North Korea Part II- The Final Naming Scheme

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Scratch that, 90% chance Suttree will invade me now

60% chance he'll take my newly founded city

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Ok, so here's what happened



The turn before this, I had an axe on the tile SW of the barb city, all I could see was Suttree's one chariot. Suttree had just accepted an open borders deal which included a crabs for crabs deal, which I took as a sign of peace. I attacked the barb city with the axe and then settled the city, revealing an axe/spear pair. Basically, Suttree got incredibly lucky, there was no way he knew I planned to settle the city, those units just happened to be there. I guess I shouldn't have attacked with the axe first, but w/e, I really did not expect units to be there. Anyway, he moved to threaten Panem and I attacked out, killing an axe by 25% odds. I'm still pretty screwed though.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Reporting is gonna pretty much stop for now, Suttree fucked up my game and I'm incredibly busy, which is why I made a bunch of tactical mistakes that led to this situation (don't play war turns late at night after exercising for 7 hours during the day). Plan is to tech math-construction and try to retake my city and then burn his corn-ivory city with a pair of galleys landing a stack right next to it. Ember can be one moved once I get back into caste for extra culture so it shouldn't be too hard. Problem is, Suttree's power is spiking way up and I'm not sure if I can match it, hopefully he won't anticipate catapults.

This game has been really frustrating; my leader/civ dictated a peaceful builder game because I invariably was going to have to play catch-up with others who had better early game combinations. So I settle a defensible border city with Suttree, but he just happened to have units, by complete coincidence, in perfect position to raze it. Except he moved to threaten Panem so I had to give up Ember to avoid having two cities razed. If he had come one turn later, I would have an established road connection and an emergency whip ready in Panem. Other things like shitty barb luck, lackluster land compared to those who I've scouted out, and more recently sloppy play by myself just contribute to this. As I've stated ad nauseum, a better player than I would probably be doing fine, but I just don't have the emotional energy to spare to put a lot of effort into this game.

P.S. The lackluster land comment is probably just an abstraction of my current defeatism, don't read too much into it

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Lol WilliamLP lost a dice roll that would have resulted in him losing a city, but I hadn't touched the game in so long that I forgot about a scouting axe I had threatening one of his cities so I took peace

Teching Construction now, then archery and monarchy and possibly feudalism after that. Plan is build a shitload of military and [strike]go ruin someone's game[/strike] minorly annoy someone who wasn't crippled. I'm not sure whether it will be William LP or Suttree, I'll probably end up going for both and failing miserably. Any lurker ideas for ways to keep this game interesting?

[Gavagai]

Attack Rome. He wouldn't expect that.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

I'm thinking of changing my civ name to "Ministry of Peace" and ALT-clicking the entire diplo list. Suttree is heading for me next turn and because I had to tie down half my army on the Arabian front, he's going to make headway. I don't want to keep blaming luck on my bad fortunes, but it really seems like everything has gone against me this game.

BTW, if I offered BrickBoldyXenu a stone for gold trade so I can get walls up quickly. Is it ethical for me to DOW them next turn, for the sole purpose of breaking the trade so I can get my luxury back? Is it legal?

[NobleHelium]

Sure, you can do that.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

So how has it been going in Utopia? Well, we've had a bit of a make-over



War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Halcyon is... War?

Speaking of slavery, we've been using it quite a lot. Turns out it's surprisingly effective at building an ancient age army.



I'm easing off it for now; My capital currently has 30 turns of whip anger. Monarchy research should offset that a little bit: wines+gold+trading spare wines for a different luxury+HR abuse means I can still grow it to a decent size. Research after monarchy is the heavily discounted currency tech, then construction, then HBR and after that it's on to feudalism. My research capacity is actually decent and will improve as I recover from whips a little bit, I'm hoping to expand on this advantage my skipping a lot of techs that I don't need(Music line, etc.) Vassalage will really shine in a small SPI civ with a big army.

So how is it going at the Ministry of Peace? Well...



Could be worse



Lost an axe at 70%, but still it feels really good

Oh, and in that overview screenshot you might have seen marauding French units. Yeah, I was scared too, until I saw what his stack was...





Ummmm, ok? The reason I was kind of fatalistic about Suttree's attack was I figured he would either

a) Commit to the war with me, pick up some military tech and build a decent army
b) Build enough of an army to stop any attacks and play some sim city

His power was spiking, so I figured he was going for A, but let's look at that stack. It has,

1 C1 Spear
1 C1 Shock Axe
7 Unpromoted Axes(At least I think they're unpromoted, the stack isn't glowing)

He has had visibility on the center tile and so far he's seen

1 C1 Shock Axe
3 Unpromoted Axes
1 Unpromoted Spear
1 C1 Chariot

However, the city is on a hill and has walls for a cool 75% defensive bonus. But wait, it gets better. I have two trailing 3xp axes which can make it to the center tile this turn. In addition I completed a spear eot108 and have another axe to whip this turn, in the end I'll have

1 C1 Shock Axe
3 Unpromoted Axes
3 C1 Axes
1 C1 Chariot
1 Unpromoted Spear
1 C1 Spear

Suttree really should have teched either HBR or construction. If he was fielding cats or HA's, I would feel a lot less confident about my ability to defend against his attacks.

I really hope he tries to attack.

[pindicator]

Good job on burning that city down!

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Thanks! I've been trying to find examples of civs surviving for an extended period of time after losing cities early on and fighting a player doing very well in food/gnp. So far I've only found your team in pb8. Without TT or full diplo, it's going to be awful difficult. Luckily, I think I can wipe out Suttree's stack soon, at the cost of 1-4 axes. Turn report up soonish.