[SPOILERS] Bobchillingworth Steals Your Heart

[Bobchillingworth]

lol, Rusten sent me a trade message of my horses and iron for my declaring on Lewwyn, about an obvious message as possible that I'm about to be attacked by Spanish Knights. I'm slightly insulted that he thought I needed it spelled out as such, but then again I was slow to really get into building military, and he has a vested interest in my not dying quick- at least, not on the Lewwyn front; Rusten is quite likely to jump in against me to grab his own share, I think.



Going to run 100% gold for several turns to upgrade Holkans to Pikes.

[Bobchillingworth]

I guess Lewwyn wants at least a small challenge? Still hasn't declared yet, which has given me time to whip and hastily upgrade enough Pikes to stuff eight in my frontlines city, behind castle defenses. That isn't an impressive array of power, but at least he can't just waltz in with a few Knights out of the fog now.


Rusten isn't much further ahead, so maybe I can outrun the bear? Unlikely he isn't aiming at me no matter what though, especially since Rusten still has OB with him, for whatever reason.


Kind of weird that Lew hasn't bothered to snipe any cities off SD though. He could at least take a decent island city. I'd totally try to poach some of Rusten's if he was collapsing.

[Bobchillingworth]

lol omg wtf





Wasn't expecting Lew to declare on Rusten; perhaps upgrading all those Holkans actually paid off. Going to at least try to pinch Rusten's island city to the south, and then perhaps try to build up small fleet to go raiding- though he can probably reinforce his larger island easily, since it has a couple decent cities on it.


Would love to capture / burn Rusten's other border cities, but though I can certainly take them, I'd them be spread thin against Lew's giant Knight stack. As it is, I'm going to need to get a lot more Pikes on the soon-to-be-ex Rusten front.


Going to be in a lot of trouble once Lew gets his UU online, but I'll figure that out if and when I get to that point. Maybe I'll actually build some of those WE I've heard so much about.

[Bobchillingworth]

Shoot, Lew captured Gemswap instead of burning it; figured he'd get rid of it due to the culture I'm putting on the city tile, but perhaps he has some sort of plan to hold it. Oh well.

[Bobchillingworth]

Game seems to be rocketing to its grand finale; Lew is eating Rusten, and NobleGas are eating Serdoa, who tried to take a chunk out of Rusten for himself but apparently committed too many units in the process.


SD is still around, but has only a few cities left; he'll be stuck playing Pirate Lord for a while, I guess.


I'm probably okay for the time being, got just enough military to be obnoxious for anyone who wants to conquer me, but Lew will surely eventually destroy me if he doesn't get embroiled in a conflict with the Byzantines.


The Maya pick is sadly looking like a complete waste; never attempted to do anything fancy with the UU (and really I'd have needed Aggressive to improve the odds of a rush with it from "impossible" to "improbable"), starting techs hardly helped, and the UB I picked the civ for has been entirely unnecessary, as I have an abundance of happiness already without it.



Also, while I'm reflecting on things, early on in the game organizing thread I wrote:

This is basically a nostalgia game, right?  Therefore, consider including the following:


* Forests in ocean tiles and/or on mountains

* Randomly generated terrain modified to somehow be even less balanced

* A "wonderland" filled with 20 floodplains grassland gems tiles, accessible only via Astronomy because the tech clearly needs a boost

* Chokepoints everywhere for a tactical experience

* Barbarian Submarines

Well, items #1 & 4 are certainly present, and some might argue #2 as well. Not so sure about those Barbarian Submarines (though one could be in an unfortable lake and nobody would ever know...), but I do note that there is a conspicuous lack of gems on the map, and just enough fogged tiles in the deep ocean to conceal some islands

[pindicator]

I'm still waiting for 5 to show up

[shallow_thought]

Game seems to be rocketing to its grand finale

I'm sorry that this game hasn't been quite as much fun, or allowed for as much artistic(?) expression as you'd hoped for.

But, for whatever reason, fate seems to have decreed your survival into the late game. Anything you can still honourably do to enjoy yourself?

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I haven't had a bad time with this game, and am enjoying the turns well enough. My civ is effectively out of contention solely due to my own errors in judgement and playing. I'm just a little disappointed that I significantly misjudged the value of having cheap ballcourts. In retrospect I should have picked a civ like Mali or the Khmer. It's not a big deal, though.


Right now my plans are to A: not die (or at least not die easily), and B: try to vulture at least a little land from Rusten.


Longer-term, I really have no idea. Try to survive to Rifling and make a desperate attempt at a Culture win, perhaps. I don't have a grudge against any civs in the game, having never been treated particularly badly by any of the players, and therefore zero desire to play a kingmaker role even if I'm ever in the position to do so.

[Bobchillingworth]

Lew offered me OB, which I accepted to replace Rusten's, which I lost this turn by declaring on him, and then a second trade where he gifted me 10 gpt; accepted that one too ofc, but I don't understand what it was supposed to signify. "Let's be friends", I guess?



Unrelated, having now scouted most of the map, I have a question for Pin: why do I have so many horse resources? Not that I'm complaining, I appreciate the production, but I have four of them, whereas everyone else has between 0 - 2 (though Rusten looks to have taken Serdoa's via Pyramids culture). Maybe one of mine was "supposed" to have been Lew's, but if that's the case then both silvers to my north were intended for him as well.


In other, mortifying news, I haven't built a single mounted unit all game

[pindicator]

It was intended to be spread out so that everyone had multiple.