[PB75 Mjmd] Call to Power

[Mjmd]

My Mother Told Me PB65 filler city I settled after Bing decided 2v1 me and helping the MoM mids player was the wise course of action.



T285

Logged in and got deluged from requests from SD to live. Rejected all. Ljub declared and tried getting a peace treaty. But real story was looking at the log and OUCH!



That is a LOT of red. Initially I swore I would have to withdraw my fleet. Btw that is 6 tactical nukes all on my forward ships that WEREN'T stacked. Civac has been playing fast turns and it shows here. I don't necesarilly disagree with the nukes to even up the navy situation (although its super inefficient and allowed me to now stack more ships because I'm pretty sure he can't have too many more), but he missed taking out the 1 carrier he could have.

Took a deeper look and came up with a plan. Rotated for direction attacking and better picture.



Now those 2 tactical nukes were slated for a port city and I still could hurt the fleet badly without them.

Why am I even pretending ( seriously I did give it quite a bit of thought). I ended up changing up a couple of ships but mostly followed the plan.



After



So last 4 of his ships (ljub caravel under the 1) can't escape and will probably attack mine and be deleted.

I'm sure you all know Ljub declared war as well. He tried to get a peace treaty, but this game needs to end.



Ya its time for Commando nuke stuff.

Also, invaded Venetian Arsenal.



Did I forget you need a 6 exp tank..... Yes, yes I did. I meant to raze two of his cities. Ah well. But got him up in this attack so maybe in the future. Back in PB66 Charriu fixed aircraft off carriers not being able to bomb roads. He must have forgotten to put that fix in future versions. Not even sure we have someone who could fix that and it doesn't matter so just used the aircraft to soften the city up. I had 1 fighter in PPTQ Grinder that was able to take out the railroad. Took out the only 2 nearby workers with the nukes and after the city raze got the 2nd one. I had been keeping my bombers and fighters mostly back to try NOT to startle Ljub, but I have quite a few free after the SD conquest which have now been moved forward.

Needed this port because as you can see had to load up two attack subs with tactical nukes in case he feels like stuffing his port cities full. Or 1 of them might go east to start on Civacs cities.

Edit: In case it wasn't clear this invasion of Ljub is brought to you by the India fast worker. The railroad 2S of Longship Spam and the road to Venetian both had to be built on hills. FINALLY getting to use them this way. All my previoius games with India I never got to use this way and now this is 3 times in one game! Oh and I'm building 1 more of my UB.

[ljubljana]

hi friend (both in and out of game)! congrats on the very well-deserved win, despite the early war with gav that many players (myself included) would probably have taken for a game-ending setback and checked out afterwards. not sure exactly what went on there but major props on that! and thank you for propping me up vs civac for way longer than i really deserved and for the nuke pictures, even if one of them came at my expense

the "plan", such as it was, had you accepted cows or warpeace, was to attack nauf in that time with my 25 secret commando units and tried to race your culture attempt with a domination attempt of my own - not sure it would have worked but there was SOMEthing there, i think, and you were probably right not to give me the chance maybe i should have taken your 40 turns of cows, to be honest.... i don't think it would have been enough without civac's land (which meant fighting you eventually, hence not accepting) but would like to see how that counterfactual played out (if seeing that didn't commit me to dumping 200 more hours into this game....). also i am curious: if i hadn't tried the game-ending warpeace with you, but had just attacked nauf anyways with no guarantee of your neutrality, how long would it have taken you to intervene? would you have attacked me immediately or let me make a bit of progress first?

and yeah, as for the military applications of fast workers, that specific thing (and the way it applied to our border, as demonstrated in the actual war when it happened) was a major, if not THE major, reason i felt that i couldn't effectively join the dogpile - i'd just get 3-5 cities razed from the fog on the first turn of the war and not really be able to hurt you meaningfully. india OP (well, not moreso than zulu, but still quite strong even post-nerf and a civ that is high on my list for future games (if i play future games, which i probably will))

haven't been through the thread yet but posting now to ask the following:

If he wants 2nd IE silver medal he is free to join me. He deserves that. If he chooses not to join me I have to assume he has plans to attack me. You know writing that made me realize maybe he would take peace until the end of the game neither helping me nor attacking me. Logged back and sent 40t NAP.

i never actually received the first of these deals in-game, to my knowledge. do you have any idea why that might be? not that i would have interpreted it as intended, but this whole game i was constantly paranoid that some of my diplo offers wouldn't go through, and to see that having actually happened is... troubling D:

[Mjmd]

VICTORY!

[Mjmd]

Wrap Up Time



Obviously Ljub hadn't played this turn, but had a look in.

Civac struck back and killed most of my eastern fleet. I have 1 healthy  ish battleship left, a few destroyers, but all my aircraft carriers still.



Oh and SD took a CITY!!! I thought he was 2 tiles away...... OOOPS. Shows I wasn't all on top of things.

Obviously this CANNOT STAND!!! (even though it was a filler city I probably shouldn't have settled)



Retook and here is the final empire screenshot.



My plans this turn were to maybe take out 1 Ljub coastal city probably the farther one as the near one I could start bombing down instead of using nukes. I was going to send 1 sub with tacitical nukes east to Civac and maybe use some ICBMs on his coastal cities before he got SDI.

Final main city list which has most of the main cities (excepting 2 of my culture cities as I sorted on what they were building)



You can see why environmentalism was starting to get tempting again.

Lets go through the 3 culture cities. I forgot to turn on culture slider until after, but long story short I was 26 turns away for both 2nd and 3rd city. I had 1 artist, but I probably wouldn't have turned on culture for another 2 turns. With environmentalism, which I was considering again, I probably could have brought down to 25 turns from now.

Capital Commodore never did give me an Ottowa scale for. Still regrowing from being whipped.



The absolute jewel of the empire. JohnPaulJones home of the Jewish shrine, cereal mills HQ, and mining inc HQ. After first round of ICBMs I was stupid enough to put it to building culture. Also still regrowing from that round of whips.



My 3rd city chosen for its two early wonders adding lots of culture was definitely both my weakest and most exposed. Building culture for a while interrupted by late Hollywood build. Also, only city with 4 cathedrals.



Being Neb playing a variant game have to show of the wonder screen.



5th city Lemmings my moai city was coming off of being whipped for 2nd round of ICBMs for those curious. But ya nice little set of wonders.

I've really liked adding stats screen to end of game reports. I do wish I had taken before SD conquest for buildings and improvements. I know showed 1 other time, but it was quite a while ago.



Just missed the 17 !!! ICBMs built. Also, SD built at least half the observatories. For some reason they had a really high survival rate in his cities. I don't think I built more than 3-4 even after I went through the late add science buildings. Phil universities got the nod over them and I only built 1 round of late multiplier buildings.

I might do graphs and some thoughts on my game another night.

[Mjmd]

hi friend (both in and out of game)! congrats on the very well-deserved win, despite the early war with gav that many players (myself included) would probably have taken for a game-ending setback and checked out afterwards. not sure exactly what went on there but major props on that! and thank you for propping me up vs civac for way longer than i really deserved and for the nuke pictures, even if one of them came at my expense

the "plan", such as it was, had you accepted cows or warpeace, was to attack nauf in that time with my 25 secret commando units and tried to race your culture attempt with a domination attempt of my own - not sure it would have worked but there was SOMEthing there, i think, and you were probably right not to give me the chance maybe i should have taken your 40 turns of cows, to be honest.... i don't think it would have been enough without civac's land (which meant fighting you eventually, hence not accepting) but would like to see how that counterfactual played out (if seeing that didn't commit me to dumping 200 more hours into this game....). also i am curious: if i hadn't tried the game-ending warpeace with you, but had just attacked nauf anyways with no guarantee of your neutrality, how long would it have taken you to intervene? would you have attacked me immediately or let me make a bit of progress first?

and yeah, as for the military applications of fast workers, that specific thing (and the way it applied to our border, as demonstrated in the actual war when it happened) was a major, if not THE major, reason i felt that i couldn't effectively join the dogpile - i'd just get 3-5 cities razed from the fog on the first turn of the war and not really be able to hurt you meaningfully. india OP (well, not moreso than zulu, but still quite strong even post-nerf and a civ that is high on my list for future games (if i play future games, which i probably will))

haven't been through the thread yet but posting now to ask the following:

If he wants 2nd IE silver medal he is free to join me. He deserves that. If he chooses not to join me I have to assume he has plans to attack me. You know writing that made me realize maybe he would take peace until the end of the game neither helping me nor attacking me. Logged back and sent 40t NAP.

i never actually received the first of these deals in-game, to my knowledge. do you have any idea why that might be? not that i would have interpreted it as intended, but this whole game i was constantly paranoid that some of my diplo offers wouldn't go through, and to see that having actually happened is... troubling D:

1) If you were going to do try for dom taking the 40 turn nap probably would have been the thing to do. Without tanks I'm not sure you could have gotten through even Nauf in time to stop my culture win let alone then take on me or Civac. I don't know how long I would have let you. A smart patient Mjmd would have just let you, but I was getting to the point I wanted the game to end which is why when you declared / if you hadn't accepted my deals I did the non smart thing and attacked. I mentioned this in my thread a bit but the "smart" thing to do for me was almost certainly to take the 10 turns of peace.

2) I haven't read much but I'm sure some people would have had you attack earlier. I mean you could have sent a bunch of rifles and cav to die, but I agree not much would be accomplished. I did leave quite a bit in that direction the whole SD invasion. But I don't know if you could have done much before infantry. Then its the classic build units to war now or factories and fight later. I'm not sure how much offensive action I could have taken earlier though, but I would have felt comfortable defending. 

3) I assume I just forgot to send. Too much thinking and reporting distracting from actually doing.

[Mjmd]

Some final graphs. Note for below, but turn rolled but I might let it again just to see what GP I would have gotten.

Power: Can see the heavy naval fighting occurring in the graphs.



Production: Can see slavery turns, but this is partially offset by use of the whip.



GNP: Again culture is distorting. With the KTB bonus I was trailing Civac pretty well. He would get a tech and then I would turn on tech.



Food: I chose to show the entire history.



My land WAS BAD. My food was horrendous for the entire early game. I still can't believe I am where I am so lets go over the big things in this game.

1) Its in all the above pictures. THE LAKE!!! I had the 2nd worst land on this map, but it had a saving grace. Much of my comeback is due to having a fairly safe eastern border. It didn't really make sense for Greenline to invade me. I haven't read his thread, but I think he understood that.

2) Gav war. The bad luck followed by good.



3) Early wonders. I'm NEB!!! This was always the plan and for those doubters it worked!!! It isn't stupid if it works right? Seriously the mids were key this game. Both for solving my happiness issues and for providing crucial GE points. The merc rep later wasn't AS good as I thought, but still ok.

4) Slowly pushing NW and vulturing couple of cities in war with SD. I finally got floodplains!!! Not great cities, but fairly good. Helped get to relevancy.
5) In general using Gav as shield to my west. I think after getting a city razed a lot of people would just want revenge asap. However, that wasn't the right decision. I wasn't strong enough to do hardly anything for a long time. A lot of people looking at the end of this game will not remember how poor I was both in food and gold. SD could have been a monster this game, but Gav made the necessary decision to fight him and I benefited.

6) It was not revenge that drove me to attack Gav later. It was just time to expand. I finally was strong enough to do SOMETHING. I lost the Buddhist holy city through being impatient though. Through not bringing more sentry units. With SD not splitting as signaled and fighting me it was harder than expected. I still think SD could have stopped me if he went fully into Gav/Scooter land instead of halfway attacking his briefly held former Gav floodplain cities.

7) overall I'm really proud of my empire building. I maybe should have done a few more science buildings a little earlier after the Gav invasion.

8) Going for culture was just stupid. I noted it at the throughout, but I do fully believe this. My 3rd city and even to some extent my 2nd were poorly positioned for an attempt. Please if you are reading this do not take away you should go for culture. I believe my war vs Gav/Scooter would have gone better without. Its possible I wouldn't have gotten so many prophets, would have had more units (naval in particular), or could have just built wealth and maybe not had a coin flip for the physics scientist.

9) A lot of player reviews of me in the past for some reason think I don't do long term plans. I hope this game puts that to rest. I've been mentioning getting 4 of the main late game prizes. I planned for every one of those.

[pindicator]

Congratulations! You took an awful hand and played it very well. This was not my best map, but I hope it was still fun to play.