[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[spacetyrantxenu]

Both, just used a general to heal promote to defend the stack.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Game paused. Peace with Kuro and Sisub. Lesson was razed. Play if you can, otherwise I'll get it in the morning. I'm not fighting with my wife a second night in a row over going to bed at midnight to play the turn. War weariness is already high with her.

Read bottom to top, as always.





And, suttree's contribution:



Not so bad, eh? The elephant put up a hell of a fight. Now, the situation:



I'll look it over and figure stuff out tomorrow.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T178 - I guess this is the turn we'll find out if Suttree is fighting us to make gains for himself or if he's only trolling us and being a jerk. He should be able to raze both of the other two cities we captured from Sisub (they're undefended). If he doesn't send a settler into the vacated territory to resettle cities I'm going to have to go with the theory that he's trolling because there's no other reason I can think of to simply raze all those cities when he could have held them with his muskets. Example: You don't raze a size 10 city (former capital, so good land!) because it doesn't fit your dotmap. So why raze it? He could obviously hold it with all those muskets, many of them promoted to guerilla I. I don't understand razing that city at all, which makes me completely question what Suttree's motives are here. If he just wants to have a little fun with war because he knows he can't win the game, well...whatever, our war civics are better than his and he better get in a big hurry to try conquering us because our production from now on is dedicated to killing his army.

Speaking of that, photo time.




This is from earlier in the turn. We thought about running around his stack to burn his two northern cities before his culture extended next turn but he pillaged the roads (and cottage/villages on top of them) to keep us from exploiting the neutral gap like he was able to. Good tactical move...but he's having to damage his own tiles to protect his cities from a campaign that so far has netted him zero profit and has denied land from a team that clearly isn't a contender to win the game. So what is the point? Suttree, I'm interested to read your thread after the game to figure out what you were after here. If you really want to fight someone why not test Oxy again? At least you can take and keep cities from him once you burn off his catapults.




Suttree shouldn't be able to take any of our Byzantine cities unless he's willing to let his whole stack die in our territory, and he'd have to raze anything he did take anyway because there's no way he could hold it. So I don't see value in him pushing further north against us. We've withdrawn our army into our territory where we'll finally have some movement advantage. That giant fork from Sisub's vacated territory has been a huge pain in the ass, but his movement edge will be gone if he pushes further north. Even defending a line in a giant arc like we are now we can move 6 tiles to his two, so with single move units stacked in zone defense in the east and west and with our giant phract stack (29 well promoted right now) positioned at the top of the arc, we can cover every single city Suttree can threaten. I don't know if he realizes it, since he doesn't know where our units are, but if he moves in he'll quickly see it. The smart thing for him to do would be to kill Sisub and capture (keep) the last Red city, try to resettle the area around the Sisub capital, and try to get on in peace with us.

Anyway, that's enough of a report, that's the only part of our game that matters, and from a global perspective this war is irrelevant anyway. Fighting between civs that are not contenders to win is pointless unless one of the sides is having fun. I'm not having fun, so Suttree goddamn well better be. He's basically wasted the spoils of our entire golden age. I'm pretty pissed about that. If he is having fun with this game my hope is that we can make him loathe playing the turns soon, just like we do. Suttree, see the power graph (T179)?




Shit just got personal, that yellow line is all yours. Also, this will help:




Have fun with pinch promotions on many of our phracts. We get 3 promotions in every Jewish city that build them. Normally I tilt in games before I'm out of the running and kill my chances to win but whatever, not this time, we can't win and don't have anything else to play for now. So permawar with Suttree. Enjoy. Someone, please enjoy. I'm sooo done with this game. (Maybe I'm not expressing myself well here -- I'm not pissed that Suttree is attacking us, I'm pissed because he's not even improving his own position by attacking us. If it's just to hurt us, it's a troll move. Does that remind anyone of when Halvgud did the same thing earlier after the Reds incompetently gave away half of their land to Suttree?). Moving on.

You know who isn't done with the game?

T178 Techs



T179 Techs

Retep isn't done. He finished up Replaceable Parts and has probably started researching Rifling. Now I wonder what he'll do with those.... Too bad we'll be in grudge mode against Suttree, eh? WilliamLP also picked up Gunpowder, it looks like, so I'm sure we'll see muskets in his border city with us. But we're not attacking him anyway. Go finish eating Kuro and level up, William. Maybe you can make a run at Retep or Wetbandit. But probably not.

Obligatory view of the rest of the empire. All those workers we took from Kuro are basically just going to cost us maintenance, there isn't a lot of productive work for them to do. Guess we'll build more ice roads in case we one day have ice road truckers.




All of our phracts are moving back to the south to join in on the fun down there.




I'm keeping an eye on EP spending, although now that just means spending all of our points on Suttree.




Too bad Retep is spending against us, I'd like to keep his graphs so we'll know when he's about to thump us later but we don't have enough EPs being generated for all that. Maybe he won't attack us, though, taking our land doesn't help him build a space ship. He just needs a bigger navy than anyone else and he'll win the game. But having a swarm of redcoats on land is probably the best move for him until he gets destroyers built. Who knows if he'll keep them on his side of the ditch, though. I can see him floating across and razing our vulnerable core cities. We'd have to stack tons of units in our capital, 2nd, and (6th?) cities to hold onto them. Our island cities are all just waiting to die, to either William or Retep, because we can't get naval tech to parity against either of them. Well, not while we're losing cash at 0% science. KEEP BUILDING MILITARY!




Demographics:

T178 End of Turn



T179 Start of Turn

At least that 113 GNP is at 0% science. But we're going to have to dedicate a few cities to building wealth, probably Mister Love and a few others to balance the budget. We opted to not leave our war civics because triple promotions are so delicious and we're just building military anyway, but in a vacuum I'd much rather use representation/bureaucracy/caste over police state/vassalage/slavery, but we are what we are. I think we're the old Soviet Union, rusty swords, lots of 'em, and not such a good economy. Only we're not a world power. Something like that. Anyway, once Sisub and Kuro are finally dead you'll probably be seeing our GNP represented as rival worst in F9 for a while to come. Yay.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ha, that didn't take long.




Anxious to play, Suttree? So he razed both of the remaining Sisub cities. Either he is holding a grudge and is doing a bit of ethnic cleansing in the old Unpronounceable Empire or he really has no idea what the point of fighting a war is (protip: taking and keeping land!).

We'll see where he leaves his army at the end of the turn. If he's smart he'll offer peace and go home. I don't think I'd accept peace now, though, seriously, fuck him.

[flugauto]

You have a Great Engineer?

[spacetyrantxenu]

We had one, bulbed him into Gunpowder and finished the tech at 100% science the same turn. So we can take pinch promotions beginning the next turn (this turn now).

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ha. Hahahahahahaa. No. Just...no.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T179

Yeah, suttree, don't insult me. I have nothing to gain by making peace. This game is over for us, and for you. Particularly after you see that our GA has ended and we stayed in war civics. This is over when one of us is gone.




I've moved a sentry to Oxy's land to scout for opportunities vs. suttree.




Here's how we're setting up our troops. Suttree looks positioned to kill Sisub's last city. We're in position to counterattack him and deal some heavy damage to his stack. You can just see the signpost for his stack at the bottom. I deleted the scouting chariot rather than let him see I have knowledge of his stack's location. Anyway, if he attacks Sisub, both of my stacks can hit him. I've offered open borders to Sisub. If he accepts, I can take a shot at his border city. The western stack was healing this turn and can cover anywhere that suttree could move his stack in our territory.




Blah.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Economy...underwhelming!

[spacetyrantxenu]

I logged in to have a look at the game this morning since Halvgud hasn't rolled the turn yet and was greeted with an offer from Oxy:




I declined it so other people won't see the deal (I replied back with a gift of one gold -- Oxy, that means yes! ), but I'm hoping he's intending it as an offering of aggression against Suttree, that's how I'm interpreting it. But who knows. At this point I prefer the PB9 style text AI-additions -- declare war on X (but not the turn timing part), or close borders (aka, We demand yous top trading) with X, etc. Probably not the "you should use our religion/civics" messages though. Anyway, the point is that it's really obvious we'd like some foreign intervention to help beat up Suttree now. And earlier in the game while Retep's snowball was building and more teams were in the game (including us!) I would have called for a dogpile on the geography sweepstakes winner clear leader. I don't doubt that if I had offered war against Retep to both William and Suttree that one or both of them would have committed to it.

Can you imagine if William had attacked Retep's north instead of Kuro? Or if Suttree had attacked Retep's south/east instead of screwing us? In that circumstance if we had commitments from both William and Suttree I can see a scenario where we attacked the middle. Given that there wouldn't be good coordination I don't think we'd have killed off Retep but we could have for sure brought him back into the balance of power and given more teams a real chance to win the game. I know there's the old adage that if you need to coordinate a dogpile it's probably time to organize a concession instead, but it would serve a purpose of making the game more interesting for a longer period of time, kind of like wild card teams chasing the playoffs make the late season more worthwhile for teams that are marginally still in the hunt. Anyway, like other settings we got wrong in this game it's something to learn from. The setup thread for pitboss 16 seems to prefer the PB9 style AI diplo and I think they have it about right.

Back to our game it's really annoying that Halvgud is waiting until last to play his turn. That means we don't know yet if we'll get open borders with him and having a chance to hitting Suttree's army. BGN, quick question for you, if you're sure that Suttree's army is on the tile it is on, shouldn't our MUSTER stack be 1 SE or 1S/2E this turn? Where the stack is now it can probably hit Suttree's weakened army if he attacks Renewal, but it can't hit the city. If we reposition to either of the positions I mentioned we'd have more flexibility in attacking that area without giving anything up in terms of defending our west -- we could still hit any position he can reach from the tile you marked as stationing his army this turn. If you overlooked that earlier let me know and I can change it in the next little while unless Halvgud plays. Or not -- actually now I remembered why you didn't move the army, it's finally getting a chance to heal this turn. So never mind. We can still attack his wounded units, and since there are 8 units in Renewal there should at least be significantly wounded units to clean up, if we can get to them. Also, if Suttree attacks Renewal our eastern stack can hit it just fine, I didn't realize you had sent so many units into that stack. What was it, every healthy phract?

I pondered the map for a few minutes looking for where to send the settler from Tyler in two turns.




A few of the proposed sites are mutually exclusive, but what are your thoughts on it? Settle on hills around the edge and sort of cautiously extend our culture, or go right to the middle and resettle Learning where it used to be? Should we also try to resettle around Renewal? I'm sure Suttree won't like it much, and he has burned every other Sisub city, no way he lets that one stand right? If he doesn't burn it we will, though, he can't have that spot so close to Revival.

I've been trying to twist my brain around and understand what exactly Suttree has been after in his stupid razing campaign and all I can come up with is that he wants a neutral zone between us. To enforce peace? You know what would do a better job of that? Not razing our captured cities and having a suitable standing army to keep us from invading him. That would guarantee peace. What he has done is guarantee war. So surely he didn't kill those cities thinking it would make things go better between us. That's my only idea, though, unless we see some quick settler action from him after he burns and moves Renewal. So let's say he does that, he settles a pair of quick cities to replace the ones he burned. He better settle them really carefully and close to his border if we'd even consider letting them stand. That's if he buys a good enough peace deal, which I'm not sure he realizes he will need to do. That offer of white peace he sent simply flies in the face of reality and defies all logic emotion. I've had a day to think it over and there's still absolutely no way I will ever sign a white peace with him. He owes reparations and he'll pay them before he gets peace.

Anyway, I don't think I have much more than this for now. Though I think we should start building a few other settler soon. Our previously marginal spots aren't as marginal now, and we will be running smaller cities than in the past given higher whip penalties, so sharing more tiles between smaller cities will be a good way to keep them all worked. So we'll need to add the filler city south of the Mister Love and east of Happy Face in addition to the one(s) we resettle in old Sisubistan. And do you think it's worth settling the wheat city in the north, east of Stars Above? I'm not sure on that one. Now, how to add these cities and still afford them while we're losing cash at 0% slider... Oh, also...we really need to pack Hell Below with cultural buildings. We're about to lose its mine tile and then the city really will have no production. But I guess the payoff of spending a lot of hammers on buildings to prevent losing that tile probably isn't worth it when those hammers can be spent toward killing Suttree. This game, so meh.