Turn Discussion Thread

[HitAnyKey]

Just realized I forgot to write the turn details.

First up, the battle outcome. Not optimal, since we lost one of our double-promo axes in a 90.2% odds battle against a quechua. But these are the remains of their forces:


We have two axes that can attack next turn, and hopefully kill their two healthy quechuas. Then the following turn, we would take the city.

Here are the demographics after the battle. We have dropped to second in Power with the loss of those two axes. Top power is Trolls, who should be far enough away as that it won't affect us yet.


Speaking of the Trolls, we got enough EPs into them now such that we can now see the stats for every civilization. Below is every graph:

In two turns our newest axe will reach Tortuga (such that he'll be able to help defend it after we take it...or help take it if they somehow get another unit in there). Capra is going to be continuing his southern exploration along the shore south of the Trolls.
Animal Farm has to keep working on Axemen, the next to be completed in 5 turns. Opportunity will grow in 4 turns, workboat in 3. We'll have Sailing in 4 turns. I'll put a turn of production probably into a Settler (unless anyone has any other thoughts) and then switch to the Lighthouse to be followed up by Great Lighthouse. Unless we think we might want to whip out a Settler before we start on the Lighthouse (or after lighthouse and before GL).
The workers are chopping the forests of Opportunity (with one of them finishing the road to Tortuga). That one will most likely stick around Tortuga for improvements after we take it. Also, we should think up a name for it to be renamed to after we take it.
I think that's about it for now.

[TheHumanHydra]

I think we should name it something piratey, but still animal-themed, like Talking Parrot, or Polly Want a Cracker.

[TheHumanHydra]

Warning: long, philosophical post.

Over the past few days, with this lull due to the storm and all (hope everything's okay, HitAnyKey, as well as any lurkers affected), I've done a marathon rereading of some of Sullla's multiplayer game reports (the Apolyton Demogame and RB Pitboss 2), which were hugely influential to the quality of my own play and introduced me to the idea of Civ IV multiplayer play when I first read them. Aside from being highly engrossing in their own right, rereading them has shown me a lot of parallels with our own situation and, I think, some lessons, too. (On a side note, it was weird seeing Nakor, who has been one of our main contacts on the Pirate team, as one of the principal players in the Pitboss 2 game. It was like realizing someone you just met is actually someone you knew long ago. Mortius was in that game too, but he got eliminated right away, though not through poor play.)

The most striking parallel for me was how closely the Pirates' ridiculous demands now mirror those of the Templars in the Apolyton Demogame when they were negotiating for peace in their war with Realms Beyond: both want(ed) the dominant power in the conflict to set them back up as competitive rivals with unheard-of concessions, on the basis that a losing power could still massively impair the victor with resistance and thereby hand the game to someone else. Realms Beyond refused the Templars' demands, wiped them out, and went on to win the game. Now, their situation was much different than ours, which leads me to my other comparisons.

Both games involved an aggressive "pink-dot" settlement by one of the teams at the outset: in the Demogame, by Realms Beyond against the Templars, and in PB 2, by the Byzantine team against the Ottomans. Realms Beyond was able to bluff and negotiate its way to securing the new city, while the Byzantines were chariot-rushed by the Ottomans and lost not only the city but the game - this catapulted the Ottomans into a highly favourable, even dominant position for much of the game. Across the two games, early warfare served several teams well: PAL in the Demogame, the Ottomans and Romans in PB 2. PAL's and the Ottomans' success led Sullla's teams to consider these teams as the contender for victory in their respective games; on the other hand, in PB 2 at least, Sullla frequently criticized early or excessive warfare as harmful even to the victor, notably in the conflict that saw the Byzantines destroyed! In each, Sullla's team preferred to expand peacefully in the early game and tech upward; I wish I had an example of Sullla being rushed to compare to.

Where does this lead us/me? I've been doing a lot of thinking about the situation with the Pirates of late; in fact it's probably the one thing in my life I've thought the most about over the past few days. I'm very, very torn. We all - rightly - viewed the war with them as absolutely essential, though we had varying degrees of confidence over whether we would be successful. I and LordParkin were not optimistic; I was quite tense. Mortius seemed confident. HitAnyKey, I don't recall you saying much of your opinion of our chances, but I took your calm focus as a sign of confidence as well. This was when I sent my first message to the Pirates, presenting them with HitAnyKey's suggested offer: that if they evacuated Tortuga, we would raze and resettle it, and we would have peace. Hoping that fear of the consequences of doing otherwise would persuade them to accept our offer, I informed them of our then-current intention to destroy them. I didn't feel we could do it, but it was our team's last-known plan. They didn't respond immediately, and while we waited we launched our attack, and our good fortune suggested we could take and hold the city. They responded with a plea to let them keep it, which I sternly refused, reiterating our intention to destroy them and prompting them to offer us major concessions to stay our hand. By this point, HitAnyKey had expressed doubt that we should try and overcome them on economic grounds, but I saw their empty cities and the conqueror's rush of adrenaline began to pour through my system. Unfortunately, their situation and my message seemed to have sent them into apocalypse-mode, and they replied with a pledge to fight to the death unless we razed Tortuga and gifted them a settler. I have drafted a response; it is haughty and accusatory, and I think we should scrap it. Two things I learned about diplomacy from Sullla's game reports: make specific proposals to advance the dialogue, and always leave them an "out" (unless you mean to leave them no out, as in the case of the Templars). I've done neither thus far.

My thought these past few days has centred around these two interrelated concerns: what I am going to say to the Pirates (their last message had me quite vexed, to say the least), and more broadly what we should do about them and about our own development. Both HitAnyKey and Sullla (through his commentary in his game reports) have made a case for peace (after taking Tortuga, of course) and further expansion. Sullla's reports and, unfortunately, my single-player mindset and experience provide plenty of examples of early warfare as absolutely the right course. I fear the economic stagnation that rapid early expansion has often brought me in single-player, and perhaps not enough, for in single-player it is quite possible to recover and win. I also fear failure if we press on, that whipped axes or chariots (I wish we knew whether they have that horse city!) would annihilate our approaching stack. I also fear a resurgent Pirates nation down the road, that we will have to fight them when much more hangs in much more doubt than now. I also fear that they will fight to the death, even if we do make peace: that they will devote all their efforts toward whipping an army of chariots or axes to avenge themselves upon us, and that we will not be able to expand in peace even if we let them be. I wish I knew their real intentions. If this were single-player, I would devote all my energies toward building my own army and crushing them completely, counting on my skill as against the AI to ensure I could catch up after securing myself for sure. I can't count on that here!

So I am at a loss. This may be the most critical decision of the game for us, war or peace, just as that for Tortuga will probably be the most important battle. I wish we could have the confidence in our abilities Sullla has of his, to see us through, even against humans. I wish we had more voices, especially experienced voices, to discuss this. LordParkin, Mortius, if you're reading this, I hope you chime in. I hope any and all lurkers will as well, no matter what their level of experience (mine is nil, I don't know about you, HitAnyKey). I will be swayed to your decision, HitAnyKey, if it comes down to just the two of us. I do think we should get a settler out from one of our cities quite soon. Unless we can secure a NAP, we may need to build a spearman or two just for defence, in case the Pirates do indeed have horses. Would it be possible to check the trade screen to confirm? I think we should get moving on our borders agreement with Gillette (I know we kind of left it in their hands), and our dotmap. Lastly, tomorrow I will try and compose a new response to the Pirates that is more conciliatory, with a specific peace proposal that doesn't make too many demands on them (but doesn't surrender anything to them either!) - unless, of course, we decide to remain at war, and go for the throat. In that case there isn't much more that we can say.

I apologize for the really long and rambling post; it was building for several days and I needed to get all my thoughts out there. No need to respond instantly! But we really do need to discuss these issues now that the game is resuming. And we really do need some more input for this momentous decision! Again, LordParkin, Mortius, any lurkers - please contribute! It would really help with my peace of mind, for one.

Whew! [goes and takes long cold drink]

[Sullla]

Interesting post. I will put my thoughts in the lurker thread, so that you can read them after the game is over. Obviously I won't be weighing in directly - you guys will have to solve this for yourselves. Good luck.

[Commodore]

All I'll say is thanks for the thoughts...it's nicely illustrative for us global lurkers, who have been somewhat in the dark about what the metagame is here in the west.

[TheHumanHydra]

Wow, I can't believe such famous people are responding to my post! (If I had realized Sullla would be reading my post about Sullla's reports, I probably would have composed it a bit better ...) I really do feel honoured, and I look forward to reading your thoughts after the game. I just hope we don't disappoint!

I'm getting to that new diplomacy message I said I'd compose (I actually had most of it composed yesterday before I posted, but in ink, not bytes) ... first, though, I had a long look at the game today and have a few suggestions/observations. First of all, if you weren't planning on it already, HitAnyKey, can we go to 100% science? We're (hopefully!) going to be getting an influx of plunder gold in the next couple turns, so I don't think we need to stock up any more before dialing it up again. Second, we still need Masonry before we can build the Great Lighthouse - have we taken this into account? We currently have Pottery selected on the tech screen to begin researching immediately after Sailing. HitAnyKey, a key component of your objection to pressing on after Tortuga was that we need to save money so we can research Pottery as quickly as possible and get cottages up as soon as possible - the need to research Masonry first might impose as great a delay. Building on this, our unit supply costs are only 1 right now with seven units in the field - and this number is about to go down with one warrior dying, another unit at least garrisoning Tortuga, and the worker at Tortuga entering our cultural borders. I would hazard to say that we can afford to send more axes than we have now toward Barbados (I just looked it up; unit supply costs do not increase according to distance).

Having completed Stonehenge, we are guaranteed to pop a Great Prophet in 39 turns. No one has founded a religion yet. I suggest that before those 39 turns are up, we found a religion and incorporate shrine income into our long-term plans. If we went for it in the near future, being the only Industrious civ, we should be able to land the Oracle even without Marble (it's pretty cheap, after all). I am going to suggest a major course change, regardless of whether or not we decide to press the Pirates. I think we should abandon Sailing immediately (we only have one coastal city, and our current settlement plans are landward) and immediately pursue Pottery, getting cottages up at the capital as soon as possible. Then we should start up the religious tree, founding at least one religion, chopping out the Oracle, and switching to Organized Religion to get its production advantage hopefully before many of the other teams. Then we're a short hop from Monarchy, to bust the limit on our city sizes. If we get the Oracle, we should select either Monarchy if we've managed to crash our economy (eg. by destroying the Pirates and keeping, not razing, their cities) or Metal Casting if we haven't, for Forges, which will build more quickly under Organized Religion and thereafter combine with it to provide us with +50% production (as well as +1 happiness with our Gold!), as well as the Colossus, to make up for losing the Great Lighthouse! Since no one seems to be prioritizing religion, we might be able to get two out of this tech path, and with our many Great Prophet points from Stonehenge and the Oracle, get a second shrine up after not too long and really rack up the cash later in the game. Under this scheme, we should run scientists (after Writing) in Opportunity (with its double-seafood) to get our Great Scientist for an Academy in either Animal Farm or one of the shrine cities. Then Mathematics (Barays, if we need them), Construction if we're threatened and want our Elephants (with Horseback Riding) or Currency if we're not (Markets for another +1 happiness from our Ivory and the gold boost; we can even run Wealth in some cities if we've tanked our economy by that point with expansion with our +50% hammers and +25% gold). Then Code of Laws, Civil Service for Bureaucracy.

Now, believe it or not, but I've never made a game-plan so detailed before except in the end-game, so it may be full of holes (and the end, of course, really looks excessively far into the future). I like it's versatility (multiple points at which and means by which to pull ourselves out of an economic slump or (hopefully) race ahead, tons of hammers to do with as we need), the short-term (cottages soon, +50% hammers from Forges and Organized Religion) and long-term (multiple? shrine income, snowball effect from previous) advantages it offers, and (versatility again) the ability it offers to either go after the Pirates in the short-term (and be able to afford it!) before switching over to wonders and infrastructure or to expand in peace. I still don't have a recommendation on that one!

So what do you say? Slow cottages and a chance at the Great Lighthouse for a landward-looking civ, or fast cottages, shrines income, the Oracle, the Colossus, lots of happiness (from religions too!), oodles of hammers, versatility, and a really big snowball?

Sorry for yet another really long post! Apparently the lurkers find them interesting, though; I hope they enjoy it ... and that this plan isn't idiotic! This one is slightly urgent, as it involves what we're researching right now, but I don't want to rush anyone, though I do look forward to your thoughts!

TheHumanHydra

P.S. We'll need more workers soon! (Just to please Commodore and Sullla ...)

[goes and takes another long cold drink]

[TheHumanHydra]

Pirate movements:



They moved out of the city, quite sensibly. Live to fight another day (or have peace).

[HitAnyKey]

Ok, the city is now ours. I forgot to take a screenshot of the popup when we captured the city, but we got 39 gold from the capture. Not a bad haul. This will definitely sustain our research for quite a nice time. I also changed the name to Talking Parrot. I kinda liked that one, also the other one you suggested was too long.

I need to get to bed, so just a quick update. I think we're still good with going Sailing, Pottery, & then Masonry.
I want to save most of the chops for the actual Wonder, so that means it could take a good 6-7 turns to build the Lighthouse. By then we'll have Pottery and can build a Granary while we work on Masonry, most likely whipping it out to finish it for the overflow to go into the GL. Then we start the Great Lighthouse, and chop it out.
Yeah, we only have on coastal city right now but I think it still might be our best bet for our next wonder at this current stage (since we've already put some time into Sailing).

I'll comment on other things tomorrow.

[TheHumanHydra]

Hey, HitAnyKey (and anybody else!), just a reminder that we've still got a diplomacy message to send to the Pirates that I need feedback/approval on. They're probably wondering what's taking us so long!

Also, I don't know how busy you are, HAK (maybe you're tied up with hurricane recovery!), but it would be nice to get some discussion going with regard to our domestic plans. If you want to stick with our current plan, fair enough, but it'd be nice to hear your reasoning as opposed to just stating it! Maybe we should try to make some of those complicated Excel spreadsheets, at least for this wonder build ... I won't be able to till sometime next week, unfortunately, though. Anyway, both I and I'm sure the lurkers would love to hear your thoughts!

In totally unrelated news, just to spice up the thread and because I want to boast a bit, I'm now attempting Immortal difficulty in single-player! I chose the Inca; man is that a strong leader/civ pairing without unrestricted leaders! Quechuas seem to be incredibly adept at holding off barbarians, probably making the game the equivalent of at least one difficulty level easier in that regard, and Industrious and Financial are power-traits! Unfortunately, I haven't gotten much (any) use out of the Terrace yet ... I still can't wrap my head around running a Granary-powered whip economy, no doubt to my great detriment (and it isn't a great omen for this Demogame either!) Anyways, my goal had been to test out the economic plan for this game that I posted above, with the Great Prophets and shrines and all. I didn't bother with Stonehenge against the AI (I basically never build it in single-player, too much of a distraction from settling), but I made sure to get the Oracle. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get Writing fast enough after starting the Oracle, and I was too afraid to delay the wonder, so I ended up having to pick Monarchy over Code of Laws as my free tech! Oh well, I rely heavily on Hereditary Rule anyway normally; now I just have to go take a Holy City from one of my neighbours (the first city has already fallen with but one casualty!). Anyway, I don't know why I'm rambling on with this purposeless story, but hey, there hasn't been much going on as of late, so what the heck! Shutting up now ...

[HitAnyKey]

Sorry, but yeah. Everything from the storm and all has been playing havok with my thought process, so I haven't been thinking much about the game when I would get home from work. Plus, I've been fighting a head cold for the past week and a half.
I'm around enough to play the turns, and give short turn reports, and maybe a little discussion, but that's about it at the moment. Like this weekend, I'll barely be around at all. Tomorrow morning I drive down to NJ to spend the weekend volunteering to help with the disaster relief in my fiance's parents's area and neighboring towns. So for Sat/Sun I won't even have internet capability until the late evenings.
I'll try to post some more thoughts on our current plan while at work today, but again....with being out of work all last week, this week has been very busy with catchup.