[SPOILERS] Big Oil! F. Dreylin Roosevelt of the Vikings

[Hollybombay]

Any updates for us lurkers?

[Dreylin]

Hmmmm. Well I expect to be food at some point this game. Lack of early-game traits (and focus/planning) meant that I fell behind on expansion and lost a couple of settling races against TBS along the South and dtay in the NW. I've now planted all my fillers and am still several cities behind both, but I do have Forges in most of my cities thanks to IND so have a decent production base.

I've just discovered Iron Working and will be starting a bunch of Swords soon; I think my route for expansion is amphibiously through dtay's extreme colonies, but I will need a central defense force to block the likely counterattack. I think I might have to make a move against him soon, so it could be Swords off boats on offense and Cats & HAs on defense.

Alternatively, I grab CoL next and improve my economics with cheap Courthouses and then push a bit deeper into the tree first. Rusten recently landed Conf., but I haven't seen any tick to the Espionage chart from anyone yet that would indicate Courthouses going up.

I'll probably meander my way into the latter...

[Dreylin]

Went for Courthouses; perhaps a questionable decision given my neighbours ramped up their armies. Fortunately they went for the other, weaker neighbour, but once he's Superdead I expect them to turn to me. Cats are starting to roll off the grid and then I'll be ramping up with 'phants as heavy hitters.

I landed a Great Engineer, but with nothing imminently available I'm probably going to spend him on a Golden Age to get me to CS and open up the large swaths of un-irrigated land. Trying to work out whether I can afford to switch to Caste for a spell, or if that would just encourage the inevitable attacks...

[Hollybombay]

Any pics/screenshots?

[Dreylin]

I can see about taking some.

[Dreylin]

So it turns out that I'm not going to be destroyed before I go on holiday later this week. I'd be worried about that potentially holding the game up from time-to-time, but it seems the rest of the players have that covered already. 

Still, I'll be travelling around a bit so the potential's there that a combo of turn-roll times and unreliable wi-fi might mean I need a sub at some point. Password is still in the first post.

Game plan at the moment is to gear up tech & unit-wise to stave off the inevitable destruction at the hands of my larger and better-equipped neighbours. Supposedly I'm gearing up to try to take a bite out of dtay, except I know that TBS has Astronomy and is probably positioning to sweep into my coast.

I've just gained access to Berserkers & Crossbows and am putting off a decision between Engineering (dtay is about to strike Guilds), Feud-Guilds myself, or just going to Astro myself and following the Xenu Pirate Empire model.

I suspect the latter will be more fun....

[superdeath]

any update?

[Dreylin]

Shhh....

[Dreylin]

t170 -

I didn't really get Astronomy in time to grab a (non-violent) share of the Astro islands, then I spotted this opportunity to get the drop on and cripple(?) a neighbour:








Of course wiping out his coast only gets me so far, so I'm also working on a force to start taking cities I can use:




I expect that it'll basically turn into a fight to the death until one of our more advanced neighbours show up to eat the remains, but at least it wouldn't be just waiting for that to happen anyway. As you can see from above, dtay has just revolted into Pacifism, and has not been building his army recently:




Probably not ready to declare next turn unless he spots me (mostly playing first in the turn has, I think, allowed me to avoid that) but the turn after I will have my last ships and a couple more Knights in place.

[Mardoc]

I didn't really get Astronomy in time to grab a (non-violent) share of the Astro islands, then I spotted this opportunity to get the drop on and cripple(?) a neighbour:


Probably not ready to declare next turn unless he spots me (mostly playing first in the turn has, I think, allowed me to avoid that) but the turn after I will have my last ships and a couple more Knights in place.

Yay!