Adv 44: Wrapper the n00b loses on T0 (almost)

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Okay, my first ever adventure report. But before I tell the sad tale of Gilgamashed, Helpless Hand of the Sumarily Sucky, a few caveats:

-- It's only my second game on BtS.
-- I've never played Emperor level, and I've never won beyond Prince.
-- I don't micromanage cities (I usually screw it up), and most of the time, twenty or so turns in, I automate workers.
-- A vulture? WTF is a vulture?
-- Espionage? Like... spies and stuff?
-- Did I mention it's only my second game on BTS?

I also got confused about the "rules" and didn't realize I could have a cavalry (mounted) and a rifleman (gunpowder) at the same time; I'd assumed since cavalry required the gunpowder tech that they were a gunpowder unit. By the time I got clarification, I was pretty much toast.

On with the fun.

Eighteen civs, tiny map, so strategy going in was to build, build, build units and not stop attacking. Turn 0, I zoom out (I always zoom out to kind of get a lay of the land), pop a hut, and OOOOH is that Korea's settler right next to me? What luck! No sense in waiting, so I declare war right away and OH HOLY CRAP that's not a settler!



A settler, two scouts and TWO ARCHERS? Okay, is this because of the difficulty level, the map build, or a BtS thing?

Okay, so, I'm going to lose this game on turn ZERO. Well, I could restart, but, meh, I'm in the forest, so maybe I'll survive. I set my city to build a warrior, and you won't believe what happens next....

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So, Korea, being an aggressive AI on Emperor difficulty, moves its archers NW into the woods, advances its scouts on Uruk... and settles in place with an empty city? The icon doesn't do this one justice, we need one with a rubber band and a hypodermic needle.

I guess n00bness has its advantages.

Sometimes.

One down, sixteen to go.

After that T0 scare, I slow down juuuuuust a bit, and take another look at the surrounding tiles, and decide that food is a priority. I plan to go Fishing & AH, then Mining/Masonry/BW, then Pottery, building Warrior/WB/Worker/WB/Warrior/Worker -- throwing in a couple turns of, whatever, Barracks I guess, if I'm one or two turns away from pop expansion while a worker's in the queue.

[By the way, this is a good time for this -- I know people generally don't say "oh wow, what a donkhead move" on this forum, but please, I do welcome such comments, especially if I've missed something obvious to all higher skilled players.]

All goes well, and when AH pops a horse, and archery already in the books, the winning strategy becomes clear! I tweak my tech line, inserting HR. About forty turns later, and, uh oh, I have a new neighbor where Korea used to be:

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Okay, so I finish the stable and start popping out HAs. Keeping a close eye on Thess's archer or two, I go after Moscow first (bye, Peter), then take out Byz a few turns later (ta-ta, Justy). By T139 I've popped out dozens of HAs and a couple cats, I've taken out France (kept Paris, but in retrospect I would've been better off razing it -- it flipped on me twice), while Cyrus and Monty take out the rest of the northeast then start going after each other. I'm bearing down on Babylon, while... oh, did I mention that I usually screw up when I try to micromanage cities? Houston, we've had a problem:



Strike? I've never done that before!

I decide to let the cities manage themselves while I focus on battles. Once I take out Babylon (see ya, Hammie), I find that I've connected to copper, and I can finally upgrade the three warriors I've had for the past 4500 years:



Oh, that's a vulture. That's... a bit of a letdown, actually. I was expecting something a bit more... I don't know... vulturey.

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For the next hundred turns, I'm keeping a careful eye on the economy. With an assist from Cyrus, I take out Monty. Around this time, I realize... I've royally screwed myself.

I've been focused on building my military, but I'm only second in power -- behind Bodacious (or whatever her name is), to my northwest. And, I figure I'm around second in tech -- behind Cyrus, to my northeast. I finally have my economy under wraps -- as a matter of fact, I have enough gold to upgrade all my HAs to cavalry. Yet, I have practically no religion, zero wonders, no freebies (lost both Oracle and Liberalism by two turns each)... and hardly any culture anywhere but my capital.

This, while playing Gilgamesh.

Creative, purple-note-happy Gilgamesh.

Crap.

To boot, I have no iron, and my powerful naval armada consists of an unstoppable fleet of... workboats.

As I've mentioned, Paris flips a couple times, Cyrus's borders are encroaching on Moscow, and oh yeah, Cyrus and Bodi... Bodu... What's-her-name are so buddy-buddy that I may have to take on both of them.

Nevertheless, I upgrade to a cavalry, attack What's-her-bra-size at the Isthmus of Vienne which is a little lighter on defense and a nice choke point... and I start losing a whole bunch of cavalry vs. rifleman battles in the 40%-60% range. I try to reload my forces, suicide my cats so I can start building some artillery, and....

Now, I know I mentioned I never play BtS, so please forgive me when I ask, WTF is an Apostolic Palace, how do I get one, and how do I get the fricken' AI to quit making me declare peace?

By T290, I've put a couple wonders in Moscow and culture bomb Paris to relieve some pressure... but Cy and Boobalicious have just signed a defensive pact, and the walls are back up in Vienne.

Here's how it looks on T294. Note that I've switched from military growth to mostly religion/currency/wonders, and I'm researching Rocketry for my last possible victory condition:

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You can see this coming, can't you? Because I couldn't.

Did I mention that I never... erm, yeah, I did mention that.

I build my Apollo program (I was first, a turn sooner than Hanny and KK but a good dozen turns or so before Cyrus), but I can't build casings. I get all confused about what order to research. I hit Industrialism, and aluminium pops in Persia and Celtia, nowhere else. I have no shot at the Space Elevator (can only build it in Paris, which had fewer hammers than any other city) so I don't even bother. I try to build thrusters for the tenth time (seriously, it was ten times), because someone (I'm guessing Bitchica) sabotaged five of them.

Meanwhile, global warming is killing me, Cyrus is popping out space parts like a PEZ dispenser, thanks to the aluminum, and I swear I can't figure out what to do with a sushi shack or an ethanol farm, or if I can actually get aluminum out of an aluminum company. Cyrus almost puts me out of my misery, but comes up a scant ten votes shy of a diplo victory.

Next thing I know:



Game over. Well, game over in nine turns. Suppose I could try to fight his MI's and Machine Guns with my cavalry, but I decided to bow out gracefully.

So... loss, AD 2011, space race.

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Postscript:

In all seriousness, this. was. FUN.

I was able to hold my own into the 18th century or so, in spite of that mid-game economic collapse. I could see where I went right (staying on the attack early, keeping up with the tech race at this difficulty), but I did make some fundamental errors, exposing the following weaknesses in my game:

-- I sometimes act too soon, before surveying the situation.
-- I tend to screw up my city tiles by overworking hammers/food at the expense of commerce, then neglect them entirely when wars start.
-- I tend to switch gears, such as changing my victory goal, a bit too soon (in this case, giving up on the warmongering and going for a near-impossible space victory).

Ignoring culture/economy/religion/wonders was a mistake too, but this was a strategic decision, not a weakness in my game. I know how to play the culture game, but in this case, with the overcrowded map and aggressive AI, and having never played this difficulty, I made the decision to overload on military/techs. Worked early. Failed mid-game, big time.

Yes, some of what went wrong had to do with inexperience with BtS, and the military handicap was... well, a handicap, but that really didn't make too much of a difference. The base concepts, especially those where I went wrong listed above, are the same for all versions. I need to master these concepts, particularly how to properly manage cities and citizens, in order to improve my game.

Comments/criticisms welcome -- I'm SURE I made other mistakes along the way....

[novice]

That is a great report! I thoroughly enjoyed it.

You win the Aggressive Play of the Year Award for your T0 war declaration.

(The starting units are due to the difficulty level, btw).

I see how this was a fun game, it is a rare treat where you find the correct settings for a game that is challenging througout and where your victory is always possible but never assured.

[Rowain]

Indeed a great and funny report

[Square Leg]

Great report and nice spot on the HA rush - It was the best move at the start most likely.

One thing you will realise by playing more games are that there are key times when being aggressive pays dividends - being first to rifles for example - or steel (if you have Iron of course! )

Having said that - the game set up meant that as soon as you finished one war - you had to start another one to get over the culture!

Nice report too - I enjoyed reading it!

[Kylearan]

Congratulations on the quickest elimination of an enemy civ I ever saw! That's really hilarious, I'm amazed the AI goofed up that one so hard. Although in the AI's defense, this situation couldn't really have been expected by the AI developers... (I suspect the archers got moved before the city was founded, so at a time when from the AI's perspective none of its cities were in danger.)

Thanks for reporting!