[SPOILERS] Charriu and Zalson are fighting the honorable post count war!

[Charriu]

Well it wouldn't be a real end without a final "Defeat" screen:

[Zalson]

What a bummer. Still, it was quite a ride! More thoughts will come later but Merry Christmas for now.

[Charriu]

Of course, how could I be so forgetful. Merry Christmas to you all.

[Charriu]

Who's winning?

1. Superdeath: Right now and with his conquest of my cities he's in a really strong position. I must say it's remarkable how he worked his way up and how he took his chances in recent conflicts. He also seems in front with military techs as I haven't seen anybody else with curriaseurs. His biggest problem going into the future is the awkward shape of his empire.
   
2. Shallow: Played a great game from the very beginning. I still think that he can manage to win this as he was only falling behind because of Superdeath's conquests. He's at least my favorite to win this.
   
3. Elkad: Has fallen behind the other two in recent time, but can still make it. In the end it all comes down, who of those three can manage the upcoming conflicts in this three-way race.
   
4. Magic: Has no chance of winning this, but that does not mean he can be ignored. I think he will still play a role in this game and he's one of Shallow's jokers in the back. He can play pirate in the north and wreck havoc to Elkad and Superdeath as nobody so far is racing towards astronomy it seems.
   

[Charriu]

I will split my post-game analysis into multiple post:

1. City placements
   
2. Tech-Route
   
3. Problems and obstacles I ran into and their cause
   
4. Summary
   

So first of all City placements. I looked for some older screenshots of all my cities and will go through every city in the order of their settlement/conquest



T0: The capitol first. Well not much to say here as the city placement was more or less chosen by the mapmaker. Exdeath turned out to be a great commerce city with good production too. Not much to say here.

City rating:




T35: We settled Wing Raptor rather late for different reason, but I will come back to that in my other analysis parts. At the time we settled it we didn't know about the horse. I planned it as an production center and unit pump, which it did excellently. The later discovery of horse was a great addition. Settling on the coast instead on the hill was the right decision in the long run as it allowed it to share the corn with the capitol and also produce some ships. I think the biggest problem in the beginning was that it did not have a food resource in it's first ring. But because I planned it as a unit pump and the capitol had 4 food resources of it's own, the building of a barracks was absolutely justified and thanks to AGG no problem. There's also the fact that almost every city that shared a food resource with the capitol could not have a food resource of it's own in it's first ring. All in all I think Wing Raptor was a good city.

City rating:



T51: Similar to Wing Raptor, Karlabos was founded without knowing about the iron, which turned out to be great as a shareable resource. Karlabos's biggest problem through the whole game was production of which it had few. That's why I planned it as a GP farm. But honestly I should have maybe switched it to commerce at some point. Nonetheless it produced all the Great Persons I used. I still feel that I could have improved more in the Great Person production. The city placement was good as it did not need a border pop for most of the time. Attempting the Great Lighthouse here was mistake in the long run, because it used up all of the valuable forests for Karlabos.

City rating:



T57: The whole purpose of Siren was to get us our first happiness resource in the form of ivory. The city itself isn't great and always felt more like a filler city. It served another purpose in helping Exdeath grow it's cottages and I used it primarily as a production center, which it worked great thanks to the addition of iron. But the biggest problem from the very beginning was the food situation here. It had no food resource of it's own in the first ring and only banana under a jungle in it's second ring. In the end I'm not that happy about this city. It had it's uses and thanks to the distance of the capitol it was cheap, but it never was great.

City rating:  



T65: Magissa is the one city, where I'm sure I did place it in the best way . Similar to Exdeath this city was more or less chosen by the mapmaker. It served it's purpose as a small commerce city and providing trade routes. It also gave us another happiness resource in the form of whales, which was great although it came late because of second ring. With the two resources it turned about to be good for a one island city.

City rating:  



T71: The city placement of Forza was forced due to Coeurva settling Schilda near the gold. It was a good defensive position, but the culture bomb from him hurt this city in the long run. Initially I had planned this city as a filler for my gold city and would have settled on the desert 1NE. All in all it was ok not great, but at least it had a food resource.

City rating:  



T76: From this point onward the biggest problem for every city was that the best spots where already settled. Galura was ok-ish as a city. It had the oasis in it's first ring, but needed to share it's only real food resource with Siren, which also had only this banana as a real food resource. Galura was planned as a northern defensive position, which it achieved thanks to the hill. The problem was that there were few other useful resources nearby. There's the marble which would have meant giving up the defensive position and there's the wine, which is not great. All in all it was a bad city placement, but the best I could come up for at the time.

City rating:  



T96: The first and only city that I did not place myself. But I would have settled it in the exact same spot. This is a great spot. Food in abundance. Iron for production. I planned this city as a great person farm, which it would have done a great job of. I maybe should have done the switch to Great Persons sooner though. All in all a great city.

City rating:  



T102: The first city that I disliked the moment I settled it. It was planned as a defensive position towards Shallow. The biggest problem is that I settled it too early as it desperately need more food via irregation. This city was just bad and I only settled it because I feared to loose this spot to Shallow and that I was falling behind in city count. But this city was to costly for the benefits it brought to my empire.

City rating:  



T119: Byblos was a mistake in the long run, not due to the city placement, but rather because of the time it was settled and therefore it's position. Who could have known that Superdeath and Coeurva took so long to settle this great region of the map. If I had known that they take so long I would have settled this region sooner. Byblos was settled this way to deny more cities to Superdeath and Coeurva, which it did. It had it's own food resource although not great and iron, which is great. An earlier settlement also would have brought in another spice. Of course the defensive position on the hill would have been better, but would have been worse because of Coeurva's culture. All in all I think the city placement itself was good, but the timing was bad.

City rating:  



T125: Sandworm was a filler city and was settled late because of that. With two amazing cities as it's neighbors it would never have become great on it's own. It's sole purpose was to make use of another iron resource. Not much to add to that.

City rating:  


So in the end I settled/conquered 11 cities:

5 had a ranking of  
3 had a ranking of  
3 had a ranking of  

I think in comparison to PB39 my city placement improved. I still settled some bad cities, but this time I settled them, when

• most of the good land was gone
  
• for a specific purpose (acquiring happiness)
  
• defensive positions
  
• the land was very low on food
  

So in the beginning I decided not to use CRE as a trait, because I wanted to train better city placement. I think next time I won't hesitate to take this trait as I feel a lot more confident in my dotmaps now.

[Charriu]

So next up would be my tech route. The first time is always the beginning of the research the second the time of finishing it:

Hunting T0 T9: I think this was the right decision as I needed to hook up the pig as this was the best tile in the beginning.

Bronze Working T9 T22: Also a no brainer. I already had mining and this would have enabled me to chop into settlers and switch to slavery.

Fishing T22 T27: So this is the first tech, which you could argue was this necessary in the beginning. I would say this was a good decision. It was clear by this time that the land is low on food and I would need to settle my first cities within reach of seafood.

The Wheel T27 T34: I needed this on my way to pottery.

Pottery T34 T42: I was PRO so I wanted to take advantage of the granaries as soon as possible. The only thing I could have done is to build some cottages earlier to take advantage of the commerce in Exdeath. But this is independent on the decision about Pottery.

Archery T42 T45: With the upcoming barbs and being PRO this was absolutely the right time to start on this and as it just happened I needed those archers against the barbs.

Animal Husbandry T45 T52: At this point in the game it was clear that the only happiness resource nearby and in reachable in a timely manner was the ivory north of the capitol so it was crucial to raise the happiness limit with this.

Sailing T52 T59: I think this was the first real mistake in my tech route. Don't get me wrong Sailing was still important, but the time I started this was wrong. Back then I started this with the goal of getting vision on other players resources, possible trade routes, the galleys to attack RFS and to build Magissa. Now I think all of these things could have waited or were meaningless to begin with. Let's start with the meaningless. Seeing the resources of the others gave me no advantage on the contrary it showed the other that I have iron. Trade routes with other players came only in effect with open borders, which is similarly meaningless. Which brings me to the other points. First the galleys. I would not have needed galleys immediately. I only build two and could have done so shortly before the attack on RFS. For the most time after I built them they were docked in my cities awaiting action. Second I think settling Magissa as my 5th city was a mistake, but I will get to that in my later analysis. So all in all Sailing could have waited.

Writing T59 T65: Instead of Sailing I should have done Writing. Karlabos could have used the library to start on it's great persons and Writing was an important prerequisite for the ever so important Currency.

Iron Working T65 T76: This was important to start the conquest against RFS. It was also an important stepping stone towards CKNs and the northern cities needed to cut some jungle. But and this is important. Maybe it would have been better to start the conquest earlier with a massive chariot rush. I had horses revealed and in my border around the T50s. Who knows if that would have been better. On other problem that arouse from going for Iron Working was that my finances were crippled by the time I started my next tech. So Iron Working was important in the end, but it also caused problems on this map.

Alphabet T76 T94: It took me way to long to get this tech. But without it I would have had any chance to get out of my financial problems. My economy was heavily focused on production, so I needed a way to turn this production into beakers. So Alphabet was absolutely the right way to go, but due to other decisions before it took way to long.

Mysticism T96 T97: I took this little detour to get more multipliers towards masonry. Maybe this was a mistake but it was a 1 turn tech anyway.

Masonry T97 T98: There were three factors that lead me to go for Masonry. First and most important I wanted to be able to build walls. By this time good land was scarce and I already had my bad conflict with Coeurva, so I felt I needed more protection and in case of an attack I would not have enough time to research this. Second this enabled me to hook up marble, which wasn't that important as I did not use it properly. Third this allowed me to build the Great Lighthouse, which I should have build anywhere else then Karlabos. Maybe I could have gotten this wonder that way. Nobody knows. In the end having the walls was nice, but maybe I could have waited a bit for that.

Currency: T98 T107: This came in way too late. I started it in T94, but switched to the above techs. This was a mistake as I needed more gold desperately, especially when the Lighthouse plan failed.

Polytheism T107 T108: Needed for Monotheism

Monotheism T108 T109: Judaism was still unclaimed and I managed to get it, so this move was justified. It also helped me on my way to monarchy.

Meditation T109 T111: I wanted some monasteries for culture and to spread my religion. But honestly maybe it would have been better just to swap into OR and spread that way. This also gave me modifiers towards Priesthood.

Priesthood T111 T118: I took this to get more modifiers towards monarchy. But looking back it would have been better to skip it and go straight to monarchy. Also it's terrible to see that such a cheap tech took me so long, but I leave that discussion for my problems section.

Monarchy T118 T125: I took this mainly for the happiness. The wine was just a bonus on top. The big question though is would it have been better to got for Mathematics->Calendar. I could have gotten good use out of the chop bonus and I had two calendar happiness resources that would have raised my happy cap by two. Well monarchy allowed me to raise my capitol to the max, so it was likely the right move.

Metal Casting T125 T131: Prerequisite for Machinery. Oh and the workshops were nice but not essential at that point.

Machinery T131 T141: It took me so long to get to my UU that I felt I missed the point of usefulness for it. But in the end it gave me more protection towards the other empires. On the other end it did not help my stagnating economy. So there is that.

Mathematics T141 T147: At this point in time this was a mistake. Most of the wood was gone and I got little use out of the bonus. Should have gone for CoL immediately.

Code of Laws T147 T153: The courthouses were desperately needed as my maintenace was terrible.

Civil Service T153 T160: Many of my cities needed irregation desperately and bureaucracy was also very important. Unfortunately by this point the dogpile against me had started, which rendered all upcoming tech decision more or less meaningless.

I did research some more techs after Civil Service, but by this time I was a goner, so no point of debating any of these decisions as the ship was already sinking.

[Charriu]

Problems, Obstacles and their causes:

In this section I want to talk about the big problems I encountered and what I think led to them. There are some smaller issues which I will tackle in the last section. Oh and by the way I started a link summary for in my very first post, so as to quickly navigate my thread.
I will start this section with some smaller problems and work my way up to the big issues:

Problem: Getting more Great Persons

Around the T120 or so I noticed that the other players were getting a lot more great persons then I did and therefore also more golden ages. The main two reasons for this are:

• Only one working GP farm most of the time
  
• No wonders producing GP points
  

Solution: I think the best thing I could have done is to focus on an early conquest of RFS and using Liquid Flame to produce Great Persons in tandem with Karlabos. These were basically my best cities to produce them. Of course I could also have gone for some more wonders, but I needed the production to conquer RFS, so that is out of the picture. I also should have used the woods around Karlabos for building up the city instead of investing in the Great Lighthouse there.


Problem: Discovering the attack from Elkad, which led to the dogpile.

I actually managed to deter him from attacking me a quite some time. The biggest problem here was that I was just careless and missed his discovery of Engineering.

Solution: Being more vigilant. I knew that he had started Engineering before I lost tech vision on him. Nonetheless I went to attack RFS last city, which opened the door for him. Maybe it would have been better to force a war-peace so that I had 10 turns of peace with him, while I attacked RFS. Or I should just have delayed my attack on RFS until I got my tile 1NW of Forza back. Of course the best solution to this would have been to avoid that culture war to begin with. But more to that in a later problem.


Problem: Culture pressure from all sides, especially in the later stages of the game.

Many of my neighbors started building up huge amounts of culture in my border cities, sometimes without any intend of pressuring me. For example Superdeath build much culture buildings in Spiderman, but mainly to protect his gems. Shallow's culture increased with the holy city of confucianism in our border and his hindu holy city also nearby. Of course Coeurva willingly increased the culture pressure on me with his stonehenge build in Schilda.

Solution: Being China I actually had a great answer to all this culture in the form of my UB. But I never got to research towards it because of other problems. Another way would have been to go for artists with Caste. Seeing as my land was low on food, slavery wasn't that useful as it could be on a more lush map. But most important I should have been more vigilant towards Shallow and Superdeath. It was clear that they were building up culture because of the gems. I should have countered this sooner, either by attacking Superdeath or building more culture buildings earlier. The main reason why I could not go for culture was that my finance and research situation was bad. But I'll get to that problem soon.


Problem: Failing expansions in the north and east

Around the T100s I settled some questionable cities in the form of Iron Claw and Byblos. If you are hard on me you could even include Galura in here. Sandworm wasn't great either. These cities raised my maintenance substantially, but did not contribute that much to the empire. I also did not acquire any important resources from them with the exception of wine. The main cause for this was that I had the feeling of falling behind in city count, which I did anyway.

Solution: This has to be done on a per city basis.
Starting with Iron Claw. I just should not have settled it. Yes I may have lost an important defensive position towards Shallow. But in the end we were more or less allied the whole time. This city was so low on food that it also could not put out enough hammers and buildings to win in the culture wars. This city was a waste.
Next is Byblos. This could have been a good city if I had settled it some 30 turns earlier. But who could have know that Superdeath and Coeurva were not interested in that region. In the end I settled it in T119, which was way to late and just added maintenance. I should have sticked to my own words and let the other two have that region and start fighting over it.
Sandworm was a filler city. It was rather safe but it also never was a great city. In the end it also just raised the maintenance costs.
Lastly Galura. I think it was still right to settle this as a defensive position and for the wine.
So if I would have settled like described above I would have had 8 cities instead of 11: Exdeath, Wing Raptor, Karlabos, Siren, Magissa, Forza, Galura and Liquid Flame. This wouldn't have been great. But it would have been better to grow these cities tall, conquer more from RFS or spiderman from Superdeath or even go for the astronomy islands.


Problem: Conflict with Coeurva T87 - T91

The cause for this is very simple. First Coeurva totally surprised me with his stonehenge build and I felt the need to respond. Second I had a bad combat sim running and thought it would be worth it to go to war.

Solution: This whole war was a mistake. It would have been better to swallow the bitter pill in the form of stonehenge and invest in culture in Forza. I then could have used my military for what it was intended: To attack RFS. I also should have simmed the combat better. With a better sim I would have known that I had no chance. Of course this whole mess began with the failing of the settler race towards the gold. Which is another bigger problem.


Problem: Financial crash in the midgame around T75

This had multiple issues playing into the larger problem:

• some bad decisions in the tech route.
  
• missing out on the gold (I'll get to that problem next)
  
• running a high military count
  
• maybe to many workers.
  
• misreading the map
  

Solution: I already talked about the first point and I will talk about the second point in a bit, so we are skipping to the third. I think the high military count was justified, after all it was clear that I had to fight for better land against RFS. The only thing I could have maybe improved here is to go for war earlier. The fourth point is just a minor contributor this problem. Looking at the state of improvements in the T100s I had way more improved tiles then I had pop to work it, so 1 or 2 workers less would not have hurt. After all this was a food low map. Which brings me to the biggest contributor misreading the map. What I mean with this are multiple things like:

• not recognising how high the maintenance cost get. 
  
• the short distance to some other players increasing the likeliness for war.
  
• recognising that the map was low on food, but not recognising that there were also few rivers and other good spots for commerce.
  

So for the next time I have to take a good look at the map and its size. Notice when maintenance problems can occur and try to counter them with the right techs like currency before the problem arises.


Problem: Failed to settle the gold T71

I think this is one of the main reasons the game went down like it did. Just as in the last problems a few things went into this, like some suboptimal tile improvements in the beginning, the misreading of the map and therefore noticing the importance of the gold. But I think the biggest contributor to this problem was settling Magissa as the 5th city. Let's go to the solution, shall we.

Solution: So the fact that I got into a three-way settler race for the gold with RFS and Coeurva, shows me that not much was missing to get the gold. I already mentioned suboptimal tile improvements in the beginning. What I mean with this is that I should have build a farm on the corn instead of the river mine. With this the settler would have come out 1 turn earlier and Wing Raptor 1 turn earlier too. I also should have noticed how small the map is and how important it would be to grab as much from the mainland as possible before attempting any oversea cities. After all Magissa was a safer city position for me, with my capitol's culture more or less blocking access to that island. If had gone for the gold instead of Magissa I would have been able to settle my spot there and maybe get enough archers there to hold it. I also wouldn't have run into any problems with growing forests on my way there.

So these are the major problems I encountered I have a few more minor issues I want to talk about in my summary and of course I also want to mention what went right.

[Charriu]

Summary:

Here I want to give a short list of the major and minor things I did wrong. I already talked in detail about the major problems in my last post, so I will keep it short. I also want to mention what went right. Destilling from this I want to make a list of things I want to improve in in my next games. Lastly a short list of things I noticed, disliked etc.

Major problems:

• Misreading the map and failing to settle the gold
  
• Financial crash in the T75s
  
• Culture pressure
  
• Producing more Great Persons
  

Minor problems:

• A bit too many workers for the population I had
  
• River mine build instead of farming the corn in my capitol
  
• Some questionable tech decisions.
  
• Expanding into the north and east.
  
• PRO was a great trait to have, but I feel I'm not aggressive enough for the AGG trait
  

Things I did right:

• Improvements in city placement
  
• Exploration was a lot better compared to PB39, although I could have send out a few chariots earlier as soon as I had open borders with the neighbors.
  
• I developed a microplanning of which I'm very proud and which helped a lot in planning. I think my micromanagement improved compared to PB39
  
• Due to this planning tool, my knowledge of the game mechanics increased a lot
  
• Conquering RFS was the right decision, but could have been done earlier
  
• First attempts at C&D, but more improvements can be made here.
  

Things to look out for in the next games:

• Improve GP farming
  
• Read the map correct from the start (size, player distance, maintenance costs)
  
• Better prepare for the financial crash due to maintenance
  

And lastly some additional things, I noticed:

• I really liked my city naming scheme more then that in PB39. It was a lot easier to remember which city is which and I had more connections to the city names. In my future games I will try to find naming schemes that have more meaning to me
  
• Naming units. I think this was a total time waste. It did not help in any way and at some point I forgot to do it. I also did not incorporate it more into my reports.
  
• I think a little my reporting can still improved, but I'm not sure in which direction.
  
• I should try out more traits. I played Agg twice in a row now and some point I would like to try myself at Philosophical and Spiritual.
  
• AI diplo sucks. I had a lot of interactions with the others during the game. The fish for fish agreements were fine, as I understood them, although at some point there were so many of these that it got meaningless. The copper for copper deals are just confusing to me. Next game I will advocate for no diplo at all.
  
• Snake pick. I see the inherit problem with this, that this just leads to people choosing the more standard stuff. I myself like to try out some new stuff. So maybe I will advocate for the method from PB38 next time. By the way are there any other pick methods I didn't know off? So far I only know these two.
  

[Zed-F]

FYI I noticed you seem to use mayor a lot where you mean major. A mayor is an official in charge of a town or city. Major (as an adjective) means more important.

[Charriu]

Oh, of course how could I miss that. Well, I'm not a native speaker after all. Thanks for bringing this up. I will fix that real quick.