Silly Rules succession game

[La Fayette]

Hard times

1882: LF comes to power and says that he 's going to break the rule on purpose and stay 4 more years in Democracy.
1883: Zulus sneak attack Ritter (4 Soupy units killed )
1884: Zulus take Ritter (we get 3 partisans who manage to kill 2 Zulu units); Silk from Leiden delivered in Toledo = 332g.
1885: English sneak attack and take Beeblebrox (Colossus and Magellan ); the cowards in our Senate sign a cease fire behind our back .
1886: Electricity discovered, alas Electronics comes before Espionage ; Zulus attack Jerrie Lewis ( ).
WE SWITCH TO DESPOTISM.
1887: Many Soupy cities starving ; our partisans start killing English units inside Beeblebrox; Zulus take Jerrie Lewis ; our valiant dragoon kills French cavalry outside Old Chuckles.
1888: Our partisans march into Beeblebrox ; Zulus take Third Rock .
1889: Our galleon now offshore Spanish coast.
1890: Beads to Minsk = 152g.

Conclusion (and advice to my successor):

1)The Zulus are much stronger than we are. They come and take. We MUST try to protect our main island. Unfortunately this would require walls + coastal fortresses + barracks and our treasury doesn't allow that much. I would advise building several barracks very quickly and build half a dozen vet cavalry (able to take back our cities since we are unable to protect them).

2) Please don't forget to switch to Monarchy at once (1890). Despotism is a real pain in the ***.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Crap

We are in trouble, I think.

[Straybow]

Whadya mean, you're just now figuring that out??

[La Fayette]

IMO we haven't lost yet, if we avoid big mistakes.

I gave a high priority to sending some freights to Spain because we were so poor (and I was hoping to get Espionage available for research), but stealing techs with diplomats is not forbidden .

We also have TACTICS, and should therefore be able to protect our main island, even if the Zulus strike hard.

We also have INDUST (+ Magellan), and should therefore be able to finish building a strong shipchain to Spain.

Don't lose your morale, Soupy friends! We shall overcome

[Old n Slow]

I haven't seen a post from Bob Smurf in over three months, so I'll assume that he's MIA; I saw a post from atomant about two months ago, so I'll give him some consideration -- looks like it is about time for a new round.

Hmmm -- when this one is all over, I think we should vote to see which rule (or combination) caused the severest difficulty.

Maybe we SHOULD spend a few turns in Monarchy...

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Old n Slow
Hmmm -- when this one is all over, I think we should vote to see which rule (or combination) caused the severest difficulty.

I think the biggest difficulty has been the need to change government every 4 years coupled with the need to go through the forms of government in order.

However, the deterioration in our reputation has hindered us as well. We didn't have the strength to win a major war, but it became very difficult to get and maintain a peaceful relationship with the AI civs.

My suggestion to help us win is that we use the JRabbit exemption rule to stay in republic or democracy for an extended period.

Also we probably should agree whether we are trying to win by conquest or landing - in the remaining time we need to concentrate all our efforts on whichever we decide.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Straybow]

The gov switching is killing us. Without Jrabbit's rule letting us maintain some momentum on occasions we'd be dead.

Right now we're timed so that we switch players on the oedo year. If we relaxed atawa's rule so that we only had to change every 8 years—when we switch players—then we might lower the frustration level enough.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

We could also *ahem* change the number of years to be played by each player to 4... thereby letting us strictly adhere to the rules.

But that's OnS's call, I would say.

[-Jrabbit]

Originally posted by Straybow
The gov switching is killing us.

This is why I made my rule the only anti-restrictive one.

I think we're all in agreement that 4 turns/gov is our greatest challenge, but I think it's the combination of this with the required tech choices that's really killing us.

I wonder if we we could win if those were the only silly rules...?

Can we win? It's getting pretty late, but I'm encouraged by La Fayette's optimism in the face of an absolutely brutal set of turns.

Should we cange the rules so we can win?
NO!!!

[Old n Slow]

I think that our challenge will be to change our thinking based upon the circumstances -- we’ve become perhaps used to certain ways of thinking given the usual set of conditions.

Let’s see what I can do this weekend.

[La Fayette]

Of course the proposal to reduce the number of turns/player to 4 is very attractive.
Personally I would rather fight and lose, than twist the silly rules we have chosen:
" à vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire "

[-Jrabbit]

Exactement, La Fayette.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by La Fayette
Personally I would rather fight and lose, than twist the silly rules we have chosen:
" à vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire "

I agree

There are a lot of 'what if's' in this game. What if we had been on a bigger island, and our early expansion hadn't been handicapped... what if our terrain had at least some specials ... what if I hadn't lost Chuckles to the barbs in the BC era (that always hurts)... what if we had stayed spotless and begged for gifts more assiduously...? etc.

That said, if we can hang in there... losing the odd city isn't a bad thing, if we can retake it with partisans... trade better and smarter... hang on until Espionage and Robotics... and then, we WILL win.

I favour a conquest approach, just because it'll be hard to win the Space race without much production capacity and changing governments all the time, IMO.

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man

I favour a conquest approach,

so do I

[-Jrabbit]

Another vote here for rabid aggressiveness.

Besides, we're far from Spotless, so WTF...