This game feels very impish

[Krill]

Honestly thought that was in the changelog.

I'll sort it now.

[The Black Sword]

So, an update.



I stabbed Rusten this turn. I've wanted these 3 cities on my border but there were a couple of issues. I didn't want to divert any of Rusten's defenses away from Mack, I did't want to give Mack the assurance that I have no units in the fog backing Rusten and I want to convince Rusten to stay at war with Mack and give him WW. It's also possible if they peace out that Mack could use Rusten's culture to hit me as I try to take the cities. The majority of Mack's forces are concentrated towards Naufrager right now though, so some of these problems are alleviated. I pushed 3rd ring culture with artists in House of Night last turn, allowing me to get the drop on Brain Droppings. This meant I could 1t the city without him having a chance to reinforce from his other fronts. Sealing the deal, there are 5 workers NE of the city. Astro settling is a worker hungry machine, I'm still building workers on turn 150, those units will be put to use.



I lost 3 HAs to take the city, 1 more than I expected. My sentry chariot also had a poor teleport and I had to delete him. Hopefully I can clean up Modjo next turn and then Maze Runner can be taken at leisure. I'm a bit sorry to hit Rusten in the back but this opportunity was too good to pass up IMO. I'd really like to get Brain Droppings up to 2nd ring culture by the time Mack comes knocking. Here's the state of Mack's current conquest:



I was initially super happy that naufrager went after mack, but I haven't been too impressed by his defending since then(well, the problem is he didn't defend, he attacked). I think he's just made himself into an easy mark now. The small stack of HA's were originally in Rusten lands to threaten Mack's holdings. I was actually 1 turn off being able to raze SinfulWindborne. But 'almost' isn't worth much. Mack then caught sight of them, which I was ok with, I hoped to threaten with more imaginaary forces in the fog. I had the stack of War Elephants and catapults too, that I was originally thinking about sending to help, but I got spooked by Mr 2 and 3 in power - Dreylin and Pindicator. I didn't want my 1 movers stranded.



I've had a couple of signs that Dreylin is going after dtay's islands and Pindicator has just declared on former Gavagai, which frees me up a bit. On the Dreylin front, he birthed a Great Engineer a while ago and was the only person I was really worried about stealing the Taj from me(I know, I just jinxed it). He picked up Optics though, so that eased my fears. Pindicator is quite a headache in the long term. The inexplicable war between ex-Gav and plako was pretty bad for me. I feel a strong Gav would have been much better for me than a strong Pin. You can sort of see the problem with my empire in this picture - almost everywhere is a border city. The likes of Pin and Mack who have strong land invasions will find it much easier to concentrate their forces. It's hard to see how I manage to expand through Comm or Pin eventually without the other deciding he needs to help out. I guess I can hope Comm will fall behind in tech, hard to see that happening to Pin with Org and the Confucian shrine.



Here's my expansion to the south. The two unfogged spots are boats with settlers on them for this new continent. Unfortunately my travel time to these lands is a lot longer than Commodores. I'm decently happy with how this area has turned out. I guess I could have claimed more land at the expense of snowball, but that only makes sense if land is limited, and there's still enough out there that valuing the snowball makes more sense IMO. Makes for more neighbourly relationships too. Speaking of such relationships, here's the northern holdings:



I was particularly unimpressed by the settling of Zeewolf. Settling my end of the island, walking past unused resources and trying to steal a 2nd ring fish from a creative civ.  He only brought a spear to defend it too, I had a crossbow on a boat nearby(with my own settler for the area) that could have immediately razed the city. I'm also pretty sure he walked past coastal sites for his inland cities. I understand the temptation to do this type of stuff though, I was very close to settling to steal Red Alert's 2nd ring copper in retaliation. That really would just be pettiness for no gain however. I guess my question is what happens when we get to the last few pieces of Astro land. If you miss out on that last race you can end up with no extra land as well as a smaller snowball. If there are no competitors for it then it's possibly worthwhile to pull stunts like this.

To the north I think is the other end of continent I share with Commodore, which I might try settle. I'd prefer to go south though, I expect there should be land there and I have a settler on the way, depends on how much there is.

Demographics are ridiculuously skewed due to Monotheism research, which is of course why I'm posting them.


I need OR for the Taj build. Not sure I want to bother spreading a religion after that, I might try for free religion. If nobody goes for Lib by the time I get to Guilds I can consider Libbing Constitution, at the cost of blocking my Chemistry bulbs. Otherwise I need Paya.

[The Black Sword]

New cities incoming:


Rusten land:


Got a bit unlucky rolls taking both cities but happy that I was quick enough he couldn't pull any units from his other garrisons. Gav(formerly BGN) sent me a wheat/iron offer which I returned. I'm not really sure what he's trying to say. But I don't want to go any further, so I won't get in his way if he wants to. Not worth chewing through LBs in hills for size 1 cities to defend from Gav/mack respectively. So I'm just setting up to take Maze Runner while I have the spare time.

-rolled my 50% Great Engineer. I'll still probably use him on a golden age next turn, but there's a chance I rush Taj.
-I've been thinking about the value of Free Market and it's quite competitive with Representation as an upgrade over Mercantilism. Trade route values have been going up as we settle the new world. Particularly for whoever gets there first and wins the Merchant, it's even better.
-I should put a higher priority on chopping workers in new world settlements.
-Speaking of, I mislicked away 3 worker turns today. 

[The Black Sword]

Sometimes Pitboss really gets on my nerves.



Not really sure what happened. My gold buffer(in case of inflation) was only supposed to be 10 gold too, not 23g. Assuming no-one is challenging me for it, it shouldn't matter at least. I still think that's the case, but the cost of doing some wealth building to get it a turn earlier just in case seemed small. I'm going to need to do a little bit to hit my GA research goals anyway.

I decided to GA now instead of GE rushing the Taj, because otherwise I would need to wait 25t for a clean non-scientist GP instead. Which would mean an 8t delay in revolting into my civics. Also, I believe if you build the Taj inside a golden age you'll actually get a 9t golden age benefit instead of 8-and-a-bit turn, which is worth a decent amount. So long as I'm correct that no-one is racing for it. But they saw me hit Taoism and birth a Great Engineer, they'd be crazy to do so right?

[darrelljs]

The risk/reward feels right  .

Darrell

[The Black Sword]

Mack has now also peaced out with Rusten. Here's an overview of how he's been diced up:



WoweeZowee was the original flash point between the two of them, way back in the Aretas & Horse Archer era. Mack's main thrust this time captured Sinful Windborne, Kaputt(the capital and shrine) and Leitmotif, cutting the empire in two, making it easy for him to defend his gains. He also captured some border cities at the start of the war - Status Excess and the one that naufrager razed. Since then he's slowly picked off the two southern cities(not visible here) while his main army focused on naufrager. That's a total of 6 cities gained, 3 with large pop, infra and a shrine.

Gavagai/former BGN has captured 3 cities in the north and is pushing on toward the 3 remaining mainland spots. These cities will be much tougher to chew than the juicy morsels from the start of the war, but I'm pretty sure he has the numbers to take them. Mack could interfere but I don't think he will. He's enough on his plate with naufrager. We'll call that 5 cities for Gav, because I'm not sure he'll even want to take InsideMyMind.

Meanwhile I've picked up 3 cities really cheaply in the East. Since Rusten won't be inflicting WW on Mack I should figure out how to take his size 15 island city. Not sure when I'll be able to spare the Galleons/units, but that should be 4 cities for me.

I've got to be pretty happy with that outcome in the end. Mack sliced through Rusten at an alarming pace at the start. He definitely got the lions share but I expected him to take the next line of cities north also. Now we have to hope that naufrager's neighbours manage a similar job dividing up the carcass.



Naufrager has managed a decent standoff here for a number of turns now. That's a lot of pikes! Now that Mack has one person to focus on I'm sure he'll bring the troops to break these guys eventually. Naufrager's best play IMO is to figure out when Mack will attack(easy right?   ) then retreat to the next city the turn before. Make him walk up to each city with his 1 mover catapults, and bombard the defences before retreating again. It's a slow death but it's the best he can do I think.

[Zed-F]

How are your own plans working out? By which I mean Taj, Astro settling, anything else going on in your homeland, etc.

[The Black Sword]

It's going pretty well. Taj is due to finish next turn with the last chops:


So that will give me an extra 9t of golden age. The two priorities over the rest of the golden age are the tech goals and the astro settling. Non-essential infrastructure can take a back seat.

Next up to contest with OH is this continent:


It's much closer to him than me and I suspect he's already been settling the south. I'm about to settle my first city on the north next turn. I have a settler/worker/mace in the galleon sailing down the east coast also, looking for either a high priority city or OH's borders. This is the settler that was bound for the Zeewolf spot by the way, wonder what the trade will look like. I think I have 6(ish) settlers already built and on the galleon chain down here and more coming. With Astro land running out, numbers become more important than the snowball, so they don't have quite as much worker support as my first waves. I just hit the conquerors plateua also, all my cities are at the full 6gpt No. of cities mainentance and it can't increase any further. So each new city now only has to pay for it's own mainentance and 2-3gpt civic upkeep - they break even almost immediately.

Over on the other coast, Commodore settled very aggressively with Short Pump:


You can see the tight knit of cities that I consider the optimal settling pattern for the continent. Comm settled right in the middle of them. If I settle any of the others our borders are pretty crap. Additionally he skipped past the better city of Necrium Rogue to do so. Essentially he's asking me the question: Give me the whole continent or let's have crap borders that can quite possibly lead to war. I'm not willing to give him the whole continent just because he planted a flag in the middle of it. So I settled Necrium Rogue, I'll probably try for the 'x' spots and I have to seriously think about the 'f' spot. That spot would take Short Pump's only food source and really hurt his city. Otherwise land tiles go to waste though, and that hurts my soul.  Anyway, the basic defense of the whole area is the MAD doctrine, it helps that I'm bigger, it hurts that I've more to lose(I doubt Comm seriously considers himself a contender at this point). As I've said before though, when Mack is so far in front it doesn't make sense to play conservatively.

I'm also settling that Western island. It's a lot more lush than it's neighbouring continent(seriously, the place has no food, part of why the settling plan is pretty rigid), so I sent my next settler there instead, it lands next turn. I think I have 4 more settler already built on the chain into the area and more coming.

The two southern cities are ex-barb spots btw. Mine sucks, with 0 resources, but hey it was free. Comm's is great with 3 resources. I can't hold any animosity for him over that, I'd accept shit borders for such a high quality free city. I wish we could have nicely split up the rest of the continent though.

There are two other pieces of Astro land to think about:


Top left of the screenshot is the south of the original continent I settled with Comm, that he is keeping as backlines. I could sail around the world wrap quite easily and settle there. All sorts of reasons it's not worth it though. It's not worth setting up a galleon chain to do it, so settlers are better off chained into the OH contested continent instead. I'm sure relationships with Comm would really plummet too. It's just sweet to think about while he is making such bold claims elsewhere. I guess the only practical application would be to sail a galleon up from this direction to tell him to stop taking his time.

The other piece of Astro land is south of the Necrium Rogue continent. Well, I don't know it's there, but it's a pretty safe guess based on the map setup. It's also designated Mack-topia. I don't think he's pushed there too hard yet though and as the land dries up I should consider it. Both Comm and OH also have access to this area.

That's the Astro goals, the tech goals are also interesting. I've been barrelling through the techs towards Banking with a 60% known tech bonus. I'll do some heavy wealth building to 1t it next turn and get into Mercantilism finally. I'll also probably take the opportunity to jump into Nationhood and draft 30 or so maces. Then I need to finish the golden age with either Constitution(Rep), Lib -> Constitution, or Economics(GM, Free Market). Liberalism would be my preferred choice, because it allows me to get into Environmentalism as well. My empire is so big that Bureau is not that efficient, Nationhood and Vassalage have their strong points but Environmentalism is worth a lot of gpt to a Merc economy. On the plus side, I'm in a golden age, I have a GS prepared(well 90% chance) to bulb Education and I'm the only person with Philosophy. On the negative side, Mack has been saving up a war chest, he just turned on tech and picked up Paper. He must be going for Economics IMO, the only question is whether he will try to Liberate the tech also. I'll have to evaluate his capabilities before I make a final decision. There's no way I can contest Economics but I might be able to contest Lib(they cost the same except Lib requires Philosophy). If it's close I should consider going for it, again on the basis that risks make sense. Beating mack to one of these first-to boni, which are so expensive if you don't win, is one of the best ways to pull him back.

[darrelljs]

That was a great update. Its been a very fun game to lurk due to updates like this.

Darrell

[The Black Sword]

Thanks for the kind words, it makes me want to update more often.



For some reason the game tells everyone I've converted to HR/Nat/Merc, but not that I've gone backwards to Paganism. Hey, Pagans are cheap. I had to go with Nationhood in the end, because of an annoying immortal on the northern OH island. Bureau is only worth about 25gpt and 12hpt anyway though, if I draft at least twice a turn it should be worth it.

Rest of the turn is too complicated to work out tonight. I saw a massive top GNP last turn, along with Mack picking up Meditation, and was sure I would see Philosophy fall this turn too. But that was not the case, I think the top rival just had a bunch of KTB and pre-req boni. Racing looks possible, but it depends how many Great People mack has to boost him along.