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

[BRickAstley]

Sudden expected appearance.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

And my photo of the tech screen? I already reported that Retep had Rifling.

I'm skimping on reporting some because I've been busy at work and the turns take too long, are exhausting, and leave few good options. Eventually, no matter how strong you are, the technologically inferior are eaten alive. Retep poses a two-sided problem: he has a unit we can't easily counter (Redcoats, strength 14, +25% vs mounted, +25% vs gunpowder), and absolute superiority on the seas that we can't tech to parity in anything approaching a reasonable timeframe. Current time just to get to caravels at Optics: 84 turns.

So, if we swap to Representation (eat a turn of anarchy) we can tech a little faster, but we lose the -25% bonus to producing military units that we can't afford anyway. The unit costs get worse each turn. I'm in favor of eating the turn of anarchy and praying that we can dissuade retep from attacking by putting our huge stacks in our core coastal cities. Of course, he has little to stop him from taking our Moai city and everything north and west of there. Those cities are lightly held, except the one near Kuro with sheep and clams, but even that would fall after a couple galleys unload with 5-6 redcoats after a few turns. Other cities have much less for defense. I need to sandbox to see what kinds of odds we would get vs an amphibious redcoat attack with CG2 muskets. That's probably the best defense we can manage in most of these cities, but to get them in time we'd surely have to whip down further, raising unit costs (but reducing maintenance. ha!) but otherwise eliminating economic potential.

If I convert every city to wealth, we can raise ~260g/t. For comparison, suttree is over 700g/t in his rump state to our south. Infrastructure makes a huge difference. We have 30+ cities. That's a free 3 beakers in each city from Representation/Mercantilism. Every bit helps. If we eat a turn of anarchy. The best thing I could do is just whip a courthouse everywhere that lacks one. A quick guess is that would save us ~5-6g in ~20 cities, so 100g-120g each turn. But, then we're also whipping off cottages here and there, so a little less than that. And, whipping hard is why we're so economically stagnant as it is. We are working a lot of farm tiles trying to regrow from our whipping spree.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: If we don't tech, we die a slow, grinding death (universe expands forever). If we do tech and retep and suttree come for us and we haven't continued building units, we die quicker (universe expansion halts, collapses in on itself), but we still die. Maybe not completely, though, because after we are invaded, we start whipping for survival and at some point become more trouble than we're worth. Like Kuro vs. WilliamLP. Once WilliamLP got second ring borders over some ocean tiles, he opened up access to more free western islands, so can peacefully expand again. Retep can expand to the east forever and really only has to separate us from our northern islands and raze our coastal core cities to reduce us to non-threat status. That's what I expect him to do. Suttree only has his personal redemption to play for, so he pretty much has to come for us. No bully likes to be embarrassed, and he very likely can't win either, so he's going to be gunning for us.

Can we win? No. We are way too far behind technologically to be able to approach any winning condition. We could magically eat all of suttree, Kuro, Oxy, and maybe even Molach and still almost certainly lack anything close to winning by domination given all the free land out there and how big the map is. And, no one would let us just do that. We aren't winning a space race, way too far behind in tech. Culture? That is probably our best bet, but again, technology deficit is large and someone would invade us and stop it. PB6 really was an exceptional circumstance, IMO, and unlikely to be repeated. Conquest is out, and we won't win a time victory with others able to expand into infinity for free.

Since we can't win, I'm not sure what to play for, other than survival and just to do the best we can with our position. If we could get to Astronomy then I'd try to make a fight of it with retep, even with our tremendous tech disadvantage. If we could diplo I'd have been arranging a dog pile for 75 turns now. Probably, though, the best we can hope to do is just hold on to what we have and prevent retep from getting stronger at our expense. If we fight, he gets the north free and clear, but at least the GLH will be obsolete for him soonish. We can afford to lose the north if we can keep former Sisubstan/suttreeland. The land is just better and the suttree cities at least have infrastructure.

So I think what we have to do is just try to hold the line against suttree and retep on our side of the water, and be prepared to swallow our disappointment when we lose the Moai, stone, and all those icy filler cities. We'll pack cataphracts into our coastal cities to prevent easy amphibious capture/razes via sheer numbers, leave catapults in small stacks where we can hopefully collateral disembarking Redcoats, and try to make retep see that we just aren't going to be worth the trouble. He has to see our GNP. The fundamentals of the Byzantine economy are not good, and we're only going to get further behind in the next 15-20t. After that, if left alone, maybe we can recover some, but we still won't have rifles. Maybe he can't know that, but I hope he thinks like that. Suttree, though, is going to come for us no matter what, so we just need to be ready to deal with that. I just don't know how to defend both fronts effectively at such a vast distance, especially when retep has complete initiative attacking out of the sea fog, and suttree has initiative attacking out of cultural superiority. Should I just invade suttree? I'm afraid if I do that then retep basically has to attack us or risk us becoming that much stronger. What's the opposite of a paper tiger? We're more like a lumbering troll. Strong but stupid.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Pictures, and not all of them relevant because I may have posted some of these already.




Accepted.




Xenu annoyed me until I took city screens to show tile configuration last turn to see how I was going to deal with the starvation in our new cites. Lucky lurkers!




Overflow in both of the previous cities is going to a musket.




3 pop whip upcoming next turn. Yes, I spent 10k words saying how shitty our economy is, so I'm going to plant another city and whip down a city that has good economic potential with actual infrastructure and mature cottages. Borders pop at EoT, this pic was from last turn.




Renamed Pork Chop or something now. I swapped this turn to work the wines and give the cottage to one of those starving bastard cities we got from suttree.




A 2 for 1 shot, again, tile configuration to make Xenu stop sending requests. He's sometimes as insistent and nagging as...well, my wife doesn't read RB, so her. Also, another settler! It will whip next turn, 184.




We're awesome!




I think Xenu posted this last turn too.




This really is a dump all the pictures report. I took it, you get to see it. This is after T183. Apparently I didn't take any pictures at all of this turn.




Xenu nagged again, so I took this. As we knew, suttree and retep are in Nationhood and are drafting. And, oh, hey, look at all those guys who can build infrastructure in Organized Religion. Well, that would be nice.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Airport security took away my wife's single serving applesauce cups. I asked the TSA screener if he knew how much airline food cost, my protest fell on deaf ears.

Is there a faster way to radicalize someone than taking away your applesauce?

Boldly just do what you can. "Everything falls apart, it's scientific.". We've had a decent run in this game and haven't played too terribly, can't win 'em all.

Initiate radio silence sequence!

[scooter]

Is there a faster way to radicalize someone than taking away your applesauce?

QOTM.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T184








That's a fair number of whips/drafts up north. Sigh.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Greeted to this logging in to T185:

[NobleHelium]

And the winner is?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

And the winner is?

He'll be the winner, but he has to spend hammers to capture whipped down cities, obviously. No way I give it to him for free and fully intact and let him come at me full strength in 10t anyway. Suttree will be fighting us in the south soon, so this is going to be bloody either way. Waiting won't help anything.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Even the easy stuff isn't easy for us in this game.




My response to retep's "offer".




Another view.




And what he can expect to see coming into our southern beaches, which he probably will not do right away. On the ocean (of tears ) I've placed signposts 2N of my cities (2E at Revival) listing the total number of troops on the left and the number of cataphracts on the right. I put everything that could reach into a city this turn into one, so that's why there is an imbalance between ML and HF. Obviously I will readjust next turn to put more units in ML, as it is by far more important. Really, though, I don't see good options with phracts vs. Redcoats and Galleons. The best I can do is 2 promo muskets, so I'm doing that en masse.




Whipping sends power up...








...and everything else down...




Except for land area, because I'm filling in the dotmap, double rainbow invasion be damned.

Not pictured, basically anything that retep politely requested at gunpoint that he can take from my cold, dead hands. They're all busy whipping units. Nothing to see. I had written all of that off anyway, so I'm not that upset if/when he goes for it. Is it coincidence or...something else... that his diplo offer is so neatly timed up with when I had very recently posted my long post on what's certain to happen up north? Probably. I mean, it's obvious, so yeah, not worried about spoilerage.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Avatar update to reflect how PB11 makes me feel.