***Spolier*** Tour de France avec Beam

[Rik Meleet]

That sucks ...

[Grille]

update to 243:
Built and rushed a lot of stuff related to shield and gold production. Doing quite well in these areas, my new cap alone makes 160+ gpt.
I almost ignored unit construction, but that'll change soon. Beam is of course seriously ahead here, Greeks doom is just a question of time. And if that little playground isn't keeping him busy anymore...

Since building improvements is boring for the most part, I thought gaping at Beam's activities might give some diversion (240):

68.76 KB
Peeping tom can travel for free on Alex and Otto's trains.[] He reports about a lot of craters in the warzone, guess it would take some time until that mess has been cleared.

IBT240:
A source of oil depletes.
My other source is sent to Korea (forced to stop bomber builds until ~257!).

241:
The new source of oil is in German territory, could have been worse.

242:
Mass Production is available on the world market. Korea's still at war with Greece, so they don't consider my spotted rep and accept 152gpt.

243:
Beam reduced the (furious) Greeks to 2 or 3 cities, chances are they're history soonish. I have still deals going and decide a spy gamble to get out of those. Plant attempt failed, they declared.
Btw, I think I made ~8 plant attempts here and there so far, only have a spy (yet the most important one, of course) in Beijing (3 attempts IIRC).

-edit(continued)-
244:
Beam had removed my spy. Something to hide me thinks.
Yay, plant worked this time all at once.
He is building a fleet.[] 1 carrier is in duty yet.

[Grille]

245:
Greece is history.
My outnumbered navy detects a Chinese destroyer/transport combo which could reach the east coast. Assuming Beam has more stuff behind this combo, I feared he might raid cities at the easte coast and garrison them (spy tells Beam has some marines).

246:
The shit hit me hard. I expected a serious attack soonish, but not *that* soon. If at all, I guessed about a quick raid on my east coast now.
However, Beam launched an assault on my western coast! That area was poorly defended and he caused too much damage. My economy is still very strong, but my resource access is pretty much fucked up, ww is sky-high (razing) and I lost FP, IA, MilAc, HE plus Wall street and Pentagon build (both to be completed in 2).
The situation:

95.05KB


100.82KB

The main trouble is missing resources and huge unhappiness:

95.96KB
(they were not all unhappy, but that pic was taken after some diplo action which obviously led to happiness probs - still almost all cities were in disorder)

I guess that Beam moved all his bombers to Rheims, so I wanted to try a propaganda flip attempt as last option (I noticed on F3 that my spy is still in place, althoguh IA was gone). However, I don't get that option.

39.94KB

If at all, I could *maybe* stop Beam at Brest bottleneck, but I don't see any perspective on the long run. I give in.

I concentrated way too long on infrastructure, the TGL raid should have happened 20 turns earlier or I should have prepared military build much sooner. I think I need to seriously improve my MP skills.

Congrats Beam, thanks for a really great game!
Kudos to Aggie for the map.

I enjoyed this game very much.

[Kingreno]

Very nice read Grille! It was always good to read this spoiler.

[Beam]

Thanks for this game Grille! Very nice spoiler.

About the UN. I probably would have build to avoid AI diplo victory but not hold elections. It is a shitty victory and certainly not worthy for this game.

About the techs in the late IA. I decided to stop trading as there was a bulk of cash in Chinese marketplaces (not in Banks as none are ever build). Greek war declaration robbed about 300 gpt away but China still had over 5000 gold end of game.

Finally there was just a Cav army and a Cav in Rheims. Even if you had managed to recapture it losses would not have been dramatic and a huge Carrier / Bomber force soon would show up.

[Grille]

@UN:
When I got a clearer picture of the WM and the situation as a whole on it, I wondered why you were not going for Greece. When my galley approached your northern border, I noticed that Greece had "milf" as best defender there (while they could have had rifles then IIRC). At that time, I thought you were the tech leader and got huge gpt from the AI, which would oil the research through the industrial age very well. Furthermore, you had all these ROPs, at least these would help keeping good terms with the AI (btw, I indeed feared you had some stuff in Babs terry behind Babylon!).
So I thought you *might* be aiming for the UN, avoiding wars/razing and keep the AI as buddies in the process (you knew by the slaves on F3 that I razed a lot, so AI would be mad at me).
Agree that diplo is sorta lame, at least in MP (and it's sometimes bugged AFAIK).

@Rheims:
Agreed, it would have been just a matter of time.


Interesting that you didn't build any banks!
I made it even to some stock markets, but military would have been the better idea of course.
OTOH, I did not build a single university...[]
IIRC I researched only in the ancient age, except for some beakers towards printing press which I eventually got by trade before it was finished; got it within the 4-techs-in-one-turn catchup you had wondered about

stuff I picked up from your spoiler:
-the music theory thingie: you never get it from TGL in C3C, for what reason ever.
-MA rep hit if a civ gets wiped out: you don't get a rep hit here. You can fuck the AI hard with that. Put tax on 100%, give huge gpt within a MA to a (backwards & somewhat poor) civ, sell your techs for ('your' granted) gpt to that same civ in a seperate deal, go to the next civ and repeat, then wipe out the target civ (you can sometimes jsut jump a train if it's safe bet the AI will wipe out a rival soon). Kinda exploitive (that's why I asked you before Hammurabi left the stage, but my question was expressed very poorly IIRC). I did not use it. It would not have helped a lot anyways, because I did not have much to sell.
Not sure about embargoes, though. You had one with the Babs in place, did that trash your rep?

General question: I'm not so used to coal plants, but do they actually need coal for functionality? I know they at least need it as building req, but AFAIK factories would not need iron to give their spt bonus. (>look at Babylon in the pic above, it has a coal plant, but spt seems to be somehow crooked)

PS:
Glad y'all had fun lurking.

[Beam]

Just checked your turn prior to invasion, France is making 1400 gpt . No Banks indeed, it is upkeep and there is no real need for them if you don't know where to spend +11,000 in cash. Main reason for maintaining a solid rep was assuring I could pay gpt to the AI if needed and they would pay cash together with gpt for techs etc. Afaik not a single event has hurt my rep.

You only need Coal for one turn to build a Coalplant and that's the turn you start construction. After that it is a matter of building and using it. It's main disadvantage is pollution. That hits very hard on this map cause there are very few rivers so you can't build many Hydros.

The most interesting thing about this game is the fully opposite approach to techs and ending up just prior to the Modern Age with a margin of one tech for the techlead. Although the many surviving AI-at-strenght might be a factor here it also clearly shows there are more competitive approaches getting techs. It's also either way imo. Go Unis and seek max. profit deals or go Banks, SE's and get techs cheap.

The buy / steal approach would have been more difficult in the Modern Age imo if the game had continued. First of all the surviving AI would have suffered the same faith as Babs and Greece making stealing the only remaining viable option. Second there are a number of techs that a techleader can plan and play for where a techfollower can't. Nukes, couple of wonders, completing Space Race etc.

Hm, maybe I should replay turn 245b and resubmit.

[Grille]

Yeah, agree on the points about aquiring techs.
Of course, my original plan was certainly building up universities. But at the point I could build them, it seemed easier to just buy the techs that had been traded around and improve cash production. Later (Greek war) I was quite amazed that I could still get techs and even resell them. But as you pointed out, that would have stopped now anyways with those shitty AIs.

quote:Originally posted by Beam


Hm, maybe I should replay turn 245b and resubmit.

Hehe. If you don't attack, I bet you'd win by space for the above reason.
Although the gpt/spt numbers looked really shiny in 245, there was nothing behind it. Too late to make good use of this potential. By the time I may have had a half-decent army/fleet/airforce, you'd have still much more stuff, a nuke head start or a space ship.

Alternatively, how about submitting some 001 save, i.e. start a new one?