[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[WilliamLP]

So, I hate to let down the universal lurker desire for bloodshed, but I have to say I'm really not feeling a big war with the world leader right now:

- It might be different if Retep were set to run away with this game for sure. But post Corporation when GLH goes away, and post Biology and SP when land area becomes more critical, he might start to lose his dominance over tech and production. In other words, I don't think he's in the "needs to be stopped now" range. Compare his skinny empire with Plako's in PB8.

- It might also be different if I wasn't actually quite in contention in this game still. I think if a master took over my place right now, they could win. I don't know if I actually have a chance, very inexperienced in play past gunpowder, but that's another story...

- What do I have to gain from war? Preventing retep from controlling cities in that sea is impossible - it's already done. Boldy only has one fortress city left. I think the fact that he was loading it with units to keep us honest is what's preventing it from being easily taken. There's no way I can think of taking out even just a few Redcoats for quite a while. (Though, galleons full of cannon could help.)

- If I war in the sea, Retep will build more navy, obviously. If at peace, he'll see that my coast is well defended without aggressive intentions and maybe not invest as much.

Another option would be a proxy troll war: start gifting Frigates to Boldly! It has the same problem though, and I also need to look out for Bandit.




I've got to try every turn to see that Retep doesn't have an opening to declare and unload a bunch of troops on my mainland.

If Boldly can hold on, he still has a lot of land on the main continent. Losing his fantastic Moai city must hurt a lot. But still, Retep now has a bitter enemy for the rest of the game, I bet, if Boldly is allowed to consolidate all that land.

Tech is set to Steel in 3, aided by a bunch of wealth builds. Cannons earlier are more important than most of the stuff I can build right now. When that comes in I'm going to try and build a bunch of them empire-wide, and maybe consider cash upgrading some cats too. Molach now has rifles in the south, which is a concern.

Bandit is also going steel, and it's not clear whether that's a defensive or offensive move (or both). The simplest explanation to that it's same reason as us: Redcoats.

After Steel, I'm considering if I can afford to go Econ / Free Market -> Corporation first to speed my overall tech rate. I think I probably can: cannon, camels and defending with boats can probably keep me alive for a while.




There's little evidence of massive conflict, considering how many of Boldy's cities have gone down. Bandit and Molach are very quiet, which I like to see.

[WilliamLP]

I declared on Kuro again:




4 frigates bombarded and 8 camels and 4 horses moved to strike from out of his vision. It doesn't look like he was prepared for this. Though to be fair it's obviously a no-win situation for him on all sides.




Pirate's Cove was founded. (This island is more religion oriented.) A settler hopped off the galleon to settle the eastern site but I think he'll actually hop back on - the western site is better to start with. Also there's another settler that is going to go for one of the western islands.

I've said it before I think: I really should be rushing with better micro to settle west. My concern was Retep rushing east with galleons and rifles, but as soon as I saw that he was attacking Boldly I probably couldn't have reasoned that the west was pretty safe for a while.

I guess I can still try, though without the whip for now. I have 21 turns of golden age left!

Steel is in next turn, and I am starting to build a decent round of cannon.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Are relief fishing boats incoming? Tell me they are, people are hungry.

[WilliamLP]

I've got work boats building, but admittedly my micro and urgency of pre-action there kind of sucks.

So, Kuro was unable to reinforce Standard Oil. First I bombarded to 0% with frigates, then:

C3 Camel vs C3 longbow (73%): Win
C3 Camel vs C1 longbow (76%): Win
C2 Camel vs C2 Spear (74%): Lose
C2 Camel vs C1 Medic 3 Longbow (75%): Win
Shock Camel vs C1 Spear (77%): Lose
Shock Camel vs Spear (95%): Win
Medic 3 HA vs Wounded Spear (99.9%): Win

Luck was slightly below average. Incidentally, I haven't gotten a Camel withdrawal yet this game. So while it may look like a good unit on paper, here they're just knights! (You have to lose enough attacking combats for the 15% withdrawal to be significant.) Still:






I get it at size 12, which is nice. The colosseum is unusual and may help with happiness if Kuro isn't wiped out by the time it's out of resistance.




Kuro is moving 5 longbows and 2 spears which didn't make it in time. I don't know why he didn't just pack those units into Standard Oil or a fork defense tile like the deer.

The cat stack will advance on John Dodge. David Buick is an obvious raze. I don't know if I can screw this up this time.




With the culture pressure gone, suddenly C. Vanderbilt is quite a good city.

I don't have a good feel for tile micro in the pre-industrial age at all. Against the AI I've probably automated workers by now! With already developed cottages I guess this is a pure commerce city. Are watermills a good idea here? I'm guessing not really (I don't badly need production) but windmills become good at replaceable parts. And workshops in caste are better than mines until railroad.

Boldly begged for stone, and I accepted - I don't think I have use for it anymore. He then offered 5gpt in a separate trade, which I took.




Now, what's this stack of Boldly's doing in our land? He could be going to snipe Kuro's cities. But, he also has open borders with Kuro (see the mysterious worker he has in an above screenshot). So maybe he's actually looping all the way around to back-door Retep and try to take back some of the crappy cities he lost? What a weird game.




Pescatore was settled. I'm not sure if Bandit will like this much, but I already had a claim on this island.

Crucially, Bandit is showing Liberalism, which means he wants to go Free Speech, and sit back and tech up with financial towns. But at least in the short term, I don't think he's going for war, or he'd be quickly moving for techs like Military Tradition and Railroad for cavalry and machine guns.

I feel like if this game goes long enough, the New World islands between us and Retep might be a pretty big deal. But, it will also take ages before any investment settling there actually pays off. Especially factoring in the amount of military needed to defend it against even the simplest boat attack. (I'm actually drawing comparisons with Commodore's move in PB8 to invest heavily in settling islands, and he may have fallen behind the world leaders in tech as a result.)

Building privateers for these seas would be a funny move, since there are three of us in that sea with Chemistry and so there's plausible deniability about who they belong to! I don't know if that would work in a PBEM but in a pitboss game we can easily tell who owns them by seeing when they move and who has played.

[WilliamLP]

So Retep is just owning everything to the east of Kuro:




He has 6 Redcoats up there. Him having open borders with Kuro is a problem. I thought about whether to press forward against Kuro or not. My military up here is, of course, quite pathetic against a non-backward opponent. And I have nothing that can defend against a Redcoat right now. With cultures pushed up to cities this is a problem. I do have a steady stream of cannons coming in though so I can at least put up a fight and make it costly for him.

I decided to press forward anyway. I don't know if I can take John Dodge next turn, but probably the turn after that, after attacking with all cats. David Buick only has 2 warriors in it, it will get razed next turn probably. I'm seriously considering razing John Dodge, if I can take it and Retep starts heading my way.

Compounding things, Boldly has a Cataphract stack still heading that way, and I'm not sure why. He has no infrastructure to be able to hold any city up there, as is being shown. Is it possible he's actually trying to help me out? I have no idea.

So the key question is what's retep going to do.

I have some city visibility on him, and I wonder if he knows I do. The ctrl-E screen says I don't have enough for city visibility, and it's more complicated than that - I get a bonus for cities with Hinduism, which is a lot of close cities. E.g. it's nice and a little surprising I can get vision from his hill city above.

I switched to Free Market - Since I only have 3 cities on great people right now, I think it's much better right now than un-Represented Merc, once foreign trade routes are recalculated. Nationalism will be next, and then either RP->Rifling or Military Tradition I think. I'd like Constitution and Corporation, but I don't think I can afford not to start catching up in military techs.

Retep is showing Communism, and he'll be snowballing really well with SP. Bandit isn't far behind.

[NobleHelium]

The espionage screen always shows the correct values. You can select various cities to see their individual values.

[WilliamLP]

The espionage screen always shows the correct values. You can select various cities to see their individual values.

Ahhh! Thanks, I don't know why I couldn't figure that out.

[WilliamLP]

That many promoted longbows on a hill halts my advance for now. I simmed attacking out with all 10 cats a few times, and while it does cut his numbers down a lot, it loses all the cats and isn't decisive enough.

In 2 turns I can get a galleon to unload 3 cannons and move in some more camels, to attack in 3 turns. Cannons should make this pretty easy.

Retep doesn't seem to be making a mad dash for us along this land bridge. If he does, it changes everything. But again, at least Communism is an economic road, and he lacks steel himself right now.




David Buick had a granary and a lighthouse but was razed. I guess in the early game Kuro wanted a fast copper hookup but the location 1S is so vastly superior it's hard to even imagine keeping it.




I just figured out Oxy's new theme. Ouch! I hope he (and Suttree too) do better in PB14.

[WilliamLP]

City visibility reveals:




That's an 8-move galleon! I'm kicking myself for not getting vision on wetbandit's north earlier with a caravel - you can see one moving in and back out. I've not been appreciating his threat to attack at all, but what else could those galleons be for? I need (or needed) a frigate force up there. The navy I do have was anticipating a possible surprise attack from the west from Retep.

This is the trouble with these mid-game island projects, I guess. Right when they start to pay for themselves they become really juicy low-hanging targets. If Bandit moves to attack right now, he can take the north island I think. If he waits a couple of turns (maybe he doesn't know I know) I might be able to get enough over there.

I'd love to start drafting muskets on the islands now but I need 2 turns for another revolt.

I really misunderstood this position strategically: I thought Bandit and Retep would be tensely locked and vying for the islands between them.




Up in the north, there are at least 2 redcoats in Kuro's territory. It could be a larger force, I'm not sure.

I think what I have there (2 additional camels plus 1 HA in the tile SW) can take John Dodge next turn, or nearly so. But it wouldn't take a large amount of redcoats to give me serious problems. Having failed in the attack before may make a big difference here.

If Retep and Bandit both go for a focused attack from both sides at the same time it's pretty much GG for me though obviously I'll fight it out.

[WilliamLP]

I think Bandit plans to attack this turn:




The galleons are 5S2W of Kraft Dinner, where they could amphibiously take the city (it has a musket, longbow, cannon in it), and move in for safety. Having the extra move from Magellan's is a big deal. With just a couple more turns of warning I could have been much better set up for this (i.e. pants not completely down).

I declared war on him, offered the 10 turn peace deal, and started to move ground troops to hit him over land. I think this is my only hope here of not losing a bunch of island cities, that he takes the message that with war he gets mutually assured destruction!

I also spawned a useless duplicate artist, with the polluted gpp from Mausoleum. But... if Wetbandit wants the war route, it might not be so useless - it can gain a turn pushing back culture.

Crucially, he doesn't have nationalism and I do, even though I'm some turns away from rifles. If he wants war, I'm thinking going to Nat + Slavery and practically whipping down every city with camels + muskets + cannons. Retep would be delighted, obviously. I admit I'm thinking as much about my diplomatic image in future games as about this game itself.

Over in the north:




With all those longbows fortified on a hill, I'm _still_ not bringing enough to the party here! And I don't have enough hitters. I could win this over multiple turns but I'd lose a lot, including cats that could cash-upgrade to cannons. And the gain is very little at this point. It will be ages before adding John Dodge would make a significant benefit to me.

I'm revising my opinion even further about how hard "hammer" type attacks are (when he knows it's coming all along) in Civ IV, even against a ridiculously backward opponent. I seriously appreciate Kuro doing the right thing and whipping all those longbows to show me.

I offered peace yet again and moved back - I need the happiness right now with cancelled trades to Bandit. If I were Kuro I wouldn't take it, but he might again, and the worst that happens is he just says no.

Retep has some redcoats in Kuro's territory... I "double moved" him by playing first in the turn, but I don't feel bad since I don't think we're really in contention? Or, we have no land units in range of striking anyway.

I had to kill a knight of Wetbandit's in the north. It was a reporter unit but it could have done some damage from the place it was teleported to.

This game is stressing me the hell out, lol. I'll actually be relieved when it's done and I don't think I'll play in 2 PB games at once again. Hopefully some lurkers find it interesting though.