[SPOILERS] In the beginning...

[Commodore]

Flight would probably be unskippable, and hit early, if you want not to die, I think T-Hawk's comments are in the context of cuddly stupid AIs who don't know how to wreck people with bombers.

[superjm]

I've been building airships since I got Physics and will continue to do so in a few cities once they have their factories/power up, and there's no upgrade path to bombers that I know of so he has to build them from scratch. If what you say is the case then it seems like an inevitability that we'll both get Flight sooner rather than later.

I switched from Pacifism to Free Religion for the research boost during the golden age. I'm not entirely sure that was the best idea, since I want a fourth golden age and will need to run a bunch of specialists for longer to get there, but I think I have enough time to get enough GPP for that purpose. Incidentally, this means I'm staying in Caste System after the golden age. I don't think there's enough time left in this game either way for Emancipation to have a marked effect on my late-game economy as most all of my cottaged tiles have converted to towns by this point or will do so within the next 10 turns or so, and I've been opting for watermills in newer cities over cottages where ever possible. I also have a ton of workshops in newer cities that will benefit greatly from me running CS.

Since I just got Refridgeration I could actually go Combustion->Flight right now and then continue to Superconductors, or just do Superconductors now and then Combustion->Flight/Industrialism. I'm not sure which path I should take there...

[superjm]

EOT164

I've been periodically rolling forward my NAP with slowcheetah just to see how long I can stretch it for, and I just got an extension to T175. Does he really not have any plans to at least force me to develop militarily? Unless I'm severely misreading the situation if slowcheetah lets me develop a good defensive network and tech in peace, I'm going to win the game. I was outteching him even before this golden age, and with it I've caught up in beaker count and am prime to shoot right past him after I research superconductors next turn. I have factories/plants up in everywhere of value now and can start pumping out fast military units or wealth/research builds depending on the situation, I'll be benefiting from US/FS towns even after this golden age finishes, and if the RNG cooperates I'll have the GP needed for a final golden age when I'm close to finishing the tech tree. One thing that COULD screw me over is if Sian was a troll and put the only source of aluminum on those islands between players. That would suck, but even with such a theoretical handicap I think I could beat slowcheetah.

Of course, I'm not very confident in how to build up a modern defensive military (my thoughts are basically pump out machine guns to counter collateral, pump out tanks because they're just plain better than everything else, and pump out fighters to counter bombers) and if I go too lightly, waterbat and slowcheetah and be disruptive down the road. With the eventual ability to see everything they're doing however, I can prepare for any eventuality (whether I prepare *correctly* is another story).

EDIT - Another interesting thing: slow actually had 4 great people to start another GA if he so chose but instead used his engineer to finish Cristo (I couldn't find it this turn and the city he put it in doesn't have anywhere near enough production to push out 670 hammers in 5 turns even with a factory). I can't really say it's an "odd" choice since I was planning to do something similar but A) He has MoM, and it's in his best interest to leverage it, B) I was only on my seventh GP so I could have knocked out another one out for my third golden age easily had I gotten Cristo, whereas slowcheetah is further along the GPP track. Just a curious note there.

Incidentally, I chose to go Combustion and was going to do either flight/industrialism next, but with the NAP extension I can afford a turn to 1T superconductors before I go to the rest.

So Combustion -> Superconductors -> Flight/Ind -> Medicine -> Genetics -> Fission/Radio/Plastics in some order -> Rocketry -> Satellites -> Composites -> the rest.

Let's see how things go.

[superjm]

waterbat declared on Azza, attacking from the border in what used to be Xenon's territory. Seems a bit late for that, especially since there's only one city he can take that slowcheetah isn't already going to get to first. I tried to check if he attempted to attack at my border with Egypt at Sareln's former territory but I don't have an airship in that area yet. Ah well, as long as they're leaving me alone they can do what they want with Azza's territory.

Also slowcheetah, a turn after getting Cristo, revolts to... Caste System? Only? At this point he's in Rep/Nationhood/CS/SP/Theo and I don't really understand why. Maybe he's attempting a full-bore SE in the endgame but a cursory look at his land shows that he doesn't have enough food to really utilize it to the extent necessary and even still, why are you in Nationhood? Infantry drafting is inefficient and besides that, you're mere turns away from tanks! And no rush civic despite having Kremlin?

I guess with Cristo this isn't much of a concern at all because he can switch civics more or less at will now, but with the end of the game so close and my top opponent starting to leapfrog you in tech, I'd try to leverage every economic advantage I could get on every turn.

As for my actual self, my calculations show that I'll be producing ~2000 base beakers at break-even science (roughly 3000 at 100%), and may practically go higher once I determine how much wealth-building I want to employ in the end game. I could potentially wealth-build all but my heavy production cities and use the excess gold to fund construction of whatever remaining buildings I need (basically observatory/labs for my planned spaceship cities, grocers/supermarkets for cities with health issues, factories/plants for my newer cities) even though that's pretty inefficient. After the golden age ends next turn I'll form a tentative turn-by-turn plan until the spaceship is built, and then I can have an ETA on winning the game.

Of course, now that I said all this I'm going to either screw up badly or waterbat/slowcheetah are going to swarm me and ruin everything or it'll turn out I have no aluminum or slowcheetah will end up beating me to space anyway, but let's try to be optimistic here

[Commodore]

Pictures?

[superjm]

There really isn't much to see besides slowcheetah/Azza business, but I guess I have been slacking off lately on all the pretty pictures, so I'll make sure to address that next time.

[superjm]

EOT168

Azza is down to four cities, with one, possibly two of them under thread by waterbat next turn, and slowcheetah advancing from his end.

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[spoiler]

More specifically, waterbat didn't have to commit much to his end of the war, as far as I'm able to see.

[spoiler]

The bulk of slowcheetah's army is on the Azza front, and he does have a lot. This is my last real worry of this game, because Azza won't be around for much longer and I have to hope that I can defend against all of those units if he turns them on me.

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Finished Flight this turn and Industrialism will be in 2 turns from now so I can start pumping out tanks. I may end up going to Radio before Medicine->Genetics just so I can get some bombers going, so we'll see how that goes. Assuming I don't cash rush anything I will get to Apollo Program in ten turns, but I imagine I'll run max gold for a few turns so I can cash rush some factories/plant/lab builds that are remaining so I can produce units from more places. Also need to remember to run 10% espionage for a turn so I can keep pace on Rome's investment.

Also got a Great Artist this turn. Nice look you've got there Ludwig van Beethoven

I can still get screwed by RNG on two of the other three, they should all be coming in within a dozen turns or so, just in time for when I'm ready to build the space ship.

Finally, pictures of my empire (one turn old but whatever)

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And demographics at EOT. Important to note that slowcheetah has been stuck at around ~1700 GNP or so the past few turns. waterbat actually passed him a couple of turns ago. Just what in the world has Rome been doing all this time?

Also, MECHANICS QUESTION. Is there a bug regarding how overflow hammers and overflow-to-gold are calculated? Because I built a Pavilion in my capital for the dye happiness (need it for whenever slow runs Emancipation) and got extra gold at the end of the turn presumably since my hammer production far outpaced double the cost of the Pavilion. However, looking at the actual hammer overflow this turn, I didn't actually lose any hammers at all when taking into account the city's multipliers. So in essence I got ~30 free gold from building that Pavilion. And the same thing happened again this turn when I built a library with excessive overflow. Is there any reason why this would be the case?

[superjm]

EOT173

Quick question: If the terms of an NAP are until T175, can war be declared on T175 or does it have to be T176.

Also I've been pretty busy lately so I haven't been able to do much more than play the turns, so I haven't been updating. Long story short, slowcheetah isn't extending the NAP anymore and he's building marines for what I presume is an amphibious invasion. I'm turning off tech for a few turns and going full military everywhere via building/cash-rushing. (tanks, battleships, air units, etc) to try and respond. I may end up conceding a few not-very-strong cities in an initial attack, but he's building military via slavery and that's eventually going to tank his economy while I'm far outproducing him anyway so if he can't cause a lot of damage in an initial attack then I'm confident I can win a war of attrition. More worrying is whether I can extend my NAP with waterbat beyond T179. He's still very far away from Industrialism so the best units he has are infantry and MGs (both die horribly to tanks/air support) so I'm not terribly concerned, but cancelling my deals with him loses me 2-3 happy in every city since that's where I'm getting spices/dyes from. I still have my galleons from the Sareln attack so I could always take his island cities to get those resources back but I'd rather not deal with that in the first place.

Also got a GE this turn. I was planning on saving it until my last GE, but I considered that if I get to Fusion first I'll get a GE from there anyway. So I may end up using it on Pentagon (surprised slow hasn't built it already) to ensure that newer units are promoted. I think I can one-turn it in my capital but we'll see.

[Sareln]

EOT173

Quick question: If the terms of an NAP are until T175, can war be declared on T175 or does it have to be T176.

Up to the people who wrote the NAP.

[thestick]

Why are you cash rushing?