[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ha, right. Thanks for the war status update, one less thing to worry about while I'm working tonight. And the clams...well that means they didn't gift the city back (I mean why would they???), I didn't score changes in Civstats so I knew that one. Saw Brick was elminated too. Rematch, rematch, rematch!!!

As for things going my way...I've bought 10 turns of peace with Serdoa, not enough time to wheel south and do anything nasty to the Zulu. But it is enough time to keep whipping hard and trying to be ready for Serdoa's REVENGEANCE stack that will probably arrive in 11 turns. Maybe ([size="1"]probably not![/size]).

I wonder if there was any head scratching about my war declaration among the other players? I guess anyone with Serdoa's and my graphs will figure it out in a few turns when it pops up on the power graph. (yeah, yeah, I'm trumpeting my moral victory noisily here. Leave me to my small victories, will you??? Don't worry, by the time this is over those 10 dead knights will be drops of blood in a river of Portuguese death and I will be silenced by my enemies! )

[BRickAstley]

Kill everyone in my vengeance. For you are shamed due to never even taking a city from me in battle. So I command it. And such.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Oh poo poo. The dead don't give orders to the living! But since you command it, I will now go kill everyone. I should have thought of that before!

(No way you've read through this thread already, you have to go read about the early days when panthers FEARED my scouts!)

[fluffyflyingpig]

Oh poo poo. The dead don't give orders to the living! But since you command it, I will now go kill everyone. I should have thought of that before!

(No way you've read through this thread already, you have to go read about the early days when panthers FEARED my scouts!)

I am pretty sure I told you to do this some weeks ago, only to be ignored and plied with excuses about 'Nakor is already dead' and such like. Please remedy this by going and killing Azza now. Or Pooter. Or someone else, I'm not picky.

[BRickAstley]

T22 - Well this just got interesting. Apparently I'm sharing this landmass with someone:



Someone had an encounter with a panther (I can only assume with their scout) and fared worse than I did with mine. This is really good for me. If that panther (0.2 strength) attacks my scout (0.5 strength, on a hill/jungle) I should win that fight and get my second XP so that I can promote/heal and keep exploring. There's also the other part of this, whatever that panther killed isn't out exploring and taking my huts. I wonder who is out there....

The person with abysmal scouting luck, of course. I lost like 3 or 4 scouts to animals at horrid odds.

I'm less than happy about stopping my sim-civ game I've been playing. The problem when you go vertical with your cities is that once they're grown you have to go horizontal or you'll get behind. Just as I was ready to push horizontal Brick screwed up my plans. I think this war is going to set me back quite a way -- I'm bleeding commerce here, people! Maybe I should have conceded the city (in the short term) and come back for it after settling the rest of my peninsula. But no...that spot is mine. Damn your hide, Brick!

Bastard! One way or another, Brick will pay in this game. I know I'm not good enough to pull off winning one of these pitboss games but I do know how to grind two civs into the dirt at the same time. Having been involved in a spite war in the past it won't turn out well for me, but I'm not facing Mackoti and Seven this time, either, so if it goes badly for me maybe it will go worse for Brick. Let's find out!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! DIE DIE DIE!

And this is why we got behind.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah, it's your bad luck that you got started next to a player who sometimes plays emotionally.

That's one reason why I hope these next few turns are mostly uneventful while I'm away from home. I can't play these turns 100% objectively and with the concentration I need to right now. I agreed to a trade this morning with Slowcheetah, a straight furs for dyes swap that I had previously rejected, partially because I don't want the damn trade window to hold me up if there's another pause. Not rational. But expedient. Bad play though...I need health resources and I blew a chance to extract some from someone with excess health an low happiness, just because I'm not playing thoroughly. Anyway...yeah, ultimately my early war probably killed whatever slim chance you and I had for long term relevance in this game. #PlayingFor6th

[spacetyrantxenu]

T190 - As the turn rolled earlier today I received my ballot for mayor of the Apostolic Palace. Since I don't steal much from the church coffers I went ahead and voted for myself, along with a clear majority of the other players. However, the AP isn't modeled after a senate, it's a house of commons/representatives so Serdoa voted himself into office. I haven't bothered to research what RB mod does to the AP, but from what I can tell I can't lose to a cheese victory condition and I now get +2 hammers for every temple, monastery, and cathedral empire wide. I did a quick calculation and found that this will net me an extra zero hammers per turn from this turn forward. The same guys doing those calculations told me that monk buildings don't hold up as well against invading armies as military units do, so they probably will never be built.

While the AP vote is unimportant in general, in a no diplomacy game it's as close to diplomacy as you're going to get. You can infer things from the vote if you choose to, so here it is, infer away!




I'm moving some units from Blue Fish down to where Scooter can see them to my south. I'm beginning to think he's swirling his boats around because he thinks I'm going to invade him, rather than him preparing for an invasion into my territory. I sent boats down to defend when I thought I'd be attacked by Serdoa soon (because why not rip open an opponent's lightly guarded rear?) but that may have caused paranoia and a naval buildup.




Anyway, I'm not interested in a naval arms race, the Zulu have caravels and I don't. If they want to come on shore and try an attack they can go ahead, I'm almost certain they don't have Gunpowder (not tracking techs, no time for all that business) so short of that they aren't getting by my longbows behind walls, I don't care how many boats they bring. They may pick off Glad Fish, which is still only preparing its own defense, but even my resource grab horse city is about to be secure. I have a pair of longbows shipping down my west coast and they'll be in position in a few turns, in addition to evacuating the three units that were marooned in my former western city when it flipped to the Zulu. That will give me 8 units in that wretched size 2 city, surely it won't be worth the trouble to capture. And everything else the Zulu may want to attack is far enough away that I could whip/ship in extra defense if needed. They would have to show up in truly overwhelming numbers to cause a real problem right now. Or, if they wait 8 turns for my peace with Serdoa to no longer be guaranteed, they can show up any time with much less numbers and actually present a problem for me. I hope that doesn't happen.

I've moved a decent force out of Blue Fish toward One Fish / the southern coast. It's only 14 units but that should stand as a reasonable enough reminder that an attack won't get very far. I'll place them inside Red Fish next turn so that Scooter's nearby caravel can't miss it when he dodges in and out of my borders with his caravel.

I haven't marked it on the map but I'm going to be replacing Black Fish soon. I haven't decided whether to resettle in the same location (crowded with my other cities) or to move 1NE onto the coast. It really makes little difference in terms of defense against Serdoa, either way that spot is impossible to defend without a massive stack of units. But I need to close down that border with a city and there is a lot of grass farmland up there for quick food, so I'll get a city in soon. That reminds me, I think I was going to whip One Fish for the settler this turn to speed up settlement by two turns. I hate to whip the capital unnecessarily, but I'd like borders popped in that city as soon as possible. I guess I can wait until next turn and do a 1 pop whip and line up a missionary whip somewhere. Sounds like a good enough plan for now.




Demographics:



My soldier count was starting to look respectable, but then Merohoc and Brick died and Azza was eviscerated by the Dutch and now Khmer (dogpile!). I'm just below average...but I bet our per capita military enrollment is respectable! Maybe I'll try to invent ways that my demos are competitive so I can feel better about my performance here.

I guess the turn pace is going to speed up a bit with fewer players. That makes two today for me.

[Ceiliazul]

Maybe I'll try to invent ways that my demos are competitive so I can feel better about my performance here.

Really interesting analysis, keep it up.

I bet in the pivotal "gnp/land" stat you're doing pretty well thanks to all those cottages.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Indeed! It's all the more impressive when you consider that 10% of my population is apparently employed by the military if you run the power/pop numbers.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T191 - Meh, so the Zulu decided it's time to sink my navy. They've done that now (caravels versus ancient age trash), so I offered them peace. I really don't know what other objective they can possibly have, other than to harass me and rip up my seafood nets. They can't invade me, they don't have the land based power. Well, they CAN invade, I'm just not sure what it will accomplish. I guess we'll find out. Here's the scene:




They aren't breaking through my capital, obviously. And I find it unlikely to be worth the trouble to capture Bad Fish, as it is defended pretty well for a horrible resource grab, size 2 city. And the resource it's protecting, horses, I've hardly used in this game. Unless I ever get to finishing up research on Guilds who knows if I'll build many mounted units at all -- they don't defend as well as longbows, after all.

So If Bad Fish isn't the target, and if they're not after One Fish (which I hope they are, because I'll just crush any stack they land there), they have to be after Glad Fish which has been left to its own devices for a while now. But even there I have a decent defense. Not enough to stand up to any concentrated attack, but it will be expensive enough to take. It will have 3 LBs next turn and more as soon as I can whip them in. With no other navy around they'll either rip up my nets or park a boat on them next turn to slow my growth/whips, or they can blockade, or whatever. It doesn't matter, unless they really do have a lot of units on those 4 galleys SW of the island I'll just keep whipping units until they either attack, I run out of pop to whip, or they take the peace offer I sent them.

There isn't much to see in the north other than the settler that's due out of One Fish and the missionary from Old Fish that will push borders quickly. I still expect this city to be run over by Serdoa in short order but I have to try to expand. Elsewhere, same as before, all military all the time. If you're looking for dynamic gameplay this is the wrong thread.




Demos:



Power graph (from start of T192 when I got graphs back on missing teams) - and yes, that is everyone still alive in this game. Remind me why the Zulu think they can kill me? They should have waited until my enforced peace with Serdoa was over, at that point they could cause a problem. Right now it's just harassment, unless they really thought I was going to invade them with those empty galleys?



I'll post a full set of graphs later when I play T192. Looks like our turn pace isn't going to speed up after all, now with a war split. Or maybe it will -- as many times per turn as the Zulu log in this may force them to speed it up a bit. But I only play in the mornings before work so if this slows down the game, so be it. You guys can file this down as a completely pointless war, unless the Zulu have gobs of units hidden in build queues (and I haven't seen that many whips from them so I doubt it). They may take one city from me...yippie. Worth a big buildup? Hardly.