Part ... 7?! Good heavens, how many are there? It didn't seem this long as I was playing and writing along....
The Year 75: (Ascending Dates)
I got the horse ornament in my border just in time to chop its trees down and use them for the rafters of the New Z Land granary. I'll build a pasture for the horses too; I've finally gotten a bunch of workers into the area. I might claim the Frank Incense with a city on the sign itself before Mansa destroys the forest there too, but only because Mansa has only a single worker in the area, the snowy forest incense is in a desert, and the worker in question is busy hooking up another incense right now, also in the desert. At least my settler is en route. (I need a bunch more settlers. I may have mentioned this already.)
Also visible: The northern borders of Justin's incredibly annoying new city. We're going to have to wipe that guy out before he gets 'phracts. Not because I'm worried he'll attack me with them - just because Guilds is so far off in his distant future that I can't bear the thought of letting him continue to annoy me for that long.
Later in the same year, the city of SIOFA was established on Woodcrabs' Isle. We will never actually take control of those crabs since the placement of Hatty's city on the island, in combination with the placement of the water-bound seafood, renders any city that could do so completely unviable, but merely having an island city boosts our commerce by a pretty significant margin, and there's already a workboat on the way to hook up the fish in its harbor. We could actually have founded this city last turn if not for the comedy of errors that our scouting has been in this game, but that's okay.
(In real life, the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries Agreement isn't really a city, nor anything like a city. In real life, it's a multinational agreement, to which Australia is a significant party, regarding fishing in the Indian Ocean. In this game, SIOFA isn't really a city either. It's basically a bunch of Australindian fish with trade routes and voting rights.)
The Year 125:
It's going to be a near-run thing to get the Incense into Serrata's borders before this worker finishes roading and then plantation-chopping it, but I think we'll make it! Serrata, incidentally, is the species name for Indian Frankincense. It is also the name of, I dunno, some eco-friendly apartment complex in Melbourne or something that I found on Google, but I admit this is kind of a stretch as Australindian names go.
We're also likely to lose an exploring workboat to a barb galley next turn (especialy because barbs don't play by the same vision rules as the rest of us) -- which is actually pretty disappointing, but I guess it might mean paying a little less unit supply from time to time....
The Year 150:
So the AIs are messing with my plans here -- Mansa (not pictured) is being surprisingly smart, chopping down the incense forest before he finishes his road there since it's obvious that Serrata's culture is going to claim the tile before long. This will cost me style points! Again! Curse that Mansa!
Pictured, of course, is the other monkey wrench in my plans: Hatty's settling party. My settler (currently standing on the ruins of the auto-razed barb city of Minoan) was meant to plant a city 2SW of his current position, claiming sugar, spice, and the gold ornament, all in its first ring. Unfortunately, because AIs don't believe in dotmaps, they pretty much just all want to found the same cities on the same tiles, which means that if left to herself, Hatty will probably build a city on the ruins of Minoan next turn -- invalidating my desired spot since, lacking two more workers in the immediate neighborhood, I can't plant it until next turn. I could move my spot a bit further west and be fine -- except it would then be cut off from the rest of my empire entirely by AI culture. This, for the record, would be bad. So I thought about just building a connecting city here myself ... but first of all, it's a terrible location (and even worse when you remember that I have the Great Lighthouse; this spot isn't remotely coastal). And second of all, what is Hatty going to do with that Settler if I do? Probably move west herself and claim that gold ornament before I can get another Settler there is what. (Maybe I'm wrong, but c'mon -- where else would she expand? So I wound up foolishly sending my Settler along as originally planned. I might even plant that completely isolated city I was talking about just for the "style points." It wouldn't be the first completely insane and indefensible move I made this game.
The Year 225:
It turns out that I was doubly wrong in the Minoan region: Hatty founded in place with her settler rather than moving 1N to Minoan, and then I discovered that Justin's latest city invalidated my planned gold city site as well. Thus, the new city of Sumatra. It is named for the island off whose coast a major earthquake occurred in 2004, bringing India (which was itself hard-hit by the resulting Tsunami) and Australia, as well as a number of more distant countries, to come together in providing disaster relief. I felt the name was appropriate for this complete disaster of a city. Its first-ring wet corn, together with the resource tiles it can share with New Z Land and the second-ring iron mine it will hopefully someday steal from Justin, make it look like a decent city, but Sumatra is so far from our core, while being well off our GLH coast and (critically) not on an island to help fill out our domestic trade routes with overseas ones, that it's going to be a drag on our city for a long, long time, without claiming any new ornaments or having any other reason for existence except for one: To be another staging area close to Target Justin.
(I'm quite sexist in this game: Men must die! Women are okay by me ... as far as humans go, at least. Obviously Wombats are far superior.)
I was also wrong about the Frank Incense of course; I could almost certainly have claimed it culturally just by revolting to caste and running an artist for a turn or two when I noticed the worker starting to chop. Sadly, I realized this too late to save the ornament, which means that the no-longer-forested Incense, once praised for its frankness, has been recognized by all its peers to be merely rude. (Resources on desert tiles are like that though.)
The Year 300:
The Minoan civilization, for which the aforementioned barb city was named, suffered from a major volcanic eruption on one of its tributary islands at some point during its late-ish history. As a result, this civilization is imagined by some scholars to be the "origin" of the Atlantis myth. My new city, replacing Minoan a bit further north, is therefore named for Lemuria, a completely imaginary continent which, prior to the discovery of plate tectonics, some scholars imagined to have sunken into the sea somewhere in the Indian or Pacific Ocean. These scholars supposed that Lemuria might have been the origin for the legend of Kumari Kandam, an island which, according to certain ancient myths in India, sunk into the sea much as Atlantis did in Western myth. In another thousand years or so, if human civilization lasts that long, I have no doubt that scholars will speculate about some astronomical collision that might havee destroyed a small planet in the Sol system and so become the "origin" of the by-then ancient myth of Alderaan.
Meanwhile, another new city, the (Sir Joseph) Banks Hotel, is of course the site (according to some random blog, but I'm sure it's totally sound research*) of the first Australian zoo to include an Indian elephant!
*- So, yeah, I'm theoretically joking, but I actually find that certain types of blogs tend to feature better research and fact-checking than most newspapers. The reasons should be pretty obvious: A blogger obsessed with the history of animals in zoos is likely to look into a historical zoo question a lot more thoroughly than some newspaperman trying to fill out a story for a deadline. You do have to be very careful with this though, as it's easy for a blogger (particularly one with an axe to grind) to cling onto something that "sounds right" as actual fact. One thing I'm curious about though: People a generation or so older than me lament the disappearance of newspaper fact-checking and journalistic integrity, and I tend to take their word for it, knowing the execrable state of news reporting today. Is this a real thing that has indeed degraded over the years though, e.g. as improved marketing techniques found ways to drive sales more cheaply/efficiently than factual accuracy (and all the rest of what people call real journalism) ... or is this just a case of misplaced nostalgia, perhaps coupled with the improved modern techniques by which, when a newspaper gets a story wrong, we can actually find out?
Also appearing this turn: A city named for the Curry Pie Floater, a ... hearty ... Australian food which involves Indian-style Curry as part of a meat pie floating in a bowl of pea soup. (I'm just going to go ahead and assume the pea soup has bacon in it.) It will probably be the location of our national epic someday. (Yes, I founded three new cities just this turn.)
The Year 350
Just no. Of course Justin is asking me this because Hatty is his worst enemy. But because I'm obviously going to refuse, I'll get a special -1 modifier and therefore immediately become his worst enemy myself ... which means he'll forget all about hating Hatty, his (temporary) hatred for whom is the reason he's about to hate me. Anyway, whatever; I knew I was going to have to get rid of him shortly anyway.
In more important news, Sheringa completed the Hanging Gardens, providing a nice boost to the whole empire. Here's a look at the original core, together with Curry Pie Floater and the three additional cities just founded last turn to go with the three I founded the turn before!
Felrick Biotech is named for a partnership formed a little more than a year ago between Felrick Australia and Biotech India to turn landfill gas into useful energy. It's quite appropriate to this hapless little filler which would never have been built at all if not for the Great Lighthouse, and probably shouldn't have been built this soon in spite of the Hanging Gardens (which completed just after the city was built). With the GLH though, it's profitable already, and can help grow some cottages for other cities in case I play a lot further into this game than I expect to have actual time for.
The Extension is the common name of the Eastern Extension, China and Australia Telegraph Company, which obviously made extensive use of copper cables. How did it take me this long to found a city to work that fish and copper?! (This is what happens when I don't bother to make a plan.)
Murwillumbah is named for the site of a Hare Krishna "Temple and Farm" retreat in New South Wales. Though it was actually founded in New York, Hare Krishna takes enough of its inspiration from ancient Indian scriptures that this is a rare city whose name isn't much of a stretch for my theme! It's also my second island city, which makes it massively profitable automatically, and most importantly features yet another ornament: A forested plains farm!
Right, so I obviously put some effort into getting six new cities onto the board just before the Gardens finally finished. That's all very well and good, but we're getting close to closing day for this game, so it's back to my regularly scheduled lazy non-planning!
There followed lots of turns that featured little or nothing that even I could find interesting enough to write about. I even sent some Buddhist Missionaries running around, I think, because Izzy had finally adopted her favorite civic, and could therefore no longer spam missionaries out of cities that lacked monasteries. The highlights are these:
The Year 620:
Samantha Berger noticed a barbarian axe causing trouble down near the wheat ornament that Hatty chopped down some time ago, and decided to do our Egyptian buddy a favor (while incidentally earning herself a shiny new xp). She won the 99+% battle without a scratch. Oh, and I also finally adopted Bureaucracy. I've honestly underestimated my capital pretty much throughout the game, as I'll demonstrate a little more clearly when I get the chance. Also in the "finally" category: We'll found our third island city next turn.
Yeah, that was a highlight.
The Year 660:
Sri Mandir Temple is looking pretty good right now, but it would look a lot better if one of the scientists chilling their heels here were settled and the other had built an academy (break even tech rate is a little over 50% right now). The theory was that they would bulb education or something, but I'll never get that far before reporting day. In fact, the capital would look even better if I had grown its cottages more and not tried so dilligently to interrupt Commonwealth Bay's great priest - he could always have started a golden age. Ah, the hazards of ... you know, not really bothering to plan ahead.
And The Year 740:
Behold my southern island holdings! Sangeet Majari is the name of what claims to be the first school of Indian classical music in Australia. This is appropriate since it not only just claimed another ornament, it actually managed to hook up Hit Records thanks to some ingenuity with roads and a fort. Rock'n'Roll eat your heart out.
There are a couple of other island ornaments that I could certainly claim (I even have a settler on the way to one of them) but I've run out of time. Fortunately, I did play the game to its conclusion! No, the game has not officially crowned our Great Wombat the High Master of Orion (or whatever you get for winning a game of civ) but check out these demographics. Bear in mind that these are at zero percent science, with nobody building wealth.
You might say we're last in soldier count, but that's being corrected rapidly, and with their inferior AI tactics, the lead they have wouldn't be enough to matter even if one of them had the courage to attack.
Part of that is my severe technological edge. You may have noticed that I have research visibility on everyone but Hatty (it would be everyone, full stop, soon, if I played on) and I'm expecting to have Guilds before Justin even has Feud. As for Mansa, in spite of his shiny new wonder, I'm planning (well, okay, make that intending) to take him out with a lightning-strike before long. Or I would be if I hadn't just run out of time.
My first three cities are numbers 1, 3, and 5 in the world. And apart from Stonehenge, those are the ones without the Wonders! (If I'd played on, Sustainability Victoria might have added the Colossus soon too, just for grins.)
Granted, I did some pretty compact little microplans for some of the wonders I built, and granted, I am pretty good at this game with or without a well-thought-out long-range plan. And granted, my "lack of a plan" was more about ignoring certain details than anything else: I did have a general strategic idea of what I wanted to accomplish most of the time, and even the crazier things I did (luckily mostly worked out and) were in service to some kind of goal.
But the fact is that these AIs - even though they got Emperor production bonuses - started with the same units I did; no workers, no settlers, no anything extra. And for them, that's kind of a recipe for disaster ... especially when they're forced to play regular old leaders and civs ... and I draw a rabid Wombat.
Thanks very much to T-Hawk for getting this Adventure rolling, to everyone who suggested it in the General Forum, and especially to everyone who enjoyed my rambling enough to get this far! I had all kinds of fun writing it down ... but next time I participate in a Civ Adventure, I'll try something very different (and a lot shorter, I hope...).
(January 14th, 2014, 00:36)RefSteel Wrote: Yeah, I considered the eastern site too, and that's the site to which I thought I would eventually move my capital before I discovered Disappointment Peninsula. But getting the Holy Cow in the first ring saved a turn on producing the first worker, and I figured that would be more important overall. (Plus clams is a terrible food tile for most starts.)
I was playing very sloppily. Very very badly. So badly I forgot to hook up those clams at the capital until 1480 BC. I meant to, I really did, but I got distracted by something and just flat out forgot they were there until much later.
(January 14th, 2014, 04:17)haphazard1 Wrote: I was playing very sloppily. Very very badly. So badly I forgot to hook up those clams at the capital until 1480 BC. I meant to, I really did, but I got distracted by something and just flat out forgot they were there until much later.
Yikes! I actually hooked them seven turns sooner than you then, in the second ring of my second city! (And honestly, I should have had it sooner too....)
Also: Wait, they're not just style points? There's scoring for this one? Okay, then for ease of reference, and to do at least some kind of in-character thing:
The Eight Ornaments of the Australlindian Empire:
1) The Holy Cow of Sri Mandir Temple, claimed by the Empire c. 3960 in the Backward Calendar Era. Pillaged for wood to build wagons for the settlers who would one day found Commonwealth Bay during the First Australindian Gold Rush, they were lost circa 2960.
2) The Frozen Bananas of Bael-Bael, claimed by the Empire c. 1680 in the Backward Calendar Era. Lost after being undermined by greedy plantation builders some twelve centuries later.
3) The Gingerbread Village of Melbourne Epicure, claimed by the empire c. 800 in the Backward Calendar Era, is so beautiful that, according to Australindian legend, no one ever had the heart to eat it until it became completely stale and inedible. Perhaps there is truth to this rumor, for not only does it still stand in its frosting-iced forest today, but a tradition of adding the winning entry in each year's National Gingerbread House Competition to the outskirts of the village has since grown it into a veritable Gingerbread Town.
4) The Underwater Forest of Sustainability Victoria, claimed by the empire c. 625 in the Backward Calendar Era, is extant to this day, and a marvel of the world.
5) The Ornamental Ruins of Nalanda, claimed by the empire c. 375 in the Backward Calendar Era, all that remained of a civilization so ancient that no tales of them remain in the world. Damaged by treasure-hunters and Nalandian citizens desperate for building materials during their early history, it was utterly destroyed by miners, leaving no trace of its ancient glories, within three centuries.
6) The Heavenly Horses of New Z Land, claimed by the empire c. 75 in the Advancing Dates Era. Lost almost as soon as claimed, as the cottagefolk of the New Z Land floodplains scoured the land for building materials to store imported grains.
7) The Great Farmament of Murwillumbah, claimed by the empire c. 350 in the Advancing Dates Era still stands as a marvel of the ancient world. Of the islanders who built it, consuming all the resources of their isle in honor of forgotten gods, no other sign remains.
8) The Great Music Box of Sangeet Manjari, claimed by the empire c. 740 in the Advancing Dates Era still stands ... for now. 740 is the present day.
(I realize it's possible no one is still interested in reading this, but since I was still writing my report as I went along for the first few turns after closing day, I figured I might as well post it, and if follks aren't interested, they can always ... you know .... not read it.)
Bonus Round, Part 1!
All right, so that report was clearly not long enough. Let's play on and see what happens! Maybe I can claim the game outcome is a foregone conclusion, but come on: I was playing as Asoka of Unrestricted with an amazing capital site against Emperor AIs that didn't get any extra starting units. The outcome was a foregone conclusion before the game even strated, and the point of this game and report was to do lots of fun and crazy stuff. So let's do some more of that, right?
The smart play at this point is to keep expanding to the islands, go on teching the AIs into the ground, take liberalism for something expensive and/or humorous, land Rifling before Justin gets to 'phracts, and take my pick of space, culture, or splattering the poor medieval and/or renaissance AI with cavalry and/or tanks. I already have two Great Scientists saved so I can one-turn Education and.......
Wait, the smart play? Never mind. Let's try something different.
Okay, fine, so Isaac Newton's changed his mind and started a golden age for us, but that's still going to help us tech up and build infrastructure and otherwise get set to eventually just pick a victory condition of our choice. That's totally how we're going to spend the golden age, right?
The Year 800:
If your guess was, "No," you have apparently been paying attention to the way I'm playing this game.
Actually we're using this golden age to crash out a couple of wonders. In the Turn 150 city overview shot below, you can see that Sustainability Victoria is almost done with one of them. You can also see some chariots in the queue. A few of them were just whipped this turn or happen to be getting a bunch of overflow. By coincidence. Note I'm not building any Horse Archers though; this is because I never bothered to tech Archery. It turns out it would have been helpful to have done that sometime in the last three turns, but I didn't bother calculating out how many beakers and gold and whatever I would have to spare. I'm pretty sure it'll all work out anyway.
There are some partially-built chariots waiting for those Barracks to come out too, by the way. So can you count how many chariots I'm going to complete between now and turn 151?
The Year 820:
If your guess was "Zero," you apparently also noticed what was happening at the top of that overview screen. I did finish some units though. You can see one of them in The Extension. (It's not really working on a Forge next though; that was just sitting in the queue from a time when I thought I had more time than I did before I would want to start pushing out military. I'll probably get started on another Knight instead.)
Anyway, remember four turns ago how I said that I was technically last in military, but climbing quickly? Yes, that was four turns ago. I'm now second. I'm not done climbing.
The Year 840:
So about those wonders I mentioned. On the left, you can see one of them - the Colossus to which I referred previously. If you think you can see signs of the other one to the right, you are mistaken: I still don't have Theology (and probably never will). It just so happens that this is the turn Izzy completed the Apostolic Palace for me (as expected ever since she founded Christianity).
No, the other wonder I'm talking about is visible here, following upgrades to Mandy Foot (now a Knight) and (the now-mace-toting) Charles Lamb:
The Wonder of the Medieval World known as "13 Knights in Two Turns." More are coming.
I've unfortunately had to give up my original unit naming theme by the way, with all these units getting spammed. The knights are variously named for their cities of origin with of course the designation "Kwombaght." (As every student of medieval warfare knows, the k and gh are silent.) The other new units have appropriate names as well. For instance, there are no cats in our empire! What we have instead are the first through fifth Wombatapult divisions.
Also notice I only have thirteen Fworkers for almost 20 cities. Outside of Moai Bael-Bael I haven't even been working many water tiles (nor unimproved tiles of any other variety) in the course of the game. Granted, I'm pretty efficient with worker actions, and granted, some of my cities would have gotten started faster if I had more of these guys on hand, but most of this comes down to the incredible power of India's insane UU. It's also a reason I actually don't like pairing Expansive with India very much: The apparent synergy between the trait and civ is actually slight anti-synergy since you never need to build many Fworkers in the first place (though both are so powerful anyway that no one who has both is likely to complain).
Oh, and those Galleys are going to help some with logistics. It's a long, long way from the core to Byzantium. It'll be a little while before the bulk of my forces can arrive.
So obviously what I'm going to do is attack immediately.
The Year 860:
So let me talk a little about my movements from last turn. I have three Kwombaghts threatening Nicara to make sure of taking out its axe and archer. (In an MP game, this would be pure fail: The defender would dry-whip a spear at a minimum, likely have units in the fog to move in, and possibly have means of whipping/chopping/building an "archer" that would turn into a longbow as it - and Feudalism tech - completes.)
In the south, I used a Kwombaght and a chariot (Samantha Berger) to pillage the farm and road on the tile where my units are standing ... for ... some reason? Concerned that Justin would attack out of the city, I promoted the Kwombaght up to C2, but then forgot to do the same for the elephant. Forgetting that HAs can flank (and knowing none of them had flanking promotions and that I had an elephant in the stack) I also thought a Cat might become stack defender at some point if Justin threw in both cats and the kitchen sink, so I promoted one (just one!) to Drill I: The only promotion that might be even slightly useful on defense. Now, there were definitely some mistakes involved there. But they weren't this bad:
(I note in passing that when I say Izzy built the AP "for me," I was not using hyperbole. But on to the war at hand.)
The first cat attacked out at just above 2% odds, and my Kwombaght took him out without a scratch. That's a slightly lucky but unsurprising result. The second cat attacked out at the same odds, and withdrew from combat without getting scratched itself, taking my Kwombaght down to 25% health! The chances of both combined doing that much damage is probably in the neighborhood of 10%, so I should have known it would happen given my combat luck this game. At that point, since I'd failed to promote my Wombataphant, forgotten that HAs attacking it after it took collateral could actually make headway, and forgotten about flanking damage, it was inevitable that I would lose most or all of the stack ... but to add insult to injury, Justin's first HA - with around 30% odds of survival - managed to withdraw from combat with the Wombataphant after doing massive damage. After that, it was just a massacre. Uh ... so much for that stack then. What's the plan now?!
Um, obviously the plan is to keep right on pushing forward with all the rest of my units, including more than a dozen other Kwombaghts. Here you can see a Shock Kwombaght getting only ~80% odds on the attack, so I'm not surprised when he dies. That's why the other two (at ~96% and >99%) are there to clean up the mess.
Okay, so this is probably a good time to talk about the pRNG for this game. Spoilered for Wall of Text Syndrome.
It's easy to feel that the dice are weighted against you when you're playing a game like this - I tried to show early on how appearances can be deceiving: My low-odds combat losses were offset by lucky forest growths and religion spreads, for instance. The reality is however that (outside of a no-barbs duel, but who duels the AI?) the pRNG really does favor the computer in a single-player game. I don't mean that the random numbers fall in their favor more often than they should; of course that's silly. I mean that randomness itself favors the AI in two important ways: First, randomness tends to favor less-skilled players. A chess grand-master will pretty much always beat (say) me at chess, every game. But if we flip a coin for every piece before each game begins, to see if it gets to stay on the board, we'll eventually randomly get a game where the grand master starts with such a huge handicap that even I can beat him. (If nothing else, I probably win by default in the 25% of games where my king is on the board but the Grand Master's isn't.) Second, randomness favors the crowd. In order to win a game of Civ, I have to defeat lots of different AIs, and if I'm trying to win through combat, I have to "defeat" each one of them separately. Now, the AIs might fight each other, but it doesn't really matter which one wins - they're all just AIs; all that needs to happen for me to lose is for any one of them to defeat me. Of course that's not going to happen here, but that's the basic nature of the game: If your exploring scout beats a barb archer at incredibly low odds, you get to explore a bit longer and your scout gets 1 xp. If a barb warrior destroys your city at incredibly low odds, your civ is crippled for much of the game. And if the same thing happens to an AI, there are still several other AIs you have to defeat.
Note by the way that I'm not complaining about this; the game isn't supposed to be "fair" to the player - it's not a showcase for Blake's AI; it's a game. In fact, in MP games, the rule of the crowd still applies: Whoever you are, whoever your opponents, you're likely to have some poor, low odds results against somebody ... who in turn is likely to have some against someone else. It might not seem fair to any individual player - but over enough games, the unfairness will pretty much even out for every individual player. The RNG really does favor your opponents, but that's just part of what you're up against. It's part of the game.
Oh. There's one other way the RNG favors the AI: No matter how many high-odds fights it loses, no matter how many of its best units die, the AI never rage quits. On the other hand, if you're prone to becoming upset over the outcome of events in a game, and a low-odds fight makes you so upset that you end up quitting the game, taking a walk, calling and catching up with an old friend, or visiting the library instead ... maybe that was a case of the RNG coming up in your favor actually.
I'd like to say that Nicaea is the first of many Byzantine cities to join the Australindian Empire ... but the reality is that there just aren't all that many Byzantine cities. The winning Kwombaght was getting 99+% odds anyway against the damaged axe, so I saved the promotions for healing - they'll now be used immediately for Combat II. Note the Forges in the build queues shown are there for the same reason as The Extension's. They're both going to be delayed for more Kwombaghts instead. Oh. And you can see the units in the city. The fortified one is a warrior, but the others are Mandy Foot, Charles Lamb, and another mace. There are also two more Kwombaghts in Lemuria, in range to attack Antioch this turn, and more reinforcements not far behind them, arriving swiftly. The RNG made Justin's attack out from Antioch look tactically brilliant, but it may have been a strategic blunder. One Kwombaght and three Wombatapults can be replaced pretty quickly, and the elephant and chariot aren't going to be needed any longer. To be fair though, I don't think Justin had any strategic options at this point apart from a range of different possible blunders.
The archer who got the final kill and was therefore stranded outside the city (so glad I pillaged that road, I guess?) dies to a new-built mace, who is then named "Forgetful Wombace" because I neglected to name him in advance. Then Mandy sees her first action of the war, with a shot at the wounded spear.
In black or in grey, with clubs or with spears, all barbs are the same to Mandy Foot, Australindia's very own (and recently-knighted) home-grown heroine. We follow up her success by losing another Kwombaght at over 90% odds (of course) and proceed to clean up a wandering Byzantine Horse Archer who had been scouting near our borders elsewhere. The 4th Wombatapult Division joins Mandy and Forgetful, and this time - with only one Cat and two fewer killing units in Antioch, all of the latter injured - I figure that between Forgetful, full-health Charles Lamb, a single (unpromoted) Cat, and a new Combat II Kwombaght, I should be safe from counter-attack on the tile bordering Antioch. The latter could have attacked the city with excellent odds on the top defender, but it would have left only Strength 8, CR2 (i.e. no defense bonus) Charles to defend the stack uninjured, and I prefer this arrangement.
The Year 880:
Well, Feud is in for Justin, so the first Longbows are appearing, but Antioch has only 20% defenses - 12% now that the 4th Pults bombarded - and this guy has no fortification yet, so our C2 Kwombaght is getting almost 90% odds. If you think we won this battle, you must be confusing this with a different game report, but Charles Lamb (yes, the LB took little enough damage to still be top defender!) was able to clean up even though his odds were (barely) under 97%. A C2 Kwombaght peeled off the top HA, Mandy headed out to Lemurian for healing, and that's all apart from some last-turn-of-GA rethinking of my cities. (The Nicaea forces now have road access to the rest of the empire thanks to a couple of combat fworkers, but they just spent the turn healing in the city.)
The Year 920:
Most of the fighting happened last turn, but we ran out of healthy attackers. Now, though not yet fully healed from her previous battle, Dame Mandy Foot conquers her first city. This leaves the nearer forces available to advance into enemy territory, taking out the Swordsman and Archer visible in this picture before they can get behind city defenses and make nuisances of themselves. It also will allow our Wombatapult divisions to reposition significantly closer to their next target.
Another consequence of Dame Mandy's bravery is the rise of Chandragupta Maurya. (He has nothing to do with Australia, but considering it was purely the luck of the rng that we drew someone so appropriate to India, I'm pretty happy with the name. Vercingetorix, the GG Justin got for his lucky attack on my forces outside of Antioch at the start of the war, was ... not a Byzantine.)
The story of Australindia's General Maurya follows (in spoilers due to length).
Growing up among the pastures of Bael-Bael, little Chandragupta lived for his elders' stories about Mandy Foot, Heroine of Australindia, and her invincible chariot. He studied her tactics and those of field generals not only in Australindia proper, but in the nearby Spanish and Malinese empires as well.
Then he discovered that Spanish and Mali generals just ordered their soldiers to run in circles for no reason, and went back to studying Mandy's legacy.
When he learned of his heroine's elevation to the rank of Dame, Maurya was overjoyed, and when he learned of her conquest of Antioch, across the killing fields where so many brave Australindians had died, Maurya was inspired to enter the fray himself, setting off from his home in Bael-Bael to find an army worthy of his leadership.
At Sheringa Lakes Pass, West of Nalanda, that army came to him: A force of Kwombaghts out of The Extension, where they had trained at barracks and stables for decades to become a powerful fighting force. These Kwombaghts were not only prepared for battle, but of sufficiently open minds to recognize greatness when they saw it. Maurya taught them that the key to victory is not mere personal prowess, but the speed and resilience to strike more swiftly and more often than the enemy. He taught his loyal Kwombaghts to be mobile comat medics, capable not only of incredible feats of surgery, but of recruiting new men and their mounts to shore up broken combat units, even among the enemy. The morale, eloquence, and healing abilities of Maurya and his knights would become legendary ... but not so legendary as their speed.
Our Great General was born in Bael-Bael, one of the most distant mainland cities from the battle front. The 7-xp Kwombaght (barracks + stable + Vassalage) he would join was completed last turn in The Extension - the very furthest from the front. Thanks to Engineering though, the General could move five spaces, meet the Kwombaght (who moved just two to join him) and promote it C1-Medic3-Morale, allowing them to reach Sustainability Victoria together. There, the Victoria-Banks ferry service picked them up, and will drop them off at the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel next turn - at which point General Maurya will be close enough to reach the front the turn after his birth.
Meanwhile, in the west, I spot another swordsman on flatland, a cat alone on a hill, and a Byzantine galley.
Two local Kwombaghts clean them up while the third (my lone sentry) ... um, fails to cover the now-vulnerable, injured one who killed the swordsman. Oops? Two Wombatapult divisions are moving in to begin what will most likely be a long assault on Constantinople, while the Australindian Republic Ship Sting takes a combat promotion because it knows it won't survive otherwise. (60-70% odds in my favor is pretty much a guaranteed loss for my side.)
Nicomedia's garrison consists of two longbows right now, and it's on a hill, so that'll be a tough nut to crack. Fortunately, I have plenty of Wombatapults on the way.
The Year 940:
So, yeah, a Horse Archer came out of the fog to kill that uncovered Kwombaght. My cat-killing Kwombaght god rid of it. (Had I been an AI, the "free" worker might have lured me into ignoring it instead, I suppose.) Also, Justin saw fit to send a catapult wandering off toward Nicaea on its own, so my sentry is happily taking it apart. I may have made some sloppy mistakes with my units in this war, but at least I'm not as bad as the AI.
Next time: How will my mighty (but much-injured) Kwombaghts fare against Longbows fortified in hilltop cities? I actually started the war prematurely specifically to minimize the number of match-ups I faced like this, so ... wish me luck!
Actually, I find the RNG screed the most interesting part of that writeup. Yeah, there's loads of perception bias coloring everyone's opinion about the RNG. And you didn't mention the selection bias: you will lose some fights at 90%, but you will not make up for them with wins at 10% because you will not attempt those 10% attacks. This selection bias favors the defender because those low-odds opportunities for swinginess only happen on the defending side - and of course in SP vs AI games, the AI is the defender the vast majority of the time.
The word you're looking for is variance to describe the phenomenon where randomness can outweigh skill. Chess vs backgammon is the classic example, where the variance inherent in backgammon's dice rolls can let a beginner beat an expert in any particular game. Variance can be quantified for rigorous statistical descriptions of the systems. Civ 3's combat has significantly higher variance than Civ 4's, with a smaller sample size for each fight.
Great report RefSteel! I enjoyed the RNG discussion, it was a very mature response to complaining.
I would add to the point T-hawk made by pointing out that we also are very aware of the odds when attacking, but often less so in defending, where we are more likely to benefit from the RNG.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Nice report, RefSteel! I am enjoying seeing more about how another (much better) India player did.
The perception bias on RNG results is definitely strong. In my mind I know this is the case. But it sure is hard to avoid the feeling that attacking at less than 95+% odds is suicide. Damage results also feed into this perception: intellectually I know that taking heavy damage when the odds are highly in my favor is to be expected, since the high odds cover cases where the defender gets in some hits but does not kill me. But emotionally it is always hard to avoid feeling "cheated" when a knight attacks a catapult at 99.1% and ends up with 1.6 health left.
Why yes, that did happen to me just today in another game.
Thanks, guys! It's actually quite heartening to hear people are enjoying the report! And good points about other forms of cognitive and selection bias; thanks for pointing that stuff out. I should note that the player will sometimes attempt battles at extremely low odds, when cats (or sometimes other suicide units) are needed to wear down powerful defenders ... but that actually supports your point (and mine, because the AI basically has no plan to ruin) since the player only does this as part of a specific plan where the loss of the suicide unit is expected. A couple of suicide cats withdrawing at 10% odds apiece is certainly a nice little bonus, but doesn't change the overall plan, whereas a couple of knights losing at 90% odds apiece can wreck your entire offensive if you counted on winning a certain number of high-odds battles and didn't bring overwhelming force.
Noble, I assume you're talking about the vertical squishing? Sorry about that - it's an artifact of my 5ish-year-old netbook's limited screen specs. (Five years may be neolithic by computer standards, but if so then my other computers are Pre-Cambrian.) I can get it to stretch vertically for individual screenshots, and I'll try that for at least a couple of the screens in this report, but doing so cuts off the bottom of the screen, including important parts of the interface, so I can't play that way, and switching it back and forth all the time would be a pain.
Anyway, I should get back to my report, which will start out in some detail to provide a sense for my tactics and a few more examples of the pRNG stuff we've been talking about here. After that though, I'm going to gloss over a lot of things since we all know where this game is going at this point.
So here's the battlefront in 940 with all our units in position and more (obviously) on the way:
All five of the units forking Nicomedia and Thessalonica are Kwombaghts, with the top two already promoted to C2 and the rest with two promos available, but the main stack is stationed on the tile with the "Gold Fever" sign, which is unfortunately blocking the view: Two slightly injured maces (including CR3 Charles Lamb) with another C2 Kwombaght and no less than four Wombatapults (one already promoted CR1 and injured.) The Kwombaghts healing in the forest across the river from the forking stack are in range for attackers coming out of Nicomedia, but the attacks would have to come across the river and these two are pretty nearly healed now. The injured Kwombaghts between Thessalonica and Nicaea can also be attacked only across a river, and only from Thessalonica. Since we know there aren't enough Byzantine combat workers (or any HAs) in the area, the 'pults slowly approaching Constantinople can't be attacked this turn at all. Finally, the Kwombaght standing farthest right in the picture has just captured a worker (and thereby sped him up). The Kwombaght in question couldn't have reached the actual battlefront this turn anyway.
Oh, and the real main stack is the one healing just northeast of now-Australindian Antioch. Most of them will finish healing this turn even without the help of the super medic, which is why the latter is positioned where he is instead of being next to them. I think Justin's out of bullets, so I'm not expecting any disasters before next turn, but you never can tell....
The Year 960:
Yup! Justin's forces are still sitting on their hands inside the cities, so we're going on the offensive again! The battle for Nicomedia ends thus:
The 9th Wombatapult Division promoted to CR1-Accuracy and dropped the city defenses to 4%. (The injured CR1 'pult should also have either bombarded or suicided, but it sat around waiting for an opportunity that didn't come instead.) Then, with three Longbows in the city, the 4th and 6th Wombatapults took Barrage promotions and went in (to their deaths). I doubt if City Raider would have done much more good against the top defender, and since both 'pults rolled low on splash damage, I was glad I'd done what I could to boost it.
I still had to suicide one Kwombaght (by "suicide" I mean "attack with only 50% odds") but after that first death, something absolutely incredible happened:
I started winning battles.
The next two Kwombaghts' odds on the other two Longbows weren't much above 70% each, and yet both won! Forgetful had odds upward of 96%, and then Charles Lamb was getting close to 100% when he captured the city, but I still wound up with five Kwombaghts in position to attack who didn't have to!
Fortunately, they didn't go to waste; the three that were healthy were also forking another city.
64% against the lone longbow, and crippling him will make my real attack easier next turn ... and 67+% against the fully-fortified sword, for almost the same reason ... and 90+% against an axe, since others can come in to cover though this is the last healthy Wombaght that can reach the city ... but I do have two somewhat-injured ones in the north, and now I'm getting 80+% on the HA, and even if I only cripple it, my units will all be safer from counterattack ... and now 80+% with the injured sentry against a cat alone in the city, which means Justin can't kill these units on counterattack even if this doesn't work, and....
Win. Win. Win. Win. Win. Each attack made sense on its own, and each one had a (supposedly) good chance of going my way, but the chance of all of them winning was only ... ... uh, apparently almost one in four. Huh. So here I was going to say the pRNG was paying me back for all those 90+% losses and 98+% redlines and everything, but while this was fairly lucky, it wasn't a miracle at all. (It just felt that way since I'm used to losing anything under 95%.) You could add in the post-coinflip-loss battles at Nicomedia too, but first of all I lost the coin flip, and second of all, I had two more slightly-injured Kwombaghts (visible in the forest at the right of the picture above) positioned to hit that city, and didn't even need to use them (they could easily have cleaned up after any other losses without affecting the force available for Thessalonica). So ... yeah, go ahead and refer back to what I was saying above about randomness and planning. When you're going to war, expect to take more losses than the odds suggest - not because the pRNG hates you but because, being random, it can happen. And never expect a run of luck to even out your odds. (I.e. beware the Gambler's Fallacy.) You will have runs of good luck occasionally, but your chances of a good or bad streak are the same for every battle, regardless of what's gone before.
So now it's just a matter of positioning my reinforcements (there are plenty) to cover my injured stacks and prepare to go after Justin's last mainland cities. I think you can figure out where things are going from here though, so unless someone begs me for more details, I'll stick to the highlights from here on out.
The Year 1000:
At the turn of the first Advancing Dates millenium, I traded two CR2 Wombapults and a C2 Kwombaght for the Oples of Adrian and Constantine. Fully-healed reserve units captured a couple more workers en route to the galleys: Two C2 Kwombaghts bound for Iconium and the barb city beyond (which claims Marble) plus Dame Mandy Foot and a C3 Kwombaght bound for Angora, with an option on Trebizond and maybe even Laodicea (I'm not sure where Laodicea even is, but Justin's now futilely offering it along with his world map, his entire treasury, and all his gpt for peace). All of which means I've kicked Justin off the continent for good. I declared war eight turns ago, so you can tell I was a little premature: If I had all my forces gathered back then, it wouldn't have taken nearly this long.
(Cervantes, the filler city I just founded for the clams and GLH trade routes, is named for a town on the western coast of Australia which at one time bred horses for the British Indian army. The town was apparently named for a ship that sunk not far off its coast. The ship was named for Miguel, the author of a famous book. The book was named for its protagonist, who tilted at windmills. I don't know who or what the protagonist was named for, but his name gives the English language the lovely adjective, "quixotic." Which probably describes someone or something ... that lived in the house that Jack built.)
The Year 1030:
Since my only alternatives were this, stopping trade with Hatty, or doing nothing, I decided to give Izzy and Mansa a chance to fight a phony war against Justin while I did the actual winning. Hilariously, (and unnecessarily) they voted for the AP resolution, presumably because Justin's power, never terrific, has fallen off a cliff since I started fighting him. Also this turn, I confirmed the location of Laodicea (on the southern island with Iconium, not the northern one as I had first assumed) while moving into position to wipe it out next turn. Which is also when I'm going to be conquering Trebizond, most likely. Iconium, still left empty, fell two turns ago, so Justin will shortly be down to just his new capital of Angora.
The Year 1060:
Well, we aren't at war with Byz anymore.
The last two Kwombaghts attacked straight off the ship, since they were getting better odds than Mandy Foot and another Kwombaght on land, both of whom were somewhat injured but available to clean up. The last ones to attack Angora, I mean. Dame Mandy and another random Kwombaght took the opportunity to capture a pair of barb cities on the ex-Byz islands as well once the great grey "menace" was no more. (This was actually a mistake; I temporarily forgot that barbs won't provide xp to anyone who has 10 or more already. Mandy should have healed or boarded the ship and left Tartar for a lower-xp Kwombaght to take later on.) You can also see Hatty doing silly religious things and the birth of Oliver Cromwell. He's probably just going to get settled in Sustainability Victoria so I can build 11xp Cuirs or Cavs there (with war civics - or 5xp non-horse units while in peacetime civics) if I decide to take out Hatty for domination later.
Here's the scene of the crime (removing poor Justin from the game is sort of like a crime) with two of the culprits returning to the mainland aboard my C1 galley. (It was injured when Justin senselessly attacked it with his unpromoted galley a while back.) I did not want to destroy Justin's sweater (just his civ) so I did not hold this thread as he walked away. I just posted a report with some screenies in it instead. (That is the last time I will ever reference Weezer - I think their name was Weezer; my brother used to love them when he was a teen - in any post ever, so enjoy it while it lasts. I just couldn't resist when Angora fell back there....)
Following my tradition from my own early unit losses, I've placed a tombstone for poor Justin, complete with an epitaph explaining why he died. My Kwombaghts were literally running circles around Justin's units on this island, by the way; it was pretty hilarious actually. Also, here's what's left of what Justin imagined were his holdings in the south:
(Dirk Hartog Island, just off the coast of western Australia, was named for its discoverer: The captain of a Dutch East Indiaman. The Australindian city of Dirk Hartog, meanwhile, is due to be founded in two turns. The just-for-laughs whaling city marked on the northern island is due to be founded basically never, in spite of the GLH.)
I didn't bother to send any cats here, and since the cities were new (both Byz cities auto-razed) and lacked longbows, I didn't lose a single unit taking them. I guess it all comes down to this famous Australindian truism:
You-Know-Who Wrote:kwombags are good
Okay, so let's talk about another plan I have in motion. I've been talking about taking on Mali ever since part one of my turn report. (And remember, this is like part 9 or something.) My war with Justin here has been purely opportunistic: Being Byz, he was so painfully backward that I had a chance to hit the poor sot with Kwombaghts before he could tech to longbows! Since I didn't plan my offensive out far enough in advance, I did have to fight a handful of LBs in Byzantine territory, but there weren't many, and they were pretty much all fresh off the shelf: I think I faced exactly one (in Angora) that had reached full fortification in the course of the entire war. Yes, I did prevent poor Justin from ever getting 'phracts, but honestly, that was going to happen even if I waited for Cuiraissiers or Cavalry. When Byz went down, they were teching Theology ... and still lacked (among other things) Metal Casting!
Mansa's going to be a bit of a tougher nut to crack though. He's had longbows for a while now, and recently got engineering, so he'll have good mobility in the field and potentially castles for his cities. Fortunately no Pikes though ... since Sheringa stole his only source of iron! He also has the Statue of Zeus in Djenne, his front-line city, so I'm planning to take that thing out on the first turn of the war. This is why, while my forces were embroiled in conflict with Byzantium, in addition to the entire Aesthetics-Music line and Education (with a bulb, as planned) and Philosophy (yeah, you saw my pre-war demos; a mere war can't slow down that kind of steamroller) I teched Alphabet.
I've been dumping EP on Mali for a while to allow my spies to get some city revolts in, and here you can see that I have a sizable stack on hand (actually there are two - the other is in Sheringa - plus some one-movers on just-roaded desert tiles positioned to threaten Kumbi Saleh and Timbuktu) as well as a spy who's been fortified for a few turns in Djenne. I suppose I could wait a couple more turns, but I can't bear to end a turn at war with nobody!
Yeah so, have you spotted my mistake? I'll save you the search: I only have one spy in Djenne. (I did build a second, but got greedy and sent him on to Timbuktu, which has a castle already.) So when I hit the "Support City Revolt" button with only 91% odds ... well, you've been following my report. You know what happened.
Fortunately, I waited to declare war until after trying to revolt the city, with the result that I did not in fact declare war. (By the way: Walking your stacks right up to the enemy border without bothering to hide them, and then waiting several more turns before declaring war? Yeah, there's another trick not to ever, ever try in an MP game.)
Sheringa is one-turning another spy who will reach Djenne next turn, and I'm whipping a backup in Bulgar to arrive one turn later, but I still feel pretty embarrassed. I know - after this game, I ought to know - that 91% is no guarantee. When I launch the attack in a few turns, it will be from even better unit positions than I have now, but even so....
Next time: I finally get that war with M&M started that I've been hinting at since practically the beginning of the game.
Also, though I haven't played the turns yet, I'll probably finish the war in the course of the same report. My culture is encroaching pretty heavily on Mali, and Mansa has even fewer cities (none offshore) than Justin did. On the other hand, with fortified longbows on hills behind castle walls to breach ... maybe I'm getting a little overconfident!
Very very badly. 
So badly I forgot to hook up those clams at the capital until 1480 BC. 
I meant to, I really did, but I got distracted by something and just flat out forgot they were there until much later.
Yeah, there's loads of perception bias coloring everyone's opinion about the RNG. And you didn't mention the selection bias: you will lose some fights at 90%, but you will not make up for them with wins at 10% because you will not attempt those 10% attacks. This selection bias favors the defender because those low-odds opportunities for swinginess only happen on the defending side - and of course in SP vs AI games, the AI is the defender the vast majority of the time.
