AU601: Aqualung71's DAR2 (Rome, vs Paddy)

[JimiD]

still lurking, still reading

[Aqualung71]

790AD

Bloody Persians!

With 1 turn to go on my Leo build, Persia completed it! And now I have to suffer a PBEM bug. The turn before (780AD) I checked F7 to make sure Leo's hadn't been finished by anyone. It hadn't. However, because of the lack of PBEM's popups, in 790AD I was not advised of the completion of Leo's and given a turn to swap the build as you would in SP. Instead, I was presented with a message that Leo's was no longer available and my 580 shields invested had been automatically switched to a 200 shield University - a waste of 380 shields - around 20 turns! If given the chance I could have switched to a Palace and then moved back to JS Bach with only 1 turn to go once I finished Music Theory next turn. Now I have to wait another 20 turns to get JSB! This REALLY pisses me off!

Anyway, Newtons has been finished, while Smiths is still over 20 turns away, though no-one has discovered Economics yet. Sistines has been completed, so the wonder cascade potential has diminished.

[Aqualung71]

730AD

Ok, now I've got that off my chest, I'll go back a few turns.

730AD, and 2 of Carthage's 5 available towns flipped to Rome within 2 turns. And no, neither of them were the previously mentioned Leptis Magna. They were the former Carthaginian towns of Theveste and Utica.

Here is the new Roman Empire, now much more homogenous (as of 790AD)

[sabrewolf]

yes, that's one of the really annoying things of PBEMs. if you're not the last human player, you don't get all the neat popups and infos
and you also don't see the AI moves

it was wonderful, when andydog bit the dust and i could click through all those peace, war, builds, completion, etc. messages

but a shame about the wonder! now i'll have to start checking F7 too every single turn, together with F1, F4, and all diplomats

[Aqualung71]

Sabre, hitting F7 still won't save you in my situation. As I said, I hit f& the previous turn to check, but still wasn't given the chance the following turn to switch to a Palace.

[sabrewolf]

so the turn leo's was built, it switched you automatically to university? i always thought you get a turn inbetween and only in the beginning of the 2nd turn does it switch.

but then... i havn't built many wonders in non-AP PBEMs yet

[Aqualung71]

That's exactly what happened. Here's an extract again from my post above:

The turn before (780AD) I checked F7 to make sure Leo's hadn't been finished by anyone. It hadn't. However, because of the lack of PBEM's popups, in 790AD I was not advised of the completion of Leo's and given a turn to swap the build as you would in SP. Instead, I was presented with a message that Leo's was no longer available and my 580 shields invested had been automatically switched to a 200 shield University

[Arrian]

That REALLY sucks. Ouch.

-Arrian, checking in occasionally

[Aqualung71]

Well, I guess it's time for an update. We've just hit 1000AD, and the game is moving along pretty well for the Romans. We are at war with Babylon, though for what reason we cannot really discern. We have been very friendly towards the Greeks, and allowed them to expand without harrassment. Paddy has continued to ICS into Babylonian territory, so has plenty of tightly spaced cities.

We are way ahead in techs, having just completed Industrialisation and commenced a bunch of Factories from pre-builds. We are now only 4 techs ahead of Persia, having bitten the bullet and traded them Physics and Metallurgy for Democracy. We also revolted from Monarchy this turn, and have been informed by our wretched advisor to expect 7 long turns of Anarchy! Oh well, I hope the benefits of Democracy are worth it. The main reason to switch (besides superior research power of course) is to double our RR'ing speed. Oh, we have Coal, by the way

In 990AD the previously mentioned Leptis Magna finally flipped to us, bringing our tally of Carthaginian flips to 3 and reducing Carthage to 2 towns.

The only other things worth mentioning these last 200 years or so are shown in the following 3 screenies

770AD

[Aqualung71]

990AD:

[Aqualung71]

and also in 990AD:

[Aqualung71]

and the obligatory map at 1000AD:

[Aqualung71]

Hmmm, well what has Rome achieved in the 250 long years since our last update? Well, after deducting 7 turns of Anarchy before emerging into Democracy, we're only left with 18 turns to achieve anything

That probably explains why our score hasn't risen as dramatically as it did in the past. We are at 1110 compared to Persia's 885 and Greece's 726.....Paddy has diligently improved from 5th to 4th and is still moving through the ranks, though we are still 53% ahead in score with a reasonable power lead (though Paddy is gaining with recent conquests).

A Celtic city, Cataractonium (an early centre of research into eye disease perhaps?), flipped to Rome.....seems the world's population is so in awe of us they can't help coming over to our side. I think that makes 4 flips in total now.

On the research side we have completed Medicine, Replaceable Parts, Electricity, Scientific Method, and have just started on The Corporation. We have started ToE for a 9-turn build, which should allow us to complete both The Corporation and Steel in 4 turns each, then take AT and Electronics for free

Paddy has been badgering us for an alliance against Babylon, which we didn't really want and eventually made peace with them. Then this last turn he inexplicably offered me 400g for an alliance against them, so I accepted, not intending to even send one unit over. He has them down to their last 2 cities anyway. I think he is hoping I'll "tech" him up to Democracy! We're 11 required techs in front of Greece, and 5 in front of Persia, our nearest rival (though Xerxes has Military Tradition). He has also forgotten the "don't attack AI cities" rule, but it's a bit too late to really matter. Having said that, Greece has embarked on a pretty aggressive and impressive programme of ICS'ing over there, as you can see from the minimap

No more wonders to date......US being built now, and ToE and Hoovers will follow. Factories and Coal Plants have been built or are being built in core cities, and we even got to build the Iron Works. RR'ing is nearly complete and a few Infantry are being built for security.

Current plan is to remain peaceful and win via spaceship.....unless we don't have the resources, in which case it will be become warlike and win via spaceship.

Some of you may be wondering why Rome hasn't asserted her dominance over Greece long ago. But there you have the essential difference between SP and PBEM in my opinion. You can often just have fun playing with humans rather than conquering them....the AI isn't so thoughtful

[sabrewolf]

nice to see this is still going on. i see you're researching nationalism. why that? the draft won't be that important for you in your position and i think rubber should be reachable somewhere. and the AI will research this tech anyhow, so you could trade instead...

curious moves by paddy. 400g just like that?
maybe that's a strategy he picked up in one of his 40 other PBEMs

how long do you think you'll play this game? without war, it could get very dull.

[Aqualung71]

I knew somebody would pick up on that Nationalism thing . I'm not actually researching it - as you can read from the post, I am researching Corporation. It's just that when I reloaded the last turn to take the screenshot I didn't bother to select the tech research choice after the discovery of Scientific Method and it defaulted to Nationalism. A couple of the builds are probably wrong too.

You're probably right about the no warfare option, but I've decided to keep going to a spaceship win, and see if I can do that without attacking anyone else.

On the 400g, Paddy didn't accept the offer and wanted a tech as well - I think I offered Printing Press