The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)

[The Black Sword]

Hmm, no Corp for the Old Tourists, I had to make liberal use of my Rep specialists to make it by the skin of my teeth. I guess they must be going for Democracy instead. They're Fin, their hammer output is relatively poor, beaker output relatively high and they're still in slavery, so they don't have much workshops. All signs point to a hard cottage economy. Ah well, nice of them to take the temptation of Statue of Liberty off the table for me. Even as Spi, I'm not sure if it would be worth swapping out of Rep/Caste for US/emancipation for a few turns.

I need to evaluate the techs after that, they all look important, hopefully I can find some that are more important than others.

[The Black Sword]

Pitboss, I'm getting really tired of your crap.



Looks like the bloody city revolted at the end of my turn, costing me 21b and by extension hundreds of gold from Corporation.

[The Black Sword]

No pictures I'm afraid, I don't seem to have time to update when I'm at home right now. Anyway, after the Corp mishap, I one turned Replaceable Parts, which was crazy good value now with the KTBs and the Khmer hills. Corp was worth a bit less than I expected, since I finally ran out of foreign trade routes on this massive map. Still 300gpt at least.

What to tech now is a bit of a conundrum. I think I'm going to save gold for 3 or 4 turns, since nothing is immediately useful. Oxford comes in 4 but that might be a bit too much gold saved. Then we'll industrialise; Astro->Chem-> Steam Power -> Assembly Line. If I need Rifling I'll pick it up for defence.

I think this path is the best value right now and goes well with my other macro plans. I have 3 or 4 more Nat turns, then 5t Bureau before Wall Street completes and we're into Pacifism. That will pump out GPs for my 24t golden age. It makes sense to get Levees built before that and have strong buildings like Factories to put the GA hammers into. I should set up somewhere to build the Pentagon too, it will save me having to switch in and out of Theocracy.

I don't believe the war path is competitive with this right now. Any future invasion, even of Joey, needs to be based on Naval superiority. I won't have that for a while, but that's why I want Astro to start building my fleets and Destroyers will probably be a long term tech goal. Once I have some ships I might pick up Gavagai's city on my mainland and his 2 ice islands but nothing major.

What about other economic options? For one thing, none of them go so well with the golden age. Railroad requires Steam Power anyway, so I can double check then between that and Assembly Line, but I expect AL will win. Democracy is not in (Native) America's near future . Even as a Spi civ, it seems too expensive to drop Caste for a few turns for Emancipation. US might find some uses but not enough to justify that humongous beaker cost, Rep is better in general. So unless I roll a lucky Engineer, this is out. Liberalism might be worth it when I'm not dominated by OR and Pacifism, aka after Factories. Enviro actually beats Bureau at the moment, but not nearly by enough. Apart from that, we have the stuff after Scientific Method. Obsoleting my AP/Sistine Monasteries will really hurt though, wiping out most of the gains I'd get from Biology, as well as doubling it's cost. I don't think I want State Property over Free Market, at least for a while and Kremlin isn't so appealing with nerfed whips and no plans for US. There just remains the Gspy for a Phi civ. Physics is another item, like Biology, that I probably would prioritise if it didn't require Sci Meth. Airships would just be really handy IMO, not least because I could finally check out Old Tourist and BGN's land and make more informed decisions about my chances.

In more current news, I rolled a Great Prophet from Hornshark at 30% odds(also had 10% Engi), so that sorts out my 4 person GA. I'm sort of pondering a 5 person one at the minute! I also attacked the Khmer island, my GG treb stripping their defences completely. He had about 12 units, mixture of LBs and muskets on a hill, I had about 12 Cuirs. I lost 5 with odds centred around 75%. I shouldn't really complain, my luck has been pretty good on a whole and all of my Commando candidates survived. It was stupid to attack though, I would have had some suicide cats available next turn. Or if I was going to attack, I should have loaded more Cuirs on the boats last turn, not cats, to kill off his survivors amphibiously.

[The Black Sword]

Does anyone know the GP formula after 3000gpp btw?

I know it increases by 200 from 1k to 3k, but I'm not sure by how much it increases after that.

[Ceiliazul]

Not sure of the gpp formula, but I came to say something else:

5-man golden age MUST happen! I'm pretty sure its never been done on realms, perhaps in MP games anywhere! No idea if thats an optimal play, but it would be optimally cool.

[The Black Sword]

Heh, we'll see. I'm putting some spy and engineer pollution in the current set of GPs, if one pops out then I'll probably save it for a 5 person GA. I'm fairly confident about being able to generate another prophet at need. Assuming the game lasts long enough, another MoM GA probably can't be a bad thing.

I've been examining the late game tech tree, and I think once I get Industrialism, Radio, maybe Rocketry and Fission, I'll probably be set. Modern Armour is the only unit after this that would really worry me, but that's like 100k more beakers to get. It should still be possible to deal with them if I get the first strike.

[Ichabod]

Pitboss, I'm getting really tired of your crap.

Looks like the bloody city revolted at the end of my turn, costing me 21b and by extension hundreds of gold from Corporation.

I feel your pain, man. When I was playing Civ 5 PBEM 2, I planned like 20 turns earlier how I'd manage to delay my culture production so as to get the next Social Policy when I could choose Rationalism. On the last turn before I could do it, Pindicator used a missionary, DURING THE INTERTURN, to change the religion in one of my cities, which made me get 1 more culture than I could, since now pasture tiles were giving culture. So, my plan failed.

It's close to maddening when you don't get what the interface is telling you. It happens way too much in Civ 5, since the production is actually factured at the start of your next turn, not on the end of your current one. So, in PBEMs, you are susceptible to other players' actions all the time. And that's only the start of the UI problems there.

Anyway, long story short, that sucks.

[Commodore]

Although at the time I thought that was a brilliant attack by Pindicator. Except it was an accident.

[The Black Sword]

Instructions; Try and find 5 good drafts then revolt into Bureaucracy. If you think a city is too good to draft, and you can't find 5, that's fine. Just leave tech off again this turn, put any city that pops up on some economic building(Lib, harbour). Try to find something for the workers to do, windmilling hills is a theme these days.

Assuming it doesn't look like I'm getting attacked anywhere, you can probably just leave the military units where they are if you're not sure.

Main thing really is just to set builds in cities that don't have them, and revolt to Bureau, I'm sure I can live with anything else, so don't spend too much time on it.

Thanks!

[Gawdzak]

Played according to your instructions. Hope I didn't mess anything up.