Oxy Hates Making Sandboxes

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Turn 90-96




Eot89, a GS was born. Turn 90, I bulbed him into education and switched every city except for the capital to research. The capital one-turned a university, leading to this:




I find this picture a little funny because I actually needed 590 beakers to finish lib this turn. That's right, I 2-turned lib by the skin of the free beaker. The walls build in Quirrell is to shave a turn off Taj.




Taking advantage of my time in caste to push back some borders. Of course, Q is doing the same thing.




Eot90, my second GS was born in Snape(ignore the research) which was used for a PP bulb.




You can see where my GNP peaked when I finished half of liberalism




Success




Turn 92, I overflowed into Taj at the capital. It would ultimately be a 5-turn build total, with the help of a forest chop.




Turn 94, both Ruff and Q fired golden ages, presumably with the great people they had previously spawned. Q also completed a couple of wonders the following turn, one of which I sincerely hope was just for fail gold:




And he teched philosophy. Astute readers will remember Q got a GE a while back, so it doesn't exactly take a mind reader to see what he was pushing for.




Sorry, to remove the suspense so quickly, but this story has a happy ending:






Here's the plan for the GA.

Turn 97: Switch research to 0% on feudalism. Start Oxford in Quirrell. Revolt into caste. Hire artists in Mad-eye and Merchants in Snape.
Turn 99: Finish Oxford eot
Turn 100: Turn research onto fuedalism.
Turn 101: Finished feudalism, start guilds
Turn 102: Revolt into pacifism
Turn 103: Finished Guilds, start theology
Turn 104: Finished theology, start banking
Turn 105: Finished banking, start constitution. Mad-eye GP is born
Turn 106: Snape GP is born
Turn 107: Finished constitution, start gunpowder. Trigger second GA, revolt into rep/slavery/merc/theocracy.

Spend second GA researching to rifles and then start planning a more serious offensive against Ruff or Q. Depending on how tight the whole constitution by eot106 goal gets, I may delay theology a little bit. The important goal is getting into merc+rep, which will be awesome on this map.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Before:

After:

I underestimated my tech rate by a decent amount. I'll be getting cavs in about 12 turns, at which point I'll be going on the war path, though I might look for a move or two with knights before that.

[Catwalk]

Cute walls micro Which targets are you looking at?

[Oxyphenbutazone]

I'll only be able to make limited headway until cavs, but I think I'm entertaining the notion of attacking Q's southwestern border city with 4 cats, 3 maces and a couple knights and HA's.

[mackoti]

Hey were are my updates?

[Krill]

Hey were are my updates?

mack you only get updates after updating PB13

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Sorry guys for the lack of reporting. The PYFT has gone down from excellent to solid to PBEM51-esque lately, so not TOO many turns have been played. Anyway, here's what's been happening from:

Turn 97-104(Yikes, I should update a little more)




Turn 97, Oxford is started in Quirrell. I flipped into caste system, which conveniently bumped that workshop up one hammer so I didn't need to run citizens to get Oxford in 3 turns. Caste also let me do this:




And this:




The artists are both to push back Q's borders and minimize the chances of birthing 2 scientists.




Turn 98, I started the collosus in Umbridge. It's worth about 10 commerce per turn, which isn't great. However, it has a decent culture output and is very cheap, so it seemed worth it instead of wealth.




Already showed this picture, but here's Quirrell post-Oxford. I'll maintain research at 100% until turn 109, which is awesome considering I make about 730 bpt.




I was worried that Q might snipe this worker with fast worker magic, but he instead just clumsily moved up a threatening axe. Strange.




Turn 102, guilds is in and I start to que up some knight builds. My entire military build-up has been without slavery, mostly because I have such strong cities with GA production that I can produce 2 units every 3 turns without needing to whip.

I think Lockhart is a good example of city specialization. I recognized early on that it had very limited commercial potential and was better off giving away its cottages to Lupin and Quirrell. Thanks to landing Hinduism here, I had no need for culture buildings, so I just focued entirely on military. I would estimate that this city has built more than half of my entire military. Once I finally get a level 4 unit, I'll research lit for the HE here.




Kicking the artist production in Mad-eye into overdrive on the last turn.




Just showing off that crazy GA production. I have 4 cities that make 30 base hammers per turn, all with forges(interesting aside, Commodore STILL doesn't have metal casting tech, even though he spent hundreds of beakers on the useless nationalism).




Lupin's cultural preeminence is finally yielding some tangible results




As is Mad-eye's mass artists




After completing Oxford, I one-turned Feudalism, Guilds and Banking. Constitution was the first tech I didn't finish eot, belying my crazy research capabilities. By comparison, it took Q 3 turns of max research just to finish guilds.




Finishing second GP in Lupin.




Quirrell is finally done building infrastructure and can now contribute to the military force. This city in GA is insane.




After 30 turns, I finally. hooked. up. that. sheep.







I'm at least opening up the possibility of attacking Goldflakes. Getting rid of that city would be great just to remove the pesky culture, but isn't there some weird mechanic with a dead city's latent culture? I don't know, but I could always resettle the city 1N.




Another wonder down. Partly for denial value to Q, but I have a decent amount of monasteries up, so it's still worth 20ish bpt.




Solid demos, especially GNP and MFG with Q in GA.







My aforementioned military build-up sans slavery. Q is no longer pathetic in this category, but he seems to be expecting an attack up north:







I just finished consitution and next turn will swap in rep/merc, which I estimate to add about 200bpt to my current rate. So where to from there? The economics merchant is a lock, as I'm the only one with banking and the only other person who has education is Commodore, who like I said doesn't even have metal casting for the banking line.

Beyond that I have two possible tech paths- Communism or Rifling/Military Tradition. They're both accomplishable in the 10-turn timeframe I have. I guess I'm currently leaning to rifling, just because I already invested in setting up a merc/rep economy and communism seems to shine most when you can switch into state property/uni suffrage and krem-rush everything. Still, Communism is undeniably awesome on this map, so I'm not totally sure.

Finally overview from the current turn:

Mack, just curious now that I know you're reading this thread. Do you have any general comments on my game so far? I know it's been far from perfect, so I would really appreciate your input.

[mackoti]

I think is an excelent game you play here, you focused exactly on whats important and i was very courious how you will continue to play.You are talking about comunism, how much will save that to you?From number of cities i would say a rifling MT beline is way stronger, kill a neighbour and just after research comunism.
I like very fast oof OU build,very well done, city specealization now is time like you to capitalize that.I dont think i would had play better i realy enjoy seeig a'rookye' playing that good.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Turn 105-107




Last turn of Taj GA, time to revolt into merc+rep. This had a pretty immediate effect on my economy:




This is with tech turned on to gunpowder with double pre-reqs. My economy has gone from 730 bpt at 100% to 920, for a clean 25% increase, and the new beakers are constant, regardless of the slider.




Next turn, I decide to trigger another GA. The plan is to research rep parts and rifling- both in 2 turns- and then sweep the mil trad line going aesthetics-lit-music-military tradition. From there, I'll claim the economics merchant and then research up to communism, at which point I'll start another GA and switch into end game civics. That may seem a little optimistic, but I'm currently researching twice as fast as Commodore and it's even worse when compared to Q and Ruff.

I decided to go for rifling over communism because Q is starting to bulk up his power, so I could use some solid defensive units. Also, it seems like Commodore may be heading for cuirs(it would somewhat explain the nationalism research) so I want a clear counter to those before he can field them in large numbers.




Gearing up to fire the first silo of the turn timer war




And somewhat optimistically one-turning a settler to resettle Goldflakes 1N.




The situation next turn. Q actually moved 2 catapults and the longbow out of the cities during his turn, so the conclusion was pretty forgone.




The one area where I'm not dominating is espionage. Commodore and Q are building more courthouses, so I'm losing research visibility. I'm actually building a couple of jails to combat this(tech is outstripping unit production so much it makes sense to build otherwise mediocre buildings).




Evidence that Commodore may not be spending a lot of time on this game. It seems that he hasn't noticed that he set this longbow on explore




Something curious: Q has had guilds researched for a while, but still doesn't have HBR. That doesn't bode well for India in:

The Battle of Goldflakes




Q dry-whipped a maceman and upgraded another one.

Start by sending in 4 barrage cats at 0.1% odds. They all died, but got one hit on the top defender and inflict decent collateral on the other defenders.

Next the knights go in, killing the top defenders. I won a nice coinflip on his least-wounded maceman.




Next the Maceman start to get clean-up odds.




In the middle of this, I get my HE unit, finally.




Delivering the final blow




Easy raze

Event Log:

So I lost 4 cats to kill 2 maces, 4 spears, 1 chariot and a city. I also gained a 150 gold and a GG from the battle, which will probably go for a medic chariot.

Now the bad news is also in the log. Q has adopted martial civics, and considering his position in the game, may be looking to throw his game trying to drag me down. I'll leave the PB16 postgame discussion/clusterfuck to determine the ethics of such a move, but I do have to consider the ramifications of this. I think I can weather the storm, even without slavery. Rifles are pretty good and my production advantage is large.

Overview Turn 107:

Building military all over to offset the losses from the battle of goldflakes.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

You know what's crazy? I think that was the first city raze of the game.