[SPOILERS] Donovan Zoi Reflexively Clicks Advanced, Then Back

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Never worry about what is happening in the lurker thread. It is seldom good and even seldomer relevant to what you'd expect. 

[Old Harry]

Now might be a good time to post by the way...

[naufragar]

[Donovan Zoi]

Now might be a good time to post by the way...

Hey guys, thanks for your interest.  I guess this latest development is kind of a big deal.  Before I get started, I do have to say that I am extremely sorry for the lack of posting.  My day gig has just been relentless for the last 8-10 months, and since I work from home has a tendency to bleed into my personal time.  Then you can check out the amount of time I spend in my two night gigs (43 and 44) to see that I am pretty spent by end of day.

I am also sure other players may be grousing about the frequent need to pause for me, but to fair I have been at the tail end of a turn split against 1-3 players for about 25 turns now and have all 3 borders seeing conflict at this time.  There's plenty of backstory and screenshots (I have plenty I will try to upload) leading to how we got to this point but for now, let's get to that burning question....

Why TF would you scorch a viable city with two wonders?

And yes, that is a good question.

Let's start with the contents of the city:

Stonehenge: I can get +2 culture now from cheap Terraces and have had Judaism spread to much of my empire. 
Great Lighthouse:  I don't have a lot of coast and I don't foresee having many friends to exploit its benefits.

I still want the shrine that I had captured earlier and Commodore will likely retake this turn, but I decided to burn their capital after mulling it over for about 15 minutes after conquest.

That's because right now the short term benefits outweigh anything I could get for holding it.  Here are my thoughts on that:

--I took the city with one sole Horcher at 20% odds.  I guess nobody remembers PB38 -- don't leave your capital exposed to me at the mercy of the RNG.
--Though he had sent many units north to take back the Shrine city, there was one Spear available to kick my injured Horcher back out just as easily next turn.
--The loss to Commodore of 60% culture puts us on even ground as far as movement goes, and will make it easier for me to rush the new Indian frontlines.
--Keeping this city would just add to the negative gpt maintenance woes I have had since about T80.  Conquest gold has been the only thing keeping my units from striking.
--At size 7, the capital could have provided 10 more whips as things got more desperate.

More later! (he promises..........)

[Hollybombay]

More later! (he promises..........)

Is it later yet? Any updates?

[Hollybombay]

Hope all is well! Would love to see whats going on in inca-land

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Hope all is well! Would love to see whats going on in inca-land

Seconded, would really like to hear your thoughts on the ongoing conflicts.

[Donovan Zoi]

Hope all is well! Would love to see whats going on in inca-land

Seconded, would really like to hear your thoughts on the ongoing conflicts.

Hey GKC, did you save me a spot in the bleachers?  GG, man.  And Holly, thanks for your continued interest in all of my games.  I am sure I owe you a lot of words....

I will try to do a post mortem here.  It was a crazy, um, psychotic game from me for sure with a fitting end for the bad guy. 

[Donovan Zoi]

Hey all, time to start giving you an idea of what happened on my side of the world.  The reporting will be pretty basic with screenshots, but just ask if you need anything clarified.

T33 after the founding of the second city.  You are all aware of my economic woes, which wasn't helped much by my capital.  This game was gonna be production heavy but I wanted that gold.  This actually meant that new city Tiwanaku would sit at Size 1 for awhile while I enjoyed the benefits of early gold to get The Wheel (first to connect the Gold) and then Pottery for my cheap Terraces.  IIRC it was 5 turns each, which was pretty nice for this early in the game.





Commodore

I didn't get an early screenshot, but the land to my south had a nice DMZ built in due to desert without much opportunity for growth.  With his early wonders, his culture encroached out pretty quickly, but were also Horses just out of his reach for quite some time.  Which to me signaled good intentions to maintain peace.

Alhazard

 I was pretty coy about meeting Alhazard's Mongols to my west, and it was easy to keep my Scout out of sight with an entire forest allowing only one tile of visibility.  Mongolian envoys eventually emerged and we signed OB on T58.





RegentMan

Well, here's a look at my empire on T57, and you can see my old friend RM's land to my east.  A nice natural mountain border should keep both of us honest for the settlement phase.  There was some Corn four tiles east of Olly (sorry for forgetting the resource toggle) that I thought I'd be contesting the Ottomans for at some point.

It was also easy for me to Terrace-grab a second gold with Machu Picchu, and you can already see the start of the dastardly tech plans I would be eventually bankrolling with double golds.  If I am not mistaken, this would be the last tech I discovered.   

[Donovan Zoi]

T65-66

Hmmmm, it looks like I actually got to HBR without that second gold, as I'm just mining it now.  Regentia wins the race to the Corn spot (much easier to see here), which is way too close to my Horses for comfort.






Just south of that, Commodore was scouting what would be one of the the main sites of our conflict.  A true Menace indeed, but I thought I may still have a shot at the ivory.






Finally getting a chance to look at Alhazard's land.  I played in one PBEM with him and it always seemed he was overly cautious with defense.  This game was proving to be no different.






Demos

Looking pretty good at this point, and this was before HBR and the first set of whips