Chairmen NobleHelium and Gaspar Demand Your Presence in the Collective

[Gaspar]

I take it that was for this:



And not the Paya build.

[Ceiliazul]

There's no sugar-coating it and I'll not put myself in this position again.

Does this mean: (choose all that apply)
A. No more wonder builds.
B. No more Mister nice guy
C. No more games against Mack and/or Seven
D. No more experiments from the Kama Sutra

[Gaspar]

Turn report upcoming shortly but Ceil made a related comment about casualness in the PB7 lurker thread and I don't want to go OT there so I'll address them both here.

Does this mean: (choose all that apply)
A. No more wonder builds.
B. No more Mister nice guy
C. No more games against Mack and/or Seven
D. No more experiments from the Kama Sutra

Well, it definitely means B and C. B you'll see shortly, C is a given. I don't think I'd call myself a casual player as Ceil intimated in the PB thread, though. I take my games seriously, I pore over most of my turns, I pay attention to micro, I sandbox occasionally. I check city tiles every turn, settle for overlap, reassign tiles regularly. A casual player to me doesn't really do those things all that much. There's a level between casual and absolutely hardcore where I live. I think a lot of players live there - myself, Lewwyn, scooter, Nicolae, etc. What you and Timski were doing in PBEM31 is absolutely insane. But that's not my issue.

My problem really is just that I'm not that good. I'm good enough to compete but bad enough to always lose. I think I've gotten a lot better from PBEM12 to now, but I could play against SevenSpirits a million times and he'd win the game every time. I could play against Kyan a million times and he'd win the game every time. I could play against you a million times and you'd win the game every time. I could have won PBEM14 because the players in it were all on my level. And Commodore and I could have won PBEM26 in terms of the skill level of opponents (no offense to rego or pin, both excellent players.) But ultimately, I can just as easily lose those games too. And that's okay. But I know what my level is now and I don't really see the point in continuing to sign up for games to prove to myself what I already know - I'm in the top 50% of players on the site, but below the top 20%.

Anyway, enough about me and my fragile male ego. This was an interesting turn and I'll report shortly, but I didn't want to let that little bit pass without comment.

[Ceiliazul]

What you and Timski were doing in PBEM31 is absolutely insane. But that's not my issue.

Haha. Honestly I'm never going to do that again. I had no intention of doing more than a limited sandbox, and it was only my desire to not be outposted in my own thread that kept me going.

That crap is too much work. You'll see in PB5. From now on I'm gellin' like my avatar.

I look foward to the turn report.

Edit: I wasn't fair to Timski, there was like 2 spam posts in out whole thread. He was doing CIA level analysis and planning, and I convinced myself I didn't want to let him down. Timski, awesome job dude. The rest of my post stands.

Edit2: (connecting back to your game) If I was a lurker I'd much rather read your style than my own. 'Angry Birds' And 'leaning tower' was epic!

[Gaspar]

So this was D-Day. Though in fairness, it was a bit of a damp squib with only one combat taking place. Next turn should be more interesting on that front.

Firstly, N7 tried yet again to tie us to a deal indicating their expression of friendship. Ultimately, if you want to be someone's friend, don't settle aggressively towards them while co-opting 2/3 of the games wonders. Just a tip for future PBEM players.



The die had been cast long ago, however. Those of you who recall us being quite upset at their settlement of Jest is Anarchy - the plan really was put in place all the way back then. Since then, we've been moving towards this moment. So to start, we sent in our galley holding a spear/bowman. Unloading those gave us this picture:



Uh, hey like I know you guys are roughly 87 billion times better at Civ than we are but when your opponent has a power graph that looks like this:



And has been rebuffing your diplomatic efforts for ages, you might want to do better than a warrior in a front line city. They did react - they teched Feudalism recently, maybe even last turn. And they may have just guessed wrong at the target. For that matter, they may have seen the HA stack last turn and decided to largely evacuate this city, which nothing was really going to hold given our stack. But still, I expected at least a spear in there, since there was one when they settled it. For posterity's sake, here's what the other border areas looked like in terms of N7 troops:

(East Indies)


(Tundra Hub)


Anyway, mission one was to rub out that chariot. One quick combat road and we took an unpromoted 5 XP Horse Archer:



Which we won, though we did take a decent bit of damage:



We'll definitely take the city next turn unless they have a horde of longbows sitting behind the city or something. We do have a handful of additional HA's heading towards the front as well, so we should be able to push on a bit. With the longbow era upon us, there's absolutely no reason to save these units - push as far and as hard as they'll allow us, go from there. That's really about the extent of military movement for the turn - we positioned an HA in the north to threaten an uncovered worker as well. But let's talk about the other strategic concern - the city of Latte Isles.



Assuming the capture and hold of Jest (dangerous, always, but we are pro pre-rifling) this little bugger basically can be used as a staging area to strike virtually everywhere on what is otherwise a Collective controlled sea. I drew a line to our eventual city on that plains hill there as well. But ultimately this city has to fall. Particularly when you remember that:

1. They got circumnavigation (Thanks, Commodore!) on T17.
   
2. They will most certainly have both Caravels and Galleons well before us.
   

Right now, Factory Drift is our ace in the hole in the area. Our Moai city can bang out ships with relative ease and reinforce the area faster than N7 who are relatively isolated in the area, particularly after the fall of Jest. As far as we are aware, we have 2 triremes on this particular pond to N7's 1 and we've another in production. The current tentative plan is 2 for 1 their trireme and then try and maintain an inability to reinforce the city by "blockading" the area with our Triremes while we wait to get the necessary units to crack a city on a hill with longbows. (Read: Catapults.) I put blockading in quotes since we banned actual blockading this game.

What will really tell in terms of the actual game (i.e. the one those who can still win are playing) is Lewwyn and mackoti's reaction to the fall of Jest. Lewwyn has 4t before he can redeclare war on N7. While he has been building up forces, I don't see any real evidence that he's intending on attacking N7. Mackoti has not been at war with N7 this game and there's also no indication that he is intending an offensive. But could he smell blood in the water after we bloody N7's nose? Hard to say. Right we're the only ones with any friends - our OB deals with Lewwyn and mackoti are the only active trades in the whole game besides the peace treaties Lewwyn has with mack and N7 due to wardecs. Anyway, we'll have longbows in 3t, so I'm not in the least bit concerned about an attack on us particularly as the last place civ.

Mackoti fired a GA this turn and revolted to HR/Bur/CS/OR/Confu. Our GSpy is born in 3t and we'll do the same, subbing Hinduism for Confu and obviously not abandoning Slavery. We might do a little exploration before then, just to see what's going on in N7-dom, but I doubt it as the GA is pretty key in terms of civics.

Here's the current demographics. Anything else you kids might like to see?

[Gaspar]

Or, perhaps to more succinctly put it:

[Ceiliazul]

Or, perhaps to more succinctly put it:

Which one of you two is Jennifer Grey? :neenernee

Looking forward to next turn!

[NobleHelium]

They got circumnavigation on T11, actually.

I don't get that picture but that guy looks like Zack from Saved by the Bell.

Also, Jest has Buddhism. We might want to wait until the border pop before adopting a religion.

[Gaspar]

Two quick things - I forgot to mention we offered them peace for Jest and their two East Indies cities. That may have something to do with why they're holding the turn - considering that offer. It never fails that the turns you most want back are the one's that get held.

Secondly, I'm not entirely I ever really explained why we're doing this. Obviously to some extent its crazy to attack the leader who just teched Feudalism. Honestly though, what are we to do? Sit around and wait for them to zoom ahead of us with their OP Rep SE and then genuflect and kiss their ring while they do it? We're at our strongest relative to them right now. We can keep what we take because Pro LBs behind walls are incredibly tough to crack and with pro and stone we can 1t walls in any city and we have many barracks, so most of our LBs will be Drill I, CG II. You're not cracking that without Knights and even then that's a lot of them. So essentially we built a lot of military because we lost all our wonders. N7 became the target because they zipped out to a lead AND they settled in our face. Lewwyn also annoyed us but he's roughly even and has since done his best to make amends. mackoti might as well be on another planet for all we care - he's furthest from us for one and he's not the issue as long as N7 are on top for two.

So that's the situation in a nutshell. Plus truthfully if there's one weakness N7 have its that they don't respond well to being punched in the mouth. Or at least they didn't in PBEM23, the only place we really have data on it. Maybe 7 flips out and quits. That's okay, novice is the less competent general of the two. Maybe they overreact and make some mistakes. Or maybe they turn around and destroy us. That's okay too, because its what was going to happen if we did nothing. So rather than sit and wait to die because the odds are against us, we decided to do something about it.

Might have been the wrong choice. But I feel strongly it was made for the right reasons. (And if 7 is moralizing in his thread that this is reputation carrying over, I can assure you I have more reasons to invade mackoti on past history than I do 7.)

[Gaspar]

Well, they took the deal.





We'll see if we regret it later. We've got a whole lot of useless Horse Archers now, though.