[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[WilliamLP]

- The first half of the timer sucks ass for this kind of attack: he got to charge and then heal before I could move again. (Because units that attack but don't move in doing so still heal.)

Just so you know, this is not correct. A unit that attacks will not heal on the same turn, even if it ends the turn on the same tile. Kuro may have been able to heal by via promotion if he picked up experience, but he didn't heal in the way that you wrote.

Ah, thanks for the correction. I just tested this in WB for my own sanity.

[NobleHelium]

Units only heal if they haven't spent any movement points, unless they have March.

[Plunder]

Maybe it is not too bad to offer peace now.
Kuro might even take it... That'll mean that he can focus some of his defence forces on Boldy, which will slow Boldy down.

[WilliamLP]

TLDR: I'm f-ing terrible at Civ IV medieval warfare! Ah well I guess getting spanked is a good way to learn what I don't know, and to safeguard me from the dangers of thinking I don't totally suck at this game.

First I logged in and read the log, and saw Kuro promoted and attacked out:

He lost:

Longbow
Cat: 1
Axe: 3
Spear: 1

We lost:
Cat: 5
Camel: 1
Axe: 2

We definitely got the worse end of this but it wasn't a total wipe at least.




My first colossal mistake was of course last turn: attacking into a losing situation when I could have just sat the stack there, bombarded down to 0, and healed in place bringing in a medic 3.

I just retreated what was left of that stack to the south, and offered peace. I think that was my next big mistake: I didn't look at this carefully. Even with 4 nearly dead cats I could have bombarded down to 0 (promote accuracy on a couple which have 5xp) and had 5 full strength camels that could do some damage since the CG2 longbow was the only decent defender there.

I looked at this after retreating and realized that I probably could have still won the battle! And my odds on the top defender were 69% so what the heck:

Camel vs LB (69%): Lose
Camel vs Medic 3 LB (79%): Lose

Oh gee whiz... But that's Civ 4 for you, I get plenty of good luck as well as bad.

Camel vs LB (79%): Win
Camel vs LB (97%): Win
Camel vs HA (98%): Win
Camel vs LB (98%): Win

And unfortunately that's all the real attackers I had.

The final remains (with my earlier peace offer standing):




Really really painful was losing to the Medic 3 at 79% and bringing it to 0.5/6. Also imagine that I had bombarded to 0 and had those two extra axes to attack with even now, that could be another 4 units dead. And that stack is just a hair away from being so wounded that even my nearly dead units could finish it off.

So oh man, what a comedy. Those lurking this game hoping for some noob level plays won't be disappointed here I hope! I'll try to do better next time I am in a big battle.

Side note:




I'm not quite sure Molach's new city of Archery is worth the plant.

[Commodore]

Happens to the best of us. Cuirs a possibility?

[WilliamLP]

Thinking through for my own sake, my main tech options right now after Philosophy:

- Nationalism (-> Military Tradition). (Draft and Cuirs) Constitution would be nice too but not critical.
- Replaceable Parts -> Rifling.
- Astronomy / Chemistry.
- Economics.

We'll get a golden age somewhere around 5-6 turns from now I think. It would be kind of nice to have Economics for the free Free Market switch (we have a lot of foreign trade routes now). It would speed the rest of this along a bit.

Wetbandit just got Astro. I don't think he's planning to attack us though - he has that rather nice island to defend from Retep who is very close and I'm sure he'd like a stake in a couple of those unsettled islands. Still... right now the biggest threats might be over the sea. And I have a fair number of grass workshops in production cities (probably too many since they're still a bad tile) that are in anticipation of running Caste and eventually getting Chem.

It would have been nice to start developing Kuro's lands now, and would still be nice. And if we don't take him out soon, Boldly probably will... or i would have said that if Sutt hadn't muddied the picture.

My inclination is usually tech investment, so Econ -> (golden age in FM / Caste / Pacifism) -> Chemistry (workshops become decent) -> Astro (frigates for security + bombarding, kill Kuro this way still with camels) -> Nat -> RP -> Rifling -> MT for Cavs.

Are Cuirs enough better than Camels (cheaper and they have the withdrawal anyway) to need them really soon? I don't know.

[WilliamLP]

Another unrelated thought, on how I can get better at this game:

In chess (which I'm not very good at) supposedly learning how to think is important, and the best players use a process where they first spend a considerable amount of time just finding candidate moves, then analyzing each one, and only then making a decision.

I think I could learn to be more disciplined with this in war situations, and it would give me a chance to avoid making moves too hastily and then soon realizing I'm falling into a tactical rabbit hole. In this war last turn I should have analyzed all of staying in place, attacking forward, or even retreating and done some work with combat spreadsheets offline before starting to commit to one path. It's a lot of work but then these are really long games.

[Old Harry]

That method sounds interesting. I usually build a very rough sandbox (sometimes not even bothering with promotions) and then just muck about (as both sides) to see what turns up. This definitely helps with the "being too hasty" issue.

Also Sareln or Cynheard's combat calculators give you an idea of how much damage you're going to take with an attack and where the break points are in a defending stack. But to get better you really just need to attack more people!

[Plunder]

As you said in the beginning, we started an unprepared war (I don't know the exact words). We didn't have a technological advantage. You took 2 cities none the less, I think that alone is worth a praise.
Maybe, with hindsight, that was the moment to stop the offence. It's like with poker, at some point you think "I invested so much already, I cannot fold now, I have to call!" Even with a bad hand.

Rather than playing chess, you should play Go :P Chess is about annihilating your enemy, go is about getting just a bit more territory than the other ;-)

We'll get Kuro later down the line. If we peace now, he can focus on defending against Boldy, otherwise boldy will take it before our noses :P

[WilliamLP]

That method sounds interesting. I usually build a very rough sandbox (sometimes not even bothering with promotions) and then just muck about (as both sides) to see what turns up. This definitely helps with the "being too hasty" issue.

I was using a sandbox, at least, to look at the effects of the strike on the initial approach... and that part was true to the game. How do you switch sides in a sandbox? Can you do this back and forth without having the AI play a turn when you switch, somehow?

Also Sareln or Cynheard's combat calculators give you an idea of how much damage you're going to take with an attack and where the break points are in a defending stack. But to get better you really just need to attack more people!

I've been using Cyneheard's a lot actually, but not in this game. It's great for discrete battles with fewer units. One thing that is obvious when thinking about it but I didn't realize, is that combats of a wounded vs wounded unit have more variance in result (e.g. high chance of getting 0 hits) because it takes fewer hits to kill the unit and vice versa.

As you said in the beginning, we started an unprepared war (I don't know the exact words). We didn't have a technological advantage. You took 2 cities none the less, I think that alone is worth a praise.

We do have Guilds and CS vs Feudalism; that's a whole era of tech advantage. Next time in a situation like this in another game I'd be sure to bring more macemen.

Maybe, with hindsight, that was the moment to stop the offence. It's like with poker, at some point you think "I invested so much already, I cannot fold now, I have to call!" Even with a bad hand.

Yeah, poker is another game I've dabbled in but am not that good at. There's the idea of being pot-committed where because the stakes are so big it's even the mathematically correct play to call, but the whole situation is very bad for you and you actually made a mistake earlier in the hand to over-commit to get to that point first place. And a good poker player may calculate exactly the amount to bet where it's your correct play to call instead of fold, to milk you as much as possible. If you have an unlimited amount of free time and mental energy, David Sklansky's "The Theory of Poker" is a really interesting read.

Rather than playing chess, you should play Go tongue Chess is about annihilating your enemy, go is about getting just a bit more territory than the other ;-)

We'll get Kuro later down the line. If we peace now, he can focus on defending against Boldy, otherwise boldy will take it before our noses tongue

I don't play chess better than the level where games are won and lost by tactics (usually) but high in skill level very subtle factors win and lose the game, like manoeuvring to control individual squares and gradually gaining space. I know that Civ 4 is a much easier game than chess (or Go!)