we'd had a mutually beneficial peace so far? I don't know! Did I feel bad vs Gavagai? Well hell no, obviously.

[Ceiliazul]

Where is the rumor that EE doesn't work?

[WilliamLP]

Well, TBS's post here: (PB22 spoilers: lurker thread).

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid538822

But then again, he said he only looked at it in the Medieval age, presumably not what it looks like when you're running Nat and all the bonus buildings I've never really touched.

And at the present moment, I hadn't been thinking of going for the techs for this, Constitution, Demo, Communism, because I was figuring that I need Artillery + Combustion as the next tech target, so that my prior investment in navy isn't totally worthless. On the other hand I'm not sure if the cash upgrade from Frigates to Destroyers is very cost effective vs just building them with hammers. Don't quote me on it but I think it should cost 355 per unit which is a lot.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 237:

Dreylin abandoned Absinthe, a pretty anticlimatic end for this ancient site of contention.




Razing this late in the game is probably questionable, but I did it because the infrastructure wasn't great and I can pick up four otherwise wasted tiles (eventually) settling 1SE.

I moved all my wounded Cavs up for the final battle.

Turn 238:




In the battle for Aachen, he had a cannon to hit my infantry group, but his units were mostly very wounded, and I had some cannons to knock down cultural defenses.




This was closer than it looks in the log because I was almost out of units to attack that weren't red-lined. If a GG medic had survived for him it probably would have taken an extra turn.




Chichen Itza! And four settled generals! What's crazy about this is that I'm FDR and I have 3 wonders in a 33 player game... all captured from Joao. I think Chicken saw zero use - there was no little fighting between us pre-rifles, though I did wonder why he had extra defense in his cities at one point.

Earlier in the game, getting West Point, Ger, Barracks, and running Theo and Vassalage here would have been fun. I think that would be 24XP, where Commando is available at 26. I already have WP though, so setting this up for tricks is probably past its possibility.

The battle for Independiente:






And that's the end! Welcome to the continent ower's club.




In the end I only was able to keep 4 captured cities. The marked north dotmap site is probably better placed on the old city ruins, 4E of Death.

Final power graph including HRE for posterity:




And look at how much the balance of power in the world has transformed since this war started! It's crazy that 40-ish turns ago HRE was ahead of Harry in power.

My scout partaking in a fun airshow:




Man, before this game I'd never even seen the graphic for planes on carriers before! It's crazy that this old game still has surprises and spectacles for me.

[WilliamLP]

So what now? Looking at Molach's power and tech level... I really can't see an attack ever working. About the only thing that could change my mind would be if full war broke out between him and AT. I just have too much catching up to do.

I could snipe Lannisport from TBS probably with an amphibious attack, but that's both rude and pointless.

So I think this is basically gg for me! From here my plan is just to hunker down on this little island. The next tech to serve the purpose of making me hard to kill is Artillery, and after that, probably Flight. I think after Arty I'm going to try the EP strat a bit... get Demo and Communism and mass all the EP buildings and run the EP slider, see where that gets me.

And, well, making it to turn 238 and between Krill and Plako on the scoreboard isn't that bad, right?

[fluffyflyingpig]

You need to work on the all important kill count ranking. Find more players to eliminate!.

hammerhammer

[WilliamLP]

Ah man, I guess I don't even get credit for MYKI, do I? Even though I did like 80% of the killing!

But anyway, I'm convinced attacking Molach is impossible anytime soon, and he's now the lowest hanging fruit in the world, now that Ruff has about 2-3 turns to live. So one of the Juggernauts is going to get around there anyway, probably before I could mobilize any force that would be interesting. Aside from that I offered him sheep for sheep already and for metagame reasons I want my signals to be honest.

Something I learned about this game, I notice Krill has a fleet of destroyers but no Combustion yet. I suppose you don't need it in RtR, you just need Arty and to find someone to trade oil. I bet Boldly would want me to have oil and trade me it, because he'd want another check against Aztec for the balance of power in the north.

[Dreylin]

Well, another one bites the dust for HRE. My plan to force gameplay so tedious that all my adversaries quit is working. You don't wrestle with a pig and choose the mud as your battlefield.

I knew it!

Turn 237:
In the end I only was able to keep 4 captured cities.

And that's what I considered my "win" in the end after some early mistakes. It took me too long to realise that equal trades weren't really equal because of the production differential. Particularly your first push in the West I should have withdrawn one turn/attack earlier when I was just about still ahead. And yeah, spending a couple of turns of research on Astronomy was just

[WilliamLP]

And that's what I considered my "win" in the end after some early mistakes. It took me too long to realise that equal trades weren't really equal because of the production differential. Particularly your first push in the West I should have withdrawn one turn/attack earlier when I was just about still ahead. And yeah, spending a couple of turns of research on Astronomy was just

Yeah, I was happy to have you lose 10-15 Cavs at that point to my, like, 20, even though they were extremely well promoted. But once HRE's tech rate was crippled there was absolutely nothing to do with rifles against cheap drafted Infantry and rails so that I could pick any entry point at any time.

So thanks for playing it out and giving some thought to the turns and unit placement. Another sub could be perfectly excused for building units and hitting pass every turn.