[PB70] Charriu tries to promote the arts again

[Charriu]

The song



Music: OJV - Halo Live

Ah it's Halo with it's ever so famous intro song. I had a lot of fun with Halo back in the day, when I was still able to play shooters against other people. What I love about this version is that they are not only playing the intro, but also do show some more from the OST. Of course at some point they do "have to" play the intro, but even then they arrange it and break it up into different parts. And who new (instrumental) musicians can even sing.

T137:

---

I absolutely neglected to post about me founding my last city in my territory. Shame on me. O'Donnell is named after Martin O'Donnell the composer for the Halo series as well as Riven, Myst II and Destiney. And sorry for posting about so many Japanese composers, but the hard truth is that video game music seems to be valued more from Japanese developers compared to Western developers.

On the turn roll I also finished the last Research Institutes. Thanks to those my constant science output increased from 71 to 127 beakers. Doesn't look so great, but keep in mind that I get those every turn no matter what and during research turns I get even more thanks to the modifier from Research Institutes. Thanks to those I can also construct Oxford in Tin. I know I needed only 6 Research Institutes for that instead of 11.

I also promised to post more war plans between me and Scooter and here they come.

Scooter: if Mjmd/SD are that close, one thing that I keep thinking about was that SD seemed willing to nap-stab Mjmd earlier in the game, so it makes me a little leery of the current plan after Mjmd closed borders I remarked that it was "awfully aggressive for a non-aggression pact" and he remarked that it wasn't disallowed by the agreement
well, I also note the agreement said nothing about him passing info to SD who would pass it on to bing I think we still go ahead and I played the turn as such but I'm thinking about it anyway

Charriu: Those things are also on my mind

Scooter: I don't have a good answer. I obviously toyed with declaring one of them has broken the agreement and alpha striking anyway. But so many problems with that. 1, I don't want to actually break agreements. 2, Mjmd has put a lot into defending his coastline, so it's less free (but still doable I guess). 3, I'm not sure what I gain from alpha striking SD other than satisfaction so my inclination is to press forward on bing and see what happens, but it makes me a tiny bit nervous about pushing in too far if that makes sense

Charriu: We don't have to eliminate Bing with this war. Taking some border cities should be enough to throw him back in tech rate again.
As for Mjmd and Superdeath. I would trust Mjmds word on a NAP, but not Superdeath since he proposed breaking a NAP with Mjmd.
Keep in mind also that closing the borders also hurts Mjmd too. Basically the same result as if we trade embargo him. As for Superdeath a trade embargo hurts him the most since he has the Great Lighthouse.

Scooter: yeah, the overall impact to me isn't huge. the biggest impact was me obsoleting colossus and firing all my scientists to dedicate pop for the war effort - felt both of those in a big way. the trade route impact is smaller and regarding Bing, agreed for sure. crippling him and returning later would be great too the biggest win would be him handing over a few cities for peace, though I don't know if he would actually do that

Charriu: Yes, but hopefully to us both. Bing is still on Machinery

Scooter: Yeah for sure and that’s good news. It’s odd. I don’t know why he wouldn’t go HBR and unlock HAs and elephants which would handle my units quite well. I guess he’s dead set on the pro/xbow synergy

Charriu: Probably, but those will not arrive in time. If he finishs Machinery somehow in T136, he can only start those in T137 and whip (efficently) in T138.
Oh he got a Great scientist I forgot. But he could only bulb Alphabet with it. Which would actually be great since then I would not need to maintain tech vision on him. Alphabet is almost as good as that

Scooter: Yeah I really wonder what he could even use it for. Maybe sit on it for another golden age later

Charriu: SD picked up feudalism fyi. produced a longbow

Scooter: No, I thought he forgot, but he may have been trying to avoid getting his galley teleport trapped. Expect he will next turn. Bing didn’t really add more this turn so maybe my concerns were over stated. I ran some scenarios through the combat calculator yesterday and things look promising. Though I’ve had to scale back some of my amphibious attack plans recently
Also his core is empty. Like, single warriors or outright empty cities. So it’s not like he can reinforce either front much

Charriu: Ah right you have a scout in there from open borders.

Scooter: sentry explorer, so it's super easy to see everything still planning to declare and go in T138. I don't think i'll amphibiously hit anything, but it depends on how many units each city has. Worst case I think I take 2 cities on T139 at pretty big but manageable cost. Best case 1-2 are boated T138 and another captured T139, but I think that's only possible if he doesn't add any more

Charriu: Keep in mind to blockade the gems island while unloading in T138

Scooter: yeah. the gems island is the tricky one. previously it was 20% defense and 2 unpromoted skirms. Now it's 3 plus walls

Charriu: I will do combat simulations too in the next days

Scooter: whether or not I can afford to brute force boat the Gems island will depend entirely on how many units he can stuff and therefore how many I need for Tekedda (mainland city next to it)

Charriu: If you keep blockading those islands you could ignore them for the time being. They are not main production cities

Scooter: I imagine I may have to just blockade Gems and come back to it right my feeling right now is to not spend units on them unless it's "cheap" enough
time for me to check the cth blockade changelog

Charriu: I would do the same. They are basically safe backlines to capture

Scooter: So, if I understand it right the radius of blockade is huge like vanilla BtS, but it allows the city itself to work tiles so it would be cut from resources and vice versa. is that right? Like, I want to know exactly what I need to do to block his gems access. I'm a little fuzzy on it

Charriu: Yes everything like in BtS, but he still can work water tiles. The city can only trade over land with other cities. That's why it is important to blockade both gems island cities. That's how it should work

Scooter: ok. is there any way the second island city could take control of the gems and THAT city could share the gems?
that was what I was concerned about, whether I needed two blockades to make it work. I don't have vis on the 2nd city (though maybe next turn), but I've just been assuming it's there based on his city count

Charriu: Must be there because of city count and how the road looks. Both cities need to be blockade either by one or two ships. That way they can only trade with each other, but not with the main land.

Scooter: if I placed one between the two though, I think it would cover both cities one boat that is

Charriu: I think that should work

Scooter: ok
hoping to snipe his galleys too to further isolate the cities. depends on how he places them
he's got one on each coast that I've seen
What I mean by core cities, as of this turn-

Walata: 1 Skirm, no walls. I could boat it by T139 potentially
Katsina: empty. I could boat it by T140 potentially.
Taodeni: his horse source - 1 Skirm, no walls. Boatable by T140 potentially
Djenne: 1 warrior, walls. Reachable by T141 potentially
Capital: 1 warrior, walls.

Now I don't thave the numbers to actually boat all of those, especially if/when they add defenders. But the point is he has no reinforcements yet and he will need to keep them in these cities once he builds them or else they can burn
so that's the main thing we have going for us. He will be forced to defend border cities with only border city build queues I think
and even if I run out of units, I have 7 Galleons, so an empty Galleon is an effective bluff

Charriu: True, sorry for being so quiet. Playing my turn right now. ?

Scooter: No worries, just wanted to update you on my scouting findings since I had a couple minutes

Charriu: Bing is still figuring out how this Machinery thing works

Scooter: do you have a rough eta for it?

Charriu: It switches every turn but for the last turns it was over 40

Scooter: ok, so "pretty far" to use a highly technical term

Charriu: But keep in mind he is banking gold. So could do a 100% sciene turn all of a sudden

Scooter: yeah I wasn't sure if you've seen him turn it on at all

Charriu: Maybe even T137 since he now roughly has twice his maintenance cost I absolutely do not know what he does with the slider. Definitely not binary research, but he is doing something with it.

Scooter: man if he had finished HBR 6 turns ago and started whipping horchers and elephants I would literally have to call off the attack or delay it significantly
he still has 0 catapults that I can see which is mind blowing

Charriu: That's very good news since I will have to bombard his defenses probably. But simulating will give some results for that scenario. In other good news I think Mjmd bought my lie about the involvment in your diplomacy and offered to sign open borders again. I take that as a good sign for NAP

Scooter: the CKN vs Pro Skirm sims are really interesting

Charriu: How so?

Scooter: basically when he has 3-4 of them, trading against them is quite painful from a hammers standpoint. However, beyond that it swings back in my favor as the collateral starts to matter a lot more so I want to see 1-2 of them or like 7 of them at once

Charriu: uh interesting

Scooter: this is mostly in city defense with good defenses scenario basically I was doing a sim against like 4 of them in a city and I found I lost about the same number of units against 4 as 7 slighlty more but not much more

Charriu: Yeah he has 4 skirms in his border cities with me too + 2 directly on the border (mountain passes). Interestingly though. The first city I want to hit (Gao) has a combination of 1 swordman and 3 skirmishers as well as being on flatland. It should be the easiest to capture. At the same time I think it's the most worthwhile of his border cities.

Scooter: yeah that's nice. flatland makes a huge difference with skirms

Charriu: Vodka says I should be able to take Gao with my 5 war elephants, 3 catapults and 1 horcher in T140.
I would go in in T139 for that. I would still stick to my old plan though that is: if I see him moving away units when I play T139 I would wait just one more turn, so that they cannot return back to defend the city. Always easier if I don't have to fight those skirms in the cities. By the way have you seen any spearman from Bing?

Scooter: I have seen literally nothing but skirms except for a lone warrior in the capital
granted I haven't gone past the capital but i dont see why it woudl be different near you

Charriu: Yeah, no spearman in the border cities. I'm flabbergasted. He has seen war elephants being produced by now. One would at least put just 1 spearman in each border city, I assumed

Scooter: yeah. it's really something. I'm growing much more confident today after surveying the situation and seeing him not add more units this past turn
my sims look good even when I add 2 more skirms tahn he has currently will come down to how many he adds + RNG to see how wounded I am afterwards, but there seems to be almost no way he will hold the cities I target and if he pulls units away from coastal cities, they'll burn and he'll be down build queues now I just hope Mjmd plays earlier tonight so I can declare tomorrow rather than another day. So one thing Bing did that I was trying to figure out. Note the highlighted Skirm. It was on copper the previous turn


I thought it was headed to Awdaghost, but it walked right past it. I think he intends to walk it into my land and scout me? In practice it'll just get stuck in no man's land

Charriu: I really don't see any point in that skirm movement

Scooter: I think he’s gonna move n-nw into my territory to see what I have. Maybe. Idk, will be incredibly easy to stay out of sight. Someone picked up HBR. hopefully not bing. He added a couple skirms to the front, but less than he could have if he was being aggressive about it. I'm still a go for next turn. Still see nothing but skirms anywhere in his core also that Skirm I highlighted above - he fortified it. I could hazard a couple guesses why, but it's whatever. If that city does not get reinforced next turn (surely it will be) I'll just boat it immediately let me know if you see any units leaving your front. he suspects me now for sure

Charriu: Will do. Maybe Bing is already on auto-pilot, because he has given up. Bing is still showing on Machinery this time with 30 turns. He also gained gold over the last two turns, so I would guess he did not switch to and research HBR and switched back to Machinery. No unit movement on my front. My guess for HBR: Mjmd

Superdeath also came back to the upcoming Bing attack.

Superdeath: So it's no secret that scooter is about to smash bing. I assume you are as well?

Charriu: Well if scooter attacks I will certainly join in. Bing is doomed no matter what and every city I take Scooter doesn't. I also think I have the right to take at least the border cities, because Bing settled way across the midpoint between us towards me in the beginning.

Superdeath: Right

Don't know what's his problem is with keeping Bing alive. I kept the facade up of not being an ally to Scooter just for safety.

[Qgqqqqq]

I didn't see it in there but I admit I skimmed. What are your war plans? Troop movements, aims, etc?

[Charriu]

That's the battle plan for now. The goal is to at least capture/raze the three border cities. Everything after that is just icing on the cake. Plan is to launch the attack on Gao first since it is the weakest target. After that army healed it moves towards Tadmekka with the goal to raze the city. There isn't really anything that city accomplishes that Gao does not. Razing it allows my army to pillage the cottage improvements around it for gold.
During that western plan moves onward I build up a second stack to go capture Nianti. If it is kept or razed depends on the culture spread from the northern Bing city outside the picture. That city is also the next target for the eastern army. The western army will move towards the gold city of Bing after razing Tadmekka.

[Charriu]

The song

https://osiroismusic.bandcamp.com/track/...tral-cover

Music: Osirois Music - Undertale 'The Broken King'

T138:

---

War has started. Unfortunately not the one that Scooter and I had planned. Mjmd backstabbed Scooter and took/razed 3 of scooters cities. That's a very hard blow. Mjmd also let me know that the NAP with me is also off.

Mjmd: so Scooter came to me and said "accept my deal or I boat you". Shockingly that left me with warm fuzzy feelings. I'm considering that deal signed under duress and have rescinded it. It should be noted that deal also allowed me to kill you down the line. I decided to go to war with the person threatening me instead

Charriu: That's sad

Mjmd: Sad is an interesting descriptor

Charriu: Sad as in I would not have you expected to go back from a NAP

Mjmd: never have before. Contracts signed under duress are not valid

Charriu: I can understand the why you did it.

Had to walk a tightrope again to keep Mjmd calm and not attack me too. Of course my army is speeding south again including the war elephants I removed from the Mjmd border. Once again Matsumae is threatened, but a war elephant will be back in T140 with more following. I'm very much disappointed in Mjmd. Once again he is overreacting. Nobody attacked him, not even an oh-so-terrible trade embargo was enacted this time. I know I said I can understand him up there, but that doesn't mean I agree. A deal is a deal no matter how it came to be. I will remember this incident for the future. It also means that NAPs with him around this late stage are worthless for me.
Let's hear from the victim though:

Scooter: NAP-stabber. sorry man, bing war is off.
[picture from PBSpy with the cities being taken]

Charriu: So I assume Mjmd now has astronomy too

Scooter: Yes

Charriu: Sorry to hear that

Scooter: Yeah. Mega scummy but whatever

Charriu: In that case my army will move south just to be ready for anything

Scooter: Yeah. All bets are off I guess. Would not take any deal from him seriously

Charriu: At least you have not started against Bing

Scooter: Yep. Tbh if he can seriously tech Astro that fast there’s not much hope for anyone. SD says he’ll have guilds shortly. He as in Mjmd I mean

Charriu: And I gunpowder, but with Mjmd having astronomy I now have to reinforce the islands more

Scooter: Well I have 35 real units and 7 galleons and my power is still well below Mjmd so yeah. It’s gonna be a lot

Charriu: Shit. Well one thing I will take away from this game regarding Mjmd. First destroy some of his cities then negotiate.

Scooter: Tbh I don’t blame him. This war was sooner or later. I think the real question is how much the plans for Bing’s partition change

Charriu: Not sure how the plans could continue

Scooter: Well now I definitely have to wait for muskets and more defense towards Mjmd

Well obviously he is pissed, who wouldn't be. Despite me not being happy with this, I have to say though that this might once again be a great play Mjmd, might even be his winning move. Who knows. Then again it might be his downfall too, we'll see.

Scooter: so I spent some time talking to superdeath this afternoon
he's about to have Knights and seems pretty up for sending them at Mjmd. he's NAP'd with both of us, but his logic was that stabbing him is OK because Mjmd so openly made a mockery of a deal.
now, the pall hanging over all this is it's difficult to believe him, but he was more open than usual this time around. said seeing how much damage he did to me has made him more open to it
anyway the short of it - get gunpowder and then start whipping muskets as hard as you possibly can. for two reasons.

1) SD is lying and will come at me anyway, and Mjmd has already torn up the agreement, so I wouldn't fully expect him to honor T155 NAP. so you'll need them to defend yourself.

OR

2) SD is telling the truth, in which case Mjmd will have his hands full by land and sea in opposite direction, and you could get some revenge for earlier in the game
basically I'd recommend you go total war for the forseeable future regardless - whether it's for offense or defense.

Ginger: Realistically I recommend we both show SD full trust and support as if he sides with mjmd its effectively concessions anyways

Scooter: Pretty much yep

Charriu: Mjmd also told me that the NAP between me and him is off if that wasn't clear already.

Yes muskets all the way down

Charriu: What a joke

Agree that SD is somewhat unreliable. Should he attack Scooter too then this should be remembered as one of his worst moves. It will essentially give Mjmd the win.

Charriu: Well now we have an even bigger problem then Bing being conquered

Superdeath: so it seems

Need to speak some more with Superdeath. But Scooter came back with a request shortly before I played.

Scooter: if you're able to get vis on WhereToGoJonny at all, please do. if there's one juicy boatable city it's that. I assume very well defended.

Charriu: I can have a look at it

Scooter: You’ll notice I do have some galleons on the edge of your islands. They’re 8 tiles away from it. I could look to threaten next turn maybe, but I can’t do it blind basically, otherwise they could get wiped with units on board.

I’m expecting there’s no way for me to do it, but if the window opens let me know

Charriu: Does that mean you want me to look every upcoming turn? Can do

Scooter: I just mean whatever eyes you can provide would be helpful, but this next turn especially. You’ll see I’m exactly 8 tiles from boating, so if the doors look open to you I could move 4 tiles next turn and threaten.

I expect the doors won’t be open. Just figured i’d set it up in case as I could do it safely for this turn

Charriu: Of course I will check

Scooter: Just hoping he makes a mistake ?

Charriu: The tooltip is from hillsofcomm???


And the target

If Scooter could manage to raze WhereToGoJonny that would be awesome as it puts some pressure culture-wise on me. It would also strengthen my defense on the Mjmd border. On top of all that it hosts the Shwedagon Paya, so if Mjmd looses that it's back to Paganism from him. Currently he is running Free Religion thanks to the wonder.

[Charriu]

The song



Music: Vampire Hunter Dan - Secret of Mana 'Things We Didn't Know' [Fear of the Heavens] OC ReMix

Don't fall for the rather sad and mellow beginning. Not only do we get some nice vocals from 0:40 onward but the piece gets increasingly intense with every minute. Now where the original is very bright and uplifting Vampire Hunter Dan managed to move it into a way more dramtic direction by mixing in the boss theme 'Danger' and the overworld theme 'Into the Thick of it' and even a dramatic version of 'What the Forest Taught Me' all from Secret of Mana. Great work in using all of these themes to create something totally new.

T141:

---

The war between Mjmd and Scooter is still very much hot. On the one side it's great to know that Mjmd is occupied, on the other side it would be better if he did not engage my best ally in the game. I know I have said in the past that Scooter has the best potential for winning this game. Well that certainly is no longer the case. Mjmd burned a lot of Scooters cities and sits firmly in the drivers seat in this game. No matter what he says he is the leader of this game now. Especially as he just started his second MoM-enhanced golden age.




Superdeath as you can see also started one via Taj Mahal. At least that is denied for Mjmd. I myself have moved my units away from the Bing border towards Mjmd, mainly for defense against a potential knight rush. The problem is with just war elephants and catapults I cannot really support Scooter so far against longbowman and pikes from Mjmd. I need more musketman for that. Luckily I finished gunpowder this turn.
As you can see I slotted in Alphabet which is somewhat odd. Well as you can see I spawned yet another Great Scientist. But actually I had hoped for a 25% merchant to spawn for some extra gold. With the scientist my plans change a bit. I will finish Alphabet so that I can bulb Philosophy. This unfortunately is a bit of a waste of a great person, but it frees up the way to nationalism and constitution, which I plan to finish during a golden age with another scientist being done in Tin. With those two in hand I can switch into Nationhood and Representation at the end of the golden age. I can also use the extra hammers from the golden age to finish more musketmen. Meanwhile I try to keep Scooters morale up:

Charriu: My army is speeding south. Bing meanwhile finished Machinery and slotted HBR in

Scooter: I’ll sim but I don’t think I’d have enough on board. And due to the culture I can’t hit it from the fog. [Remember the plan to hit WhereToGoJohnny from last post]
yyou didnt happen to see where his boats are on those waters did you

Charriu: Haven't seen them, but will keep a look out. Should I look for ships or towards Johnny again?

Scooter: Any ships is helpful but I backed off. I don’t have enough to crack it, and I can’t guarantee he couldn’t just kill my ships at sea if I got close anyway. Can try again if/when you have units to pressure

Charriu: Went north haven't found any ships, but in his northern gems city is only a single chariot

Scooter: Ok. Sadly that front is very much at my coast line. I have two cities at risk this turn again. Trying to mass galleons and hit his stack if he leaves an opening

Charriu: Bing seems to upgrade his skirms to Crossbowman and I see catapults from him. The big problem that I see is, should I join in on Mjmd or he attack me it's pretty much a given that Bing also attacks. He has shown similar intentions in the past.

Scooter: hm maybe, but I also wonder if he'll keep building units now the crisis with me is averted. He sent me a message with a screenshot of my chengdu stack leaving and joked about it bieng a "near death experience". So i guess let's just see if he adds more units or if he just defends more. The sad thing is I still could have taken a city of his last turn and 2 more this turn had I kept on the plan. even with all the warning he was toast haha.

Charriu: Such a great diplomat. Yeah without big daddy Mjmd he can't do anything

[next turn]

Bing produced a catapult in one of my border cities and moved it northward. Probably towards you, I guess

Scooter: yeah he's built a few. I do have eyes on him. I sort of wonder if he might pile on me

Charriu: He definitely will attack you. Back when Mjmd razed my city he immediately moved units to my border. He backed away as soon as I took peace with Mjmd. (By the way another good reason for the peace deal back then)

Scooter: figured. at least i have a sentry explorer in the area

Charriu: He finished HBR too and started Engineering

Scooter: may see if he's open to a warpeace, but I expect not.

Charriu: And he finally built a spearman now that he can produce elephants

Scooter: I'm not signing more naps that's for sure lol

Charriu: You could sign one with me if that builds up your trust in humanity again. ?

Scooter: HAHA the one person I trust to keep one currently I"ve never signed one with

Charriu: Yeah we are in a similar situation like Tarkeel and me in PB67. No need for a NAP if you work together.

The important factor in the upcoming turns will be Superdeath, so I contacted him:

Charriu: So where are we going from here. Mjmd sits in the drivers seat.

I'm moving more units to his border for defense as I am very much afraid of him, when he thinks he can even attack Scooter.
Then again wasn't that the plan all along to start the dogpile with a war dec from Scooter to Mjmd way back. ?

Superdeath: well, im going to be massing knights once i get guilds. Im going to eventually send them against Mjmd, but he will have a scout no doubt in my territory SO... i will need to position them "towards" scooter. Ive already let him know this.
Im hoping for about 15t from now having "some" units to maybe blitz a city? depends on if Scooter can counter strike at all

Charriu: So where are we going from here. Mjmd sits in the drivers seat.

I'm moving more units to his border for defense as I am very much afraid of him, when he thinks he can even attack Scooter.
Then again wasn't that the plan all along to start the dogpile with a war dec from Scooter to Mjmd way back. ?

Superdeath: well, im going to be massing knights once i get guilds. Im going to eventually send them against Mjmd, but he will have a scout no doubt in my territory SO... i will need to position them "towards" scooter. Ive already let him know this.
Im hoping for about 15t from now having "some" units to maybe blitz a city? depends on if Scooter can counter strike at all

Charriu: Yeah. Right now everything is on Scooters shoulders. I myself will have Musketmen soon. You also can hide units on ships.

Superdeath: I'm donating galleys to scooter for galleon upgrades. I am 5t from guilds roughly. (Saving $ before Taj golden age for maximum tech speed

Charriu: You can hide another unit on galleons. ?

Superdeath: Going knights-gunpowder, and then beeline to cuirs I'm not worried about hiding units. To mjmd I'm on his side since it's been all game long more or less. To scooter I'm on his side cuz breaking a NAP 2t after making it.... is a dick move. If it was a final kill/winning move, I'd at least be like "okay, fine. It was to win the game"..

But I can't realistically honor my game long alliance with him due to that.

Now I understand that if mjmd gets taken to the brink I'm then stuck between you and scooter anyway.... and bing wouldn't be much help, but hey. My starting position was the least likely to win ?

Charriu: Best case of course would be scooter and Mjmd razing themselves to stone age

Superdeath: Well yeah. Hence the more galleys being built and shipped south

Charriu: As for the hypothetical future of you being stuck between me and scooter. Don't worry. I have no intensions in that direction. I rather want to go on a revenge tour to my north

Superdeath: Fair

Hopefully Superdeath does the right thing, which is not giving Mjmd the win on a silverplate aka attacking Scooter.

Meanwhile I have to keep the big boy near me calm.

Mjmd: so what are your plans?

Charriu: Well you may have noticed that I had moved units from our border because of the NAP. I plan to return those since the NAP is off. I think that's understandable.
Other than that I plan to build a small army in the hopes of capturing a few border cities from Bing. Since you took scooters attention he will likely not take the rest of Bing.

Mjmd: fair enough

Charriu: Unless of course you plan to make peace with scooter. That would make things complicated again around Bing.

Mjmd: this may shock you, but I don't think Scooter plans on peace any time soon. I'm pretty sure if I offered him all my gold he would not take it

Charriu: Yeah I thought as much. But what can you win from that war. Do you really want to conquer his land therefore building up a second land empire. That sounds hard to do?

Mjmd: ya no

Charriu: By the way if you were thinking about me supporting you in that war. I don't see how I can do that without Galleons.

Mjmd: wouldn't expect you to. If you didn't already have skinny island inbetween you, would be a nice opportunity but you already have

Charriu: Yeah I took that since Scooter didn't make a move
But then again it's the least important place for both of us

At least I won't be in a position where I have to choose between Mjmd and my ally. Hopefully Mjmd takes the bait with Bing. We'll see...

[The next day]

Bing: Hey, would you like an NAP? I heard that those are a thing in this game mode. Mainly I don't want to be a useful idiot menacing non-MJMD players while not even being able to take any land off them anyway.

Charriu: Yeah sorry I'm not interested

Well look who suddenly came out of his cave to have a chat. Mind you these are the first words we spoke since Mjmd razed my city. Even after the attack on scooter no words were exchanged. Now why all of a sudden is he interested in a NAP. Could it be that someone warned you about an upcoming attack. I told scooter about it.

Charriu: Bing came around asking for a NAP. I declined. Hopefully that will bind some more of his units that would have headed in your direction

Scooter: If it helps, we had this chat right before, so if he’s being honest with me his intentions are not necessarily bad here. He shares the concerns of Mjmd crippling everyone







But notably he did not offer me a nap haha

Charriu: He said similar things too me when we were discussing dogpiling Mjmd and the trade embargo. Then as soon as Mjmd razed my one city, he was at my doorstep ready to pounce.
I would be careful.

Scooter: yeah i'm gonna keep my sentry explorer over there and watch

Charriu: I've looked back at Bings original message when my city was razed. He must have talked with Mjmd and learned that way that it's not a full war. That's why he didn't attack back then. I expect Bing to work closely with Mjmd

Scooter: probably

Lazy bastard even copied the "being a useful idiot menacing non-MJMD players while not even being able to take any land off them anyway" part. So much for originality and creativity in diplomacy. Well let's here from Bing some more.

Bing: Can include not attacking scoots in it if that's the issue, guess I better whip more tho lol

Charriu: I don't know. Last time you said you would not attack because of Mjmd you immediately send units to the border, when I just lost one city in the first turn of war.
Why should I trust you now?

Bing: By 'planning' I meant preparing a force with the intent to invade you. I moved those skirms forward because I couldn't be bothered to ask you or MJMD what was going on (I thought maybe he was doing a full-scale invasion, in which case why not join in, but I had no plans) - I was probably playing at midnight or something, or was busy and just wanted to hand turn to the next person asap
I suppose I should clarify my attitude a bit more. I'm used to playing Age of Wonders 1 and Dominions 5 multiplayer a lot. Both games a heavily focused on war with little internal economic development. So there's much more of a bias towards 'random' attacks or backstabbing. Like, even though games have full diplo, the default state is war, not peace. The more considered big wars, or opportunistic razing, of civ4 multiplayer is quite alien to me.
I completely forgot to ask about something else, what about OB? then we can do mutual scouting
which is clearly more trustworthy than NAP ))

Charriu: Yeah, but you did ask Mjmd what was going on, why else would you have written:
"Only moved the skirms forward on the offchance but I head that's all between you and MJMD for now."
I have no need towards mutual scouting in your direction. I'm sorry but my trust level towards you is on a low end since you started settling towards me. Maybe I will change my opinion if I see you not joining in a war against a warring neighbor. So far nothing you said made me trust you more.

We'll see what he will say to that or if he stays mute again.

[Qgqqqqq]

Going back to your plan for this game, I notice you've been doing some bulging. How are you feeling about settling scientists?

[Charriu]

Yes, I've used 1 scientist for education and will use another one for philosophy. Both so that I can get faster to my UB and to representation.

Looking at the scientists they produced the following amount of beakers were produced end of T141

1. Built an academy in T58. This is a bit harder to quantify, but just taking the beakers from the other settled scientists this scientist produced at least 417 beakers. Now that sounds low but of course it produced a lot more from those commerce tiles too. Taking everything in it roughly produced 1121 beakers so far.
2. Settled in T75. It produced 402 base beakers so far and 502 if we factor in modifiers from library, monasteries and university. (Not academy as that is included in the numbers under #1.) It also produced 67 hammers.
3. Settled in T100. It produced 252 base beakers so far and 348 if we factor in modifiers from library, monasteries and university. (Not academy as that is included in the numbers under #1.) It also produced 42 hammers.
4. Settled in T112. It produced 180 base beakers so far and 243 if we factor in modifiers from library, monasteries and university. (Not academy as that is included in the numbers under #1.) It also produced 30 hammers.

Now if we want to compare those numbers properly with a potential bulb, we also have to factor in that almost every tech has a known tech modifier of 1.2 to it. With those I get the following numbers for the scientists

1. 1345 beakers
2. 602 beakers
3. 417 beakers
4. 291 beakers

So what would I have bulbed at the specific times? Well:

1. T58 Most likely Mathematics for 390 beakers. In my mind the academy was worth way more.
2. T75 Hard to say. I would have needed to get Alphabet away for better bulb targets. Compass would have been a worthwhile investment with 624 beakers. I think the settled scientist was and is worth more to me.
3. T100 Probably Philosophy for 1248 beakers. Worth more then the settled scientist.
4. T112. Probably Astronomy after getting Optics out of the way for the full ca. 1773 beaker amount of a bulb. Definitely worth more then the settled scientist.

I think the first settled scientist was worth it no matter what. The other two are debatable. A lot comes down to how long the game will continue. Of course if I had gone for bulbing I would have chosen a totally different route as you can see above. A route that leads me down more the naval path, but not towards Education or Constitution what I wanted.
Of course another very important aspect are the extra hammers. I never worked strong hammer tiles in my capitol and considering that the extra hammers were very much appreciated to get to the important whipping points in time as well as constructing Great Library.

Another important factor is that I had the tech lead for a long time due to this strategy. For example it was a very comfortable ride towards Currency. I think this variant play could be worth it if you want to push for something important (wonders) or you could use it for a very early knights rush, which I could have done. For example instead of focusing on Great Library and Education I could have gone for early Guilds reaching that tech in the T120s.
I would play this style again trying to better balance great people and my expansion, which was the area my style was lacking the most. In the end I think it's at least safe to say that settling one scientist after an early academy is not such a bad play.

[Charriu]

Addendum This made me think what if I built a second academy in Uematsu with the second settler instead of settling it. Well that academy would have produced 270 beakers. Way less the the capitol one with all the settled scientists especially considering that both cities have roughly equal commerce output.

[Charriu]

Addendum 2: With representation the numbers will also quickly favor the settled scientists.

[Charriu]

The song



Music: Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra : SCORE - Final Fantasy VI - Aria Di Mezzo Carattere

See I told you we will hear her again. Here we have Sabina Zweiacker performing the Opera from Final Fantasy VI and I think the first comment under the video describes it perfectly:

This. This is what Nobuo heard when he wrote it. This is what we all heard when we played ff6. This is what made us cry like dorks to a midi file and not care. Damn, that man can write music.

Absolutely. I mean just listen to 2:43. It's amazing and I can't get enough of it. And we didn't even talk about the final. Love it, love it, love it. Best performance of this peace I ever listened too. Oh and for those who don't know. The microphone isn't there to amplify her voice. It's there to record it. And yes her voice is that powerful.

T146:

---

This turn marks me starting my first golden age in this game. The goal is clear finish Nationalism and Constitution during the golden age and finally swap into Nationhood and Representation at the end. But for now I switched into Bureaucracy and Caste. And in the meantime I use all the extra hammers to get more musketmen out.