Grave Errors: The Bobchillingworth Experience

[Bobchillingworth]

Sent!

[Bobchillingworth]

Nice blitz today, took out about about a week-and-a-half's worth of turns.


Most of the blitz was spent building military while my two Workers made farms:





Normally this quantity of soldiery would be highly excessive, but there are some mitigating factors. Typically I would have started with a scout and bloodpet, and have gone scouting with both; instead I had two bloodpets, and kept them both close to home (before fortifying in the capital) since I quickly located a good second city site, and because Charadon is in this game. The other two bloodpets are likewise staying at home just in case some nasty Doviello units turn up- having two bloodpets to guard my first expansion isn't a bad idea anyway. The scout left the next turn to uncover more land- because there are no huts or lairs, and because I don't even want to make contact with most of my neighbors yet, having minimal exploration isn't nearly as much of a problem as it would be in most FFH games.


I researched Calendar as my second tech and revolted:





End-of-blitz situation with bonus Unkillable Angel:





Yeah, nice as Orthus Axe would be, I don't see myself killing that thing, like, ever. What flying unit would I even use to obtain the axe, a flesh golem? Bah.


Capital only spent a turn on the Granary- it's going settler next. I got the Kill the Witch event, so I was able to grow to size 6 a turn sooner than anticipated, which was nice since I could work the Dye Plantation (sans road) for an extra turn.

[Bobchillingworth]

[Looks at PBEM 54]:

Hrmm.


[Looks at FFH PBEM XXXI]*:

Well.



Oh hey, but I'm in this game too, and it moves at two days a turn! I should update:






I'm the first to two cities, and should be first to three as well. Triss went in a really obvious location, and will be a nice production spot eventually. Geralt the capital went straight into another settler, to claim the other incense near the scout- that city will build a monument and eventually hopefully the Heron Throne. Tech plan is Code of Laws after Education, then I think Fishing since it's cheap and Triss will want to be working its seafood, and then Crafting -> Mining. One of my workers got mutated by an event to have Mobility I, which is pretty neat


No sign of the Doviello so far. I'm last in soldier count due to having deleted my Shade, but power #4 hasn't dropped either as far as I can tell, which unfortunately means it doesn't look like any of my opponents is getting Doviello-rushed. Bah.


Forgot to position Bloodpets to be in Triss this turn; two move in to garrison next turn. My game continues to be very conservative, but I think I'm making all the right moves.



* Okay, I can't really complain about this game, since there are supposed to be month-long gaps between turns :P

[Qgqqqqq]

Oh hey, but I'm in this game too, and it moves at two days a turn!

Two days a turn?

[Bobchillingworth]

Well, it is if you're playing WW

[Bobchillingworth]

Btw, I haven't seen a single barbarian yet (well, one Sea Serpent, but it doesn't count). I think our mapmaker might have placed a few too many Super Angels...

[Bobchillingworth]

New city:








It's expensive as heck, but will pay back for itself & then some once the incense plantation is finished. It will actually be a decent city much later on, once it gets a manor, breeding pit, some culture and ideally the Heron Throne.


Also killed my first barb this turn, unfortunately it managed to take down a bloodpet first. At least I got a promotion out of it.


Nobody seems to have dipped in power to any appreciable extent (and it looks like everyone still has their Shades, wtf), plus Charadon hasn't popped his WS yet, so I guess TBS never managed to find anyone to rush.



This map is crazy waterlogged. Lanun would be grossly OP here, at least from an economic standpoint- although I imagine Qg would have edited the map in response had anyone picked them.

[Qgqqqqq]

This map is crazy waterlogged. Lanun would be grossly OP here, at least from an economic standpoint- although I imagine Qg would have edited the map in response had anyone picked them.

I would've canned it and started again. Torusland just has insane water because its scattered around so much, rather then concentrated in oceans - I played a SP game with the Lanun in it once, and Raging Waters (or whatever their worldspell is) made my computer crash because it hit like every other tile.

[Bobchillingworth]

This game has the greatest turnpace known to man. Having recognized this fact, it will now inevitably slow to a crawl.


Some pics from our blitz, which got us to turn 60 (!)


Empire at turn 50 (a few turns into the blitz):





Demographics @ 50- kind of mediocre, but soon to improve:





City #4:




I think I was first to four by a fair margin. One would hope so, since my capital went like settler -> settler -> settler :P


I was also first to aristocracy, assuming others were in the race. Demographics looked better afterwards (and this was with a fair few farms either not being worked or in the progress of going up):




One of the players asked how I got to aristocracy so quickly (quick for this map, anyway, T57 isn't anything special compared with more abundant scripts). I told him my tech path- Agr -> Calendar -> AC -> Edu -> CoL. He asked why I went so long without researching mining, but the answer is simple. I have a single resource I can settle which requires crafting, and no gold to justify mining. I have three types of units to build- bloodpets, workers and settlers. Of those three, the first I can produce in 2T in my first expansion just by working forested plains hills, and the other two I am constructing using food. I don't have any buildings worth constructing before I unlock Manors, save Monuments- and those are fairly cheap, as FFH structures go. Getting mining early would be a mistake for anyone on this map, unless Dave has a very close neighbor and/or someone has a gold resource. There are simply too few high-yield commerce resources close by and the combined expense of Immortal + Toroidal is tragic.

Note also my improved position in the solider count- everyone talked a bit about their games, as players are wont to do during blitzes, and I pointed out around midway through that keeping the starting shades didn't make any sense from an economic standpoint, since they'll never earn back their unit upkeep fees if players can ever get around to freeing them.


In the last couple turns I found one of my neighbors:




A good result- I don't think Tholal is a very strong MP player (although he knows the game inside & out), and it's not one of the two Rush Civs.


Further scouting:




Kind of annoying that he has a river + grasslands valley nearby while I've got mostly lakes. I do have a large river system to my west, but what I've uncovered so far is either plains tiles or covered in jungle.


Tholal's culture graph is peculiar:




He revolted to Agrarianism awfully late for someone who started the game able to research Calendar.


This probably explains why:




I think he might have held off until he also could revolt to Godking. If so, this was a bad move for a couple reasons. First, avoiding a single extra turn of anarchy wasn't worth missing out on like two dozen turns of increased food yields which could have gone into workers and settlers. Second, Godking isn't a very good civic to adopt on a map with Toroidal Immortal maintenance fees. He's not going to be able to keep up with his neighbors (i.e. me) in expansion, and that will make him easier to defeat when we come to blows. He's Organized and elves- he should adopt City States and spam cottages & cities while sneering at distance and city # costs.


Finally, some more interesting data from the city ranking screen:




Everyone but me has crafting- the wine are why they have size 7 capitals (8 for Charismatic Charadon). While getting the wine up early is not entirely without merit, I think my settling my first two expansions to claim Incense resources made more sense. They didn't require researching a special tech to improve (everyone had to research Calendar early if for no other reason than the Dye) and gave +6 commerce each, immediately paying for the cities & then some.




Finally, like I said there was a bit of chatter while people passed around saves. The salient points:


* TBS alleges that he is going to try out an arcane game with Charadon. This actually isn't nearly as insane as it might sound- he saves a lot of hammers by not needing to construct Mage Guilds, Charismatic is a really good trait for going the magic route & Aggressive gives Empower 1 to summoned units. His apparent reluctance to attack anyone may testify to his sincerity (he claimed to have passed up a potential worker steal against one of my opponents), but I'm still going to play cautiously. Thankfully I now have a couple shock bloodpets thanks to getting lucky in a couple combats vs. barb warriors (taking 50% odds battles is the right move when you can 2T replacements and don't have much else better to do).

* Most of the other players have met each other; my reluctance to invest any energy in scouting means I was the last person to make a first contact.

* Tholal found superjim, who in turn discovered TBS and Dave (I think, I may have jim & TBS switched around).

* According to one of jim or TBS, the map "is full of diseased angels". Okay

[Qgqqqqq]

since they'll never earn back their unit upkeep fees if players can ever get around to freeing them.

Hey! Time victories with powered up caps can (eventually) pay them off!
They were never intended as anything but a gimmick, however. Also I'm pretty sure AGG gives C1 to summoned units - at the very least, it does so to Hosts and Spectres.