[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm in a golden age now so I can probably save up for three or four turns and then run 2 or 3 turns @ 100% to get Machinery or Engineering. I can build elephants now (not that I've built any yet), but if Serdoa drops by for a visit that's what I'll be whipping in heaps for now. Longbows too, because I'm protective, why not? But I have the same problem, lots to build and not enough hammers.

Optics would be nice...hey, these carracks, am I scouting you or is this an invasion? That's right, YOU DON'T KNOW! I'll think more about the tech path later, but Guilds is up next after Machinery because knights aren't bad counters for knights, amirite?

Oh, and national wonders....nope. I used my GG earlier to sprinkle a promotion onto ten units defending Red Fish, that partially stymied the Brick offensive at the time. Alas, no one is near 10 XP because there wasn't nearly enough land down here for me to be fighting barbs and farming XP. So no HE for me. And NE...well that would be nice but I don't have marble anymore I can't even build Moai because I can't get my hands on stone. I've tried. And almost every one of my cities would be a good Moai candidate in a normal game because they're each short on land tiles. Bleh.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I guess I should post some city screens soon. I was going to do it this morning but I ran out of time before work. Will try to do it tonight/tomorrow when I play.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Didn't have time to grab city screens this morning, but here we go for T174:

The invasion continues and is rolling north through Brick's land, as expected. That city is doomed because it looks like Brick doesn't have sufficient (any) reinforcements that can arrive in time to defend:




A zoomed in power graph, this is the same turn as I posted above (the current T174 graph):



My empire. I added the tile yields because when you're in a GA it looks like things are going really well with sacks full of cash all over the map. But then you look at the score board and realize, nope you're still a small fish:




I'm building out a late pair of cheap archers and then it will be straight LBs unless I desperately need warm, cheap bodies to throw into the breach. I'm using the GA and Serdoa's attention on Brick to get my forges up finally. Since I'll probably be doing nothing but cranking out units from now on everywhere after the forges finsh, why not?

My few workers are improving the last remaining settled/unimproved tiles, mostly up around the uncleverly named city of New New Fish. It's going to be all farms there to grow the city to size, and then I'll lay down workshops over some of the farms to get hammers in there. I'll probably whip in the bit if infrastructure I need (the library build sucks but I want to take back that damn plantation without having to fight over that city. It's Serdoa's job to kill Brick's units, I just want my cities back). In NNF I'll finish the library and add barracks, and after that it's possible I may put in a lighthouse but that's up in the air. It may just start producing a lot of units, like everywhere else. Actually, now that I think of it, the library is a really stupid build, I should just build the barracks now and be done with it. It won't take forever at +2 culture to get that plantation back. I don't need +4.

Demos:



It's a sorry thing to be in a golden age and still be that far behind in commerce and production. But look at that approval rating -- room to whip. I think this turn Red Fish worked off its last whip unhappy, but I hate to whip in a GA now. I'd rather work that extra coast tile for now, but I'll probably whip anyway when the city is at 1t/1t on growth/production. I also need to check my trades again next turn, it's time to cancel my deal with Plako again. I'm probably annoying him at how often I renegotiate, but oh well. I've met Slowcheetah now and he's hurting for happiness resources, maybe he'll accept one of my offers eventually. I've been trying to sell him dyes for (effectively) 2 commerce per citizen per turn, but since he's spending his cash he has 0 gpt available right now. So I tried to sell the 10 turn rate as a lump sum. It came out to 360 gold, I'm not surprised he declined it. I'd like to get something for these damn dyes, especially since I converted two towns to plantations to do it (didn't change the commerce yields for this stage of the game, but later the exchange won't be as good, if I ever make it that far down the tech tree).

Just in case anyone missed it in the tech thread, I may need a sub for a few weekends coming up. I'll be traveling for work 2 of the next 3 weekends, and will be taking a bit of vacation in between. When I scheduled the vacation two months ago I had no idea I'd end up on a plane three straight weekends. That isn't what I call relaxing....

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

So, report before you leave again?

[spacetyrantxenu]

T178 - Not much of a report tonight, Little Tyrant's first flight is tomorrow and I'm hoping I don't regret staying up to play this turn.




There isn't much interesting going on in my empire. I'm going through the golden age, three turns to go until I'm back to my regular sucky economy. I finished off Machinery last turn so I'm back to zero percent research now. It was nice while it lasted -- I was #1 in GNP for two turns when I ran 100% science. I haven't been tracking the other teams that much because really, what's the point, but I'm going to guess that most of the top dogs were saving gold for me to take the top spot. This turn if I ran 100% I'd be third, but I'm out of cash. So time to save.

With Serdoa's knights splattering Brick to my north I'm working on elephants in a three cities and longbows elsewhere. Since there isn't really anything I can do to fight off Serdoa if he comes calling and determined to kill me (massive, massive hammer advantage on his side, I can't match his production), I'm going to build a lot of units and hope he doesn't think it's worth the trouble. But he'll probably come after me when it's muskets or rifles, I don't think he'll try with the knights he's killing Brick with. When this golden age ends in a few turns I'm going to probably whip elephants hard and wreck my economy, just to be prickly. I had hoped to make it to Guilds and then be a real asshole, but I'd have to whip a stack of knights and several galleys to go do anything fun with that. I won't have my source of iron back for a minimum of five turns (traded to Brick for Blue Fish ) so I'll have to sort that out before I can even build knights. And that's assuming I don't wuss out and change research to Engineering when I have my cash saved up. Knights cost 90 hammers, pikes cost 60. Pikes will keep me alive just as well as knights, but yeah, I'm not going to be able to attack anyone with pikes. But am I really going to be able to attack with knights even if I do tech Guilds? Probably not -- Where's the hammers? Oh right, whip these cities down again...um derp, RB mod.

The thing that should have been beautiful about teching Guilds was that it makes the workshop economy really good, definitely worth doing. I could even conceivably swap into Caste at the end of this GA and pick up another hammer per WS that way, even though that feels rather unsafe. But I have, at last count, 4 workshops in my dumpy empire. Tought to run a WS economy on that. I can't really pave over all the towns I have, because that would be economic suicide. (Towns: 7, 2 plantations built on top of what were towns, and then about 3 tiles soon to become towns....you know what, on a huge map that doesn't sound like very much.... By comparison I'm working 17 coastal tiles, not counting seafood tiles. Goddamn that's terrible.) I'm working 19 "good" economic tiles empire wide, counting a few plantations in along with my village/town tiles. Commodore has 15 such tiles within the BFC of his first two cities. Nevermind what he has in the rest of his empire, those two cities match a significant part of my total output. Land, land, land, this game is for the guys holding the land. I have 74 land tiles inside my culture, to go with 74 population. All of my cities except for the two newest (Blue Fish and New New Fish) are already working all the decent tiles they have, and some are working awful tiles for lack of anything better.

I'm not sure what the point of this analysis is, other than to reaffirm a point I've probably already made ten different times in this thread. In RB Mod, land is king. It's true in vanilla Civ, too, but even more so here where there aren't as many ways to generate hammers. This isn't Civ 5 where small empires can compete in some contrived way, I really feel like I have no control over playing this game. Any kind of aggressive move is liable to be ineffective and get me killed sooner, and turtling up and waiting to die is boring. This game has been fun, but it's kinda meh for me now. Hence the lack of reporting, and anyway this report has kinda sucked too so I'm going to wrap it up.

For an interesting read go see Brick's thread or Serdoa's, I hope they're reporting the war. My chariots have been wandering around up there every turn so I can keep track of where Serdoa's death stack of knights is at any given moment. Mostly so I can know when it's time to emergency whip 10 elephants and move them forward. But blah, I don't want to post a lot about their war, I hope they're doing it.

Photo -- do note the highlighted tile, the sign is correct as of this turn:



Brick has evacuated 4 units from Black Fish onto galleys, Dunkirk style. I guess he's going to make a last stand on Plako's continent, until Plako comes to finish him (probably after he finishes Merohoc). Cities have been falling left and right all over the map. Plako is eating Merohoc, Lewwyn is a few cities up on Azza, and obviously Serdoa has taken three cities so far. I'm not sure what Scooter & Company's Zulu are up to, it looks like they're playing an economy game and just ending turn, they still haven't built up a significant military. With a more secure flank I thought for sure they'd eventually come try to take some cities from me and get more into the game, but I guess not. Commodore and Slowcheetah both seem to have mostly been peacefully building away for a while, with the brief exception that Commodore and Serdoa had a spat over something at one point, but I don't know what that was about. So that covers international relations....what about this?



I guess there is no circumnavigation for this map? I thought for sure there was enough water but I never did the math to check. If anyone wants to:



Yes, my 3.7% land area is taking over the world. Anyway, I made a map trade with Commodore to clear the last of the lines of longitude and there's no polar wrap, so that should have been circumnavigation for either me or Commodore because I haven't seen it elsewhere in the event log. Whatever, I'll probably never get to carracks anyway, what does it matter if my boats move slowly or very slowly?

Demographics, because I care:



Questions, comments, snarky insight? I'd prefer some snark, maybe it'll put some fight into me.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Since Brick is evacuating, why don't you request the city? Or, demand it And war dec? I'm sure you could scrape up a handful of units. Then whip war ellies. Fight!!!!

[fluffyflyingpig]

There is enough water for Magellan's. You just didn't get it.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Fighting brick wouldn't be prudent until he kills some of those 20 knights Serdoa has running through his territory. When those come my way they're going to present a problem. I'll need to start whipping a lot of elephants soon to make sure I don't get run over. I'd prefer pikes since they're cheaper but it's going to take a few more turns of saving cash before I can make a run. I think Guilds is going to have to wait. I can't afford to whip a swarm of knights to counter Serdoa, it isn't nearly as cheap to do as using pikes/WEs. Plus the additional road movement will help my defense.

I also can't declare war on Brick for three more turns. Then there is the matter of my iron that I traded ro him. I don't need it until I finish either Engineering or Guilds, so I want him whipping spears as long as he can so he'll maybe kill more of Serdoa's army. I'm ultimately in the same boat as Brick. What does it matter if I get Black Fish back now if it gets Brick killed by Serdoa sooner? That just means his knights will be free for the next campaign. You know those units don't often earn a retirement, they'll be spent in combat one way or another. Chances are it won't be on defense.

As for circumnavigation I guess I missed it in the event log. I'll have to go back and find it, it has to be there. Unless Slowcheetah got it before I met him. If that happened I'd still get a notification in the event log, right?

Just a few more turns of GA, then I'll be whipping my little empire apart again.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Less excuses more killing. You need to swipe last hit on Brick or Merovich from the big boys. That way you get all of their risk cards, and can claw your way back into the game. That is how this works, right?

[spacetyrantxenu]

I like the concept but I don't think it works that way I think it is the same idea as gold tagging in a MMORPG, you may not get any benefit at all and may just decrease the amount of loot or XP the original attacker was going to get from the mob you tagged. Dick move most of the time. But here? Would be funny for sure, alas that it would probably only result in a waste of troops I desperately need for my own defense.

Still, the idea has been sent on to Churchill for further evaluation by the war mismanagement team.