mackoti Wrote:So in the end some luck can decide a game isnt it?
It does. There is quite a big variance in battle results. There are numerous examples, but in PB4 good luck gave me way too easily one of the key cities, but then bad one prolonged the lifeline of WK with several turns. It all should even out, but one game is usually not big enough sample. In general I think the variance of battle results in Civ4 is a bit too large.
win 34.2% (Shermans Lagoon, Numid vs Archer)
win 63.5% (Pedro, Numid vs Spearman)
win 82% (Pedro, Numid vs Axe)
win 24.8% (shermans Lagoon, axe versus archer)
lose 24.8% (Shermans Lagoon, axe versus archer)
win 99.8% (Shermans Lagoon, axe versus heavily damaged archer)
And Shermans Lagoon is lost ... what again forces me to wonder if they got clean sheets is that they doesn't finish one area of attacks before starting another place
I have officially lost the game on at best, stupid luck ... they won on luck, not superior forces ... now my only chance is to keep fighting against them trying to make sure that they don't win in turn
i don't know why i even bother anymore ... they pushed through my defense on stupid luck (by statistics they simply shouldn't have been able to) and now they're just going to roll over with superior ability to build new forces
just lost C'n'H, on even more stupid luck (althrough admittedly not as blatant as earlier)
retreat against Spear (4.1% + 50% retreat), knocking Spear to 55/100
retreat against Archer (10.5% + 50% retreat) knocking Archer to 32/100
retreat against Axe (4% + 50% retreat) knocking Axe to 10/100
win against Spear (99.4%) cleanup
win against Archer (100%) cleanup
win against Axe (100%) cleanup
Kudos on the stern fight you continue to put up Sian
With Donald Duck gone, what does your empire/military look like now?
Also, now that it's after the fact, why did you expend your GS on an academy, which would go to Gaspadore should DD fall. Did you expect to hold the city?
now that i'm completely out of the game i thought i would do a minor debriefing
from where i can see, there is a number of reasons as of why i lost, although only 2 of them was something i can do better next time
1. sub-par exploring, which caused me to be to slow expanding to good islands
2. grabbing Pyramids, ignoring expanding even futher
3. Confusism popping in Perdo, while Gaspadore settled 3t away from it (knowing that it would likely pop borders in a few turns anyway)
4. Failure in diplo towards Gaspadore (althrough, i believe the blame lies more with them wanting war than, my suggestion was relatively fair and they didn't even counterpropose anything)
5. Gaspadore deciding to rather go after me, than going after Yuri, which i honetstly suscept would have been a better attack for them given that they appear to have done nothing but expanding, giving military no thought what-so-ever ... from where i'm sitting i guess they would have been number1 now if they've done so.
6. RNG hating me, dropping the first 2 or 3 cities on luck rather than superior forces
Some spoilerish lurker comments, now that you are out, if I may:
Curiously I thought you understood the map better than others, since you made early contact. That may be a reflection on the low priority everyone seemed to give to getting early boats in the water, which confused several lurkers.
The Pyramids were not a poor choice on this map. Certainly the best early wonder available, since the Great Lighthouse and Colossus were not allowed. The main mid-term reason is the lack of cottageable land, which reduces the ability to fund science from commerce. The Pyramids' early Representation should have been very powerful with the appropriate GP-based economy.
Why weren't the Pyramids great here? Well, the benefit clearly scales with cities/population, and short-term building the Pyramids knocks back expansion a little. But that shouldn't be an issue by the mid-game, and there was still plenty of land to be settled. Also the Pyramids did not fit well with Sacrificial Altars, which were a logical part of your strategy. The main issue was that you didn't reach the mid-game due to war: The disadvantage of the Pyramids is that it painted a target on you, especially for Gaspadore since they were (1) also trying for the Pyramids, (2) were your close neighbor, and (3) had a fairly early unique unit to deploy.
As you may see from the lurker thread, there was a lot of discussion about Gaspadore's early luck. Exactly what might have happened had they not done so well on the first few rolls is always hard to say, but I suspect the war might have ended in stalemate before they reached your main island. That said, I think you failed to appreciate an important map dynamic, which tends to favour the attacker more than in normal warfare:
On primarily land maps, the defender has a significant movement advantage, since the defender normally has roads connecting their cities. However, at sea everything is equal in movement. Here, due to Gaspadore's circumnavigation, the defender was actually at a disadvantage. That's most obvious from your inability to bring Tiremes into play, in spite of trying very hard - you had a tech advantage, but still couldn't stop their Galleys. But ultimately this is important because it means early attacker luck snowballs much more quickly than in land-based games. Combined with the low map production, that makes it very hard for the defender to get back into the game once their main defensive stack is destroyed. Add to that that Gaspadore are optimists, so they were more likely than others to play a risky opener, and then more likely to continue on subsequently. You faced a perfect storm.
To echo novice, I think you earnt respect for continuing on to the bitter end, lengthened Gaspadore's war by at least 10 or 15 turns by forcing them to bring Catapults into play, and wasting many more hammers and units than they would have wished. The end result is still unclear, but even with all of your land, Gaspadore's position is far from dominant, which should have been the case after such a decisive early war.
