Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[Brian Shanahan]

To get into the mood of the piece I suggest you all listen to this:



The report itself isn't that big on pictures, mainly because whips don't make for good screenshots.

Turn 150
Change priorities as discussed, turning Bean a Sidhe back into a full time unit pump, and adding a scientist to Yaqob Marley's specialist pool.

Turn 151
Qin starts pointing his finger at us telling us that we need to cancel deals with Mali, I pointed my finger in a different direction in response.
I see an opening to try for the Great Lighthouse in Ancient Mariner, so I decide to whip into the wonder a bit during the set.
Axe put into build at Inky (not my best decision, spearman would have been better) for MP duties.
Whip the Library in Ioi
Whip Cats in Yaqob and Bean
Izzy becomes the pope (let's hope she's never found out by giving birth)

Turn 152
The Axe turns into a Mace at Inky, because machinery is in. D'oh. Swap back to the forge and whip that.
Whip the settler in Brocken, the Forge in Caleuche, and the Mace in Xmas.
Reasearch goes to Aesthetics.

Turn 153
I move units for staging purposes

Turn 154
Bwca forge>Lighthouse (through the power of chops)
Mausoleum falls, Bean gets 313 gold, Christmas 60.
Aesthetics>Polytheism (1 turn)>Literature
Research to 60%

Turn 155
Lots of builds
Mace>Cat Christmas; Mace>Mace Brocken; Cata>Colossus Flying D; Mace>Cat Xmas; Lighthouse is whipped in Bwca

Turn 156
Cat>Cat Christmas
Lighthouse>Courthouse? Bwca
Found Zar

It's about here that I start stripping the defences in Gergovia with Catapults. I've reconnected the sheep at Xmas and am roading up to Gergovia

Turn 157
Literature>Drama (pushing for Taoism at Philosophy)
Yaqob Cat>Jewish Monastery
Bean Mace>Heroic Epic (putting overflow into the wonder, I swap back to a unit next turn)
Colossus Cashes out with 161gold back
Whip the Catapult in Ancient Mariner, overflow into the Lighthouse.

Battle of Gergovia, sorry no pics. Didn't embed any reporters
2 cats strip the last defences
1st Cat retreats from the Longbow at 8% odds
2nd Cat retreats from an Axe at 63% odds
C1 Shock Axe dies to the other Axe at 53% odds
Mace beats Longbow at 99.8% odds
Sword beats Axe at 99% odds
Axe beats Axe at a certainty.
As Gergovia is in such a crappy location and only the Granary survives, I burn the city getting c. 200 gold.
Jeanne D'Arc is born in Bean a Sidhe, I leave her in the city. We don't need a second healer right now, and it's not essential to settle as of yet for the extra XPs.
Whip the Mace in Inky and Courthouse in Ioi.

Turn 158
Bwca Courthoues>Market
Reassign the EPs to Qin, Monty and Izzy. We're behind on Monty and barely ahead of the other two.
Drama>Philosophy
Christmas Cat>Mace
Brocken Mace>Mace (we need a few more catapults in the north, but we could take Kazakh soon enough with what's there and going there).
See the following incoming:

That's four Horse Archers, a Chariot and five Catapults. Decide to wait for it to come to me.

Turn 159
Battle of the Ruins of Gergovia, actually in the forest where the Chinese scout is in the above shot
C1 Mace vs Horse Archer 73.8% wins
Collateral 1 Catapults vs Horse Archer 23% withdraws
Collateral 1 Catapults vs Horse Archer 46% withdraws
Mace vs Horse Archer 93% wins
Catapult vs Catapult 63% withdraws
C1 Axe vs Catapult 68% Wins
C1 Axe vs Catapult 68% Loses
C1 Axe vs Catapult 68% Wins
Sword vs Chariot 99% wins
Cao Cao vs HA 99% wins
C1 Axe vs Horse Archer 99% wins
Chariot beats Catapult 99% wins (I think it flank kills the other one too),

Turn 160
AP vote vs Monty:

After alt-tabbing to ensure a no doesn't give negative happy I decline the generous offer. We may still be pulled in though.
Whip the Mace in Brocken. Because of War Weariness I also stagnate the city as it'll become unhappy.
Mansa gets the Great Library (thankfully I passed on trying to build that one)
Whip the Forge in Moura; Mace in Bean.
Start a Theatre in Ancient Mariner
Charlemagne has Elephants (traded with Mansa)
Can get the following peace:



Here's the sit rep:

There's a Mace, Axe, Spear, two Cats and two workers in the forest on the border SW of Xmas Presents
The north

Celtia

China and Germany

Demographics

Graphs

We're down a bit in both Hammers and Gold, but that's mostly because I've been relatively liberal with the whip (not my worst whipping spree, no city is above 2 whip anger), so that'll rebound quickly once we force peace.

And finally a few city shots to show what I'm doing in them
Yaqob

Our GP centre for now.
Ancient Mariner


Final thoughts. Take the war to Boudica. We can definitely burn both Durnovaria and her replacement for Gergovia, putting the hurt on her hard. And five more turns or so of getting units out to the north will allow us to take and keep or burn Kazakh (I'd actually keep it if it has more than one building). Push her hard to cripple her.
My thoughts on tech are, 1) go for Philo, 2) decide to either take the Liberalism slingshot or go directly to gunpowder.

[shallow_thought]

Some nice applied violence there. Getting rid of that mobile stack was very handy - I wonder how much freedom of choice we now have to pick off static targets?

Strategically, the point of beating up on Boudicca (fun as it is) is to take her land (which I agree we couldn't really do this turnset) and put her out of the picture so that we
- don't have to deal with her
- can strike north and eliminate our real rival, Mansa (who is racking up more wonders and first-to bonii - at least he didn't get the Mom).

Lib rush for Nationalism is obviously nice, but it doesn't help us against the Celts. Even if we go peace, I'm worried she'll be back with knights in 10t.   And all those beakers in Education don't really pay off until we have time to build universities and Oxford.

We're a scarily long way from Gunpowder (22t at break even tech!), although there are lot of useful goodies on the way (HR, knights); we also need to branch to Engineering.

Getting into better civics could help, and we should have a great person for a GA soon (I'd have loved to have had a spare scientist for the bureacademy, but we can't really afford that while we're in an offensive war).

Some of this may just be me being nervous about attacking rivals at similar power and tech parity - it's not something I'm used to, but is inevitable if ever want to try MP...

Lets wait to see what Zalson and the lurkers have to say (also to see if Zalson picks up the game or not).

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the detailed report and screenshots.

Nice work on eliminating that incoming stack. That should have been a sizable chunk of Boudica's available non-garrison forces, which will hopefully mean no significant attacks from her for a while -- possibly long enough for you to take the fight to her.

Hmmmm, Durnovaria the little junk city is now size 5? I guess it must have some food in the fog after all, so maybe planting it was not such a bad decision by the AI as it seemed at the time. Might even be worth keeping.

Mansa piling up wonders is a bit worrying -- he has enough advantages without adding more.  You are not really in a position to take the battle to him right now, though, not as long as Boudica keeps coming back to hammer on your border cities every so often. If she gets better tech containing her could become very tricky. Better tech of your own offers some options: knights maybe, or engineering (trebs will only help once you go on offense but pikes and road movement can help defense as well), or of course gunpowder and your unique. I am a bit worried about the AI getting to engineering and upgrading its defenses with castles. If that happens you will definitely need better tech or a lot more siege units (or both). You probably have a bit of time before that happens, but the clock is running.

[RefSteel]

Still catching up on the cities, one by one:

The first barbarian city to be assimilated and renamed went with a theme appropriate to its location in the frigid southern seas, probably because there ... kind of aren't any famous Cuman ghosts.  (There was some interesting ancestral spirit stuff in there, and you could stretch a point and go with Tengrist ~demons, but none of them would have any coastal relevance!)

The second barbarian city though?  It started as Chinook, so when the ghostly empire conquered it, there was a perfect Chinook legend from which to draw!  The only named character in the story (unless you count Blue Jay) is also the only one who is never a ghost at any point, but she's certainly close enough, having married a ghostly husband and gone to live in the home of the ghosts!  Thus the city of Ioi, represented here in suitably ghostly aspect by a painting by Charlotte Phillips:


Then he went and opened all those houses. They were full of bones. A skull and bones lay near his sister. "What are you doing with these bones and this skull?" [asked Blue-Jay]. His sister replied: "That is your brother-in-law; that is your brother-in-law." "Pshaw! Iô'i is lying all the time. She says a skull is my brother-in-law!" When it grew dark the people arose and the house was [quite] full. It was ten fathoms long. Then he said to his sister: "Where did these people come from?" She replied: "Do you think they are people? They are ghosts." -Franz Boas, Chinook Texts, from chapter 15.

Ghost stories, like any type of folklore, are particularly difficult to translate, as you can probably see here.  This can be for obvious reasons in the case of words in one language with no really good analog in the other (the square-bracketed words are written that way in the quoted Chinook Texts itself, and apparently represent difficulties of translation and transmission) - but more subtly, the sounds of a story are often significant to its impact, to say nothing of the larger cultural context in which they're told.  And perhaps most importantly of all, it is very rare to find someone with equal facility in both languages and deep familarity with storytelling and any given ghost story to tell the story the way it ought to be told.

Maybe most importantly of all though, stories like this one were not originally written:  They're meant to be told!  Just to take a really obvious example, the bracketed "asked Blue-Jay" might just be an attempt to put to paper the fact that the storyteller said the line in "Blue Jay's voice!"

[Zalson]

I'll try to offer comments tonight.

[shallow_thought]

I'll try to offer comments tonight.

Do you think you're going to be able to play this week or shall I pick up the turnset? I have a window to play tonight. If we don't hear from you I'll grab it.

If I do play, my plan would be:

A) Economy. Switch from Philo to Monotheism / Monarchy. Get great person, go GA. Switch civics (probabky throw in caste during GA). Try to get to or near a second great scientist for academy. Try to get missionaries out of one mature city to spread to new cities. HE in BaS. Keep GL / Moai builds going. Other mature cities keep pumping maces / cats. Go for engineering. Even with HAs in play I'd ike pike cover, and knights will be appearing soon...

B) The war. Push main stack south and capture Dumnovaria. Keep if it does have seafood. Get vision on whatever is east of it. Try to get enough troops in north to push on Khazak. Probably keep - we miss the plains cows but the sugar is better now.

[shallow_thought]

I played the turns, 'cause we were due a golden age, and I'm selfish like that . (Also, hope that all is well for understandably silent Zalson)

Hopefully there will be a fuller report coming out, but that was a 2h+ push (not helped by interruptions by wife and cats), so a summary.

The good:
- Mono, Monarchy, Engineering, Archery, Feudalism
- We now own the copper iceball of Durnovaria; we will need to kill/capture the newly visible city of Camulodunum to get the predicted fish though (cost us four cats and an unlucky C2 axe at 88%, in exchange for eight units including 3 longbows)
- Bureaucadacp; there have been better, but we've got one
- HR/Bureau/OR, no anarchy. We spent some time in caste but are now back in slavery.
- Got the academy GS and one more GP about to pop (at Brocken) from the last turn of the  GA without actually losing any pop; couple of food boxes need a refill though
- Heroic Epic
- Great Lighthouse (nicely set up by Brian - it's a pangaea map, but we have a ring of coastal cities, so its well worth it).
- Hinduism spread to some more cities to exploit OR (notably the GL city and the future Moai city)
- various random celtic units (one cat, two HA) killed in wierd locations for no loss.

The meh
- An attack stack of Boudicca's destroyed; no attack went in at less than 75% but I lost C2 mace and a C2 axe.
- Got suckered in by a roaming cat and planted my stack near Khazak too early; we now have a big stack there and have bombarded down the culture, but it's been reinforced (as has our stack). No losses, as I've been (too?) cautious, but it was only defended by two longbows when I first moved up; now there's a lot more
- I planted the GG in BaS (HE city); might have been better to save for a second medic to help push northern front. It's only 3 poiints to the next GG though.

The bad / YMMV
- I entered a fugue state towards the end of the set and have not tracked the worker micro tightly. We have a lot of roads, and I have chosen to start laying watermills down at "production" cities, in some cases eliminating unworked plains cottages to do so. Also, some riverside mines -> windmills in places where there seemed no chance of getting the mines worked for lack of food. There is a big stack of workers irrigating towards a pair of "needs CS" signs, but no settlers to follow (see below).
- I started moving CP over to total production by farming over its only grassland village, but have not yet followed through by watermilling the relevant river plains farms, so it's probably in a weird state
- The only pure GS pool we had at the start of the GA was in BaS, so it had to produce the scientist for the academy. Brian not is going to be happy. But it never has to work a specialist again   (unless we actually want to run an engineer).
- No settlers. We still want some fillers, and at least on to raze-and-replace (there is a sign for "new Bagacum?" at a suggested location)
- I haven't looked at the espionage screen in the entire turnset . We seem to have graphs on everyone; they are the usual GA flattery, but we're solid.
- We could have got the music GA. Mansa was two turns out at the start of the set, so were we. Occurred to me too late. I'm really glad to have got into the GA and civics when we did and to be fielding pikes with 3 moves on roads, but we could have been lining up a second GA...
- Too tired to be imaginative about renaming captured city. Slimer for our first real capture?

I'll try to get a fuller report with some pictures out RSN. There is zero rush to get the next turnset played, as Zalson is busy and I'm away from Monday 23 Jan to Wed 1 Feb.

[haphazard1]

Sounds like a lot happened, Shallow Thought. Mostly of the good. A bit of less good and some expected mixed combat luck. But that happens. Especially in busy war-heavy turn sets. Will look forward to a more detailed report later.

I will second the best wishes for Zalson -- hope everything is going well!

[Zalson]

Sorry for missing the turn.  Baby is still firmly entrenched; it's just that this Tues to Thursday left real available civing time. If I can take a look tonight , I will offer thoughts. Brian, if you're unable to play, would you mind a switch at the time? I'll take it tonight if I get the chance. If not, continue without me.

Thanks guys.

[shallow_thought]

Sorry for missing the turn.  Baby is still firmly entrenched; it's just that this Tues to Thursday left real available civing time. If I can take a look tonight , I will offer thoughts. Brian, if you're unable to play, would you mind a switch at the time? I'll take it tonight if I get the chance. If not, continue without me.

Thanks guys.

No, if anything it's up to me to apologise for jumping the gun. As I said, I won't now be able to play again really for over a week (which is why I jumped), so it would be great if you and Brian can keep things ticking over a bit. Hopefully at least me playing midweek will let someone else play at a weekend for once.

I'll try and get a full report out tonight or (more likely now) tomorrow morning.