[SPOILERS] Fire and Blood: Nyles Standish and Zalson watch the world burn

[Zalson]

So, I was feeling a little down about this game; I can't play because of my weird internet connectivity issues and our fast-expanding rival has a city 6 tiles from our capital, claiming about 5 resources.

But that's the Suryavarman game, right? REX (only person faster is Joao). So now the question is: what is our game? What are our advantages?

Granary production: we should try to get pottery early so that we can benefit from, you know, +100% granary production.

Sacrificial Altar: mid-game benefit by reducing operating costs, and reducing the whip penalty 50%. The more I think about it, the more we should play to our strengths. Let's try our best to stake our claim in the south and the expand up the isthmus to the north. Take advantage of protective to garrison our cities with double-promoted archers and then make a push in the medieval area with our ability to whip without penalty.

Obviously, we've said this before. I am just trying to pump myself up after being beaten to a spot that we knew was a long shot.

Our next move should be to grab the spot W of our capital. Maybe squeeze in one more to the south? Then start expanding up the isthmus?

Any thoughts from you, Nyles?

[NylesStandish]

Were you able to run any simulations? Any results to share?

No, I came to the decision to settle further away based on Pindicator's tech path.




Certain techs will increase your power level. I use this as a reference to figure out what techs or soldiers could be responsible for an increase in power: http://civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/demographics.php. Our spike of 8000 is clearly visible, and Pindicator has a power increase which looks like 6000 just from eyeballing it, which would indicate Archery. Going the extra mile and measuring the pixels in MsPaint gives our spike a height of 264 pixels and Pindicator's a height of 198 pixels, an exact 4/3 ratio.

So, they've got Archery and are thus probably expecting a rush and are pretty prepared for it either way.

So, I was feeling a little down about this game; I can't play because of my weird internet connectivity issues and our fast-expanding rival has a city 6 tiles from our capital, claiming about 5 resources.

But that's the Suryavarman game, right? REX (only person faster is Joao). So now the question is: what is our game? What are our advantages?

Granary production: we should try to get pottery early so that we can benefit from, you know, +100% granary production.

Sacrificial Altar: mid-game benefit by reducing operating costs, and reducing the whip penalty 50%. The more I think about it, the more we should play to our strengths. Let's try our best to stake our claim in the south and the expand up the isthmus to the north. Take advantage of protective to garrison our cities with double-promoted archers and then make a push in the medieval area with our ability to whip without penalty.

Obviously, we've said this before. I am just trying to pump myself up after being beaten to a spot that we knew was a long shot.

Our next move should be to grab the spot W of our capital. Maybe squeeze in one more to the south? Then start expanding up the isthmus?

Any thoughts from you, Nyles?

It sucks he took the site we wanted, and it is better than the one we got, but far from gamebreaking. It's a little heavy on food in relation to the available happiness right now; it'll start to shine more as the game goes on.

The granary production was the main reason I chose protective, and we need Agriculture both to utilize our corn and as a prerequisite for pottery. Fishing commerce is tempting, especially with all of the fresh water around so that'll probably come after pottery. Pottery would be cheaper due to extra prerequisite bonus if we got fishing first, but the granaries which we will be able to whip out almost instantly will make up for it.

Dcodea as Joao seems to be doing the opposite of REX for some reason. He could have founded a city before anybody and staked a claim to the disputed lands between us, yet he hasn't founded anything and has grown his capital larger than anybody else. He also didn't grow to size 2 as fast as the other expansive civs did, which could mean he put a couple of turns of production into an emergency warrior at the beginning to be safe. I was going to suggest maybe he worked food instead of hammers and didn't get enough hammers to get any extra from the expansion bonus, but won't it automatically switch you to the right tile when you build a worker, so he would have to have manually switched to food for that. Too early to judge; maybe he's built his city into the ultimate 5 tile settler factory and is going to outexpand everybody. I agree that we should go the the spot west of the capital next before dcodea gets there. I'd try to grab as much of the western borderlands before going north. At the very least, a city straight west and another southwest to fill out our border.




I founded Volantis, set production to a worker. Haven't ended turn again because of the warrior from the capital; he's moving towards Pindicator's new city to look around and maybe harass, so I have to wait for Pind to play to avoid double moving. Probably won't actually declare war, just keeping the option open.

[NylesStandish]

More exploration.




Pindicator's city of Karego-at has a cultural expansion and displaces our warrior.

[NylesStandish]

Not pictured: a worker has been produced in Valyria, and he is half-building a road to Volantis, by which I mean he's moving a tile, putting a turn into the road and cancelling so he can do the same again next turn. Valyria is on another warrior and Volantis is building a monument both to get our second ring tiles in the short term and fighting Pindicator's culture in the long run. My plan is to whip Volantis for the monument as soon as it grows; even though Creative civs have an advantage due to being able to expand borders without building monuments, monuments have the advantage of increasing their culture with age. The culture provided by a building doubles every 1000 years, so a pre-2000 BC monument will equal creative culture in 1000 BC, double it by 1 AD and quadruple it by 1000 AD (this game is not going to 2000 AD).

[Zalson]

Volantis shifted from a worker into the monument? Or did we shift off the worker before turn end?

Let's grow on the warrior in Valyria and -- maybe we can get a third settler out in the next 5 or 6 turns? Connect the copper and the pigs and then -- move north to chop out the settler? Or do we want to chop the copper into another worker in Volantis -- and then move up to chop into a settler at Valyria for the spot to our west?

I think I've figured out most of my connectivity issues and I'll try to take a look tonight.

[Zalson]

A new computer will be in the works soon. Everything else is running quite smoothly -- except the browser. Oh and steam through an emulator.

Any chance of screenshots of both cities?

[NylesStandish]

I just logged back in and got screenshots of both the cities, but they've changed from the plan for a good reason:




Archer rush. I actually saw it on T35 but didn't get screenshots. Pindicator has an archer on the plains hill SW of their city moving in the direction of Volantis. I moved the warrior which had been queued (Volantis hadn't put any turns into a worker and I don't remember assigning a worker there) up to the front. He should spawn before the Archer gets a chance to attack. Another warrior has been built in Valyria and we'e got another going south to defend the archer.

An Archer has slight odds on a fortified warrior (3 with a first strike chance vs 2.75 from fortify, warrior defending city and hills defense) Edit: Some here, +75% is 3.5 for the warrior), but his intention may not be to attack the city and just block our copper. That would actually be a lot more annoying, because if he attacks he's got an edge on the defenders but will likely take damage but be more vulnerable to the warrior coming from the north, but if he stays he gets obscene defensive bonuses.

So now we switch tech to Archery and mass warriors in the meantime.

It's notable that they played first. If they had gotten the second half, Volantis would not have had time to build a warrior to defend. They might have just got tired of waiting for me to PMFT. For the record, even though I was last to play tonight I wasn't camping the timer; I actually went out tonight unlike most of the time and ended up playing my turn about 6 hours later than I would have otherwise.

Or maybe I'm wrong and this is all just to scare us into building more crap warriors than we would otherwise, or maybe they're sending the archer out to scout, but I don't think so.

City screenshots:




Valyria could be switched to all hammers for 1 warrior/2turns instead of 1/3. The worker on the forest could put his chop into a settler, or more warriors, or we could save it for archers.




Scouting:

[NylesStandish]

I've got a question for the lurkers about double moves.

[*]Don't try to play after another player on a regular basis. If you are trying to prevent them getting the second half when they attack you then you're playing clock games and Krill will find your pathetic civ and crush it. If you are planning to attack them then just drop behind them one or two turns in advance (it's actually less likely to telegraph your intentions). In fact you can play before them the turn before you attack - there is no problem with letting your victim double move you.

Does this mean that turn order is only "fixed" once war is actually declared? I'm playing after Pindicator now because he moved his archer into an aggressive position that makes the most sense as an attack. Am I allowed to double move him because he's the aggressor and war technically isn't declared yet? I didn't at first because my third warrior getting closer to Volantis to deal with the archer provides me some advantage and him moving his archer first makes me think he wants the first half. If I were to double-move now, he'd be forced into the second half next turn in order to avoid double-moving me.

I was intentionally taking the second half for a couple of turns recently because I was planning on declaring with the warrior that was going towards Karego-At but when the city's borders popped sent him back a tile and made me change my mind. I was last to play and played 2 turns back-to-back, but because of that and some recent turns where I played very late, Pindicator and Commodore might think I was playing clock games and just took the first half because they didn't think I'd give up the second half. Pindicator might still want the second half, but me keeping the current order would deny him that, although he's already lost what I think is the main advantage of taking the second half, which is the element of surprise, but there's no fixing that now.

[NylesStandish]

False alarm. No archer rush. No reason to panic, no need to worry about turn splits.

Kept research on Agriculture and switched Volantis back to food and a monument. Growing to size 3 on a warrior in Valyria.




Found OT4E's scout in the wilderness.

[NylesStandish]

Not much to report on Turn 37. More exploration:




More importantly, we finally got graphs on dcodea this turn: