[SPOILERS] Dazedroyalty - Move along! Nothing to see here

[scooter]

A long time ago. Then he ran 3 straight GAs. He got Liberalism and Nationalism. But he doesn't seem to be leveraging it well, imho.

Wow I just assumed Sian cleaned out all that stuff. Interesting.

[dazedroyalty]

Wow I just assumed Sian cleaned out all that stuff. Interesting.

Sian has beelined military techs, I believe. I don't know if he has Education but he definitely doesn't have Nationalism/Liberalism. (Note to self, need Lib for Free religion and the tech boost since I have like ZERO religion anyways). I need to ask slowcheetah what his techs are since he has alphabet. I could tech alphabet fast but it's not worth the 1t delay.

[dazedroyalty]

I want to work with slowcheetah and Xenu to bring down Sian, but slowcheetah is not helping. he just lost ANOTHER city (size 10 ) to Sian. Sian has astronomy so I know it's hard to defend everything but man! It's looking like attacking Sian is losing proposition for me. Just stay at peace with him and try to take land off someone else.

[Krill]

I'm lazy. What is the tech situation like?

[dazedroyalty]

Good question! I just asked Slowcheetah the same thing cuz i don't have alphabet yet. Here's his response:

Can Research:
COL, Drama, DR, Edu, PP, Steel

Has (military): Military Science, Astro, Chem (Frigates and Galleons!!!), he doesn't have nationalism so he can't draft. I don't have research visibility (in fact it's probably the opposite way round) but I'd guess he's probably going PP next, if he techs Edu he's heading for the economics GM.

He's still ahead of me, but I'm teching at least as fast as he is now, I believe. In my Golden Age I'm 1 turn teching things that he doesn't have yet (Education). I'm not worried about mass grenadiers so much if he techs cannons. But I have to go Astronomy first. Fortunately, unless he makes peace with slowcheetah (not likely since slowcheetah is LOSING hard core) or Xenu (Xenu isn't the peace type I don't think here), he probably won't want to attack me.

Intel on Sian isn't hard if you just chat with him. He really likes talking about what he's done. He just told me about the Slowcheetah razing and now is sharing about the 200 gold he got from the razing which = 1 turn full research. That's actually my biggest fear. Slowcheetah will just collapse and it'll help Sian too much too quickly.

Techs I have: PP, Education, Engineering, Feudalism

Techs I need to research: Optics, Astronomy, Gunpowder, Chemistry, Steel.

Once I have those, I feel very safe against Sian or anyone else. I just need to survive and let me earlier Universities/Oxford built on strong Printing Press powered cottages get me back to a caught up place. Once I'm even with Sian, I'll look for where I can make the most war benefit.

[dazedroyalty]

EDITED OUT

[dazedroyalty]

Annoyingly, my Moai city is on my Xenu side not my sian side. I'm seriously debating offering a NAP extension, getting ready for Xenu to be pissed and then suprise attacking him.

I generally want to take Sian down, but I don't see how I can do enough to hurt him and help me and not lock myself into a long war with the military tech leader.

[dazedroyalty]

I expect some diplo fall out. I didn't attack Sian this turn. I sent in 2 caravels that can explore w/o OB and saw more than I could reasonably expect to raze with my outdated military. Instead, I just teched Chemistry, can build frigates to help battle the seas. I am losing the cultural battles with Sian at our borders so I'm still in caste running artists (still losing!) so I am kinda screwed cuz I need Slavery to build units and stuff. Honestly, no war is probably best for me at the moment even though I WANT to fight Sian. Xenu, Slowcheetah, when you read this someday, please know that I really have been trying to find a way to help fight Sian, but legitimately don't have the strength to do much.

[spacetyrantxenu]

This game is a mess. We really should have dogpiled Sian when Xenu suggested it 40 turns ago. But, at the time, I wasn't really convinced that Sian was that much of a threat. Turns out, though, it woulda been a good idea.

My plan: get everyone into a 3v1 against Sian. If we're all in it, we have NAPs until the war is over. I will do what I have to contribute but not go overboard. I just want Sian slowed down. Honestly, if Sian attacks Slowcheetah before T125 I can't join in becuase of my NAP with Sian. So, if he goes to war with Slowcheetah and they kill each other awhile, that's fine with me. I just need to defend against Xenu.

The prevelance of participating in dogpiles and not giving it 100% usually undoes the whole effort. I don't understand not going full bore to crush the leader before it's too late, but it's happened before. I get that you want to suffer the least in the war, spend the fewest resources possible, and still get the desired outcome of stopping the leader, but spending fewer resources and suffering less usually means you don't do enough soon enough to reel in the leader.

Honestly, when I was frustrated with the diplomacy I thought more than once about just forsaking my fleeting chances at winning the game and running troops over your army of workers and cardboard cut outs, but I was enjoying the game (if not the diplomacy) and knew that any kind of stunt like that would lead to an early concession. That would have turned out to be a selfish act, even if gratifying. I would obviously have rather run an army all over Sian's lands on my own but that was impossible by this stage of the game since he had acquired Real Ultimate Power.

Actually you mentioned this in a subsequent post when you decided to not play a king maker, so it's good that neither of us went that route and made at least a token effort to fight Sian. Your NAP was disastrous, though, and Slowcheetah was gassed by the time I could bring units to the fight (and yes, my worker steal was impulsive and ill timed, but really...unless that was him baiting me into attacking him, he deserved to have 5 workers ganked since they were unprotected and exposed. I only wished I had killed them all on the spot instead of trying to send them to my slave camps).

One other note, I'll be starting Oxford ASAP! I have 5 Universities building now. 3 will be done in 3 turns. The other two are set to take 5 and 8 turns, so they'll need to be whipped.

This after talking about needing to run a dogpile? You were still focused on winning the game rather than preventing the loss.

I expect some diplo fall out. I didn't attack Sian this turn. I sent in 2 caravels that can explore w/o OB and saw more than I could reasonably expect to raze with my outdated military. Instead, I just teched Chemistry, can build frigates to help battle the seas. I am losing the cultural battles with Sian at our borders so I'm still in caste running artists (still losing!) so I am kinda screwed cuz I need Slavery to build units and stuff. Honestly, no war is probably best for me at the moment even though I WANT to fight Sian. Xenu, Slowcheetah, when you read this someday, please know that I really have been trying to find a way to help fight Sian, but legitimately don't have the strength to do much.

You invested your hammers on winning the future, not preparing for the war. That's about the most explanation needed, I think the power graph shows that.

This is the last power graph I had, it was soon after this that I had to hand things over to AutomatedTeller. My actual power should have been better than shown here, just so you don't think I'm crowing at you and didn't do enough myself; I was gifting away a lot of what I was building over to Slowcheetah, too much it turned out later on.

Anyway, I enjoyed the thread. I know I was a pain in the ass to work with, and that the good cop, bad cop routine was irritating. It wasn't planned that way (if I had planned it it would have gone...differently), I just failed in communication with Boldly and then exploited the breaks that developed. It probably wasn't 100% right to do it that way, I'm not going to try defending it. I'll just refer (again and again) to the first post in my thread

Maybe if I play another PBEM game (if I ever have time) I'll draw a leader less abusive than Mao. It may be the case that my competitors would prefer to not ban Gandhi for that match, he seems so nice, honest, and passive. Wait, never mind, I said I'd never do another diplo game. Besides, I'm not sure how much I was role playing here versus how much of a sociopath I am in real life. It's a fine line. That you found my diplomacy convincing is probably something I should be worried about! I hope it was at least entertaining.

I enjoyed getting to know my competitors, including you, but since moving and starting my new job life is at a different pace now and I think I'm mostly going to have to lurk RB rather than participate in longer games like PBEMs and PBs going forward.