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

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Ok. I say we concede now..... ... . . .

So, do any lurkers know whether any other players are kicking around the idea of concession so we can, you know, stop playing this awful game? Ok, poorly constructed question. Obviously the lurkers know who thinks they are dead meat (Kuro, Oxy, Us, Suttree, Molach in roughly that order) and who thinks they may have a shot (retep, who actually has a shot, wetbandit who could compete if the game possibly goes to space and beyond and the islands are truly infinite, and WLP who can compete if he kills us and Kuro at bargain basement discounts while spamming GP GAs forever with the MoM). Let me try this again...

What is the mechanism for concession? Once that has been established, I'd like to get the ball rolling in that direction. Life is too short to waste on bad Civ. I know a few teams have or think they have a shot, but realistically this game is over IMO. The geography is going to prevent anyone from stopping retep in any kind of meaningful way that doesn't totally skew the game unfairly toward another player. I mean, we could have sent all of our phracts at him and not defended our home cities way back when, but that would have lost our game completely and only spited retep, which is not the point. Short of something like that happening, he wins, so let's get this thing over with now.

Failing that, .dll hack us into Atlantis.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I think we'll have problems wringing a concession out of William and Wetbandit,I don't see it happening yet. As for an Atlantis event that seems like a lot of effort for a game still nominally unresolved in terms of outcome. If it got to that point of disinterest we could automate build queues on muskets and log in to click the red button every turn. That takes about three minutes from when you fire up Civ.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T212 - In the interest of playing quicker turns I was logged in for 45 minutes this time. Clearly I'm failing at this. (preview edit: So let's spend 20 minutes on writing a report, that will help! )

Since nothing in our empire counts as relevant news anymore here's the tech screen so you guys can figure out what the non-reporting players are up to. We're following in their wake, we'll be the sixth team to research Replaceable Parts when we get it in. I presume after that we'll be the sixth team to Rifling as well, if we aren't killed by then.




Speaking of being killed, Kuro is going to die soon, this is almost certain. The only question is whether William has sailed a galleon or two around his west coast to take the northern island. I assume he has. He has a stack of 10 cannons plus quite a number of catapults stationed in Kuro's old capital, and I've seen a number of rifles and other hitters walking north. I guess William will shove in the whole stack when he feels he has enough units on hand to blow down cultural defenses and destroy the city garrison in one turn. Then it's GG Kuro, a mercy kill to save him five minutes logging in to this game every day. I didn't take a picture up there, maybe next turn. But William is keeping up his thread so maybe I'll skip reporting it. Okay, probably not, but maybe I'll try.

Like I said, nothing interesting in our empire so here's a less readable but More Exciting screenshot.




Just look at those plumes of smoke, it's almost like we're being productive with all this land. Well, we are productive, just not competitive. You know, snowballs, ours melting, other guys rolling, all that stuff. Not really visible in the map shot is that I've decided to grow out I Burn to max size and then run specialists. I've been hesitant to do that before now since I assumed someone would take the city soon anyway but it hasn't happened yet so whatever. Today I feel like letting it grow. Microed cities for a few quicker growths, nothing else to see here. Regarding empire management, if I copy/pasted from my earlier turn reports I don't think anyone would notice.




Look at is, competitive (non-contender division) in food. We're actually a bit better than that since we're running specialists all over the place, not that you can tell from the GNP number or anything. The power number is annoying again, though. Once William is done with Kuro he's going to have a lot of units (cannons, rifles, and camels) sitting around with nothing to do. I can't imagine he'd take a crack at either of William or Molach, with them both having rifles. Oxy is an option but that's just an odd border. He could take a shot at pulling Retep back, and could surely succeed if he pressed hard enough, but that's a lose/lose situation because then Wetbandit would get ahead.

So it's possible William is hoping to play this out in the longest term possible and try to catch up by gathering up more land tiles. That would have to come at our expense. Although we have the giant dread stack of cataphracts they're getting less scary by the day, and we would have no advantage attacking his cannons with them. So it would be an expensive proposition to repel an invasion, and there's nothing we could do to stop him from taking our western city or, really, the coastal cities facing him. That would put our capital at grave risk. We may be able to keep him from occupying it, if it comes to it, but he probably wouldn't hesitate to raze it since that would economically break our back and make us easier to pick off piece by piece over time.

So yeah, William is a bit of a concern. That's the analysis if our participation in this game mattered, anyway. In terms of fairness to game balance, then, I should probably go back to building up units everywhere and break our economy again. But I'm not interested in doing that. The most fun I'm having with this game from here on out is in seeing how polished I can make this turd economy, so that's what I'm doing. If William comes through on a rampage with cannons and infantry, oh well. I'll throw the phract stack at the invasion and kill what I can, then whip what I can when I have to. Probably Retep cruises ahead while that happens, though, and it will come down to a final contest between him and Wetbandit. Does anyone have confidence that the status quo changes in that confrontation? Nope, me either.

Concession, concession, we're ready! Anyway, for anyone who made it through that wall of text here's some bonus maps because they're always fun. Pardon the sign vomit, that's how I play.

World Map



Culture Map

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

See if you can trade maps with Wetbandit so we can get an idea of where to send our escape pod settler. If nothing else, it looks like way south of Crystal Palace may still be unexplored and could be our best bet to found.

[spacetyrantxenu]

We can't get there with a galley. We'll keep sailing down the coast until we get to an unused lump of ice with some seafood,I expect. it may our may not be before the game ends. It certainly won't be  worth it at this point but that hasn't stopped us from doing other pointless things in this game.

[BRickAstley]

Holy fucking sign vomit.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Holy fucking sign vomit.

No kidding.

Ok, I logged in for a sec to show you where the boat could go without Astronomy. I'm not sure why that compelled me to log in, but it did. Anyway...




Pretty straightforward. We can get there. Here's what you mentioned about WLP about to finish Kuro off:




WLP reports so I'm sure this isn't a surprise to any lurkers. Except that no one lurks any thread except this one. That's the rule, guys.

I noticed something else that had me scratching my head. Xenu, why were you building a lighthouse in HF? To preserve population is the obvious answer. But, this city is too large. We have the National Epic in the capital, ML, so the food needs to go there.




ML has all the beaker/gold enhancing infrastructure that our shitty civilization possesses, so there is no reason not to maximize growth there to get our best possible output. Keeping 3 pop in a very mediocre city makes no sense. So, I killed the lighthouse build in HF and dumped the overflow from whatever finished last turn into the Chicken Pizza.




WWH (or wherever was building it) is working on something else for a turn. As can be seen, you'll never finish the great person in HF, the output in ML is simply too great. The deer is worthwhile in HF so long as we are building a wonder because we get so many hammer multipliers on our eventual fail gold. Otherwise, I think it is clearly better to grow ML and work specialists in the NE city rather than here. You had four specialists here, which is better than working the workshops unless we are building a wonder. Feel free to veto these changes if you feel strongly, you're playing the turns, but I saw this and couldn't figure out why you'd set things up this way.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'll respond to your post when I'm not on a tablet but if you're not going to play the turns don't fuck with my tiles. I had a plan for those cities I just didn't write about it.

[BRickAstley]

Why do you want to build an escape pod settler? Aren't you two tired of having to log in to this stupid game at this point?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Why do you want to build an escape pod settler? Aren't you two tired of having to log in to this stupid game at this point?

Enforced war weariness for whoever comes for us when the time comes. Mainly, though, to give me something positive to look forward to. It is novel for us in this game and that has to be worth something. I guess I look at it like a mini-quest where we deny one of the geographic lottery winners one of their islands. I WANT A PIECE OF THE PIE, DAMMIT. AND THAT HIGH RISE, DELUXE APARTMENT IN THE SKY.