[SPOILERS] Yossarian blames Caledorn

[Caledorn]

So, Yossarian wants me to post my thoughts on the war, and I am kind of at a loss for what to think and say. I never wanted us in a war with Rome, but we were obligated by our agreement of course, which is not something you break. I am very relieved we weren't their target though. Their scout chariot in our south had me worried I must admit.

I am very pleased that Yossarian found the time and opportunity to take over the turns while the war is going on, since I am lousy at waging war in Civ. I look forward to the end of it already. For now I am paying close attention to the plans and upcoming execution of those, to learn as much as I can from this.

Now, for Arretium, the location is pretty bad, so I don't think we want to keep it. We would need a very solid tactical reason for why we should do so I think.

A sim would be very useful, but with work and stuff I doubt I have the time. I will try to see if I can do it tomorrow after work if I am not exhausted though. No promises though!

[Cheater Hater]

Why did we agree to the defensive pact again? It obviously didn't mean anything to Rome (and since they aren't communicating with us, I wouldn't be surprised if they never even saw it), and I don't remember any specific deals we garnered from it (granted, most of our alliance-building happened while I wasn't as engaged in the game). Was it just an attempt to not have our entire game torpedoed by Rome, before we realized any war with Rome was likely torpedoing our chances (even a 3v1)?

[YossarianLives]

Wow, sounds like you could even get a free fairly expensive city!

If you wanted to make them turn their stack around you could head straight for Rome (nb I'm definitely not suggesting that!) but I could see you keeping Arretium with enough catapults and axes in there... Have you simmed any cat+axe vs praet battles yet? Might be fun to see how many cats it takes to give you good odds.

Although am I right in thinking GG are saving promotions to heal with after getting collateraled? Meaning you'd need to attack out with the axes rather than sitting behind walls. Maybe keeping it isn't so great in that circumstance.

I haven't run any sims. I guess it would be smart to do that, huh? Either way, we don't plan on keeping the city. Just razing it and replanting later makes us much less of a target for retaliation, and besides, it doesn't fit our dotmap anyways.

So, Yossarian wants me to post my thoughts on the war, and I am kind of at a loss for what to think and say. I never wanted us in a war with Rome, but we were obligated by our agreement of course, which is not something you break. I am very relieved we weren't their target though. Their scout chariot in our south had me worried I must admit.

I am very pleased that Yossarian found the time and opportunity to take over the turns while the war is going on, since I am lousy at waging war in Civ. I look forward to the end of it already. For now I am paying close attention to the plans and upcoming execution of those, to learn as much as I can from this.

Now, for Arretium, the location is pretty bad, so I don't think we want to keep it. We would need a very solid tactical reason for why we should do so I think.

A sim would be very useful, but with work and stuff I doubt I have the time. I will try to see if I can do it tomorrow after work if I am not exhausted though. No promises though!

Thanks for posting your thoughts Caledorn! Hopefully I'll still be able to log in and play the next few turns, but I'll let you know if it gets too difficult for me. None of us wanted to be in a war with Agg praets, but all things considered I think things are going fairly well so far.

Why did we agree to the defensive pact again? It obviously didn't mean anything to Rome (and since they aren't communicating with us, I wouldn't be surprised if they never even saw it), and I don't remember any specific deals we garnered from it (granted, most of our alliance-building happened while I wasn't as engaged in the game). Was it just an attempt to not have our entire game torpedoed by Rome, before we realized any war with Rome was likely torpedoing our chances (even a 3v1)?

I pushed the pact as a security measure against Rome. We were the first team that they met, and I was very weary of them ignoring all diplo with our team. When the opportunity to ally with two of their neighbors arose, I jumped at the chance. I must say that the ISDG played a large part in this, where Team CFC started next to an Agg Zulu team that eventually admitted that their game plan all along was to DOW whichever team they happened to meet first so they would not have to engage in diplo.

I do think that the pact impacted how Rome played out this game. The three of us sent Rome in-game messages informing them of the pact, so they must have known about it. Instead of pressing their advantage as soon as they got early IW, they waited an extra 70 turns before attacking anyone, allowing the three allied members to build up defenses while continuing to tech up the tree. Sure, starting next to suicidal Rome may have doomed us to not win the game no matter what, but I do honestly believe that by signing the pact, we have enhanced our overall standing. Otherwise, we would have needed to build enough military to dissuade Rome from attacking us way back on T60, which would have put us even further behind the other teams. Now, we can eliminate the Roman threat with a much smaller commitment of forces, right around the time that our NAP with our other weak neighbor is expiring. If we happen to have some extra units available after taking care of Rome, we can take advantage of the situation by sending them west

[YossarianLives]

Just a quick update to say that Rome razed Nottingham this turned.

T129 report will be up at some point.

[YossarianLives]

Turn 129



We're moving all our troops down to that southern front. We also have a bunch of workers down here that will be busy roading and chopping.



I whipped 5 of the catapults. Only 4 will be able to reach the front in time, though. The fifth is going to be one turn behind The catapults in Rainy XMas and Serdoa's Chariot will be chopped / whipped with plenty of time to join the main force, and we can probably overflow / chop second cats out of both. My plan now is to have up to 8 cats total for the attack.



Rome's defenses. I'm hoping they won't be adding to it because they'll be too distracted by DMOC/Teddy's attack in the north:



If Rome empties Ravenna to reinforce Antium up here, I'm suggesting that DMOC/Teddy load up some axes to go threaten that city also. Here's our military screen:



Wait a second! When I saw that, I noticed we have a lot more vision of the map. Looks like Arkipeller accepted our map trade we offered last turn, and sometime between our last trades, they got the Cat Burglar's maps. So let's take a break from war reporting to check out some new lands!



The whole reason for asking for the map trade was to see where they planted their newest city of Belle. I'm less than impressed...



Cat Burglars, on the other hand, have been doing pretty well for themselves. Asterix made a big deal about Yuufo stealing all the land between them, but it seems like they have made out just fine. I can understand why Asterix was concerned about a DOW from Yuufo, though. Lots of border there to defend. The Burglars recently finished TGL, but DMOC/Teddy, Arki and I have decided to keep borders open with them to try to get them on board with our new anti-Suttree alliance.



Speaking of Suttree, we got a slightly better view of his lands. At 14 cities, we can assume he has already claimed all that land in the south. You can see he also has an island city. I believe he is the only one. So at the moment, we're also keeping OB with them for that juicy trade route.



A better view of Yuufo. It seemed he had mostly checked out of the game, playing 5 minute turns. But recently, his partner Bisons has been logging in, and spending a little more time with this. DMOC/Teddy was considering DOWing them before the Roman war started. Ultimately, we hope India leaves the Cat Burglars alone in order to let them focus instead on Suttree.



Classical_Hero had given us permission to cut through Damien Thorne, but said we would need to turn around once we hit Pinhead, so I just went ahead and turned the scout around right away.



BowAivo is about to settle another city to our north. Not sure if he will place it where the settler is now, or where his axe is. If he settles where the axe is, that is going to be a very food-poor city. We may just need to do him a favor and raze it for him

Just to finish up with a domestic issue, here is our Financial advisor now that we've completed a few courthouses.



We didn't get a picture pre-CoL, but things are definitely looking up here

[NobleHelium]

Why is your economy so bad again?

[YossarianLives]

Why is your economy so bad again?

Good question! It's one I've asked myself several times over. I don't think there's just one easy answer, so let's take a look at the culprits.

1. We're one of only two non-Fin teams. This has made it really difficult to keep up with all the other teams' research capacity. I'm not sure what the best solution to this is. We're working tons of cottages, but since riverside isn't available everywhere, that has meant working a bunch of crappy 2-0-1 tiles. We've also been running a fair number of scientists and went for an early Academy in the capital. But maybe this hybrid economy has actually been hurting us, and we should have decided either on a CE or a SE long ago?

2. Our Academy capital is really not that commerce-heavy. It only has a few river tiles, and a bunch of lake tiles that will never get more than two coins. We have put up some non-river cottages, but we've been focusing on hammers a lot in the cap for workers, units and settlers.

3. Maintenance costs have been killing us. We over-expanded too quickly and the toroidal maintenance has been worse than anticipated. Some of our early cities started out with 4+ maintenance costs and quickly skyrocketed to 9+. We beelined CoL and have been whipping out courthouses to try to deal with this.

4. Rome is our neighbor. When they first got IW, we sacrificed some infra to rush out a bunch of axes. Then, when we got Construction just now, we again are delaying important infra builds to get out a bunch of cats. If we did not have silent, Agg Rome as our neighbor, we could have put more focus on our economy and run the farmer's gambit that a lot of the leading teams are running (SuttOxy, Cat Burglars and Arkipeller)

5. I'm not that good at Civ. Our northern neighbors, DMOC/Teddy, have all these same factors working against them, yet they have a significantly better economy. I'm sure there are lots of things I could have done better, but I'm just not sure what they are. If global lurkers want to post suggestions in the lurker thread, I will happily read about and hopefully improve from my stoner moves in this game. Even better, if our dedlurkers have any suggestions on what we can change right now to improve our economic situation, I'm all ears!

[YossarianLives]

Dispatches from England:

275 AD

today they will attack us.

300 AD

When can you attack Rome?

325 AD

On turn 127 we whipped Chelsea on 1 pop ...Rome lost 1 chariot on our catapult. Rome couldn't burn Chelsea city because it has his culture I think but i th has on turn 121 100 % our culture. So GG maybe wanted to keep the city.. City has 4 pop / 5 turn of disorder.
Yossa ..we saw your galley..did you have some forces on it maybe?
We have main stack as you see on the screen...we on turn 129 will whipped some ha / we have also 1 spear and worker down the Chelsea but it hasn't chance to survive.

350 AD

We lost axe in Nott ..We think that Rome will burn or capture the city and he will move their stack in to York direction. We use worker and spear in the suicide mission we got vision of Neapolis. Rome moved one chariot in to the direction of Liverpool. We would think that the next turn 131 will be the most important for us...Rome will attack York city on the full power.
What is the situation of your side...When you moved your forces?
We lost spices resources from you EGG heads. We have 2 silk ...anyone of You will want in exchange of it even you get us silver you got 1 happy ...we will got one more...Are you interested of that kind of exchange?

375 AD

There is no chance to defend York. I think that we should leave there axes and spear, and move back catapults. Bartek will take city, but he will lose probably 13-15 units. What do you think about it?

W.

400 AD

Rome losts 18 units - 11 prets and 7 axes.

And just now from DMOC/Teddy:

Rome attacked out of Antium and destroyed a lot of our stack. Unfortunately I don't think we have enough to even raze the city at this point, and I'm considering just retreating our troops. Let me think over it a bit more.

[YossarianLives]

Turn 130



That's the DMOC attack that Rome somehow thwarted. I'm not exactly sure how Rome pulled that off, but it is very bad news for us that they did.



Our preparations in the south. We're the only allied team that hasn't yet suffered a military loss against Rome. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate our plans/goals. Peace with a long-term NAP would actually be perfect for us right now, if we could obtain a NAP and trust Rome to keep it. But, that would put our allies in a really bad spot, especially DT...

BowAivo has been busy to our west:







Both those cities were founded this turn.

We got Cat Burglars graphs, so here's all of them:

Ugh, it's kinda disgusting to compare our graphs with SuttOxy in a GA

[Cheater Hater]

Wait, we can actually try for peace without being seen as completely scummy by our other players? If it was an actual (game-enforced) defensive pact, could we sign peace in this position? It seems like our power is higher than our (current ) allies, so we wouldn't be doomed in that respect, though I would want to confirm a long NAP before even thinking about signing peace (which means we would need to get Rome to communicate with us, which seems impossible).