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so much aluminum fun fact I have never gotten aluminum or uranium without having to trade for it, ally a city state, or conquer someone (or Recycling Plants for aluminum)

I did that once for Shipping Mafia with Strege; logs are such a headache

##Vote: Kay imo we should lynch AFKay before she uses up a sub slot sorry Kay

Your fault for picking a source material nobody cares about...

Portugal is also pretty good at making money

subbed out #hbc probably stands for HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY GO CANADA subbed out

ugh I hate doing this but this game is too active for me right now requesting a sub; sorry guys ;_;

sorry guys I don't have time to make a comprehensive atm because I have to go to a driving lesson basically skimmed the thread; Larsa completely misses the point of everything. You don't need to be voting someone to have content, you just need to actually TALK ABOUT WHO YOU THINK IS SCUMMY. Larsa has not said anything about who he thinks is scummy. This is actually worse than Dewound, who at least had suspicions but didn't want to vote. I also don't know why he got so mad about having to respond to me again and again because he literally only responded to me like once? Not counting the RVS stuff since that was a totally unrelated topic. Also it feels weird to me that he was relatively calm when responding to everyone else multiple times and suddenly just blew up at me and started yelling about not wanting to respond to my same points over and over again when he had never done so even once. Dunno maybe he got me mixed up with someone else? might switch to Larsa over Dewound but I'll need to think about it once I come back Rapier if you didn't read SMT and didn't know that I was Deathbound and not Refa, how are you getting Deathbound feels from anybody...?

okay I missed that somehow even though it got posted twice... but really it doesn't change my points against him because he still doesn't have any real content and I don't know what he really thinks about dewound either after reading that post As for him mudslinging Refa, it's just a lot of little remarks embedded throughout his posts that still don't commit to a Refa scumread, like him saying Refa is hellbent on attacking him with no grounds, or like saying Refa is chainsaw defending Poly.

Don't really agree with the complaints about Rapier's vote seeming like he was giving himself room to back off the wagon. While technically true it seems to me more like he was just saying "voting Mancer because this is the best thing I have atm" also something I forgot to add about Larsa- when talking to Refa he makes it out to seem that it should have been obvious that he was making a jokevote on Poly and implies-without-really-saying that this is scummy of Refa to do but literally everybody in the thread at the time thought he was being serious. unfortunately going to be out for most of the day

sorry guys was having internet issues last night and then my head was hurting so I decided to just sleep early ##Unvote, ##Vote: Dewound It's possible this is just playstyle differences but looking at dewound posting about Rapier, the more and more he explains his read there the more and more I don't get why he isn't voting there. I mean, I don't agree with his Rapier read necessarily, but he keeps saying that he doesn't feel that this is how a townie would act, and if that's the case why isn't his vote there? Then in #121 he talks about how he will gladly defend people he thinks are town and spend paragraphs doing so, but in #123 he just says he's not scumreading Mancer. ~Semantics but not scumreading != townreading and other than just go "man this Mancer wagon sucks" and "hey Mancer made some good points" there isn't an actual reason given for why Mancer is town at any point. Reads like white-knighting to me. When I was catching up I actually decided Randa was town at some point because I figured it'd be easier for him to bs some shit rather than draw attention through trolling, and then I realized he was just drunk (are you even legal, Randa?). q_q still inclined to say he's town because I feel like he just wouldn't post if he was drunk scum but eh kind of weak. I see from the votals that Larsa is voting Mancer but I don't actually remember Larsa pushing Mancer at all. In fact all I remember is the Poly vote and then saying that it was a joke. Quick skim of the thread reveals to me that his Mancer vote actually just seems like a misunderstanding between him and Mancer about what the other was saying- and it's about Miller game theory regardless. Larsa actually has very little content despite posting a lot. Also I don't really like his comments about Refa. He's kind of just mudslinging and throwing around accusations about Refa tunneling on him with no ground and chainsaw defending Poly (without even saying that he thinks Poly is scum), but he isn't actually taking a stance on whether or not Refa is actually scum.

what do you think about what Prims/Larsa said about Poly's vote? it's not big but generally you try a lot harder in RVS so it feels weird that you're not really commenting on anything could say the same about Mancer too

##Vote: Randa do you think Psych's self-vote is worse than Poly's or do you not see a real difference between the two? also I agree with Refa about Larsa's vote; what exactly is scummy about drawing attention to a self-vote?

confirming

I don't think Prims was really serious about you not playing so I would play. The fair way to do it would be to randomize things.

yeah don't subscribe just check the thread EVERY MINUTE OF YOUR LIFE also I'm willing to /out if we have extra people.

Yeah actually I went Freedom with the Inca yesterday and it was much better than I remembered it being. Particularly the Foreign Legion, it rocketed my army from last place (by a big margin) to second place when I got it. Also IIRC AI prioritizes free policies over anything else, because I've never had the guy who gets to ideologies second or third pick the same one as me. My Inca game was I think the easiest game I've ever had on Immortal, but a lot of factors went my way. Firstly, my capital was right beside a big mountain range, so there were lots of great Terrace Farm spots for both it and my second city. My third city wasn't close to any mountains but it had a natural wonder (can't remember which one though). Also it was Pangaea, which helps for Science since earlier Research agreements. I got early declarations of friendship from Ethiopia and Venice. Ottomans went warmonger and wiped Rome out of the game, and took 2/3 of Poland's cities. Since he was focused on military production, screwed Rome and Poland over, and Venice was Venice, my only real wonder competition was Ethiopia. It allowed me to get a lot of early-midgame wonders like Oracle, Hagia Sophia, Petra, and Machu Pichu. I was worried he'd attack me but I guess I was a little too far away because he actually ended up wanting to be friends with me. I think it eventually cost me Ethiopia's friendship, but it was inevitable since we were wonder competing, city state competing, and had different ideologies. Near the end I backstabbed the Ottomans (didn't even get me negative rep lol) and returned one of Poland's cities to him since it sucked anyways, which got me insta-friendship from him. Gonna try out a few more Immortals and then give Deity another shot.

/in if the game starts after next Tuesday (aka the 14th aka after THE REAL THANKSGIVING)

in if the game starts after Thursday

I actually like Order for Science more. You can bulb spaceship parts with Great Engineers and fsr I'm always low on money by the end of the game from buying buildings and stuff. Another good thing that Order has is a lot of Happiness tenets. If you're going for a Science victory you're going to get the first ideology, meaning the best AI (who's probably going Cultural) will choose a different ideology than you. If you go Freedom and the cultural runaways go Autocracy or Order it's going to be much more difficult to keep your happiness up than it would be going Order.

AI review - it'll be amusing to see which AIs do the best in each of our matches Celts: Other than TURN 3 PANTHEON and a subsequent spreading of Catholicism, they had practically no effect on the game. Tried to go warmonger but Shoshone and Inca spread pretty fast I guess and left her with only two cities of her own. Low production combined with weak tech made her army really bad. Didn't even manage to take over a CS. Shoshone: Got off to an amazing start but never really recovered after losing his two best cities. The biggest thing he did after that was declare war on me, but even then it was mostly China who was the threat, since she was on my continent. Amusingly, less than ten turns after the second war, he asked for a Declaration of Friendship (probably because I switched to Autocracy and got it to be the World Ideology). TBH though I think the Incans would have gone to war with him and taken his two cities sooner or later even if I hadn't bribed them. Moson Kahni was a cool city to annex though; my cultural output jumped from around 50 to 250, letting me earn SPs/Tenets at 5x the rate I otherwise would have. China: She also asked to be friends with me at the very end. Her and Shoshone were probably planning on backstabbing me at some point, but it didn't get that far. Pretty much a constant thorn in my side, from preventing me from getting a third city and ruining my Science victory before it even started, to declaring war on me and making my Diplo victory much more difficult than it needed to be. She seemed kind of stuck as to what she was going for though. She seemed to be trying to warmonger, but focused more on capturing city states than capitals... If I had to guess I'd say the early gameplan was probably Cultural, but she got screwed out of most of the wonders, and then kind of hovered in between Domination and Cultural but never really committed fully to either. Inca: THE BIGGEST BROS, INCA X ARABIA BFFS4LYFE. Did almost anything I asked them to do if I gave them enough gold and was the main reason neither Shoshone nor Persia won. Tried to go for an aggressive cultural victory (kind of like Rome, but way nicer, to me anyways) but after Sciences Funding got passed and my cultural output skyrocketed from capturing Moson Kahni, never really came close to winning. In fact I don't think he became Influential over anyone. Still, I'm trying him out in my next game. Darius: Stayed under the radar well and was within a turn of winning. TBH if he'd pulled the trigger and nuked me rather than just threatening to do it, he might have won. But I think maybe he was slightly out of range? Not sure. I underestimated how fast he was teching in the midgame, and once I started focusing on just rushing Globalization he got a pretty commanding tech lead. Still, he was pretty bro in the early-midgame, before I did pretty much everything humanly possible to piss him off. And didn't get messed up by the early worker steal q_q

WON in what ended up being a really epic game. I was cruising to what seemed like a pretty easy diplomatic victory. Got Globalization pretty quickly (I was researching Telecommunications at the end of my last update) and sent guys to all the civs. Just before Globalization kicked in I bribed Inca with like 50 gpt to vote me as World Leader- it would have given me exactly 35 votes. But then, Shoshone and China threw a wrench in my plans. Around 6 turns before the UN, they simultaneously declared war on me. Then within a couple turns, they also each captured one of the two CSs with whom I was most influential, depriving me of an overall 6 votes and bringing me down to 29 (although it also brought the total required # of delegates to 34). This time, China started pressing in earnest, both against me and another one of my allied CSs, and I had to ratchet up the army spending. I also further bribed Inca to vote SF4LYFE as the World Religion. But this let Darius get in a sneak proposal to make Freedom the World Ideology (which was neither my ideology nor the most popular ideology, Autocracy). The fact that I lost all my trade routes to China, coupled with my now sizable military and all the bribes that were going out brought my gpt grinding to a halt (at one point it was 2 gpt). To make things worse, the World Religion proposal + the fact that I was stealing his city states + being friends with Inca (whom he was denouncing at the time) made Darius decline to renew our Declaration of Friendship, and then a few turns later he denounced me. After I built up a force of like 8 bombers and a bunch of (Rocket) Artillery and drove China out of my borders and my CS's borders, she finally declared peace with me (and so did Shoshone) and decided to attack Darius instead. But by this point they'd slowed me down enough that my economy sucked and Darius was seriously threatening to win Science. I switched my production to gold and managed to get Freedom as the World Ideology revoked but I was still sitting at like 29 votes and at this point, Inca wouldn't vote me as World Leader no matter how much gold I fed him. Darius had 3/6 parts built. At this point I realized that I was sitting on like 5500 faith and there were a bunch of city states that wanted my religion- including two with whom I wasn't friends. I spammed a bunch of prophets and started sending them out everywhere. Darius put up the 4th part and after I revoked Freedom, started threatening me with nukes, so in desperation I bribed the Incans to attack him. The Incans came through like bros and started nuking his cities down to the ground. Darius created the fifth part in his second city, but China had a bunch of troops in the middle of his territory so he just had it standing off to the side. I allied two more city states and switched to Autocracy and also got it voted as the World Ideology to get me to 35. But with 4 turns left, Darius put up another part (not the one he'd bought earlier) and Inca had seemingly run out of nukes. Darius had also driven China out (or maybe her troops got caught in the nuclear crossfire; unsure). 2 turns left, I realized I still had a bunch of Bombers sitting idle. They had just barely enough range to strike his last part that was still standing to the side. I declared war (bringing me down to exactly 34) and destroyed it. 2 turns later VICTORY. Arabia is pretty good. Not sure I could have put out so many bribes (the Incans were expensive...) without the slightly higher gpt. Also my economy got up and running a good 10 turns before it would have with another civ. Desert start bias didn't really do much though. I was a few tiles away from the desert, and China + some city states prevented me from settling a city there.

It's difficult to give an answer to that because if you can make a lot of gold you're good at Diplo. So the "gold" civs like Arabia/Morocco/Venice/etc are good at Diplo despite possibly not being focused on Diplo. But beyond that, making a lot of gold is not really that difficult. Send out a lot of trade routes, have Market/Bank/Stock Exchanges in all your cities, trade luxes at 7 gpt, and you'll easily be making over a hundred GPT no matter which civ you're playing as.

Things going well! After I built up a strike force of Gatling Guns and Infantry, I bribed the Incans to attack the Shoshone (didn't take much) and the Celts were already at war with them. A couple turns later I declared war myself. The Incans took Temoak and were doing most of the damage to Moson Kahni, but I timed my attack perfectly and annexed it. Negotiated peace with Shoshone afterwards since he's not really a threat without his two best cities. China declared war on me a few turns later but other than plundering a few trade routes and disrupting my gold production for 10-15 turns, didn't really make any sort of serious attempt against me, despite having quietly built up a bigger army than even the Incans. Once my army came back from the other continent, she negotiated pretty fast. All the while I was dumping gold into city states. The first UN was a few turns ago, and I was way in lead with 20 votes. Incans are the score leader now but not too worried about them; I got Science Funding passed so I doubt they'll be a serious threat for the Culture Victory. Darius is more likely to win Science (he has the Apollo Program built) but I think I should get the votes first. And worst case scenario, he doesn't have much of an army so I could probably take his capital too. China and the Celts are going for Domination, but the Celts are just bad and China doesn't seem to be really committing to any attack (at war with Persia again) despite having a sizable army. @Xekr- ah that makes sense.

Well it's not that they're bad at gold production so much as that they don't really tend to do much with their gold? Like I was playing an Immortal game last week and the Mayans had an really good economy, making upwards of 500 gold a turn. They were also allies with a lot of city states and at the first WC after Diplo became available, already had 26/35 votes necessary. At that point, I poured all my gold into stealing their friends and preventing them from winning Diplo. And though they had thousands of gold in reserve that they could have easily used to buy those city states back, they pretty much sat on it and chose to not do much. Greece is pretty much the only AI who actually actively attempts to use its gold to win Diplo. And after writing all that I realized you weren't talking about the AIs... Greece is a good choice for Diplo due to their UA. Not really sure what you mean though?