[SPOILERS - PBEM17] Kyan Does Dallas. The Orange Sensation.

[oledavy]

It just occured to me, building the Great Wall all those turns ago might actually finally pay off

Note to Self: Protect Jaffa & the SoZ - make it as painful to take me down as possible.

[Kyan]

It just occured to me, building the Great Wall all those turns ago might actually finally pay off

Note to Self: Protect Jaffa & the SoZ - make it as painful to take me down as possible.

Your thread is brilliant to read. I'm so glad you took over mate. I've spent an incredible amount of time in and out of hospitals recently in waiting rooms with nowt better to do so have read through this completely. It's great reading. Top work.

[oledavy]

Your thread is brilliant to read. I'm so glad you took over mate. I've spent an incredible amount of time in and out of hospitals recently in waiting rooms with nowt better to do so have read through this completely. It's great reading. Top work.

Thanks mate!

Though, sorry to hear you've been in and out of hospitals recently. I hope it's nothing serious.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

It just occured to me, building the Great Wall all those turns ago might actually finally pay off

Note to Self: Protect Jaffa & the SoZ - make it as painful to take me down as possible.

The Morally Correct thing to do when facing insurmountable odds

[oledavy]

Sent this to Shoot:

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Hey Shoot,

To be honest, I balked a bit at that price when I read your email. I do think that if Novice and Darrell get embroiled in a costly war vs. me (who has the SoZ to boot), that a golden age twenty turns from now instead of five turns will still be relevant to the game. Nonetheless, I do acknowledge there is a large opportunity cost for you. Would 6,000 gold still be palatable for you?

In any event, I just researched industrialism and am turning off research. Upgrading everything will take a few turns (sped up by the golden age), then I'll be in a position to run 100% gold for a few turns to repay you. If you're at a crucial tech bottleneck or need the gold sooner than that, let me know and I'll see what I can work out.

On a related note, how do you feel about selling battleships?

Cheers!
Dave[/COLOR]

Hopefully he'll accept my counter-offer, still a steep price for a great person. I feel like I'm setting some RB record here for most expensive great scientist ever sold. The fact is that I need it, plain and simple.

After the conclusion of this game, when I write up my Everything I Did Wrong in Empire Management post. Right between "failure to effectively use HR" and "inadequate implementation of workshop economy" will be: "poor use of specialists and golden ages."

If I'd run more specialists, saved my two-GP golden age for later, or built a few less academies (4 total), I would not be in this situation right now.

It's rather ironic in hindsight. After playing alongside Mackoti for awhile and gaining more experience in MP Civ, I decidedly favor running specialist economies in the eternal CE vs. SE debate. Without trying to re-open that argument, I just feel like a well-run SE gives you more options during the early and mid game, and lends itself to conversion for a late game workshop economy. Yet this game overall shows poor use of specialists on my part.

Meh, c'est la vie

I feel really out of my depth about to fight against Darrell/Krill, Novice/Spaceman. Mack rates Krill & Novice as the best and second best players on the site respectively. After reading over Krill's games and seeing Novice in PBEM13 & PBEM23, I'm inclined to agree. Darrell and Spaceman are no slouches either, and the four of them vs. me is going to provide a stern challenge to say the least.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

You're FIN/CRE! Screw specialists, coast tiles are already as good as specialists, and your cottages will be competitive with specialists within 6 turns. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with spending food on specialists if you don't feel the need to turn food into whip hammers.

[oledavy]

You're FIN/CRE! Screw specialists, coast tiles are already as good as specialists, and your cottages will be competitive with specialists within 6 turns. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with spending food on specialists if you don't feel the need to turn food into whip hammers.

Yes, if you're financial, the cottage economy is obviously the way to go. To really leverage a specialist economy you need spiritual or philosophical. Running a specialist economy would not have gone over very well this game as Willem of the Dutch

I was just saying I never really identified and groomed a city to produce Great People if I needed them, such as in a situation like this. Virgil was the first great person I birthed in about 40 turns, all the while Shoot, Darrell, NoSpace, and even Rego were all producing them out the wazoo.

Those that I did birth, I don't think I leveraged extremely well. I built academies in Constantinople, Acre and Jaffa. However, I never got the full beaker value out of these that I could have gotten saving them for a golden age, or bulbing astronomy, for example. None of these three cities was ever fully cottaged as an academy city should be, or grown out to work all the commerce tiles in its radius.

I was calling myself out on this failure, not saying I should have run specialists instead of growing cottages as a financial civ.

[oledavy]

Two emails from Shoot:

[COLOR="SeaGreen"]I know 8000 seems large, but at least for me that is only 4 turns of running 100% gold, which doesn't seem like a huge cost for a GA. I'd be willing to compromise for something like 6500 if that would work for you. Also, the gold would not need to be paid all at once -- my expenses are only 350/turn, so I'd be fine with it being paid over a 15-20t period (and am also fine with there being a gap before you start paying to support your war effort).

A quick note, I need you to gift that EI -- I can't load my GS into it while it is still under your control.

I also would be happy to sell you battleships. Let me know what terms you were thinking of.

Shoot[/COLOR]

Scratch the gifting of the EI, I forgot I just produced a transport near there; will use that.

And my response:

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Hey Shoot,

Agreed, 6500 gold for Ms. Franklin sounds good.

I thought I did gift the East Indiamen - guess I forgot to press the button. Will I have the Great Scientist for next turn?

I was thinking 150 gold for each battleship (1=1 hammers to gold). I realize you typically value hammers higher, but with all the multipliers in place at this point in the game (including dry docks for ships), I thought this exchange rate was more equitable. I'm interested in any military you're willing to sell/give - but especially ships and planes. Land units for defending my cities on Rego's old continent would also be pretty useful too.

After I upgrade everything, pay you back, and tech flight + military science, I'm going to be rolling in money for as long as I'm in this game. If you can funnel me war materiel, I can fund your research machine.

Let me know what you think.

Dave[/COLOR]

6,500 gold for a Great Scientist when all is said and done.

[NobleHelium]

Academies are overrated.

[regoarrarr]

Academies are overrated.

Especially in a non-capital