RBTS7 - L'estasi Dell'oro

[darrelljs]

Right...this is just a lousy, terrible situation but I can't see enough killing going on in the next turnset to change things. As for the space cadets, I expect they'll just hit enter the next 20 turns seeing how far out of it they are. Speaking of space cadets, you're up:

Space 1 - mostly_harmless <<<UP NOW
Space 2 - mostly_harmless v2.0 <<<On Deck
Domination 1 - Garath
Domination 2 - darrelljs
Cultural 1 - timmy827
Cultural 2 - T-hawk

Feel free to build a large army of tanks and mass them on our western border (after killing Elizabeth of course). We do have Oil connected somewhere, right?

Darrell

 

[Garath]

And research Advanced Flight while you're at it, OK?

We should definitely play it out, see how much we *can* capture during our turns, at least. You never know, we might be able to get some extra distance out of vassalising people.

Remember that ships move faster than ground units.

You want to play first or second set for us this round, darrell?

Garath

 

[darrelljs]

You want to play first or second set for us this round, darrell?

First .

Darrell

 

[darrelljs]

MH, you around?

Darrell

 

[darrelljs]

Okay, I hate to do this but I think the game is in "play it out mode" anyway. If I don't see a "got it" post I will play in 18 hours.

Darrell

 

[timmy827]

I think I'm ok with this so we can keep things moving, but what exactly are you proposing? Dom/culture teams keep alternating 20 turn sets (10 of each player) until the space team claims?

 

[Garath]

I'm not really sure what his plan is, but then I'm not really sure what we can do to finish the game in the original style in the absence of the Space Team. I'm certainly prepared to concede that Culture has won the game, although I'm disappointed not to have the opportunity to find out just how Domination could have got in our 20.

I don't think there's any point in playing 20/20 from here - surely Culture will win on your next set of 20 whether it's 20 or 40 from now? To be honest we might as well just call the game here, although if Darrell plays a bunch of Domination turns then we might play them out to see how long it takes Domination from this position, even in the knowledge that the game is lost.

We'll have to see what Darrell is actually doing, though. He might be intending to play Space turns to retain approximate accuracy to the original intent, I'm not sure.

Speaking of 20 Domination / 20 Culture turns, though, might that be an idea for what to do when somebody next incarnates this variant? It's fairly apparent that Space is never likely to happen before either of the others, so this might be the next interesting thing to try. I'd worry that Domination would have to carry too much of the burden of research, but probably the more frequent turns would make up for that.

Garath

 

[darrelljs]

On the inherited turn, I revloted to Police State/Nationhood/Slavery/State Property/Theocracy. No free culture for you . Police State and State Property give hammer bonuses, which means whipping troops is pretty effective. Our population is for all intents and purposes gone. I did not micro to max food but it would be a good call if you have the time. I used what I inherited to create lots and lots of Artillery.

Declared war on Liz straight away (very civil to leave our troops on her border) and proceeded to pound her into dust. She'll be dead, dead dead next turn:



Zara Yaqob vassalized her immediately. He also owns Roosevelt. I have lots of screenshots, but really we feasted on their troops. Major stacks from both of them, gone in a flurry of artillery shells:



Zara Yaqob did use a slick naval invasion to take a core city (thanks Blake), but he didn't bring enough troops to hold it (thanks Blake!). I declared on Suleiman about 3 turns in, have taken one city (and got another via revolt). Istanbul should fall next turn as well:



I'd focus on Suleiman until we can vassalize him (check every turn, don't make my mistake!). We can make peace with Zara Yaqob now, but why? We've obliterated two big stacks from Roosevelt, one humongous stack from Ethipoia, and a second naval invasion from Ethiopa. Hit Roosevelt as hard as you can and make peace right before handing off the save. On the off chance we get the game back, we have a shot.

Oh, sorry to say most of our fishing nets are gone .

Darrell

 

[darrelljs]

Roster:

Space 1 - mostly_harmless <<<skipped
Space 2 - mostly_harmless v2.0 <<<skipped
Domination 1 - darrelljs <<<just played
Domination 2 - Garath <<<up now
Cultural 1 - timmy827 <<<on deck
Cultural 2 - T-hawk <<<stinky Mets fan (cultured my ass)

Darrell

 

[timmy827]

Save?
Which core city was captured?

 

[darrelljs]

Not a cultural city (I think):



It was re-taken in a turn:



Darrell

 

[Garath]

Well, I think I might have researched Industrialism before removing all of our ability to do research - I thought we were all about fast units? If we can get that and/or Flight/Advanced Flight in with any vassalization or peace treaties with anyone I won't have time to attack, that'd be a big boon.

Still, never mind. I'll take this and play at some point, though I probably won't rush since it's a foregone conclusion - surely we can't be getting this back, surely 20 turns here are enough that their 20 will push them over the edge? I'll try to play some tomorrow night and finish it off on Tuesday.

Just how big were these big stacks that you've faced? That is, how gassed can I expect the people we're already fighting to be, and how massive can I expect the armies of anyone we're not to be?

Garath

 

[darrelljs]

Garath,

It would have taken 12 turns to nail Industrialism...we just don't have that time to spare. As it is I think we can vassalize Suleiman and make a dent in Roosevelt in the next 10 turns (not to mention finishing off Elizabeth). If you do vassalize him, gift many techs . Here are the stacks I destroyed (at least the ones I bothered to take pictures of):









Darrell

 

[T-hawk]

Looking in the event log in the save, the core city we temporarily lost was Seville. Nothing special about it, just a regular city with a bunch of towns.

On the inherited turn, I revloted to Police State/Nationhood/Slavery/State Property

I was wondering if any of the other teams would figure that out. To be truthful, that was the reason I didn't research to Mass Media and found Civilized Jewelers on my last turnset. The corp can be turned off.

I'm not so sure that we can win by culture in just 20 turns. Toledo's producing only 189/turn now without the corps and specialists. It will end the domination turnset under 25K, so we'll need to average over 1250 culture/turn in it, or 1050/turn if we can squeeze a Great Artist out of somewhere.

And a stumbling block for culture is that the UN seems to have enforced Emancipation, meaning no Caste System artists, which makes producing another Great Artist dicey at best. At least Free Speech can't be locked out and State Property can't be locked in.

The domination team is still well in contention. I'll throw in a tidbit that you'll have to grow the populations sometime - at your current pace of whipping and drafting, we'll go over the land area threshold but fall short on the population threshold!

 

[timmy827]

Well, I was going to keep my mouth shut about their chances but I might as well throw in my .02. I would be surprised if we won in our next 20 turns - the 27 turns left (at end of T-hawk's set) was with nice large cities that could work towns and run artists (and the rest of the cities producing enough $ to run a lot of culture slider). Getting back to that point will take a while, and with so many fishing nets pillaged will probably be even slower than our last set.

No caste system is problematic, but we can still run 7 artists in Granada and 4 in the other two. I think that not being able to whip units (both for conquering, and beating the snot out of our cultural cities) means that forced Emancipation is actually worse for the dominators than us.

 

[mostly-harmless]

Yep, my fault. Shame noone else around believes in the way to the stars and has joined the Space Cadets. I particular blame sunrise here.
But then again, we are a lost cause anyway.
I am happy to play when the space team is again up.

mh

 

[Lekdevil.NL]

Lurker's comment:

I don't know if you've noticed, but Hatty isn't doing too shabby in the culture department, either. Nothing a good ol' amphibious "liberation" can't resolve, though.

 

[darrelljs]

Lurker's comment:
I don't know if you've noticed, but Hatty isn't doing too shabby in the culture department, either. Nothing a good ol' amphibious "liberation" can't resolve, though.

Hee-hee...it would be wonderfully ironic if the cultural team had to take a city from Hatty .

Several things did come together very nicely my last turnset. Artillery are wonderfully hammer efficient at taking cities and railroads meant great logistics at least to the front (Tanks, BTW, would still probably be slowed down by waiting on siege, at least before we gassed our enemies). Hatty picking Emancipation as the first vote for the U.N. was not exactly expected. Roosevelt building Three Gorges Dam for us. Total lack of navy resulted in nets ripped up. All that said, I've been shocked at how quickly the cultural team has been able to take the wreck we hand off and turn the economy around, and I refuse to speculate they won't be able to win it out during their turnset.

Darrell

 

[T-hawk]

MH, if you want to slot in after Garath and take a space team turnset then, that's fine with me. Let's keep the roster rotating around between all three teams as was the original plan. (Looks like it'd be 20 turns by your lone self. )

 

[say1988]

Not to mention every turn not on the offensive and drafting helps you