[SPOILERS] Muffin's spoiler thread of delicious baked goodness and half baked ideas

[spacetyrantxenu]

Report! I'm making wild speculation in the lurker thread and I have no information to base any of it on. With no better information than I've read lately my projections that Jowy will raise an army of zombies and ride them through to victory/apocalypse may well be true.

[AdrienIer]

I'll triple bump this. Even a vague description of what you've been doing would be nice.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Sorry guys: I'm swamped IRL currently. A combination of a new aggressive rota, a house move, a bereavement and an unwell partner who lives a fair distance away has really taken a hit on my free time (especially as she gets irritated by gaming).

I'll make a couple of saves for you guys to puruse, that might be easier than doing a big lot of screenies and I'll try and put something up over the weekend, depending on whether she needs to go into hospital. I did make an eot one after commodore bumped but forgot to post it. I'll do one for this turn too.

As a small spoiler I'm expecting an retep invasion from his worker movements very soon... And cornflakes has been eyeing up my island conquest too :/ missing out on the SoZ was a big misplay really!

[spacetyrantxenu]

Thanks REM, I hope things get better IRL. This isn't important, but if you have time to post a save that would be very generous.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Ah I just muddle on. Not much else you can do! Also I see that the others have not updated too frequently so I felt we were kinda playing for ourselves. I gotta say this is one of the most enjoyable games of civ4 that I have ever played though. Very interesting and fun.

I did make a save of after my moves a few turns ago, I'll do that again this turn and then talk about my thoughts and plans re the game when I get a chance and sit down work out when I last did that. I would rate current win chances

Retep 50%
Me 40%
Flakes 10%

Essentially if I can stay out of combat for 10-15 turns I will be pretty hard to beat. But I don't think they will let me do that somehow... I'm actually whipping to make retep appear stronger to flakes so I don't pass him in score :/ a dual attack I doubt I could hold off.

[AdrienIer]

I'm sorry to hear that. Take your time.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Ah I'm not looking for sympathy or anything, but is certainly is affecting the games. Having 5-10mins to war in the industrial era each day does probably make the war a little less slick (not this game). But it is mainly the rota - if I didn't have a funeral to go to and get special leave for on Thursday I would actually be in work more hours than I am out of work over the next 7 days... That doesn't even take into account commuting! It's just so many hours it is crazy :/ I haven't had chance to do any lurking or anything... At least my partner is well enough to avoid hospital thankfully. Although it has kinda all come on at once.

But anyway, here are the saves, after I did my moves this turn and I think 4-5 turns ago (check the enforced peace treaty with Retep for the exact amount) password is 'commodore' as he gave me the idea to make them. I don't have time to screenshot atm, and the land is rather spread out now so it would take a fair while to do.

Current plan is as you can see to go golden with the prophet born this eot. Retep will almost certainly declare on me looking at the worker movements. He will have rifling soon, although I should be able to reach it in a decent time period if I go straight for it which I will. I will probably use the free civic switch to switch to rep also - I will only lose the 6 routes with flakes, who also looks like he is posturing for war soon, and probably gain much more than that in the free specialist bonuses. I wish I had the mids... The HG build will be super powerful with the amount of cities that I have. It's just can I hold out... I have the land hands down, but can I hold it?

Essentially it is down to the macro game here - who attacks whom. If Retep goes for me I really need flakes to press back and retake cities. I noticed that Retep razed a flakes city - I do not know if this was a smart move. Yes he couldn't hold it, but was it wise to piss him off? It depends if cornflakes can keep his head with game theory and realise that hitting me would be the smart way to gain land, which it looks like he is. Last I saw he had two galleys ready to hit my new island of D war... There is no way he can use them against Retep. Maybe I should have razed, but each turn I own that city it is an extra GPT for each city I own with the trade routes... Greed eh?

I have whipped quite a lot just because I can see the attack from Retep coming in my weak undefended backside of old Jowy cities... With the border pops this turn it is only crashing and Dimmsdale that can be hit from land at the start of a war, and he only has the one worker near there. I will raze the roads there next turn and then it is all down to warring. His war with flakes did not seem to go too well, so I feel that I have a good chance. Whilst I took a long time to kill Jowy/HAK, mainly because I had such a low base of soliders to start from, but my warring is fairly competent I feel with the speed at which I managed to take out bob. I also needed to whip the bob cities as they were coming out in unhappiness and some were hitting over 20gpt in mait, so dry whips of courthouses were very productive to bring them into happiness and the costs down.

I wish I hadn't have had to have whipped so much with the GA coming up but small cities are better than loosing them I always think. I would also like to put the HE in Arlen and the NE in the MoM city but I doubt I will be able to stop making units for long enough. I will see how long a HE build will take next turn and decide, but the NE is probably pie in the sky thinking.

Annoyingly I cannot get the drop on Retep. I am not too used to turn order but as he is first I believe that he can strike when the deal ends, unless the deal ends at my turn part as I signed it then? But I assume that it just can be ended at the turn roll.

Btw could one of the admins (spacetyrant?) perhaps allow attaching of actual saves? It would be easier to post without needing to compress.

[Gawdzak]

Took a look at the save. Looking good! Hang in there.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Oh dear. Hang in there isn't good... If I can play it like wales played today then.

Also con aldercruz I just realised that my reply to your question never posted all that time ago. I will quickly rehash what I said. Essentially I did think about breaking off, but it just didn't seem practical. Jowy/HAK was the best target geographically. By the time I had retaken my iron I had the MOM and another city of his - essentially I had killed a win chance for him and would be locked into total war. Even going economically there was not much room for further decent cities without attacking me. So killing him as quick as possible seemed the most sensible plan, in a macro sense. Also I hoped to and indeed did prevent him getting to pikes - if he had got a 10t treaty I feel I definitely would have faced them by the end. Also he had huge unit amounts. If he could threaten my cities that I had taken then I would be a bit stuffed if he could pin down my phract stack and hit them with cata.

I could have kept at war and started another, but that seemed silly. As I said I wanted to end the war quickly (my WW was climbing and I had only just hooked the calendar resources) going into another war would be silly. Also I was keeping him on the defensive with my mobility and units. If I had withdrew then he could have regrouped and started taken back cities rather than staying holed up in them.

Also who would I attack? Flakes was too far away, Bob has decent cheap defensive UUs that would require a concerted effort and then retep was gearing up with power rapidly increasing and the ability to build a lot in response fast. So not really many options!

[spacetyrantxenu]

Thanks for the report. As for the saves, we can't allow the Civ save files with the forum software. I've tried to add that file type but it always fails, I think it's because the file extension is too long. So, zipping it is. You could host the files in Dropbox and add a link there, but that's probably more work than zipping the saves and attaching them here.