I've been thinking of this write up for a while, and about how to describe how I felt during this game. It was an incredible ride and I had a lot of conflicting emotions all the way through. I think the best thing to do is sort through it all chronologically. I'm not sure how much I'm going to comment on other teams in this post the focus will be on our team and how we did.
To begin with when this started I was talking to Luddite as I often do and he and ASM had signed up for this game. I told him I'd be interested in joining up, a great deal because I hadn't been in any pitbosses to date, and had only done PBEMs and wanted the experience. I figured a team setting would be a good place to start where we could decide things together and there wouldn't be a huge burden on me. Boy was I wrong.
When I joined, Ludds and ASM had already mostly decided on going for a culture victory. This is of course without seeing the map or anything. I had never actually played a culture victory before so I relied on them for the most part in the beginning strategy. Also important to note that when this was starting I was extremely busy because I was back in the US visiting my family and I wanted to spend as much time as I could with them since I then don't get to see them for the next 10 moths. Also there was our wedding ceremony and reception + taking care of my in-laws who were staying with us but couldn't speak english. My life was a clusterfuck and I was very little help within the planning process. I did however suggest China as one of our civs over HRE.
I was skeptical that a culture victory would work with a medieval start + AW setting though I agreed with Luddite that the AW setting actually helped us by restricting communication. I was actually incredibly thankful for Sulla stepping in and closing that banter thread as it could have screwed us enormously. It was not something we had agreed upon at the beginning and I doubt I would have gone along with our team's plan if there had been such a way to communicate. So thanks Sulla. Some may say you overstepped the bounds using moderating powers but I think Thoth's creation of the thread without consulting everyone warranted it being closed. I didn't comment too much on it at the time because again we were trying to keep a low profile.
Keeping a low profile was the name of the game. ASM brilliantly named our main thread Retrospectives after Luddite had RL issue and had to leave. I think it helped solidify the idea that we weren't really trying too hard and we weren't a threat. Culture victory is funny that way because it is psychological for both the ones running the gambit and the ones against those running it. But more on that later.
Luddite is right about me being very skeptical of our chances to win from the very beginning, but I was willing to go with it the novelty and fun of it. I simply couldn't believe that we would be allowed to do it. Given that, I went into this thinking we had a 10% or less shot of winning. That was fine for me because it still endeavored to do my best but with lowered expectations I would have to feel too much pressure.
The beginning was hard with all the reloads and frustration of getting the logistics fixed. It took a lot of my enjoyment out of the game and probably made me a bit gloomier about our prospects, but since we had a plan we continued to go at it and I just kept fulfilling my end of the bargain and tried to be efficient as possible. I think we made a lot of micro mistakes and part of it was due to the fact that we were in different TZs and all.
Through the early game I thought we were competitive, and that was good. There came a point when I knew we were not going to win culturally before other teams got to rifles and even infantry and cannons. Tech was simply going much faster than we had anticipated. Originally Luddite had proposed we win culturally around the time rifles were introduced, but we were way off. We had a quick discussion in which I basically said this is the point of no return, we tech this and we go full throttle culture no looking back. I was willing to go either way. Luddite still want dot try culture so I said let's do this. I think at this point we teched something related to culture either divine right or lib or something instead of military tech.
I also want to point out that we were worried about being rolled up on by knights. Me in particular since I was right next to Speaker. So we built Chicken Pizza when we didn't have any other wonder options available at the time. Great Library was an option but because we were going for culture I actually did not want to build it as it would result in tons of GPs for Scientists and we didn't need those. Additionally I didn't want to pop too many GPs in India so that I didn't raise the GPP counter for ASM unnecessarily. BUt all the other wonders were fair game. We kept trading the marble and stone around for the cathedrals and Herimitage.
I honestly think given the experience we have now we could have shaved a ton of turns of our win time. There are so many things I simply wasn't sure about in terms of effectiveness and what would end up being the quickest way to culture. I thought that as a team we were slow to build cathedrals and hermitage. I think ASM only built 1 cathedral! We had 3 religions but we never got Islam spread and China and India only had 2 cathedrals each! To compensate each city has hermitage, but still the lack of cathedrals bothered me.
My lowest point and greatest frustration came in the middle of game just before Luddite had to go. It was obvious to me that we would have to get very luck with people not realizing and coming after us and I just didn't think it would be possible to hide what we were doing. Interestingly, when Luddite left I actually became MORE invested in the game. I suddenly had to manage two civs and it put things in a better perspective. I told Luddite I would carry on as best as possible. Luddite had been the real optimist of the team so with him gone I sort of had to try and cheer myself up.
Also the most important thing was that when I took over I suddenly found a lot of things to do. Luddite, no offense but you had really under-whipped your civ. You hadn't spread religions enough nor gotten temples up for the cathedrals now that would have been fine except that we needed to switch the stone between us to build cathedrals so I had to rush enough temples in China in order to build the two cathedrals quickly. If we had huts built the one and then swapped the stone over it would have been disastrous because of the 10T time limit before canceling deals. The timing would have been screwed. So I got obsessed with that and working the stone and marble around to build Hermitages and cathedrals as quickly and efficiently as possible. Also I was suddenly faced with a threat from T3 souht of Macau that I had to respond to with the meager forces Luddite had under-prepared.
The point here is that Luddite had made micro errors and I had too. We had gotten into a funk. But when he left that got shook up, the light went on and I started to really fix a lot of the stuff that we had been doing wrong. I found that I too had been too passive with whip-use in my lands and spreading temples/monasteries. Culture wears at you because you are doing it in a vacuum. You don't know what the other teams are doing. You're not actively engaging them. You're trying to appear weak and sometimes you take on your appearance and you do stop trying hard. Every now and then you need something to shake things up.
About ASM. He was in it the whole way. Very invested and as such helped to keep me invested because I didn't want to let him down. ASM will be the first to tell you he's not that great at civ (see the above conversation) but he really did carry his weight in terms of being actively involved, trying to keep a list of things that we needed to do and accomplishing the tasks set before himself. At times ASM provided me goals, and I am goal oriented. So that really helped.
While reading the lurker thread I was laughing at how many were commenting on me getting lazy and focused and the difference between my play depending on which I am. I totally agree. One of the things about this game and my play here at RB in civ in general over the last few months is that I've been stretched too thin. For most of the time I've been involved in 5-6-7 games concurrently and never less. Only recently with 29 and 32 ending have I gotten down to 2 and now with only PB7 left I'm at 1! I'm glad for that and I think I will keep it that way. The funny thing is that PB6 really has been getting a lot of my energy recently and I really think that started when Luddite had to go.
About the victory I just want to say that yes we were lucky. We were lucky that T1 did not realize what was actually happening. But we also were prepared to take advantage of that fact. Our whole gameplan was based on the idea that the other teams would be caught off guard so in fact you could say we had planned for T1's obliviousness. I'm proud that we had a plan when we started the game we stuck to it all the way through and we accomplished what we set out to do. It was awesome, and while I can't say I loved EVERY minute of it, I had fun with Luddite and ASM and our sign communication, I enjoyed collecting wonders, I was pumped when I got the chance to attack others and I had a blast through the last 20 turns. Everything was worth it.
Luddite, ASM thank you guys. Great teammates, great strategists and just as fucking crazy as me to even attempt it in the first place.
To all my opponents thank you for the great game. To the lurkers thanks for watching and enjoying the blazing finish as much as we did.
I'm sure I'll have more to say before this is over, but this is a good start.
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
)
to all the players AND lurkers involved - thanks for the entertainment.
