[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 122.

I'm surprised the turn email didn't say "Good luck" since Ellimist did in fact whip Sirius for 6? population to finish the Mausoleum. Anyway, I'm done with Ellimist and his eternal chats. Any and all questions will be answered with "no comment" from now on.

We'll finish CS next turn and then launch our GA after that. I expect them to launch theirs next turn with their Prophet. We'll see what happens.

[Lewwyn]

So we got beat to MoM which is sad, but really I think we can easily recover here.

I think we should NOT tech Aesthetics. Instead we should beeline guilds. I see no point in wasting hammers into wonders that we don't really need at this point. Not when we could be using those hammers to build knights and EASILY take over half the map by conquering Jkaen. The dude is so far behind we will be able to just run knights through him in a matter of turns. Not only that, there's a good chance we could take out 2-3 of EMC's cities with knights as well. I don't want to focus on that though given we have so much land to our south and east so readily available.

Screw the wonders, lets just win the old fashion way. MOAR LAND PLEASE.

We should start building Barracks in different cities. We don't need to build any actual military yet (though a few more triremes and galley would be in order.)

Next turn we start the GA, switch to Burea+rep. Do we want to switch into Caste for maybe 7 turns? Then we tech Feud-Machinery-HBR-Guilds. At the end of GA we switch back to Slavery-vassalage and hell why not police state? We build knights in cities with barracks for 5XP maybe stables for 7. We run a few down overland and we send 2 galleys with 4 on the inner sea. We split Jkioan and just start owning him. We kill him, maybe engage in a pillaging war with EMC in order to slow him down.

I just see no reason to go after any wonders other than GW for fail gold. we should tech:

Feud>Machinery>HBR>Guilds>Construction (for bridge building, and defensive cats against EMC.)

Things I did this turn different from your signs:



I moved the galley SE in order to get the settler on since it wouldn't have had movement to move onto the Galley this turn. This allows the Galley to move the settler down a bit closer to the next site. Maybe unload on the roaded horse there.

We should really build another galley or 2 for transporting.

Demos:



We're just killing it in food, land, soldiers, pop. We should work to expand this lead. Our land is so much more developed, we can afford a war especially one that will be as lopsided as this one. Additionally its good to push for it because we'll be able to assimilate the land earlier AND put pressure on EMC. Also I don't want to lose any of that land to Juro, which is a possibility due to his HA's on the border with Jkaen.

I sent this message to Jkioan:

BTW You guys know that Kuro has HAs in a border city yes? I recommend you build a couple more spears on your border with him. We have an interest iin you not being eaten up and allowing Kuro to expand through you. We have enough to deal with when EMC keeps jacking our wonders with freaking 6-7 pop whips.

Lew

So hopefully that helps to keep them alive long enough for us to kill them. Spears will be easily run over by shock knights so we don't have to worry about them getting stronger. In fact if they build more military it might slow down their infrastructure/tech which is good for us.

[NobleHelium]

Not sure why you say we couldn't load the settler...the galley was in Hydrogen which is four tiles away from Lithium. Could have moved the settler into the city and then loaded it on the galley, no? Doesn't matter much either way.

I've been kind of annoyed at how I've played the last fifteen turns or so, so I tentatively agree with your attacking plan. But EMC might still have research visibility on us for another turn or two, so it might be better to disguise our tech if they still do (we can look up the formula next turn and see whether they do or not). I'm not sure if we can tech HBR in 1t with the overflow or not. If we can then obviously we should, since they won't be able to see if we finish it immediately. Plus then we can start building stables immediately. I don't see any reason to tech Feudalism first when that gives us Vassalage which we're not using immediately. I'm not sure if we need Vassalage at all, if we can build enough stables it doesn't really do much.

[Lewwyn]

I agree with this. We can definately 1 turn HBR. We can spend the GA building barracks and stables. THOUGH we don't need stables in every city just the highest production ones. The others can continue infrastructure.

[NobleHelium]

I don't think we should swap to Caste System, only a couple cities can make use of it really and it's still useful to whip some stuff in some of the other cities, like Phosphorus which has no production, and Fluorine might be outgrowing its improved tiles still.

The settler is going to Jkioan's border to found that city really far south, yes? That's what I planned. We've got a skirmisher going down there, we can put that one in Sulfur since it's got no experience. Then we shift the Sulfur one to the border city, plus we have the two chariots down there for backup.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn.

Next turn we turn up tech enough to get Feudalism in 1t. Then turn after that if we cannot get Machinery in 1t we might want to park our research on Meditation until we can (that's why we need to minimize overflow next turn). Feudalism is showing slightly faster than Machinery so someone has researched it. That could be a problem if that's Jkaen, longbows are serious business.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 125.

I guess I was rather optimistic when I said we could 1t Feudalism, because we can't. Oh well. I'm not talking to Ellimist anymore anyways. Anyway, we should be able to finish it at 20% next turn. No need to go higher since we're finishing a library in Fluorine.

Hilarious event: that forest on the border near Phosphorus grew back. We need to move a worker onto it and start chopping it next turn.

That's about all I have to say. Sorry about the lack of reporting, I'm just not feeling it lately. I'm only joining CTON games from now on, I've always hated talking to my opponents when playing games anyway.

Feel free to take more turns Lewwyn! I'm probably not playing them when they come in late in most cases, which is actually very often since Ellimist likes to take four+ hours to play the turn even when he knows our timeslots overlap by three hours.

[Lewwyn]

Heh,

Okay I played the last 2 turns. On T126 I did most of your stuff. On T127 Things are starting to look really good for our Jkioan conquest.

Just FYI I'm not putting any pictures up right now. But I am sending you the EOT save Noble.

I set tech to 100% and started Machinery. If EMC sees us oh well, I don't care. We are imply beating the snot out of everyone in this game now. Machinery will be ALMOST finished. Then with Overflow and 2 turns of 100% we will get guilds. It will be a glorious slaughter. We only need to take Jkioan down and then we can sit and tech like mofos.

Kuro's HA's are on the move in the south there are 0 HA's in his city. I'm thinking he is either going to attack Jkioan or us using Jkioan's roads. In the next couple of turns I'm going to see about getting a longbow on our border with Jkioan I am suddenly uncomfortable about that.

Additionally I've started a Longbow on the inner island at Sodium after the barracks. 3t for that. Also on the island, Magnesium will naturally finish the Mint in 3t. Then we start a Trireme, whip the trireme, and overflow into a lib. I want to be sure we have some naval force down there.

I 2 pop whipped the Mint in Sulfur from 4 to 2 and it regrew to 3 at EOT. It will regrow to 4 in 2 turns. That was a perfect whip. Courthouse there next. 2 pop whip it again. We can avoid a barracks for a bit.

Barracks and stables are finishing everywhere. In Hydrogen the Stable finished and I queued the build to Great Wall. Next turn the city will almost complete it in 1T. We'll switch off there and Build a turn or two elsewhere. That'll be 2 cities of fail gold so far.

We're going to be whipping some knights I think.

I switched EPs to Jkioan for 1 turn and we got to see their research. They are teching CS in 3Turns. That's legit too because they're not saving gold. If anything they are breakeven or defict. So 3T is the Best they can do. Hopefully they switch and there's anarchy.

Any chance that EMC is teching Astro? We need to grab Alphabet after guilds. It's cheap and we'll be able to monitor our opponents. Then we can grab construction for cats and bridge building. Well Maybe still construction first.

Honestly, I think there is very little chance to lose this beyond a massive 3 person dogpile. We just need to make sure that we set up defenses on our EMC borders (at least 1 to 2 longbow per city). With that taken care of maybe we even threaten EMC with a few knights. I don't see any LBs, Maces, pikes or anything in EMC's cities. Our NAP ends at 136 correct? We should have knights by that point. It's alot of fun looking at this game. Demos tell how badly we are domingating. So much so that I'm going to post them even though I didn't want to worry about pictures.

Demos:



GNP is GA infused, but really that's awesome. We're getting 440gpt at 0% and EMC is getting 200+ ish. Then we have the Golden Wall Fail gold coming up down the line.

MFG is GA infused again, but it's nice to look at.

Crop is where we see just how we're dominating. We're almost 70 food up on EMC. That's huge. That = more production as well as more Commerce. We have a huge cottage economy in addition to the mids and Rep. We aren't excessively using Rep, but we're denying any of our opponents from using it and that's bigger than you think.

Soldier points are nice, we had a big boost from HBR and Feud. But watch this fly up when we actually start making units.

We have more land, we have more cities, we have BETTER cities. Look at the pop! Almost double the next opponent. That means we have better production for military, better economy for teching and we're pretty much just ahead.

I look forward to the next few turns. Allow me to grab them, yes?

[Lewwyn]

Sent to Jkaen.

Hey Jkaen, just another note. Kuro's Karkat city on your border had HA's in it but now its empty. I assume those HA's are on the move. I hope you have taken precautions in your border city with him... I too will be building a few units in my cities close to Kuro. And I ill probably be adding an extra spear or Longbow in my cities on my border with you in case he is planning to move them at me through your territory. Once can never be too cautious.

Lew

Because I can.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah I was going to mention we should do a turn of GW in the capital after the stables, so that's good. Just need to remember not to accidentally finish it, heh. That's actually going to be the third city of fail gold, we have it in Nitrogen as well.

No chance EMC is teching Astronomy. They have Colossus, and they'd have to tech Machinery and Optics first anyway. We could get Optics before anyone else for caravel superiority if we want.

Like I said in the email, I wouldn't have mentioned longbows to Jkaen just yet but whatever.

Teching Alphabet wouldn't be a bad idea since everyone seems to have research visibility on us anyway, but I think we can definitely hold off for now. Construction is very important on this map because there are a huge amount of rivers. If anything Engineering would be a good followup also, or Optics.