Not sure you were looking for a Can't we all just Get Along. But I think it's the only way to make a game this big work. Particularly when y'all took every warm body, instead of sorting based on time available or veterancy or anything else similar.
Agreed. A shot across the bow every now and then in the direction of the Don't Be a Jerk doctrine is helpful too. That's good enough for most players. I'm not above organizing a You're Being a Jerk dogpile against egregious offenders as needed.
Before too many other civs get eliminated, I'll post my full tear list from months ago that I never got around to finishing with the pre-game opponent analysis. Some of these are not going to hold up well this far into the game:
Whales and Sharks
Mackoti - Suleiman (Imp/Phi) of France
The Black Sword - Pericles (Cre/Phi) of Zulu
Shallow Old Human Tourist - Augustus (Imp/Ind) of Persia
GermanJoey - Charlemagne (Imp/Pro) of Mongolia
dtay - Genghis Khan (Agg/Imp) of Celtia
Small Sharks and Tuna
plako - Justinian (Imp/Spi) of Inca
OT4E and Chumchu - Qin Shi Huang (Ind/Pro) of Carthage
Gavagai - Mehmed (Exp/Org) of Egypt
Commodore - Kublai Khan (Cha/Cre) of Rome
Boldly Going Nowhere - Boudica (Agg/Cha) of Khmer
Small Bait Fish
Pindicator - Hammurabi (Agg/Org) of China
Mr. Cairo - Saladin (Pro/Spi) of Russia
spacetyrantxenu - Hatshepsut (Cre/Spi) of Greece
Dark Savant - Joao (Exp/Imp) of Byzantium
WilliamLP - Tokugawa (Agg/Pro) of Japan
Shrimp and Jellyfish
2metraninja - Napoleon (Cha/Org) of the Aztecs
AdrienIer - Mao (Exp/Pro) of Mali
Dreylin - Roosevelt (Ind/Org) of the Vikings
Donovan Zoi - Pacal (Exp/Fin) of Maya
elkad - Shaka (Agg/Exp) of Korea
Microorganisms [in no particular order]
superdeath - Churchill (Cha/Pro) of the Native Americans
B4ndit - Zara Yaqob (Cre/Org) of Sumeria
Rusten - Cyrus (Cha/Imp) of Arabia
naufrager - Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of Germany
Aretas - Ragnar (Agg/Fin) of Holy Rome
Mack's frequent logins and failure to end turn is getting very annoying. I can never move units with certainty about whether mack has played or not and we have units that can come into conflict. I am having to make decisions assuming he has not moved and this is having a negative impact on my play (scouting positioning, how far to push units forward, etc.). Mack PM'd me a few days ago asking whether he needed to ask for a pause so he could finish his turn on the following day (it was late for him) or whether he could double move me. I just told him to ask for a pause if he was going to attack otherwise it wouldn't be an issue either way. I don't like being in a position to have to give away information via out of game messages or initiative in game if I have an opportunity to attack but I can't be certain whether mack is done playing. And I don't always have the luxury of playing at any point during 24 hours to indulge his frequent inability to end turn.
If this keeps up I'm going to sit on the clock until the last minute and declare war and end up holding up the game just to have a definitive half of the timer. I don't want to do that. I don't need a permanent split but I do think it is fair that all players attempt to play reasonably and completely whenever they can. Logging out to do sims, etc., is fine but mack is really pushing it. I'm sure he'll say he has a perfectly reasonable explanation, and maybe he does, but it is impossible to communicate intent to opponents and this is the entire point of just playing your turn, ending turn, and being done with it so there is no ambiguity.
Lurkers, kindly comment to mack that it is strongly preferable to play the turn in one go, or at least to avoid logging in early on the timer as he does and then waiting to finish until the clock is close to running out. I shouldn't have to try to guess every turn whether he has moved his units or not and I don't have the time or inclination to document to provide evidence. This stuff was old 30 games ago with Parkin's shenanigans.
Mack logged in for four minutes, ending turn. This is obvious timer bullshit. I'm not logging back in to see what he did but this is some high quality horseshit.
I've been delaying attacking Rusten for the last several turns due to not having enough time to play turns properly this week. He had set up a defensive force for a new city that encroaches on my territory. The city won't work for me because it would give him a salient with several decent vectors into my empire once I fill in all of my final marginal cities. I showed chariots for a couple of turns but he went ahead and settled anyway, as I figured he would. I knew I'd have better odds attacking prior to him settling due to an archer being present in the stack (+25% city defense) but I let optimism that he'd back down in the face of a likely lost city trump good sense, particularly given his ongoing, now active again, war with superdeath. As an aside, also mixed up in my thinking here is that superdeath several turns ago sent me a horse/bronze for horse/bronze diplo message, indicating hostilities against Rusten. Anyway, Rusten didn't retreat in the face of a lukewarm threat, he settled anyway. I can't say I blame him. After mack annexed a chunk of his territory he has to settle where he can, so I'm forced to attack. It didn't go well for me:
c1 chariot vs archer 9.1% (loss, 4 hits)
c1 chariot vs c1 chariot 50% (loss, 1 hit)
c1 chariot vs axe 90.1% (win)
c1 chariot vs c1 chariot (2.64) 95.2% (loss, down to 18/100)
I didn't expect to win the first fight, and that chariot did its job nicely. The second one winning would have been nice but this also wasn't expected. The last one, though, really hurts. I still have a chariot in good shape to attack his surviving archer next turn. He'll promo heal this turn so I doubt my odds will be very good attacking again next turn but I also have a promo left if my chariot is still alive. I have a late arriving c1/shock axe ready to attack next turn as well. He can get an archer in to reinforce, though, but only if he leaves two workers exposed to my chariot. He could kill my chariot and then hope that my axe loses attacking next turn. There are a few scenarios to go through, but the short version is he has options and is likely to keep the city before I can burn it. If he gets lucky again he won't have to risk his workers.
In the last few turns I've finished Iron Working and HBR. I'll have my first sword next turn and a few HAs in the turn or two following. I'm not whipping my commerce cities much, my established cities are mostly grown tall onto cottages. I got around to cottaging tiles late but it's done now. I've also settled two island cities. The combination of these two recent developments has pulled my economy out of the tank into pretty good shape. I could save gold for a turn and then spend 2T on either of construction (ballistnerfants), calendar (needed for bananas and luxuries), or, what I decided to go for, masonry this turn while I save gold. I can hook up stone on my superdeath border before our forced peace expires then have cheap walls in case Rusten loses his mind and decides to go adventuring aggressively into my territory. I doubt he will. He and superdeath traded body blows a few turns ago and the shark fins only showed on the power graph this turn. I think Rusten has all he wants right now with superdeath so hopefully the war with me will just be limited in scope. I don't want to give mackoti the notion that this is a good time to try to invade me. It isn't. I'm running out of summer months to play before my wife gives birth to our second baby in early August so I'm looking to go out in a blaze of glory before then. If mackoti wants it to be permawar with him then that's how it will be, he just needs to push a little aggressively and I'll let loose the whips before his economic advantage can snowball too far ahead. My best guess is he's going to bide his time on my front, try to hold the line against me, and he'll move eventually against Cairo or another of his neighbors that isn't Boudicca. I have lots of population that can be whipped away and stymie an assault if needed. If mack moves now he can get a couple new city razes on our border but it will not help him in the next 50 turns and could delay his advance to knights. Or I could be wrong and he has 25 HAs ready to invade and could keep 2-3 cities. I have no idea but my time remaining to play is limited here so I'm happy to fight, but preferably after my wife and daughter head out of town this weekend.
Also noticed this turn is that dtay did not end turn. He has logged in a couple of times but didn't hit the red button. Our enforced peace treaty has been over for a little while. I'm still putting EP into him to get his tech research. Once I have this I'll swap to mackoti. Better to know what your adversary is thinking than to hope intent is good. I don't see any benefit to us fighting each other at this point and I'm hoping to keep that border relatively lightly defended, for both of us. I see no profit in us fighting at this point. Maybe later if one or the other of us is significantly faster to knights. But in that event I'm guessing I'll already need knights to counter mack's knigs, and dtay probably has a neighbor that is easier to fight than me. Superdeath is the only shared neighbor that I know of and his game has been marred with fighting to this point, to the detriment of his empire. He's certainly a better target at this point than I am. I doubt I will be ready to attack for profit seriously before early August so my best guess is that Rusten will end up my target of opportunity. It's a tough neighborhood that I've been hemmed into since Mack ate Aretras. I have poor attack options into superdeath, the resulting map would have anything I take crushed by both Rusten and dtay's culture.
That's all for now. I regret not getting around to the lurker tier list or finishing the pregame opponent analysis or tier list properly but that's the way it goes. Let me know if there is anything you're dying to see.
I fell into a bottle of rum after work tonight and this prompted some thinking about where this game is going. I'm at a crossroad. I made a complete hash of the opening and have been playing catch up ever since, with poor traits for catching up. The early turns came at a very bad time for me (travel for work) and left me without time to sim, resulting in some pretty bad decisions (grow to size 6 anyone?) that put me behind in expansion. AGG/CHM doesn't really need that sort of handicap in the expansion phase. This problem was compounded by being surrounded by IMP civs: dtay, Rusten, and eventually mackoti after he noobstomped Aretas. BTW, am I right in recollecting that Aretas opened with a unit rather than worker build and teched Archery? Oww. This had to be a monstrously easy conquest for mack. Anyway...
I think I have clawed back from this early game hole somewhat, but I have made key mistakes along the way. I have not properly scouted and have very little knowledge of the world. I am missing many opponent contacts, and accordingly missing (probably) a great deal of known tech bonus that I could certainly use with an under-leveraged economy. The economy has been very poor for me for a long stretch, only recently recovering to what I deem a point of sufficiency, not proficiency. I did not lay early cottages, particularly around the capital, in part due to an all-out effort to expand into IMP civs. I did set a favorable and defensible border vis-à-vis dtay, which isn't nothing, and I believe that our long border is relatively secure without either of us needing heavy garrisons, to our mutual benefit. However, I have not built enough workers, a common theme for me through several recent games, and even now I have forests that need to be chopped but I lack the workers to chop them as I am growing tall after hooking (5) Calendar resources. I am chopping several forests now (into forges), but these chops certainly would have been of more use earlier for the snowball. I do not recall what I would have had to give up improving, though, to make this happen.
Further, I have completely whiffed on religion, although I recognized early that I would lack the tech to get there without major sacrifice. Given limitations already in place (time to sim, slow expansion, etc.), I could not risk being further behind and I am still not sure how I ever would have built a shrine. Playing a builder game as Boudica is slow. Playing without a religion and the +25% OR bonus is worse. My god it has been painful. I have 2 markets, desperately needed in my two primary commerce cities because I've run such a low commerce slider for so long, but it was a trial worthy of Odysseus getting them done. My current Forge builds are cutting into many of the remaining forests. I don't have the time (means, really, but I'll get to this) to tech to Monotheism for the OR bonus either. I have 3-4 cities with Hinduism but without Meditation to build Monasteries I can't spread the religion.
My greatest sin must be not utilizing the whip, particularly as CHM. City sites have not been terribly conducive to fast city setup, due in part to resource placement, and I've had to whip pop into barracks then wait an eternity (10t) to really kickstart new cities in several cases. I think I have tried to play Boudica like an expansion civ but have not used the whip as required. My hedge against self-recrimination here is that my neighbors, aside from Aretas, are pretty damned good and unlikely to provide much benefit to me through attempted conquest, particularly during the early expansion phase. To be AGG/CHM and neighbor a competent player (dtay) who can expand faster than you and also have extra hammers to defend against you is a losing proposition. Rusten had a tremendous early game and was far away, and on the opposite side of a thick jungle to boot, and thus not a good target either.
I've felt pretty boxed in all game, but despite this I have what I consider to be my chunk of land and a bit more. Mostly this is because mack ate Aretas and I probably got some extra territory out of his (deserved) death. But I've run some numbers and the anticipated land count doesn't add up, even with the larger than typical number of land tiles I have under my culture. More land is out there somewhere.
But this is looking forward before I've finished looking back. In sum, I have pulled the wrong levers from the start, made poor use of my leader (my game so far, ironically, would have suited Cathy, my other option, just fine), and have missed other opportunities along the way. Another example: I have not utilized fail gold despite having a shitty economy the entire game. Because my economy was weak I delayed teching Masonry and hooking up stone/marble, instead limping to Writing--> Math ------------------------------->Currency. What a slog. Looking back, instead I should have just sucked it up, teched Masonry, then invested hammers into whatever ancient wonder I could sink hammers into (Mids, HG, GLH, etc.) and counted my blessings for +50% modified fail gold. I've done this before in other games and reaped great benefit but it never occurred to me this game. Perhaps I would have considered this more if I had reported better (which makes me actually think about turns) but I've intentionally neglected reporting for meta reasons. Anyway, I estimate that I'm at least 15 turns behind where I could have been if I had made better use of what I have.
Yet another weakness to this point: GP generation. I've built an Academy, desperately needed and well utilized with a pile of hard-earned cash just before starting tech to Currency. It was a long road to get to 100 GPP. It will be even longer to get to 200 GPP and, further still for 300. Worse, I'm only just now starting on the 300 GPP, which will have to be a GS and needs 50t (300GPP/6GPP/t=50t) with just 6GPP/turn without Caste (I can speed this up to a theoretical 25t, as long as I'm willing to risk a polluted pool in my 200GP city, and risk a 50/50 merchant/scientist outcome but I know the result without risking the RNG). This is almost unforgivably bad on my part. I have known for quite some time the realities of my geopolitical situation, boxed in by strong civs, as well as the map's tile count and likelihood of Astronomy islands, but I never felt the need to count on fingers and toes what it would actually take to get to Astronomy. Turns out, I will have to risk quite a lot to get there before the win-more islands are within reach, and mackoti just fired a golden age and has roughly 5x my GNP right now (no exaggeration, that's about right).
So mack will get to the islands before me, or he'll get to knigs and knig me to death before I can double-bulb Astronomy and expand overseas. This says nothing of his production advantage, or the fact that he already has a larger army than me. All I can do is try to be tough gristle if he expands with force in my direction and hope that highly promoted units are less interesting to fight for him than Cairo, Naufrager, or, to some extent, Rusten (who has SoZ and so will have some triple promo units anyway). Mackoti swapped into HR/Vassalage this turn, so he's very close to knights already. I assume he has some wealth builds going now, but he has 9t of GA and will prebuild a swarm of HA/knigs. I'd guess he'll end in CS/Merc by the end of the GA, which makes me think Guilds is within reach in 5-6 turns. This is not encouraging for me but I have a few things hidden in queues so my power disadvantage is not quite (but almost) as bad as it looks now. Things will get worse 10-15 turns later when he fires a second GA, swaps into Nationalism, and drafts the maximum 5 Musketeers/turn. I don't see how any of us withstand that.
So, that's where I am.
The big question:
Turtle (go Engineering, stave off/deter knig invasion) or Risk All (the long road to Astronomy)? I know mackoti is going to knights. He's in vassalage, which means Feudalism, which is required for Guilds. And he's also probably building units now. Cats, because he'll need those too, but he's also France, which means a slight further delay to get to Musketeers to cover his knigs. I would have little answer for a combined stack of Musketeers and Knights. Cairo, Naufrager, and Rusten would similarly be disadvantaged. If I were mackoti, in his position this is what I'd do. Why try to win on 1.75 civ's worth of land when you can stomp for fun and profit and realistically get to about 3.5 civ's worth of land before anyone can meaningfully stop you? This is a better investment for him than rushing to Astronomy islands because those will start from scratch and need heavy worker investment.
The bottom line:
I think I'll be tougher to chew than Cairo (easiest) and chewier than Rusten, despite his good play to this point. Rusten has already tangled with mackoti and not come off the better for it, and he's had to fight tooth and nail with Superdeath for marginal gains. He has some advantages but he's behind me in city count, and therefore in raw production capability very soon. My cities are tall and have good infrastructure and my leader traits mean my army will hold its own. My concern, though, is meta-related: Mack said (somewhere) that he learned Civ from Rusten, so he may opt to play nice and not steamroll his buddy if he can help it. Which means his order of conquest could be 1) Cairo and 2) me. But if mackoti's never-ending ruthlessness with the turn timer (nicest way I can put that) is any indication, he'll take any means to win and won't spare Rusten's feelings in doing it. So realistically I think I'm 3rd on mack's hit list, which should give me time to get set up to push for some island expansion. Maybe. But it's the best option I have to improve my position.
In all of this, I've given little consideration to dtay, currently researching Feudalism (probably) unto Knights, but for very similar reasons. Dreylin came from the east, so he's likely dtay's eastern neighbor. Dreylin has not played a strong game from what I can tell and his power, crop yield, and other demos are generally lagging. He'll be an easier target than me too. And TBS came from that direction as well, so he'll factor in somehow. TBS went on a massive unit building spree and he's gotten in 2nd or 3rd on the attack against Superdeath, who is living up to his name and dying superbly. I think TBS have units left to spare when Superdeath is gone and they very likely won't be headed my way so this is overall good for me. Rusten shares more border than I do with mackoti so I do not anticipate aggression from him either.
These considerations tell me that in order to improve my position I'll have to take risks, but they're weighed risks. It may all blow up in my face but I've got to try. I didn't set out to finish 10th, though after my sad start that would be somewhat of an achievement. So let's see what it takes to get to Astronomy:
Needed:
Alphabet - 430b (Open Borders for minimal benefit)
Machinery -1207b (X-bows, trebs) --> Opens detour to Engineering (1725b, Pikes) if Mack knigs after GA buildup. Probably prudent despite Ballistaphants.
Compass - 690b (meh: means to an end)
Optics - 1035b (Caravel will test theory, discover opponents for KTB)
Code of Laws - 603b (Required for caste to get 2nd BS on time for Astronomy double bulb; how to swap civics? Also, how to swap from slavery without Mack knig rush resulting?)
Astronomy - ~1100-1200b even with double bulb (-% for KTB)
Based on current GNP, I've got about 30t at breakeven to get what I need for these bulbs. The bottleneck looks to be GPP generation unless I risk (tremendously) by going into Caste. Can I get a strong enough production base via workshop economy and forges to offset the loss of slavery to make this goal? I doubt it, but I think it is my best chance.
Final thoughts:
All of the above is the plan assuming I'm playing the game to the finish line. But I'll have another mini-BGN joining the family in approximately 50 days, right about the time all of this will (hopefully) come to fruition, barring mackoti's damnable trampling knigs. I doubt this plan will hold up to scrutiny, but I think I'll commit to this anyway knowing that someone else is likely to have to take over when my baby arrives. I'll try to leave things in good shape for any eventuality.
