RBD15 - Diety OCC

[Charis]

Charis Antony stepped up to the plate, for the times required the
touch of a diplomat.

1260 AD (0) - Times are Rough. That's with a capital 'R'. Our treasury
stands at 1 gold coin, and our income is 1 gold from a tax collector!
We've sold our barracks and even our granary, and (sniff) sold some workers
into slavery. Thebes is running a food deficit and needs to pop out a worker
just to have someone change a tile back to irrigation.

Still... getting the UN was a major coup! That's like getting the Olympic
Committee to choose Fargo... for the SUMMER olympics! Now... how on earth
can we go about winning the election? Simple, if we live that long. We
need friends. How do you make friends in this sad, dog-eat-dog world?
You scratch their backs. We don't need true friends, life-long friends,
friends that will be there for you when no one else is. The people our
our great nation do, but (sniff) it's lonely at the top.

I switch to wealth for one turn, to get out of this insane budget crunch,
before coming back to the worker.

What's the plan? Cut science, cut everything not essential, and start
being friendly. At present it's a three person race, with us, Rome and Japan
voting for ourselves. Gandhi and (gasp) Xerces will decide the victor.
That is... unless one of the other two falls behind and goes <25%. Japan
will not, with about 33% of score and power. Rome seems just above 25 and is
dropping. Perhaps they will will get knocked out of contention. If they do,
their vote will mean something, and if it's against Japan, so much better.

The world has no alliances. And no wars except one, Japan vs India. We make
the rounds. Japan is polite, but we have nothing to offer (I suspect this will
become a theme) other than an ally vs India (no way). India likewise, and
would accept an alliance vs Japan (not yet Gandhi, but we'll consider it)
Persia is cautious and seeks no alliances. Our hope there is that they get
into a war (a decent bet with Xerces!) Rome is polite, and owns a large
chunk of the land mass. I doubt they'll get booted off the ballot.
What expires soon? Wine, dyes and silks from Japan in 5 turns, and we'll have
nothing to pay for a continuation. (Ouch) In 9 turns we'll get back 87 gpt
in payments to Gandhi. In 5 turns, Incense, Spices and Ivory from Rome will
expire. Let me get that straight... in 5 turns we lose ***six*** luxuries
and have no chance to buy? I smell rioting

1265 AD (1) - Rome and Japan sign a military alliance against India!!
And Mahatma voted for Caesar last time too...

Well that's great news!! That'll let us put Gandhi in our pocket! Now
how can we get Persia? We'll want to find out before 1305, or delay it.

This turn we'll rebulid the granary.

1270 AD (2) - Madras complete SETI, Persia starts... Manhattan
So does Rome.

1275 AD (3) - Japan starts Manhattan too. Er...

Persia FINISHES Manhattan! (Cascade from SETI I guess)
For us, back to wealth.

1280 AD (4) - Pollution on our iron square. Lovely.

1285 AD (5) - I get the type of message you usually get during a sneak
attack. "You lost your supply of xxx." Six times.
Just deals expiring, but... I look nervously at the city screen.
Hmm... no disaster? It will take a turn to kick in...

1290 AD (6) - The unhappiness kicks in now. All white and blue.
It would take 20% lux at -27 gpt to keep 'em happy. It's deal or revolt.
Japan is annoyed and Rome is cautious. It's the deal expiration.
Well we're just not trying to make those two clowns happy. They can deal
with the anger. Gandhi otoh... we buy his furs for his asking price, a
mere 22 gold. (Gosh it's cheap when you only have one city!)
Still... we do need luxuries. We'll take one each for plain cash, from
Japan (who can sneeze and take us out)

1295 AD (7) - Zero gold, +3 surplus now, and had to give up an artillery.
That's with three lux imports, 0% lux and 3 entertainers, running Wealth! 8-\
Do you get the feeling something has got to give?

1300 AD (8) - Persia and India have entered an Alliance vs Japan!!!!!!

Woo!! This is like... a script! And just before the vote!
I don't think it will be 1305 per se, but from my other diplo game this
week, it should show up after my tenth turn. So just a few more.

On the down side, we lost our furs. (Japan harbor hit or something?)

AAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

India is at War with us???? WTH?!? WHY?! No declaration, we just "lost
our supply" ? Was that intentional? Did they choose to declare on us
because our big gpt deal we owed them just expired?? ACK! ACK!
If they even waited ONE MORE TURN to do this, I would be right now in
an alliance vs Japan with BOTH Persia and India, and we win the UN vote
for sure! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Sorry. I'll try to calm down. I just don't get it. They didn't declare
war. We didn't declare war. They were polite and would have accepted
an alliance. Now we're "in a state of war" ??

Well that's jolly. Now it's #1 and #2 vs #3 and #4. If #4 ever accepts our
envoy, we ally with 3 and 4 vs 1, on the turn before the next election,
and win. As it stands now, Gandhi will abstain, and Toko and Caesar will
vote for themselves. We could get Persia's vote, but it's not enough.

Ok, until then... let's improve relations with Persia, maintain with Japan
and Rome, and hope Gandhi comes to his senses and seeks peace with us asap,
then lets us help him out. Alas, I think there is a minimum #turns we're stuck
at war before he'll even meet our envoys.

Japan has no luxuries to trade to us. Odd. We get spices from Rome for 2 gpt.
He'll sell oil to us for gold+gpt btw, if we need that. We'll take incense
for one more gpt. Better butter up Persia. We trade some gpt for Rubber and
he moves to polite. Good deal. We'll make a barracks to upgrade our rifles.

1305 AD (9) - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK?????????!!!!!!!!!!!

Xerces the polite has joined forces with Gandhi the capricious to...

... form a military alliance versus us!!!!

Barracks is done, and rubber is gone.

: towel gets thrown in :

Passing off a turn early. Vote will come at end of 1310 I think, don't bother
holding elections. Sheesh. I still don't get it.

That's just a sick ending. Literally one HALF turn away from victory. If we
talk to Gandhi instead of being "entered into war without declaration",
we had it. Hats off to players this game -- you guys did very well, and Jaffa,
you had the winning maneuver. This is the saddest most incomprehensible ending I've yet seen.

Charis

 

[Zed-F]

Well, hold on, Charis, don't throw in the towel just yet. We're not being attacked yet, are we? We still have the next vote in another 10 turns... if we can make peace before then and before the AIs get around to wiping us out (they *are* on another continent and have bigger fish to fry) we still have a shot at it.

A phony war for a bit won't really hurt us so long as it doesn't become a real war and so long as we can get out of it in time to butter the AIs up again and have a vote before space race becomes a factor. If we have enough artillery, even a half-hearted attempt at a real war may not hurt us. OTOH, you're right in that we don't want to hold a vote just now; everyone would vote for Ceasar.

Let's see how this plays out, hmm? Ed, you're up!

 

[Charis]

: picks up the towel :

Nod... that post was while the events were fresh in my mind. Still... can't... fathom...

But yes, if we can ride out the war and get nice again we'll have a chance. Can only hope they'll end the war without tribute, cuz we'll need whatever little we have to butter them up.

It's not over

Charis

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Phony war, maybe, but one transport with a couple of tanks and we're history

And yeah, that was a bizarre and sucky turn of events on your round, Charis.

Oh well, let's play it out and see what happens

 

[Zed-F]

One transport and a couple of tanks we could survive. Assuming the transport makes it past the Jap navy & airforce, it could end its turn within a couple squares of our territory. If so, we shell the heck out of it and its escort with arty and they hopefully withdraw for repairs (and that's a long way to go for repairs.) Failing that, we still have arty to take the tanks down a few pegs before they attack our infantry (we *do* have a couple, and could build more if we buy some rubber) which gets a +100% defensive bonus from being in a metropolis. We also have a number of riflemen to throw away, and with that defense bonus it's not impossible for them to take out an attacking tank that fails its withdraw roll.

If they come at us in a serious way, yes we're toast, but it would take more than one transport to really scare me. We can reinforce much more easily than they. What could really hurt, though, is they could pillage all our terrain improvements, and we don't have much in the way of offensive units (no oil for tanks, etc.) to prevent them from doing so, nor much in the way of workers to replace them.
I could wish we had some fighters and bombers to scout for enemy naval vessels and bomb them before they get close enough to land, but you know what they say about wishes...

 

[Zed-F]

Hallooo, Ed, it's your turn, and your 24 hrs "got it" post time have expired twice over... Don't make us skip you again!

I'll check back this evening and get it if no response.

 

[Zed-F]

Ok, got it.

 

[Zed-F]

1305 (0): Hmm, why is Thebes starving??? Ah, too many entertainers -- well screw that! I bump lux up to 10% and send them all to the fields. We only have 4 artillery left, I guess we had to sell some. I start building some more as they are essential to fighting off an invasion. I send our lone worker out to irrigate, we need some more workers in case pollution happens, so I buy back a couple from Japan (at ridiculously inflated prices I might add, please don't give workers away again, they aren't worth much to the AI and we need them!) I use one to grow to size 21 so we can get a free scientist for some 40-turn research. Fortunately all our gpt deals seem to have ended as we now are getting about 55 gpt income.

1310 (1): Our Ironclad gets bombed down to 1 hp, but it can still scout, which is all it was doing anyway. Woot! A new source of uranium is discovered, meaning we can build Nuclear Submarines -- an actual navy will do a *much* better job of protecting us, especially one the AI can't see to target. Gentlemen, we can rebuild our navy, we have the technology... better, stronger, faster!

1315 (2): We get a chance to hold a vote. No thanks, we don't like the excited expression on Ceaser's face when the UN's in session these days.

1315-1345 (3-8): Not much happens. We build nuke subs, India and Persia won't talk to us.

1350-1355 (9-10): India offers a Peace treaty for 140 gold. We accept! Oh, Persia's willing to talk? Wonderful! We buy peace from them too, for 70 gold. To keep them both happy we buy RoPs from them, not too expensive, as well as Furs and Rubber from India for cheap prices. Japan's gone from polite to annoyed, so we buy Silks from him for 60 gold, and that cheers him up. Well, the world's a happy place again, and we've got some good resources going, all for only 400 gold or so. Now that we're at peace I put us back on wealth to get cash for deal-making.

1360 (11): Next vote's coming up shortly (like in 2 turns) and we've got 200 gold left. Gifts of 100 gold to each of Persia and India make them *very* happy -- sheesh, that's less than 1 turn income for these guys, what's up with that!? I'll take it though...

End of turn 1365 (12):

 

[Zed-F]

Our final score was 4338! Woot, for a game that seemed hopeless at times, we sure came through when it counted.

Awesome finish, people!

 

[Charis]

Da na na na, na,

HEY!!!

Da na na na!



Awwww-RIGHT!! Well we had the right line-up anyway,
the two voters in peace with us and at war with other two.

Phew... after I calmed down after my last turn, I realized that exactly what you described was not far fetched at all. I just didn't know how long they would take to come to their senses, or if we would survive til then.

Excellent finish, and to all... congrats on the first Deity OCC SG victory! That's a mighty fine score too.


Charis

PS Did I say...

 

[Zed-F]

You know, given the pace of AI tech advancement in Deity, I'm not sure it's possible to win a Deity OCC in any way *other* than diplomatically. Culture victory is probably out due to Space Race being done before then... the culture victory isn't sped up much by the faster tech researching, but everything else sure is. So, in the end, losing out on the culture race didn't hurt us much other than making it hard for us to scrounge up enough cash to keep up with the AIs for tech, even at last civ prices.

For the curious, my solo version of this game finished around 1300 AD with a diplo victory as well. About the only major difference is I had more money in the bank when it was over (and stuff that comes with money, like maps of the world, etc) though I still had a bit of a struggle at the end of the industrial era trying to get the cash to move into the modern era. Japan researched Fission first and started the UN in Kyoto; I beat them to it by 1 turn and only because I had been prebuilding the Intelligence Agency.

 

[Iester]

Next time there's a deity RBD game, I'm jumping in. Too much fun.

Beautiful game, more of these and the RBD crew will be remembered far and wide.

Jester

 

[Sirian]

Way to go!

Us observers bow to the OCC Deities in awe.

 

[Zed-F]

What's the next project? A Deity OCC with Diplomacy turned off? A Deity OCC with some weedy variant rules thrown in? I know, how about one where every time we advance an era we have to go conquer one of the AI cities, move our capital, and give away the old city?