Good luck, mdy. 
Before this game started, shyuhe asked me to take over captain duties. I kinda declined, but started on it anyway out of necessity. He's an awesome captain, as he is always very measured in his posts and does an excellent job of synthesizing all ideas from others. By comparison, I'm quite opinionated and have a tendency to get very agitated at times.
It seems that we can now definitely consider him retired, so it's either that I'm stuck with the job for the remainder of the game, or we share the responsibility. Edit: In other words, if anyone else 
wanted to be the one with the responsibility to crack the necessary 
's, I would be only too happy... In any case, I think we should develop a bit of a long view...
I'm wondering if anyone has a reasonable, if rough estimate of how long this game will last. Dynamic's best Emperor Normal game was 1710 AD with Isabella on Rainforest, with State Prop. We're behind his tech pace, ofc, but should outpace him in mid-game expansion, and get a good corporation setup. Should something like 1750-1800 AD be a guideline? Too optimistic or too pessimistic or just right?
That would be T260-270, and we're currently at T135 leaving 125-135t. I think this is important for several reasons:
1) We should keep the game going at an appropriate pace, as LC suggested. There are 72 days remaining to the new Jan 27 deadline, as of today. Let's assume that a week around Xmas and New Year's is a wash, so we have 9 weeks. That's exactly 15t per week, assuming my estimate is correct, but possibly more. I think we should keep tabs on this and make sure that we don't have some nightmare of a set in the last week.
2) I said I'd start a gpp spreadsheet, but haven't done much on it yet.
This is partly because the builds this TS, decision on Caste, NE, etc affect it quite a bit, even in the short term. Still, I should get on it and develop some options.
3) We should have at least 4 ?, maybe 5 ? golden ages to finish the game (including Taj). That's 48-60t with MoM, and would, therefore, ideally start as early as T192-204 (1320-1440 AD). This would require a MoM capture/build and maybe Nationalism steal. Combined with item (2) above, we'd need to generate a mix of GP's for use on GA by given dates.
My estimate is very rough, as I'm not experienced in these kinds of games. Perhaps others could comment and we can work towards developing these items well in advance?
Anything else that may require longer term planning? Espionage spending in the mid term seems like another.
On this topic (I've been meaning to):I think we should get on with it, we don't really have a week's time per turnset, so we should get a move-on.
Before this game started, shyuhe asked me to take over captain duties. I kinda declined, but started on it anyway out of necessity. He's an awesome captain, as he is always very measured in his posts and does an excellent job of synthesizing all ideas from others. By comparison, I'm quite opinionated and have a tendency to get very agitated at times.
It seems that we can now definitely consider him retired, so it's either that I'm stuck with the job for the remainder of the game, or we share the responsibility. Edit: In other words, if anyone else wanted to be the one with the responsibility to crack the necessary 's, I would be only too happy... In any case, I think we should develop a bit of a long view...I'm wondering if anyone has a reasonable, if rough estimate of how long this game will last. Dynamic's best Emperor Normal game was 1710 AD with Isabella on Rainforest, with State Prop. We're behind his tech pace, ofc, but should outpace him in mid-game expansion, and get a good corporation setup. Should something like 1750-1800 AD be a guideline? Too optimistic or too pessimistic or just right?
That would be T260-270, and we're currently at T135 leaving 125-135t. I think this is important for several reasons:
1) We should keep the game going at an appropriate pace, as LC suggested. There are 72 days remaining to the new Jan 27 deadline, as of today. Let's assume that a week around Xmas and New Year's is a wash, so we have 9 weeks. That's exactly 15t per week, assuming my estimate is correct, but possibly more. I think we should keep tabs on this and make sure that we don't have some nightmare of a set in the last week.
2) I said I'd start a gpp spreadsheet, but haven't done much on it yet.
This is partly because the builds this TS, decision on Caste, NE, etc affect it quite a bit, even in the short term. Still, I should get on it and develop some options.3) We should have at least 4 ?, maybe 5 ? golden ages to finish the game (including Taj). That's 48-60t with MoM, and would, therefore, ideally start as early as T192-204 (1320-1440 AD). This would require a MoM capture/build and maybe Nationalism steal. Combined with item (2) above, we'd need to generate a mix of GP's for use on GA by given dates.
My estimate is very rough, as I'm not experienced in these kinds of games. Perhaps others could comment and we can work towards developing these items well in advance?
Anything else that may require longer term planning? Espionage spending in the mid term seems like another.
to that. 
on keeping up the French harassment.
to steal philosophy by 800 AD, we may not want to steal it by then but it is possible to get it. If we run spys in all the cities when we can. I can see how failure gold is more important right now.
