[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal

[Krill]

Actually, that's up to date in one morning.

tl;dr: lurkers, do your damned job.

[Krill]

Turn 182

superjm has NOTHING. I've just scouted his entire capital area and every city down to his front city. HE HAS 4 CUIRS.








Gav has cottaged everything. I mean that, everything. I've cottaged 4 cities. He has workshops dotted around, but pretty much all his cities are working a number of cottages. That's why he isn't flat lining in GNP.





Frigates are on the move, as are galleons.





So are the privateers. I think he has enough frigates that I won't be any more than a nuisance, but I think it will definitely lead to a delay in moving his units around, as he needs to stack all his galleons with the frigates and can't just rush them up north. That's a speed bump that will work in both directions, but as his boats are faster, I can't commit too early. Going to have to judge that.





It looks like OH is still reinforcing his core, so it might not be a complete slam dunk (not that I have ever expected a slam dunk, really. Armageddon, perhaps, but not a slam dunk).

[Krill]

Quick check: triremes queue upgrade to frigates, right?

[Dreylin]

Quick check: triremes queue upgrade to frigates, right?

Must do. If you can still build them then they don't upgrade to Privateers or anything else of the era.

[Krill]

Great. Astro eot, Chem end of next turn and frigates should come out of every city eot185, 13 total.

[Krill]

Further updates to come at some point, but here is something a bit funny for you to enjoy.

Superjm has just popped 2 GS. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but if it was intentional, he just screwed himself this last turn by research Printing Press (or more likely it was a bad idea in the first place, so I don't think it was intentional).

Before Printing Press was researched, he had Gunpowder, Mil Trad and Education. The GS would have bulbed PP. Obviously he would not want to waste, beakers, so he finished research onto PP...and now that pushes his GS to bulb Chemistry (as Philo is already researched), and after Chemistry is researched, they will bulb Sci Method... Meanwhile, Gav is ahead of superjm in the push to Rifling, and already has Astro so can use Galleons and privateers to now threaten either side of superjms thin peninsula. So now superjm is in this awkward little spot that he either pushes straight onto Rifling and has to hold all of his coastal cities, so can't threaten aggression against Gav, or he tries to invade me with rifles, caravels and privateers against muskets, cats, and frigates.

superjm has no option except to grab Astro at this point IMO, and double bulb Chemistry, unless he has another plan for a GA. Even then, he can't really do anything.

I'm just sitting here waiting for Gav to be declared victor. OH just stalled out an attack on Lewwyn and is now repositioning to attack or defend on the islands. I don't know which. superjm doesn't even have a method of attack, Cairo and superdeath are having a squabble in the corner, and Gav is just pushing for Rifles and has Astro down. Lewwyn is trying to reinforce his front door that OH is constantly trying to rip appart and OT4E is holding on for grim death.

I don't know what lurkers are expecting to happen before this game gets called. Do I have to declare on superjm and raze a city or something? (That's rhetorical). Does Gav have to get to Rifles first? The entire game has reset and it waiting for Gav to make his next move. Nothing new is going to happen.

[Rusten]

I lost track of this game when PB41 started taking up all of my civ time. Reading back through the thread, but there's so much it's a little daunting...

Any particular things you regret this game or is it just Gavagai snowballing too hard from multiple civ eliminations?
Was the sickening amount of available land a trap? Would it have been better to attack OH with horchers for instance?

[Krill]

I regret picking Bismark, perhaps. IND has done less than any other trait would have in this start. Possibly about Vanilla PRO level bad: IND forges versus PRO walls and Castles. I've never slammed into both the horizontal and vertical expansion barriers so hard before, at least, never at the same time in an RB PB game. I don't think it was the amount of land available, I think the happy situation and being so far from OH, superjm and Lewwyn. I don't see how it would have been possible to pull off a HA rush TBH, and the majority of the port cities were the last ones settled because of the horrible food situation for all of them, and the tech struggles. Settling them earlier just doesn't seem possible even looking back. Nor could we compete for Circumnavigation, so right now I'm fighting that uphill battle, into Circumnavigation and a tech superior opponent, but that was out of our hands, so...I feel the start was definitely winnable, but I imagine most people will look at the sheer amount of land, think it's an automatic win, and then not realize it's quite sparse with food (I was re-reading earlier, and comparing all the single food cities to everyone's double food cities) and the lack of happy.

I'm not saying I'm particularly pleased with how I played it, or how it turned out. I know I've made significant misplays since coming back in February. But I know the delay in stacking up and being able to attack Lewwyn and deal with OH sooner is because of the delay to growth, and that's down to the map and leader.

[Krill]

Turn 183

The reports from this points on become significantly sparser, because there isn't anything relevant to report: I've explained that in the above posts, not going to repeat it.




Gav is starting to build up his stack to attack Cairo. These are not units sent form the defensive stack against Superjm, they are new builds.





OH is moving the units that got bounced from the previous peace declaration to threaten northern Lewwyn cities. Hint from future turns: most of these units die.





Lewwyn actually has a lot of units. Similar sorts of numbers compared to what OH can put into the field, as OH is limited by galleon capacity.





OH has enough units to hold, but not enough to do anything more than potentially take FaL. It is very easy for him to make a mistake and lose his units to an immediate counter attack though: the moment he moves his slow movers forward I position everything for the immediate counter attack on the tile NE of FaL and then it's just a numbers game. Worth it? Not really.

[Krill]

Turn 184




Oh look, an armada.





An armada and 20 hitters.





Lewwyn has 40 units here. I'm sure that everyone is worried. Anticlimax.





This is just not going to happen, and if the galleons remain in place, I have the privateers to start wrecking everything. Obvious plan is to withdraw and we all sit around bitching because we still have to log in and play turns.





I could carry om planning to attack OH again, but what's the point? I can't do it quickly enough to matter, and I open myself up to attack from superjm. It wouldn't work, but it's still something I have to guard against, and that means more units, which means higher costs and fewer research builds. Once I reach naval supremacy through numbers (or OH does) then it's just the number of turns to win. But it's too long, and we both take each other out of the game.





Keeping an eye on the stack.








...really? 4 galleys? C'mon. Do we need more? I've moved EP over to superjm because his tech position is hilarious, and I want to see just how far behind his tech is in naval terms. I'm going to move privateers under frigates into superjms land and start killing all his boats if this carries on. It feels like overkill but why does he have a stack of galleys sitting in a city next to me? It makes no sense unless he is planning to attack. So launching a rad to raze his coastal cities (which I can do from out of the fog, but he would have a turns notice if he just moved privateers two tiles out from his cities) is not unreasonable if his move is considered to be aggressive despite it helping Gav, and consolidates his win. But that's why the game is starting to become a little farcical.