You speak in whispers of the devils I have slain, Brian, Sareln & Ichabod of Elohim

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry for the lack of update yesterday, spend all evening working on my project and was too tired to type a report at 20:30.

So turn 150 saw me producing Horse Archers, a few Priests and lots of Monks where I had no stables and good production (mostly Termonfeckin & Bastard[s]town).

Unfortunately it will probably not be even remotely close to being enough.

In more comical news, mad Valin decided that olliphaunt burgers for the nation would win the game:

Make it so

He also picked up a healing salve I got in an event for 13g

So my situation:

Cities:

Not much change there, except Nicker is no longer the capital, and will never grow again, and that Muff is now in full bore priest mode (not that that'll help)

NamelessCity is the new capital and is going for food (and commerce due to aristo), Ravus is a commerce/mine hybrid, and placeholder will be mostly commerce as it is too back line for anything else, plus holy city. RogueEncampment is the main producer for Acalostas' former lands (hence workshops and lumbermills).

Land looks like:

Wish I had this land (this developed) 40 turns ago. I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody. Ah well I'd have probably FUBARed it anyways.

The war off east goes:

Gaspar says it's actually worse than that, he's down to 3 cities, and Dave has so much superiority that he's emulating the Civ 5 carpet of doom (proof)

Turn 151

I founded Doody's Bottom up by city 6 site. The gobbo will probably take two turns then suicide. No biggie. Produced and upgraded more units, still not enough.

Picatures for this turn tomorrow.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sareln,

the elves have left the building.

[Sareln]

Sareln,

the elves have left the building.

Daanng....

[Brian Shanahan]

Daanng....

Not quite Gaspar was slightly premature last turn. But he's at zombie bank level so not much longer.

I'll get 30 turns of pointless running around though.

[Brian Shanahan]

I declared war this turn. Declaration is a bit long but completely appropriate:

Dave,

Half a league, half a league,
  Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldiers knew
  Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon in front of them
  Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
  Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
  All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
  Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
  Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
  All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
  Noble six hundred!

Sorry I didn't give the declaration properly, but I don't have your email properly. I'll see how annoying of a gnat I can be over the next 30 turns.

If you want to reply, brianoseanachain@yahoo.co.uk is your only man.

Brian

Ye can all start calling me Lord Cardigan from now on I'd say.

[Brian Shanahan]

Well I went in and promtly lost Valin and about 6 HA's. Pity.

I've no chance in this one. My best bet is to hit Dave hard enough that when Lewwyn (yeah he never announced that he was out of war for ten turns) comes back in he can beat him, fat chance of that.

I've offered concession in the game. I don't think there's much point playing on.

[Brian Shanahan]

The game is over. I conceded and Lewwyn was willing to to.

So in conclusion I'll claim "moral victory" as the last original still standing. We Irish are good at turning pastings into moral victories .

Reflections, before seeing anything else.

1) I made quite a few mistakes, most notably to me was not revolting into nationalism first turn. I was saying all along "must do it, must do it, must do it", and shagging well forgot to do it. I made quite a few mistakes against Acalostas during the war, mostly leaving horsies exposed when I should have held them back, and my diplo could have been much better in the late game (being more frequent for a start).

2) The map shafted me. I'm sorry Amelia but that map was way imbalanced, it gave the best player(s) a position from which I'd have to kick myself if I didn't win, and it gave me a start that was at least a whole level's worth of a handicap worse than the next worst. Yes Nicolae started in jungle, but a BW beeline was in his interests anyway, yes Gaspar started on some desert tiles, but he had strong backlines. I started both in bad mountainous terrain, and cramped by another power, even moving Acalostas south to the pig/dye/copper/silk site would have given me room to expand into decent cities, and the happy tiles you gave me actually hindered my progress (e.g. plains hill cotton. I think it ended up being 0/2/3).

3) I learned a lot about focusing on techs. I had to, having no real opportunities for getting strong commerce. That has helped my game a lot I think.

4) Early diplo was all over the place, almost giving everything away one minute, and being ready to suicide on the slightest provocation the next. I think that playing hardball with Kyan was my strongest move (albeit made from abject terror of becoming irrelevant), but unfortunately the advantage I gained came too late for any value to accrue.

As regards the other players, thanks for the game. If anyone was offended by my messages, or is offended by my thread, my apologies. Now that the game is over I can sit back and be more centred about things.

[Mardoc]

Oh and the reason why I was losing interest at one stage was simply down to Gaspar not being willing to contemplate a dogpile for a long time in the game. This despite the fact that I laid out my plans for Acalostas and my justification (land, he pissed me off early, I thought I'd manage it better) and also gave a run-down of what I could do, and what I thought the rest could do from my knowledge of the civs, and my (not very in-depth) looking at the demographics.

For a period of about 20 turns I got the impression off Gaspar that he wanted to hold back and allow Kyan/Krill take out the rest of us and then move in himself when the Bals were exhausted. He was not willing to work on a proper plan for a dogpile. Rawkking was perfectly willing (though not that interested in the game), Nicolae I think was too (though I met him very late) if a bit gung-ho (though I don't know the full ins and outs of the situation), but Gaspar really held back on any comments until after my/Krill's joint war over Grigori lands revealed that he actually needed to work with the other teams to beat the Bals. By that time however it was too late.

Ok, this was straight-up miscommunication. No idea who's more at-fault, and I don't really care, but here's what it looked like to us.

Our impression was essentially the mirror image of this - that you were pretty firmly allied with Kyan, not interested in dogpiling him until after he won, and hence not worth bothering with. If anything, we thought it likely that you'd leak our plans to your ally so that he wouldn't be distracted from helping you against the Grigori. Basically we thought a dogpile had to go in before Mages, or it would be too late, and at the time we were trying to organize it, you were still allies with Kyan.

Why'd we end up with such different perspectives? Well, part of it has to be that we didn't have contact until late in the game, so we couldn't work up to it gradually. Pretty much the first thing we said was 'hi, wanna dogpile the Clowns', and we heard from you 'not interested in a dogpile until after Acalostas is gone'. And then you seemed to be taking forever to actually pull that trigger. We figured that really just meant 'not interested in a dogpile'.

Add in the fact that we'd already figured out that RG and Nicolae had long, staggered, NAPs with the Balseraphs (with hidden end dates, but far enough out that we couldn't get them to commit to anything on our preferred schedule). So nothing we did would really be a dogpile, anyway - the most we could have achieved was a 2 v 1. We picked Nicolae as our partner for that, since logistics worked so much better and he was free of obligations sooner. It still didn't work, but it seemed like it could have if we'd played better.

After we gave up on the dogpile idea, you apparently gave organizing another shot, while we were depressed and had concluded there was no chance. But...well, I think Kyan just outplayed us in the diplo game. He locked up everyone else in various deals until the stage where they no longer mattered, and he did most of that before the rest of us even had contacts. Most of the deals were even mutually beneficial, so we couldn't even argue that people were getting the short end of the stick (exception:Nicolae).

Anyway, I hope you had fun with this, and that you'll consider giving another game a try! Mapmakers seem to have learned from this one, anyway.

[Brian Shanahan]

Anyway, I hope you had fun with this, and that you'll consider giving another game a try! Mapmakers seem to have learned from this one, anyway.

Looking back I kind of did think I was looking like a bit of "Kyan's cat's paw" first time around, especially after spilling on Acalostas. But I'd rather ye think me an honest bastard than a dishonest one, so I basically fessed up on that one. So there was a problem there, and of course being invested in the game I took it a bit too heavily maybe.

The map was my main undoing I think. The whole game was "how do I dig myself out of this" (once I realised I was at the low end land wise). That being said I didn't play a strong enough game to win it given fairly equal starts. Probably joint 4th with Nicolae.

As regards another game, as long as a screaming horde of barbs don't destroy the game (like with XV) I'll be interesed. A turn a day on a game is a good investment.