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[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits
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Text update.
Mackoti declared on Alhazard like I predicted and took an island city. He does look to be trying a full scale invasion. Honestly, he pretty much has to. His economy is lagging behind me and I'm lagging behind REM. We'll see what happens. Also no, REM wasn't racing me. Needless paranoia. He seems to be continuing on to Replaceable Parts, so he must be interested in drafting Rifles. I think I'm going to save the engineer then. Getting 680h into SoL doesn't seem like great value when I've got 200% modifiers going. Really the only value it contributes is getting it online a few turns sooner, so we're talking a couple hundred beakers. I see two alternatives to burning him on the wonder: 1) Save it for a 2-man golden age 2) Ice it for a long, long time and use it on Mining Inc. First, the golden age. Not a bad idea, but it'll mean quite a bit of waiting. I'm not going to get another great person for probably another 25T or so. The flip side of course is that 25T from now might be a perfect time to get a golden age. Now for Mining Inc. I hate the idea of sitting on a great person for 40 turns because that's serious value you're passing on, but the reality is I might not get another engineer in this game unless I get lucky. My GPP threshold is pretty high right now, and Ironworks is a long ways away (if I even build it), so I don't see a way to even generate an engineer other than low-odds. The other problem is that Mining Inc is an eternity away. Let's assume I get Astro and MilTrad so that I can keep myself safe with serious boats + Cuirs. That's already a little uncomfortable, but I can make do without rifles. It'll take me 19k beakers to get to Railroad then including those two techs. Right now my breakeven rate is like 250bpt. NOT GOOD, BOB. I can probably double that without too much trouble, but I struggle to see where I'll get significantly better than that without conquering land, and of course conquering land here is difficult with my neighbors. The other downside is that Mining Inc means no State Property which is of course amazing. Here's the techs I'd have to clean up to make this happen: Now on the flip side, Mining Inc is pretty interesting on this map. There are a bunch of islands with triple metals that all matter. So let's use an example here. Teching along this route will help my military, and Plako's tech is noticeably slower than mine. So let's say I tech along this route, and along the way I capture Plako's two neighboring islands (the gold and copper). With naval superiority, it wouldn't be that hard. That in addition to the eastern islands I have will give me: Gold: 6 Silver: 3 Copper: 6 Iron: 3 Aluminum: 1? Coal: 1? (Right around here I should make the disclaimer that I've never seriously played with corporations in a truly competitive game. I'm goofed around with them in SP, but that's about it. So my gauge isn't especially well-calibrated here - I'm figuring this out on the fly.) I'm assuming we'll each have at least one of the latter two. That would make Mining Inc worth 20hpt in every city. And all of that is assuming I can't get any of the lagging players to sell me their excess metals, which I might just be able to do. On top of that, I'm ORG with courthouses everywhere already, so corporate maintenance is less of a concern. In addition to all of this, taking on these techs has a nice side effect of giving me a bunch of military techs. The bottom of the tree will get me cannons, Frigates, drydocks, and MGs. That would make me very safe, and would also give me the weapons to compete on the water. It would also put me right next to Combustion which is a game-changer, and also brings me nice and close to ORG factories. The final trade-off is that pursuing this means waving a white flag on all the goodies behind Scientific Method. That's really painful, and to be frank I'm not sure where to get the beakers from to make it that far. I get the sense REM can wrap the game up before I can get that far which makes this all moot. Can I really make it that long without some sort of invasion? I doubt it. So that's what I'm internally debating right now. The "where to go next" is really difficult because I have no obvious advantages. I can go military immediately, but I don't have a soft target readily available. Sure, I could try to invade RMoG, but geographically that's hard, and on top of that his land would just get vultured by REM. I can bunker down and tech away like I've discussed above, but due to the monk wonders I think REM can out-do me in that category too. There seem to be a host of iffy options. I don't need to decide for another 10T or so, but the lack of options and the way this map is setup is making it difficult for me to stay engaged and interested. Civ6 being more interesting than I expected doesn't help either.
I suppose you would also want to be prepared to vulture additional territory off plako if makoti goes for him after Alhazard and RMoG have been eliminated. I suppose you aren't really in a position to dogpile REM with makoti, though you might be able to do the reverse, and if makoti lands Kremlin, you might benefit substantially from that.
(October 21st, 2016, 12:05)scooter Wrote: Text update.Okay Scooter, it is kind of unjustified to get big on the Doom and Gloom right now. You are still either Number 2 or 3 overall, depending on a few unkowables of those out in the fog. that's definatly a potentially winning position, depending on what happens. Macktoi could get bogged down with Alhazard. Alhazard is not exactly a begining at Civ 4, if he puts up a even moderately competent defence it could bleed Matcoki and give you change to overcome. REM might be leader, but that just makes him vunerable to a dogpile in 25-40 turns. Then it's a matter of who's big enough to get the biggest peice of the pie.  I think the real problem is you kind of fell into Single Player mode. Optimize each individual turn, but your not focusing twords an overall stratagy. what happened to "Grow big, whip a huge Sacraficial Alter powered army and conquer even more land". True, you got two strong neighbors, but that just means you have to be paitent and wait for a good opportunity. Wait for one of them to get dragged into a war, then jump in. Civ 4 is a marathon. Plus you are very likely to land Statue, which is worth a lot. When you don't have a clear path to victory, you need a goal, something to work for besides just "Tech ahead of everyone else and win the game". Personally, I think it'll be most fun if you adopt a persona for this game. The Aztec Vulture. Think of it this way. with SA's and organized going up everywhere, State property is not as critical for you. You have low maitance even with a huge empire, and most new cities are marginally profitable from the start. The hammer to workshops is good, but a long way off, plus those same Sacraficial alters make the Whip an efficent source of sheilds even that late in the game. So you have storng neighbors. so what. build up a big military, wait for a conflict with one of the big two to break out, then, attack the weakest/closest one for the largest share of the spoils, pull into #1, and run away with the game.  I also recommend saving it for the 2 person golden age for a simple reason: you can turn a 2 person golden age in 25 turns into more Great People to bulb techs on that path. If you can turn the 2 person golden age into a couple scientists and a merchant, you can bulp a lot of those beakers on the military path. There is another option. So far you are not really optimizing your cities strongly, but with that ludiciously food rich city that can also get a few mines, you have basically 0 excuse to NOT get national epic up and running there within 20 turns. that should be your next short term goal. with a great NE city, you can get more scientists and get further down the path to railroads. You could even do something zainy and build Ironworks IN your national epic city to get out another great engineer just in time for mining Inc.  with Mining Inc, statute of liberty, and organized sacraficial alters, you can either conquer the world, or go down swinging one hell of a sledgehammer. Is all that a winning move? Maybe not! but it sounds like one hella fun variant stratagy that is sure to make the endgame entertaining as hell. Basically: Don't give up. I've been deadlurking you for two games now, and you have no reason not to score a win here or at least try. :D I'd offer more advice, but screenshots have been lacking, and I can't exactly sign in to take a look myself or i'd offer micro suggestions too. BUT, everything I said sounds plausible in theory. Lemme know what you think! also try to get Sullla to kabitz too, I think your other deadlurker dropped off a couple weeks ago. 
Now, I don't have very strong convictions about this advice, but I've been thinking of this since the early game: I like the idea of preserving Plako, who is weaker than yourself, and knows it, as a neighbour, and thus attacking Mackoti, the antagonist who is not going to slow down REM for a long while (possibly the opposite, with RMoG and Alhazard's current vulnerability). I don't believe Plako would necessarily attack you in return, since they have territorial claims Mackoti has stolen from them.
Of the many chinks in this plan, there is less opportunity for a D-day swoop to steal a decisive victory like there appears attacking west. And this operation would be highly contingent on RMoG and Alhazard making an effective defence at some point, while having sufficient production on hand, such that Mackoti would have immediate difficulty conceding peace with them (in which case, playing the war for longer than ten turns would be an important consideration, assuming RMoG or Alhazard would renew the conflict at the end). All the tech and GP stuff is beyond me—the reason for the lack of timing preparations in this idea, which may be cause enough to dismiss it.
October 21st, 2016, 22:10
(This post was last modified: October 21st, 2016, 22:13 by antisocialmunky.)
If you have no long term goals, invade Mackoti while he's fighting wars on the other side of the world later, you might lose the game, but you'll win our hearts.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." “I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
Hah, I do the doom & gloom thing periodically. The pep talk is appreciated though.
 Anyway, I gave it some thought, and I decided on a plan. I already explained my lack of options, so let's just play to my strengths. I picked the Aztecs so that I could take virtually unlimited whipping for a spin. So let's do it. I already established my path to victory is pretty bad, so let's have a little bit of fun and whip out a horde of 2-movers. Not just yet. But soon. I've been building a fair amount of farms for this anyway, so let's see what we can do here. I want Astronomy and Military Tradition, and then we'll see where that leaves us. We can decide then whether to press on for Cavs or not. As for targets, I'm going to keep everything on the table. RMoG is the softest traditional target here. Plako is a geographic option to some extent. Mackoti is an option for revenge for that city plant of his, and REM is an option to take the leader down a peg. Turn 244-246 ![[Image: t246_north.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5826112/PB35/t246_north.JPG) Barracks and Stables are going up now in the north. ![[Image: t246_south.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5826112/PB35/t246_south.JPG) They'll be next in Praetorian and Lurker once they finish these Universities. As for the two people you really want to hear about: ![[Image: t246_rem.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5826112/PB35/t246_rem.JPG) REM is going to haaaate teching Scientific Method later. ![[Image: t246_mack1.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5826112/PB35/t246_mack1.JPG) Mackoti I assume is making a two-pronged attack here. He's captured this island, and he's got several Galleons in the region, so I'm guessing he'll land some Phracts in this area and race for Alhazard's core. He hit Alhazard right as he got out of Slavery, so Alhazard is a complete sitting duck right now. ![[Image: t246_mack2.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5826112/PB35/t246_mack2.JPG) I don't know what's in Free Speech right now, but I can guarantee the answer is "not enough."
Sorry about not posting for the last 10 days or so! Very busy and work and caught up in the Civ6 release when not at work. I have time to dash off a few big picture thoughts:
* Scooter, you're doing a great job in this game.  Don't get too depressed about the map luck, it's been out of our hands from the start. We have the two strongest teams on the map bordering us, and the weakest team on the map as the only one we can't reach. And the one-tile choke points messed up our strategy something fierce, which cost us at least one good city spot over by mackoti, if not more. It sucks but that's life. We've done an outstanding job of everything that we have been able to control: leading the pack in cities, Organized + Altar spam doing serious work, and the Great Person lightbulb chain working absolutely to perfection. (I did have a good laugh about the near-fiasco with the Great Merchants. Nice recovery there!) Seriously, we're in great shape here. There's very little we could have done to stop mackoti from running over Alhazard, and that may mean we're playing for second place, but there's enough game left that I wouldn't give up hope left. I approve of the stables builds; let's tech upwards, wait and see what happens next, and be ready to pounce at a sign of weakness. * I don't approve of your suggested Great Engineer plans. Who cares if we're getting +200% production modifiers on the Statue of Liberty build? Burn that Great Engineer and get the Statue ASAP!!! There's no wonder more important to our plans than the Statue, and there's no reason to take any risk of losing it from something weird happening. How many turns does the Engineer save on the build, something like 5 or 6 turns (?) We can run a Representation Scientist (or a Spy via the Altars) in essentially every city, so that's close to 100 beakers in our 15+ cities, INDEPENDENT of the commerce slider, from all those free specialists. Not to mention, that would also free up the capital to build Oxford that much faster, because it isn't slowed down by the need to sit around manually building the Statue. (FYI the formula for the Great Engineer's free production is 500 + 20 * pop.) Don't be too clever here! We went to all the trouble of generating that Engineer for a reason. Great Engineers are terrible for lightbulbs, corporations are bad compared to State Property, and you know what helps generate Great People for future Golden Ages? FREE SPECIALISTS IN EVERY CITY!  I would stick to the original plan here. * My plan for right now would be: Statue of Liberty ASAP, Oxford ASAP after that, then wait and see where we have a chance to make a move. I don't see any clear place to go to war right now, so continuing the econ route feels like the best option for the moment. Good luck, let me know if there's anything more specific I can comment on.
THE DAILY ROLL
TURN 244–246: A BITTER FUTURE The Aztecs have realised their pint has been spilt by suboptimal map positions, by foreign aggression, by poor opportunities for their own offensives. Someone will have to pick up the tab, and the Aztecs will make sure it's not them. Now their scientists research astronomy and military tradition to marshal an army, the destination as yet unknown: England, the Netherlands, Byzantium? Speaking of whom, have capitalised on a fatal error of the Ottomans, who had just switched out of slavery and hence had confiscated their own whips when hordes of cataphracts swept across the border, capturing a city and making their way for the prosperous nest of Free Speech, the Ottomans' sister to Masterclass, and Iron Man, a fortress to its south. Things look bad for the Dutch and Ottomans, which can only be good news for the neighbouring Khmer Empire and Byzantium. The Aztecs' Statue of Liberty can't come fast enough for all the whipping and spinning that needs to be done in order to claim some glory for themselves at last. Glory is at a premium, with all the best victims taken. |
