[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Well, we can't help you evaluate the risk involved without some pictures of the troops and movements. /ducks

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ha, risk analysis he says. It's obvious that you're trying to help me pick a fight.

"Lurkers call loudly for blood, more news at eleven."

[spacetyrantxenu]

Just to keep the post count climbing, I'll do what I can about posting an update when I get home. Playing the turns and taking pictures is a PITA on this laptop. For some reason any time I click on any popup boxes in game the BTS loading screen appears and stays in the way. So every time I click a city screen or click inside any menu/page, I lose a big part of the middle of my screen. I have to alt tab to desktop and then alt tab back into the game to get my visibility back. It took 30 minutes to play the turn last night not because I was doing regular stuff like checking tile micro or looking at trade screens...I just kept having to flip back and forth to desktop. No idea what is causing it. I tested running vanilla civ (non BTS) and it doesn't happen there. Weirdness. I'll be glad to be back to my regular machine in a few days..hopefully I can get this new problem fixed before my next trip out of town coming up in another week or two.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T183 - Well this is yesterday's news by now but I have the screenshots and graphs on almost everyone. Graph dump!

I'm only missing graphs on Azza, but his progress can probably be reasonably inferred by reviewing the Dutch graphs. I'm guessing Azza's trends are a general decline as things stay bloody over there against the Dutch. Anyway, what I can verify from the graphs is that I'm still well within the losers' bracket and that one day, possibly soon, someone will try to kill me. Kinda like what is happening to Brick. Maybe it comes by land, maybe it comes by sea, maybe I'll see it coming, maybe I won't, but eventually I'll be the lowest hanging fruit and someone will take a bite. I think the graphs say all that.

EVIDENCE:

My, but isn't my trend line flatter than my rivals! But at least it still has an upward slope. Better than poor Brick and Merohoc. I'll shed a single tear for you both as you die.


You can barely see it on this graph because the Dutch ran 100% science on some of the same turns I did during my golden age, but I was #1 in GNP for 2 turns recentlly. Didn't think I'd ever see it, and it doesn't matter because you can see clearly from the graphs that people with better economies than mine were simply saving gold when I was running max science. So poo poo, my #1 still isn't worth much because it obviously didn't measure anything meaningful.


MFG still sucks. I don't have enough tiles to work. Not much else to say here. We're pulling hammers via the whip, though. More military please!


The whips aren't showing up that much here but they're happening with more frequency now. I haven't kept a running tally or anything and it's mostly in my piddly small cities where the whips are coming, but my food graph will probably be fairly flat for a while. Whip, regrow, whip.


The only graph that really matters. I'm making some progress toward bulking up a bit. But we all know it will ultimately be a futile effort (yeah, with THAT kind of attitude it will be!). My growth trajectory is approximately parallel to the Zulu's and to Commodore's, but slower than Serdoa. That's not a surprise since he is generating a lot of hammers out of his tiles, into a lot of knight builds. Have you guys seen his army in Brick's land? I hope he's posting pictures of the rampage, it's something to see. Last turn he had 23 knights ready to attack Brick's capital, I think he lost 9 in the attack and got the city. Now it's empty land for the taking up there. I wonder where he'll send his army next....?

Anyway, I'll be building more units, then more units, then more units. And he'll probably smash through me anyway. But I wouldn't be surprised to see the Zulu join in as soon as Serdoa starts in on me. My flank is fairly weakly defended versus what Serdoa is going to encounter in my north. I've probably whined about it already in this thread somewhere, not enough hammers to build up both a credible army and navy, and the indefensible coastline I have really demands a naval force for defense. So I'm screwed if the Zulu invade when Serdoa does. I have a chariot looking for WMDs in Zulu land (the chariot is named Hans Blix, not very Seussian, but whatever), they may move their army around to evade me finding it, but I'll keep looking. The point is to give myself warning before they attack, maybe I can shuffle defense around and protect the north and south with the same stack. (probably not).


While I'm talking about ways I might die, it isn't inconceivable that Plako keeps marching once he finishes Merohoc. He'd surely like to take out the remainder of Brick's cities, which will be two on the peninsula by Merohoc's cities. That leaves someone capturing Black Fish from Brick to eliminate him (he'll lose his remaining undefended northern city on turn 185). Lurker input in my thread here would have me attack Black Fish, I think that's a bad play since it's only a size 3 city now anyway. It probably won't have time to regrow and be useful before the hammer falls on me, so I'll leave it and defend what I have for now. When Serdoa captures it (and he probably will), it will create a giant salient in my defensive lines and then I'll be truly forked. If at all possible I'd like to hit his army in the field then, but I'm going to need a lot more cats and elephants for all that. Or knights of my own. Why are these techs so damn expensive? Oh, because my tech rate isn't good enough. NEXT GRAPH.

The culture graph is interesting only because it separates the teams that matter from the teams that don't matter. Sure, the Zulu have a good economy, but they're not winning this game. They're a fun comeback from death story but they're not kingmakers or any more relevant in this game than I am. If they come to attack me good luck, maybe they can claw back into the game further...but don't count on it. Tiles, they still won't have enough tiles to compete with the big dogs. And the big dogs are in the upper portion of this culture graphs. They all have gobs of tiles to work. Well, at least compared to the guys at the bottom of the graph....Coincidence?


Nothing really new here, Plako built early sacrificial alters, Commodore and Slowcheetah got early courthouses for their sprawling empires, and Lewger built as many as they could spare while warring with Azza. Serdoa played games with the espionage slider, first running several turns against Brick in the run up to invading him, and then against (I think) Commodore later on. Those two had a brief war but I don't know anything about it. I could be wrong about who Serdoa's second EP push went against. I could look at F4 in game to check but that seems like too much effort. This thread is about all the news that's easy to print, not the news that's fit to print.


LAME demos. Waiting my turn to die.


And since I have the turn map...why not post it?




It's a lot of unit builds. It won't get any more creative than that for a while. OK, one exception, on T184 I built research in One Fish for just that one turn, that let me get just enough beakers to finish Engineering in 3 turns instead of 4 turns. So no overflow into whatever comes next. I still want Guilds next for knights but I'm at such a power deficit on the seas I really need to get carracks in the water soon, if I can. Besides, maybe that will make the Zulu think twice about invading me. Any carrack they see could potentially be up to no good. You never know what a bad player will do. We're unpredictable because we're...bad players.

Oh, if anyone is wondering why Red Fish and Two Fish apparently have no food to eat, I'm running 3 specialists in Red Fish trying to get a scientist or engineer, that's due in 8 turns now. Two Fish will produce a scientist, that will happen in 9 turns, except that Red Fish will finish first and then increment the GP counter to the next level. I'm not doing math now so that means the scientist out of Two Fish will be due later, and I'll find out how much later when Red Fish produces its great person. I'm hoping for a low odds engineer so I can run another golden age later. I think theocracy/vassalage wouldn't be a bad combo if I'm just going to grind out units for the rest of the game. Yay charismatic/protective.

Oh, and I may as well own up to it, I wasn't really paying close attention to the far SW of my empire. I should have placed some emphasis on building a bit of culture at Sad Fish, well now it's in revolt for three turns. Lucky timing for the Zulu, I think they only recently popped level three borders down there, so the odds shouldn't have been very high that I would get hit by a quick revolt. But as many times as it happened to Brick at Blue Fish I guess I can't complain. I'll whip in a monument, hopefully that ends this silliness. Oh, and lets me regain my freaking workshop tile.

Anything else? Ask questions if you guys care. I'm going to be out of town for work for a week starting on Sunday, my playing window will definitely be different because I'm going to be six time zones off my normal schedule. I really hope I don't get dragged into a war while I'm out, I'm not going to have time to obsess over the turns like I should if things get messy. Anyway, thanks for reading.

[TheHumanHydra]

Thank you for writing!

[Ceiliazul]

I hope no one hits me with the spoiler bat for saying: Your graphs are the best in the land. Keep them coming!

[spacetyrantxenu]

I have the minimum number of EPs possible to keep visibility on several of the players. I try to check every turn so I can keep an eye on power ratings. It's all from an unyielding sense of paranoia, I just have to keep looking out for the inevitable signs of invasion even if there isn't a lot I can do about it. So I fret away my time in game with stuff like this.

I've started working on Azza's graphs so I can present a complete overview, as long as no one runs many EPs against me (and why would they? I'm harmless!) I should get his graphs within ten turns. Unless I've been splattered by then.

But you should wear a helmet, I expect you'll be punished in the lurker thread for this!

[Sisu]

No punishing of Ceil incoming; nobody else posts comprehensive graphs. They give us boring stuff like shots of their territory or micro plans or tech priorities.

Give me data visualizations or give me death!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

We punish Ceil in other ways, like ignoring his entertaining and insightful posts. /ducks

[spacetyrantxenu]

They probably post boring things like shots of their territory because they have territory to show, or micro plans because they make and use them, or discuss tech priorities because they have choice in the matter. My land is small and boring, my micro plans consist of determining when it's the right turn to whip a unit in a given city, and my tech plans to keep following along the military line until someone finishes me off.

You can consider this a strategy post.