[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[Ceiliazul]

Forests? In the age of knights??

[WilliamLP]

Yeah, MYKI was probably afraid of me stealing his workers if he tried to chop the border forests.

Situation on turn 138:




I didn't want MYKI chopping the forest W of Or, so I upgraded the axe on the hill to a mace. I also moved 2 workers there. I was curious whether seeing 2 workers on an already mined hill would tip him off that something might happen next turn.

These are the differences between playing someone attentive vs someone not so much so. It's Civ basics that he should have a sentry chariot stepping in and out on a border like this. Conceding giving me an invisible staging tile like this one is just not a good idea.




He played a 5 minute turn, so I went for some fights:

Mace v spear in forest (98.9%): Win, steal worker

And on to Pyongyang, attacking from the fog.

C3 Knight vs Fortified LB (76%): Win
C1 Shock Knight vs C1 Spear (71%): Win
C1 Shock Keshik vs C1 Spear (15.5%/17.9% retreat): Lose
C1 Shock Keshik vs Axe (73%/5.2%): Win
C1 Shock Keshik vs Axe (73%/5.2%): Win

A sentry chariot move showed I could clean up the wounded spear pretty safely. So another Keshik cleaned it up at 92% or so.




No infrastructure, but I kept it because obviously I don't plan to stop here.




Cats head south since Or is likely to be tougher to crack than Cochon. MYKI is actually researching Guilds now - not a terrible idea but even if he gets there it's way easier to deal with than Engineering.

Everything is limited by how quickly knights can get to the front. Getting engineering ourselves will help.

Some other points:

Molach still doesn't have Feudalism. Seizing the west island by surprise force is defensible, and given desire to micro everything well probably possible. But I'd rather commit more heavily on one front.

Zanth seems to be building defensively still. I haven't seen a Landsknecht yet, which is the scariest thing he could be building right now. Even then though, we have lots of advanced warning and the option of going to slavery and mass whipping is available.

Notably, Zanth is building a lot of Elephants. This is _great_ for us, since Formation knights crush them with no defensive bonuses. I'm not impressed with WEs in this mod at all. I think cheaper LBs are nearly always a much better unit on defense and even a slightly better unit on _offense_ sometimes. Losing to a 35 hammer ancient unit isn't a great feature for them.

Someone built AP (not paying attention to know who). This connected a lot of contacts, we now know most of the players in the game.

Some city counts, sure to contain counting mistakes:

WLP 16
Boldly 16 (His score is a bit of a paper tiger score inflated by PHI bulbed techs, it seems.)
Dtay 29 (Yeah, frightening.)
Harry 30 (Nice when you can go for an alphabetical scheme and you have to start over.)
Pin 18
Joey 18
Novice 20 (I'm sure these guys have a story.)
TBS 20
Plako 13 (Obviously, shockingly low for him.)
Zanth 14
OxyBaII 10
Cyneheard 12
Dazed 19
Molach 13
Bandit 12
Bacchus 10
Nakor 10
MYKI 9
QGQQ 7
AT 14
Dhal 9
Mardoc 11
Yuri 9
HaK 9
CheaterHater 4
Azza 3

I've got a lower city count, but looking to increase it, and my cities are quite strong and well developed.

[Commodore]

Thanks for those counts.

Good luck winning the continent.

[WilliamLP]

A little bit of an update. I'm not really feeling Civ very much these days, but I'm enjoying this game as a bit of a diversion when the turns roll.

So, turn 139:

MYKI let me stage knights in the fog (1E of Khartoum) and declare and capture Pyongyang without losses. I think the exact timing was a surprise to him, though I doubt he expected peace through the whole game.






This was a pretty light invasion army: I chose to avoid the slavery mass whip and blitz war, though it probably obviously would be more effective than what I'm doing!

The gameplan, wise or not, is to use superior sustained production and a tech and promotion advantage to be a slow moving juggernaut until MYKI is off the continent. And to not overcommit but stay concentrated near the (current) border and take fights with high odds and favorable hammer ratios to preserve units.

After taking Pyongyang I captured MYKI's forest worker, which would have finished the chop that turn, and advanced the invading cats toward Or.

Turn 140:




Just advancing toward Or, not in a hurry at all. Bombarded defenses on T141.

Note, with open borders between he and MYKI, Zanth has a chariot watching all this.

Turn 142




I had a record of exact combat results, but lost it to a power failure. But I used 1 suicide cat on Or to give a knight about 70% on a top defender (IIRC). I lost 1 knight taking this city, if I recall correctly, which was about the expected value.




Removing the culture allowed some units farther back to take on his 3 elephants and 2 hwachas in the field. Elephants are nearly junk against highly promoted knights if they need to defend.

MYKI has made some pretty serious tactical errors. (Let's not talk about the forest still intact 2N of Mine de Cuivre... Everyone leaves those around when they're learning from single player...) Given what he has to work with, letting me attack into a Hwacha is something he needed to avoid at all cost so leaving one in Or was pretty bad. He needed to hold back a stack of them and then find or hope for a position for an ideal counterattack to hit with his siege and get some winning odds with his elephants.




I lost one knight taking out 3 elephants and 1 hwacha in the field. I opted to sacrifice a knight to take out the last hwacha too, because I didn't want any surprises with it hitting a stack for some horse archers he has in the field to finish, though I've seen no evidence he has any mounted force. He must have HBR if he's going to bother beelining Guilds? The hanging knight did manage to take out a LB on defense too before it died.

I got a GG here, but unfortunately he spawned in Chub, the farthest city possible from the action! He still advanced to create a M3 chariot.

About Zanth, he's being very attentive to the game, logging in to look after every turn roll before playing later on in the turn. I was wondering who he was waiting for, then saw him play right after me late in the turn. On turn 141 I got tech visibility on him - about to finish Engineering, and with Feudalism still unfinished too! So there was a window where he was wide open to a knight blitz! I didn't know it... surely I should have prioritized getting tech vision on him earlier to have this info instead of investing so much on Molach. It wasn't easy though, he was heavily building Rathauses.

He became less attentive to my play times after the declaration on MYKI... So, this is a rival who is paying attention to what's going on. My feeling on him is he's probably the most pacifistic and empathetic of that Russian Alae group, which makes him kind of like Worf from Star Trek TNG. I don't really know how solid his game mechanics are, but I'm sure he's not in the TBS / Dtay class of "newcomer".

Advance to turn 144:




After an overly eager advance on Mine de Cuivre, I decided I needed to back off to heal and regroup. The invasion tile here forks Cochon, which I'm not in a hurry to take at all since it's just more border with Zanth to worry about right now. But it does make MYKI decide how he's going to try and defend.

Advance to turn 146, the current turn:




I used this turn just to bomb Mine de Cuivre, which should fall next turn since I have 6 cats and 12 knights that will be fully healed with 3 promos in position to attack. That will aquire the gold tile which will be _really_ nice.

MYKI's defenses are split, with 5LBs and 1 spear left hanging in Cochon. The worst thing he could do would be a bad manner city gift to Zanth, but I'm glad it's quite well established on this site that this kind of move is bad form.

A sentry chariot showed that Seoul is completely empty. So I believe MYKI's spine is completely broken after Mine de Cuivre falls, and knights may be able to run in and take Peche and Seoul the turn after.

Some scouting to the northeast shows that MYKI also has a component of his empire off the continent, contested by Dazedroyalty. So some of his power is over there, and also some is in boats, which are very insignificant in this war.

Speaking of which, MYKI has a few triremes and galleys streaming west along the south coast. What he may not know is that I have nothing to pillage along the whole south, having deliberately conceded it all to Pin in the opening game.

With tech, you can see I fell literally one beaker short of Music this turn, because of those inter-turn effects nobody really seems to understand... My plan is to limp toward Cuirs, I think. So Music -> Gunpowder -> Philosophy -> Nationalism -> MT. The empire is a pure war machine pumping mounted units with stack defenders and siege support, basically.

So... after all at least this plan is taking some advantage of the Ger, and having built many of them earlier to attempt and fail the Horse Whisperers quest. And it attempts to rely on the fact that the combat mechanics in Civ make it just so that the third promo on a knight happens to cross break points a lot with large swings in the odds.

Oh, Zanth surprise-sniped a significant city off of Molach! (8 score points worth). This is great. I'm not sure which city it was but I'm hoping Zanth is trying an intercontinental invasion since that would just lead to a massive resource sink for him and split his attention from this continent.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 147:




MYKI has been doing the right thing and whipping longbows as quickly as possible. Still, there's a reason the start of the age of knights is possibly the best offensive era in Civ 4.




With 3 "suicide" cats, one withdrew at under 10% odds. The last cat I lost was at 85% or so against a wounded axe - I was attempting to get one to 5xp for accuracy.




I optimistically kept Mine de Cuivre with no surviving infrastructure, though it's obviously worthless until MYKI's capital falls.

Turn 148:




I don't know if I've ever seen a Drill IV unit before! There's a rare bit of trivia where the fourth point gives you +10% against mounted units. I have a hunch MYKI doesn't realize that knights are immune to first strike though!

I hope this guy gets a chance to team with someone who can show him basic mechanical errors like this. Note the intact forests and also his questionable (in his position) beeline to Guilds meant skipping Calendar, apparently, since he has an unimproved spice at his capital.

I'm just leaving Cothon alone for now, with its 7 longbows isolated from the core of MYKI's empire. Probably a second wave of knights and cats can gather up and clean it out since it's not so hard to handle on flatland.




I'm falling behind the top leaders in the world in tech now, which is expected. Lib and Taj have now fallen, and I'm not quite intrigued by world politics enough to be following who is getting this stuff. I'm basically just playing this continent turn by turn in isolation.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 149:




MYKI was only able to get a few LBs in Seoul, including the wasted promos on the GG. (He could have had a CG3G2 unit in 60% culture, which could have been a huge pain with some favorable RNG!)

Instead:

C2 Knight vs GG Longbow 20.%: Lose
C3 Knight vs Longbow 27%: Lose
C2 Formation Knight vs Longbow 28%: Win
C2 Shock Knight vs Wounded GG Longbow 69%: Win
91% C4 Knight vs Wounded Longbow 97%: Win

I got a good set of rolls.




Seoul came with a nice chunk of gold, and a Granary, Forge and Academy. Quite nice!




Peche should either fall next turn, or the turn after if it makes sense to take a turn to heal and advance the 3 cats. (I actually moved them S of Mine de Cuivre after taking that shot.)




It looks like the game is all out of Great General names. Mine is probably going to join as an XP pump in the HE city, though it's actually kind of tempting to give sentry to all remaining chariots since they're so nice to have around.

Zanth has declared on MYKI now, so he's probably not long for this game. I don't think Zanth has enough to cost effectively take Cothon yet, and nothing else worries me very much.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 150:

MYKI missed a turn because of unpausing and bouncing issues, which is unfortunate.




Peche just expanded to 60% culture this turn. I could have hit it with 8 knights, 5 of them full strength, and probably won, but I decided there's no rush and I'll try again next turn.

He could have taken a 40% shot at a wounded formation knight with his elephant. Without moving, it's just meat for a pike, and longbows are basically free experience in the open.




In the north I captured MYKI's two workers on the iron. If he want to capture them back it's fine, he'll just lose whatever unit is there, and I disrupted him improving the iron. (He does have guilds, but Formation knights don't fear knights without out it at all.)

I have 9 knights and 3 cats to hit Peche next turn, and so he'll lose that next.

I can't tell you where Dazed's 2 galleys are going, but I can just tell you he won't be getting a permanent base on this continent.

MYKI has 3 more cities left, other than the three shown here. If he makes it to Engineering it seems like it's going to be way too little, too late.

Forces:




I wouldn't be surprised if I had one of the better maps of the world in this game with no trading. As you can see I think assimilating most of MYKI will leave me with a pretty competitive amount of land compared to Dazed and Pindicator.

I don't really have a plan post-war. (It's safe to say it's not a question if MYKI can be conquered now, only when it will be over.) I think I'll try to wrest control of the western island from Molach with a mass of knights unloading and hitting from out of a galley in the fog.

With Zanth, well Mindy said it ages ago, war is basically inevitable from any sort of strategic perspective. Unless I'm going to role play a good neighbor who values having had peace for the whole game. (And honestly, believe me, a lot of me wants to do just that and play sim city for the rest of this, haha.) The time to fight would probably be right after a mass promote to Cuirassiers, to hit the window before he can get Rifles and when Landsknechts aren't quite as cost effective. He's teching too fast to get to Cavs before he get Rifling for sure.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 151:




I only had 3 cats in position to bombard Peche but that was still good enough to change the odds of a C3 knight to 67% on the top defender, so good enough.

C3 Knight vs CG LB 67%: Win
C3 Knight vs CG LB 68%: Lose
C3 Knight vs CG LB 70%: Win
C2 Knight vs Spear 71%: Lose
C3 Knight vs LB 79%: Win
Knight vs LB: Win
Knight vs Spear: Win

I lose some knights... but then I also build a lot.




Some nice infrastructure is here! This liberates a buttload of culture and frees up the whole south of the continent to be mine now.

Next up is New Seoul in the northeast, and rolling some more cats toward Cochon for the backfill capture.

Meanwhile, Zanth just took a MYKI city also. He's probably not long for this game unless he has an off-continent city that is well guarded.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 152:

New Seoul was guarded only by a longbow, so it fell at 89% to a C4 Knight.




So there is the city that Zanth took. He logged in and played immediately after the turn roll to double move after taking the city. I wouldn't do that but there's certainly plausible deniability that he didn't know we could be interacting... whatever, there are larger things to worry about in life.




I had 3 formation knights that could attack into this. The first would have about 75% on the C2 elephant. I'm not sure if the third defender would be the Crossbow or the M3 knight. If the latter, there's an argument to go for this right now. What would Mindy do?

I'm sure Zanth is quite aware we're now on a single continent together with no other reasonable goals left in the game that don't point to each other. Does he know I'm thinking like this, though? I'm not sure... I have a history of being inexplicably pacifistic though, perhaps in this very game!

I thought, if I'm going to declare war, I want to do it at a time to get a very large and swinging temporary tactical advantage and gain. And this wasn't it, unless maybe I got lucky and could take out the M3 knight for free.

I could have set up to take Cochon next turn... it will have up to 8 longbows and a spear in it. I think it is MYKI's last mainland city. Other than that he has two cities left, but I think they're on Dazed's landmass, you can see where I last scouted his culture to the north.

I'm being more conservative with Cochon though. Next turn I'll just bombard it to 0, and then probably take it the turn after when I can hopefully see what Zanth is doing.

I do have an issue that I'm not really set up to handle masses of Landsknechts yet, since I've been conquering with almost only knights. But I do have muskets available to build now. And, it turns out that either C2 shock knights or C3 knights do just fine against a C1 pike. Versus C1, going from C2 to C3 on a knight is a break point bringing the odds from 35% to 64%!

I've been grabbing a couple more sets of graphs. Here they are with Dtay on them, to put this game more into the global perspective:




So um like... yeah. Dtay is in a GA I think, but even beyond that he's dominating the tech game. A really big swing tech in RtR is Economics, but I didn't check if he's actually running FM already.






The sustained growth curve Dtay is getting here is somewhat unbelievable. Just amazing stuff, probably shitting all over some Seven formula. It looks like he made a conquest at a perfect and brilliant time. Didn't his neighbours know that you have to attack this guy?




Overwhelm MYKI with superior tech, promotions, and military production: check. What I did well in this game was to pick a gameplan deep in the BC years, and it has gone according to plan.

Zanth has done very well during all this, however. He's basically at parity in all measures.






I have a lot of courthouses, so I'll try to grab some more graphs of the other leaders for the lurkers.

Going forward from here, I have to think about it some more. Option 1 is just beeline to Cuirs (Nationalism then MT), pausing for nothing. A mass of highly promoted Cuirs, supported by siege and a few musket stack defenders, would be a big problem for Zanth, I feel, until he can get to Rifles.

Option 2 is economic catchup first, so probably Paper -> Education -> Banking -> Econ -> PP. I'd revolt to Pacifism next turn with the discovery of Philo, to speed up GA number two and get out of war civics.

[WilliamLP]

Just because I'm not in a great mood:

I understand that it is "my fault" and am not asking for a reload. I am frustrated, tbh, that we've paused many times for many people and the first time I've ever even be close to being late, I missed my turn.

Dude, ask for a reload (you'll get it and nobody will complain) or hold off the passive aggressive crap. Pick any one.

Also, damn, Gavagai is playing Zanth's turn? Well, we may be in a duel scenario anyone, sooner or later, right?