Thanks for the feedback earlier in the thread Sullla and others. I'll be the first to admit that I squandered a whole bunch of opportunities, and I clearly have a lot to learn about playing past the first 50 turns of the game. I think it was TBS who once described a benchmark of aiming for your civ's growth rate to be consistently high enough such that your total output doubles every 20 turns up through T100, and I could feel myself stumble with the wave of Settlers 4-7 and 8-11, combined with the choice I made to not whip Amicalola's capital in order to get my Great Prophet and shrine running ASAP.
Everything just got kind of muddled, with Settlers going to weaker spots, not having the Workers in place to get them up and running quickly, and not feeling strong/concentrated enough to settle more confidently against my neighbors. Part of this was not having as developed an intuition for managing a bigger civ, part of it was having difficulty maintaining the sandbox after the Amicalola rush, and part of it was an unfortunate and ill-advised sense of complacency. I also didn't have a focused strategic plan to try and compete with Plemo beyond trying to stay current in military tech and hoping for a dogpile that came too little, too late.
I do wish I had continued reporting in detail so that I could reflect on my later mistakes, especially the military ones, but that just wasn't in the cards as my motivation crashed. Perhaps I became too discouraged too quickly once I realized how I was losing ground to Plemo over time in the demographics and saw the extent of his island settlements, and of course I wasn't aware of any setbacks he might have encountered during that time, so it just felt like he was untouchable. It was just grim the way he kept growing his lead and getting techs/wonders earlier than expected and positioning his troops superbly.
Overall, it was still a fun time and I'm glad I had the opportunity to participate. I'm looking forward to PB54 and trying not to repeat my worst mistakes from this game
Everything just got kind of muddled, with Settlers going to weaker spots, not having the Workers in place to get them up and running quickly, and not feeling strong/concentrated enough to settle more confidently against my neighbors. Part of this was not having as developed an intuition for managing a bigger civ, part of it was having difficulty maintaining the sandbox after the Amicalola rush, and part of it was an unfortunate and ill-advised sense of complacency. I also didn't have a focused strategic plan to try and compete with Plemo beyond trying to stay current in military tech and hoping for a dogpile that came too little, too late.
I do wish I had continued reporting in detail so that I could reflect on my later mistakes, especially the military ones, but that just wasn't in the cards as my motivation crashed. Perhaps I became too discouraged too quickly once I realized how I was losing ground to Plemo over time in the demographics and saw the extent of his island settlements, and of course I wasn't aware of any setbacks he might have encountered during that time, so it just felt like he was untouchable. It was just grim the way he kept growing his lead and getting techs/wonders earlier than expected and positioning his troops superbly.
Overall, it was still a fun time and I'm glad I had the opportunity to participate. I'm looking forward to PB54 and trying not to repeat my worst mistakes from this game