Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[Gaspar]

So assuming you are correct as far as war kicking off far and wide, what would be your ideal scenario as far as who goes after who, and if it actually happened, what could you do to exploit it?

1) Actually spend time thinking about the game.

This is a good question and a good answer. Unfortunately, I think Lewwyn and I are sort of bringing out the worst in each other this game - I'm prone to game-based depression and Lewwyn's prone to giving zero effs, so when you combine the two - you get us down in a game and not caring all that much. I mean we're not precisely mailing it in - we're still spending time on turns, we still have a plan, we're still working to execute that plan. I've mailed in games before (PBEM24) and its a much bigger disconnect. That said, we're also miles from "try hard" which is what is needed here to have a meaningful game experience over the next couple months. And this game is nowhere near the end at the moment, rest assured. While it is quite clear to me that TBS is going to win eventually, Thoth certainly wouldn't be anywhere near reaching that same conclusion as he is also in a very strong position. Now it is certainly plausible that our game is over soon - at any point, TBS could blare the horns of war and there's little we could do to keep up with him in a prolonged conflict. I suspect we are his likely target as well, he built the FP not too far from our border, for one and he certainly seems to have a better relationship with Oxy than he does with us, despite our best efforts.

An ideal scenario? Thoth and TBS go to war. That's not going to happen though because their respective power ratings discourage it. A more plausible ideal scenario: Commodore attacks dtay, Thoth attacks Commodore, TBS attacks Oxy. If that happens, both of our weak neighbors are involved in wars you'd expect them to lose and we can take our pick of whose scraps we want to feed on. Dtay makes a really juicy target as he has little military on our borders and he has two wonders that are snipeable (in fairness, one of them is the nearly worthless Great Wall) on our side of his territory. Oxy is a better target in all other ways as he has even less military on our borders and his territory more seamlessly integrates. Unfortunately, the downside to that is a successful sortie against Oxy means another border with and inevitable showdown with TBS.

The basic current plan is to use the upcoming Golden Age to get into better economic Civics/situation and rush headlong towards Maces and Knights. Once achieved, do whatever we must to either acquire some territory from Dtay/Oxy or try and knock TBS down a peg. I suspect TBS will get there well before us, however, which basically makes the latter a suicide mission.

Anyway, that's the current state of mind. But this game isn't going to end well and it will end uglier if either we don't start trying hard or we don't get someone to take over for us. Because while I don't believe the game is winnable for us without major screwups on the part of our opponents, the pieces are there for a fairly interesting midgame before a glorious death. There's really no reason I shouldn't be able to make that excite me. But as of yet, I cannot.

[Lewwyn]

We're still discussing the game. Remember yesterday when I told you maybe we should have more units over by TBS?

[Gaspar]

Alright, I'm incredibly bored and cranky so I'm going to try and mellow a bit by doing a little bit of planning. No hard feelings if you'd rather not indulge the stream of consciousness nature of this post.

So let's review the game situation... It is currently t124. Lewwyn played the last turn solo, so my last view of the game was on t122. Since then the following things have happened:

• We founded Taoism in Ys and got a free spread to Scholomance
  
• We discovered Horseback Riding
  
• We spawned a Great Scientist in Eden
  
• TBS declared war on dtay
  
• dtay brought a settling party to the rice south of Elysian Fields
  

Those last two are a bit more generically interesting than the first three. I can't see where TBS has attacked dtay, but the most plausible answer is here:




Its obscured by the resource bubble, but the rice and crab east of Game and Watch are improved. If dtay settled that area, south of TBS's territory at Hondo, presumably he's repeating the trick he played with us. I don't see anything else really reasonable, because there's a fair amount of space between the two of them over the mainland and any border territory is closer to Thoth anyway, so I can't imagine TBS could conceive of being able to reinforce it. Whatever it is, I fully expect it to be short because there's definitely no way TBS is launching a full-scale invasion.

dtay's settling party consists of an Axe and Skirm. I definitely have enough units in the Elysian Fields area to just go and raze that but honestly, I'm fine with him settling there.




The other thing to consider right now is 1. When to proc the golden age and 2. What tech path to follow when we do so.

Here's the current breakeven turn times for techs we'd like:

Civil Service (7)
Metal Casting (4) -> Machinery (7)
Polytheism (1) -> Monotheism (1) -> Monarchy (3) -> Feudalism (7) -> Guilds (10)
Construction (3) -> Engineering (10)

Now, obviously all that stuff will be faster in GA. It seems plain Civil Service has to be the first tech because it accelerates all future techs via Bureaucracy. If we assume the first 5t of the GA are teching CS, that leaves 7t for other stuff. Back of the envelope calculation tells me 3t for MC and 5t for Machinery in GA, so we could ignore the other stuff for now and tech those two next which means we can build Maces at the end of the GA. However, since Guilds is our ultimate goal and that requires Feudalism which requires Monarchy, even for the relatively marginal short term benefit, it seems pretty foolish to not go ahead and tech Poly -> Mono -> Monarchy first, which probably will take 3 total turns with overflow. Then finish up the GA with MC.

So that's my current plan.

Thanks for listening.

(I might do a fuller report later when I actually play the turn, depends on my state of sleeplessness.)

[BRickAstley]

Reading just mostly silently. Keep up the interesting work.

[pindicator]

The Three Steps to Exploiting Opportunities and Winning the Game

1) Actually spend time thinking about the game.
2) ???
3) Profit!

You brought out the best play in me back in 45 because you made me do number 1 for as long as the game situation demanded.

[Lewwyn]

dtay just lost two cities to Thoth. Commodore is whipping like a madman. I think dtay is about to be hit from commodores side.

Gaspar I think we should consider grabbing some of dtay's scraps.

[Lewwyn]

Comm took an Oxy city.

WORLD BURNING!

[Gaspar]

Alright, I feel like I owe the few dedlurkers in here an update on the world burning (Not actually burning all that much, honestly.)

So whatever was going on with the dtay/TBS war didn't result in anything meaningful and they have since signed peace. Thoth, however, was definitely declaring for real, not for play-play. He's taken 4 cities off dtay, including the one containing the Pyramids.




We could incredibly easily put together a force and swipe the stuff on dtay's border with us, but there is a collateral cost to that. First dtay's border:




However, both Oxy and TBS have been dumping all of their EP on us. TBS's border is heavily militarized and he has flashed a few Keshiks at us (none currently visible.)






That's a fairly safe detente at the moment, but he could easily have a dozen Keshiks out of vision and we'd be totally effed. We need cats, maces and pikes for safety. 2 out of 3 of those are coming soon...

Here's the Oxy border:




That Commodore city was an Oxy city last turn. So clearly there was a demand for it for peace from Commodore, which Oxy acquiesced to. If I felt totally comfortable TBS wasn't coming, I'd be in favor of diverting resources towards this border.

Anyway, that's the state of the world. Since we last spoke, we fired the GA, converted to Hinduism and Pacifism, teched Civil Service, Metal Casting, Polytheism and Masonry and birthed a Great Merchant in Eden. The next GP will be either a Great Scientist or a Great Spy out of Atlantis, here:




Because Eden had a dirty pool, we've also had Quivira running an Artist pool. I've not yet decided whether I want to push for a 3rd GP out of here before the GA is over or just settle for whatever there in the next GA. As you can see, we're not working a fair number of good tiles there as an opportunity cost and we'd need to burn some of the granary food to get that one done, though it is certainly doable.




Here's the newly Bureaucratic capital.




We're long over for getting those wines hooked. The current tech path looks something like Monotheism > Priesthood > Monarchy > Machinery > Construction. Those will all be 1t techs with overflow. We'll probably take a quick 5t slavery break at that point and then fire GA #2 to get Engineering and Guilds and then go get rekt.

Since you always show your Moai city during a GA, here's Tartarus:




For those of you feeling like all that sounds pretty good, here's why we're pretty bearish on this game:




Commodore has Guilds already, and TBS and dtay are one tech away.




And those are demos in a Golden Age. So yeah.

[Gaspar]

Quick update for t135. This is a terrible song by a worse band, but this is really the best description of this game...






We actually dropped briefly down to 5th in power. Unfortunately for our surging Malian friends...




Commodore, in the most Commodore move ever, threatened Oxy, who he could have crumbled like a stale cookie and took one crappy size 1 city for peace. Then he moved to pile on dtay and took that city mentioned above.

Dtay, of course, is not long for this world. This is what happens when you settle aggressively, play quick turns, and build 3 wonders that the conqueror gets full benefit from (in fairness, nobody gives a crap about the Great Wall.) Either way, he's putting up a dogged defense, so bully for him there. The question for us at this point is more when than if in terms of picking at least these 3 cities off his bones:




We have some HAs streaming down from the production cities in the north. I don't especially want to pile on - dtay has annoyed me the least of our direct neighbors, but it would be pretty foolish not to take the freebies. Ness I don't really love capturing - that's closer to Commodore and will be tricky to hold. Ike and Captain Falcon, however, will seamlessly integrate into our territory. We'll probably also try to grab Game and Watch, not pictured, but also on our side of the dividing line. Unscientifically, this is how I assume the division will work out:




Which seems fair. Thoth did the heaviest lifting, so he gets the the juicy wonders and the cap. Commodore gets a fairly sizable chunk of new land, part of which probably should have been his all along but dtay did a better job of claiming. And we get a couple new burgs and some Liebensraum. Win, win, win. The key really is what happens next. I think it would be more logical for Commodore to attack Oxy than us after dtay, but Thoth could go anywhere. If I was TBS, I'd be building up to hit him right now.

Back home, we finished off the Great Scientist to pair with our Great Merchant for the next Golden Age. We've already invested so much in the Great Artist in Quivira, that we're just going to finish it.

To get a sense of what our military looks like:




That's a lot of Axemen. I suppose if things got desperate, that's a lot of mace upgrades. We're teching Monarchy this turn, and then Machinery next turn. I don't think we'll have quite enough overflow to polish off Feudalism on the last turn of the GA, but we should be able to manage very shortly thereafter. Then its guilds and firing the war machine into overdrive. Some combination of making sure we've got cats on the TBS border to go with all the ancient trash and building lots of Knights and Maces to either take a bigger cut of the dtay pie or a nice chunk of Oxy. Here's the current builds:




And the demographics:




Any questions?

[Gaspar]

This is Lewwyn's turn but I know I'm going to be back and forth from the computer so I figured I'd log in and poke around...

Commodore took Luigi from dtay. It also appears that dtay took the Pyramids city back from Thoth. So Thoth is definitely running out of steam, or at least, it appears that he underestimated dtay's ability to muster a defense.




We discussed some things and decided not to head long into the second GA. With that decision, I went ahead and founded an academy in the capital. It was good for an immediate boost of 57 bpt. It won't be that good out of GA, of course, but still the payback horizon should be fairly quick and I'm confident we'll be able to generate at least 4 more GPs over the course of the game for 2 more GAs.




As you can see, I also at the last minute decided to tech Machinery over Monarchy last turn. Someone has to start work on Taoist Missionaries for the post-GA world, but we'll swap to OR next turn and regain whatever lost happiness from Hinduism with Hereditary Rule, which will buy some time. A city that isn't able to do a 2t quality military unit can work on that lesser concern.

That's about the sum total of things at the moment. While the chaos has started, I definitely get the sense the whole world is on a knife edge at the moment. I think within 25t everyone will be fighting at least one war and several will be fighting more than one. The end of the GA is going to be depressing as our tech rate and production return to normal and we have to start playing games with wealth builds to complete techs we need, but there's no question this GA has done a lot of return us to a competitive position. The MoM is a pretty good wonder - who knew?

One last note on the tech situation:




Oxy has Engineering now, so we're definitely not plowing through Maya with just Knights. TBS has Guilds now. We live in interesting times.