[Spoilers] The Crack'd Pot Civ

[RefSteel]

Finally, a question, if there are any lurkers reading following this game anymore, can you liberate a city back to an eliminated player?

Still reading! (When there's anything to read...) Thanks for the posts, too.

I haven't tested this directly, but I'm ~certain that you can't "resurrect" a dead civ. When a player is eliminated, all their culture disappears, so all cities are 0% theirs, they have no capital for distance-calculation purposes, so the game won't consider any cities "rightfully" theirs, and they don't have a diplomacy screen presence for city trading; as such, there's no way to "liberate" (or otherwise give) a city to them. (With Vassal States on, you can liberate cities to a non-existant player under certain circumstances, and a human might be able to take over the resulting AI, but you still can't get an eliminated civ back into the game that way, and the games here are always played with Vassal States off anyway.)

[Mr. Cairo]

Finally, a question, if there are any lurkers reading following this game anymore, can you liberate a city back to an eliminated player?

Still reading!  (When there's anything to read...)  Thanks for the posts, too.

I haven't tested this directly, but I'm ~certain that you can't "resurrect" a dead civ.  When a player is eliminated, all their culture disappears, so all cities are 0% theirs, they have no capital for distance-calculation purposes, so the game won't consider any cities "rightfully" theirs, and they don't have a diplomacy screen presence for city trading; as such, there's no way to "liberate" (or otherwise give) a city to them.  (With Vassal States on, you can liberate cities to a non-existant player under certain circumstances, and a human might be able to take over the resulting AI, but you still can't get an eliminated civ back into the game that way, and the games here are always played with Vassal States off anyway.)

I thought as much, oh well.

Nice to know people are reading this.

GG GJ

[Mr. Cairo]

So that's that. Out of the three pitbosses I've been in so far, OT4E has won 2 of them.

Anyway, I haven't been doing much the last dozen or so turns, I had hoped that the war between OT4E and Gavagai+DZ would get a little hotter, giving me an opportunity for some shenanigans, but it didn't happen, OT4E got to destroyers a few turns ahead of Gavagai and that was enough for Gav. Most of the fighting appeared to be hapenning at sea? I had a look at the border between OT4E and DZ and it was packed with units not moving. OT4E had a lot more, including cannon and infantry, but I imagined that most of Gav's Cossacks (for a while they were on my border after the conquest of GJ, but had mostly gone by now) would have gotten involved if OT4E invaded

Considering my own pretty dismal play at the beginning of the game, I'm pretty happy to end the game still alive, and with my empire completely intact.
Here it is in all its glory:

Now you may think "well, those are some pretty low population cities considering the stage of the game?" and I'd tell you that compared to my empire for most of the game, this is really good  
During the long long war with GJ only my capital and Ehrlitan ever stayed above 6 pop. Most of my cities were drafted as soon as they hit 6 and if I couldn't do that then I was whipping Catapults from them. Itko Kan, south of the capital at one point had about 12 draft unhappy and 10 whip unhappy stacked up. To keep it from starving at size 3 I needed ~4 units, pretty much every luxury in the game (thanks to trades and gifts) and 30% culture slider WITH a Theatre (In fact, I ended up building theatres in most of my cities during that war to make the culture slider more effective.)
One might also not all the little crappy fishing villages that make up a good amount of my empire. Well, Kartool and Letheras had the food resources to be major draft/whip centres, while the others just grew on 4c coast tiles. Fin + Collosus meant it didn't take much to make those cities worth it (although Gris was a bit of stretch, but hey, it had TWO whole 3-food tiles that were going to waste otherwise.)

Anyway, here's a pic of the whole, insane map:


I don't think the island border between me and OT4E make up for the fact we only had one land neighbor each. The Barb Holy cities were ridiculous as well, although I never really got too involved with them, or the other barb cities that appear to have had some changes made to them (look at that barb culture in the southern sea)
It's not too apparent here but those islands between me and OT4E appear to have been designed by a sadist. Resources were placed to make it impossible to get good, efficient city-placement that didn't strand resources.

There was also this:


but...

maybe if the game had gone on longer.... But hey look, my cap is in there 

The Imperial Capital:

Probably should have built an academy with my first GScientist, but then again, there were a lot of things I should have done better.

Final turn demos and graphs if anyone cares:



Beware the catapult...

That spike near the end was the first tech I'd gotten in at least 30 turns.

I do regret not having the opportunity to try and have an impact on the outcome, or at least to conquer AIGJ's last two cities. But I'm not overly upset. Now I've just to hope another pitboss gets started soonish.

[Gavagai]

Ot4E has beaten me to destroyers by two turns. The problem was that he had much more ports and they had much better production: dikes are kind of OP. So, I was going to lose seas, it was just a question of time. Ot4E also had circumnavigation and org trait, all good lategame stuff. On top of that he was more technologically advanced and larger by all counts. Also, Donovan was not really doing a thing in his war, except losing cities on islands.
Most of the fighting was going in the inner sea. You did not have the chance to know it but 90% of world Oil is on this desert island, and remaining 10% are on the North and South poles. This was the only reason I did not concede, like, ten turns earlier - I was trying to cut Ot4E off from Oil before he gets Combustion.

[Mr. Cairo]

Ah, yes, that is an "interesting" feature of the map. BTW, I saw your comment when I accepted that resource trade you sent me signalling your attack. I'm sorry about that, i have developed a habit it seems of just accepting those kinds of trades straight away. Shortly after I did so I realised that you probably didn't want me to do so   

As it happened, had you attacked GJ at that time I would not have been much help, I had just used up all of my collateral killing his invading stack and I was heading to Rifles, so I was not really capable of much at the time, all he needed to do to hold me off then was stick a couple of city garrison Rifles in the border city.

Also, yeah, Dikes, East Indiamen, why they weren't banned I'll never know.

Edit: Also, just want to say that I think this game exposed my biggest civ weakness: bulbs. I do not know how to effectively plan around bulbs, my own or the opponents, and it hurts. Maybe for a future game I could have/be a teammate/dedlurker from whom I can learn.

[OT4E]

SeeYouInTop5 was supposed to grow to size of 50. I didnt want to reveal this city location, thats why I declined last few map trades with you. Though Gav and DZ both got plenty of airships so it wasnt so reasonable.

Imho you screwed some initial buildup and that early golden age and going for Theology were not that necessary. Still I have no clue how your economics got in such a deep hole while being fin/org with Collossus. I know you had to whip hard but I whipped whole the game too. Last GJ's stack wasnt that serious as I could see.

[Mr. Cairo]

SeeYouInTop5 was supposed to grow to size of 50. I didnt want to reveal this city location, thats why I declined last few map trades with you. Though Gav and DZ both got plenty of airships so it wasnt so reasonable.

Imho you screwed some initial buildup and that early golden age and going for Theology were not that necessary. Still I have no clue how your economics got in such a deep hole while being fin/org with Collossus. I know you had to whip hard but I whipped whole the game too. Last GJ's stack wasnt that serious as I could see.

I know you whipped hard, but the difference was between T166 and around T230 I was building nothing but Catapults and drafting Rifles. The only infrastructure I built between there was a few Barracks in new cities and Theatres so I could continue to go on drafting and whipping. By the end of the war with GJ I was running 30% culture and 0% science and still losing money each turn. Also, the cities I lost to GJ way back then were some of my better cities. The ones I had left I ended up just farming everywhere so I could whip/draft them, and the ones I settled afterwards were junk.

And no, that last invading stack wasn't too terrifying, but I only had 10 Muskets and a handful of other stuff to kill it with after the catapults hit it. If I recall correctly I even had to use Longbows to kill the last few units. I counted up somewhere that I lost over 50 catapults fighting GJ