[SPOILERS] Cornflakes Returns to Civ 4: Forget 1UPT, STACK OF DOOM!!!!!

[Cornflakes]

After a couple days of pause with no explanation, we resume with no explanation 

JR4 accepted another 10 turns of war/peace with Wetbandit   Surely he doesn't want to take on Wetbandit alone, right? Apparently Iron/Iron means: "sure, you go ahead and attack while I sit back and do nothing ... yes, I could move my stack of 20 knights to the border and at least maintain a phony war to draw some forces away, but I'd rather throw you under the bus instead."

But if another 10 turns pass then that puts JR4 that much closer to advanced military, and me even closer into the position of just knocking out wetbandit without being able to make the final push for dominance. In that case, why should I help JR4? Better for me to keep massing cats and knights in order to jump in when the top dogs eventually fight. I speak in terms of JR4 since I haven't had much contact with Mr. Cairo. My first sentry has just entered Mr. C's borders this turn on the side furthest from Wetbandit.

In fact, unless I see an encouraging attack stack from Mr. C in 2-3 turns when my sentry gets to the Wetbandit border, I may start gathering all newly produced troops into a 2nd stack on my southern border that can prepare to be used to opportunistically against JR4 ... or possibly even required to defend against JR4.

I signed Open Borders with Donovan for the first time all game (thanks to our icy relations at the start) and my sentry found cities defended by ghosts. Check the power graph from my last post for reference. A few impi here, a few axes there, 2-3 maces, and a half dozen HA. I could have easily continued straight into conquering Donovan after Elkad but that almost certainly would not have been ultimately successful. I would then have been unable to defend my holding and would have been divided peace-meal.

[Cornflakes]

I’m going to cycle into Slavery for 5 turns shortly. I have been putting 1 turn into multiple units in preparation and will start whipping them out successively while in slavery, then maybe do another cycle of prep > Slavery. It’s now or never in my conquering. JR4 is 4 turns from Nationalism and Gunpowder can’t be far behind. I’ll be whipping elephants, LB, crossbow, catapults.

[Cornflakes]

T168: Here is my stack gathered for the attack. I'm going to pause one more turn as the last 5 catapults join up and then advance on T170.

   

19 knights, 5 Elephants, 6 crossbows, 21 catapults, 8 Trebuchet, 2 spear. I am facing about as many knights from Wetbandit, but my siege should soak up a good portion of the collateral from the 9 catapults that Wetbandit has.

In the mean time, this happened throughout the empire 

   

There is no more long term vs. short term. I either break my rivals in 20 turns or run out of gas and blow up.

[Cornflakes]

T170: We are on the march! Happily, Donovan is ready to invade from his end and signaled as much with another Iron/Irion Mr. Cairo has a large stack assembled as well (nearly as large as mine ). JR4 has another stack nearly as large. And that will likely be my downfall, 10 turns quicker with Elkad and I would have been able to launch into Wetbandit at least 10 turns if not more earlier, and Mr. Cairo would not have his stack ready. The only way I can win is if I can finagle alliances just right in an AI diplo game , but here we go ... grab your popcorn !

   

This is Donovan's army with a half dozen knights in range in that other stack, and the workers in place to road.

[Cornflakes]

Wetbandit slammed his Catapults into me as expected and I took heavy losses as expected. But I still have a significant stack in play and pushed forward. Donovan came through in the south with one city capture last turn and looks to have enough military to capture a 2nd city this turn. I'm optimistic by nature, but I'm not going to sugar coat this. I believe Mr. Cairo's correct play is to sit back and let us take on Wetbandit. I'm confident that Donovan and I together can be successful against Wetbandit even if Mr. Cairo sits back ... but if Mr. Cairo waits and doesn't pile into Wetbandit now with us, he will be sitting in a pretty position to swoop in and crush both Donovan and my stacks once we exhaust ourselves against Wetbandit. JR4 could make a similar play from the other side. This doesn't look pretty, but I am 100% certain that sitting around and waiting will not lead to victory and so I throw the Hail Mary and hope that the politics and alliances work out

Surely JR4 and Mr. Cairo are delighted for us to eliminate the tech-leader-just-took-Liberalizm rival while they sit back and merrily tech away. Not saying I blame them at all if they don't lift a finger 

[Cornflakes]

Log shows Cairo declared on Wetbandit as well. My sentry was not able to detect an advance but was a couple tiles out of position, finishing to defog Cairo’s land rather than hanging out right on the border. Will JR4 declare from the south?

In a perfect world JR4 will invade Wetbandit from the south, and then either JR4 or Cairo would annihilate the exposed stack of the other in neutral territory as soon as Wetbandit is eliminated 

[Cornflakes]

Cairo has declared on Donovan and captured one of the former-Viking cities. I could actually see Cairo ignoring Wetbandit from here and just blitzing through Donovan:

   
   

Donovan is lowest world power with a lot of land and pop. I can't touch Cairo, and JR4 doesn't appear to have the army to be a counterweight on the other side of Cairo. But Cairo is JR4's problem to stop, not mine. 

I'm not sure what Wetbandit took with Liberalism. Last turn I could see on the tech trading screen that he could research Nationalism, Gunpowder, or Replaceable Parts. I assumed that he would take one of these, but this turn he still showed that he could research all of these. I didn't check the other techs since I was certain that he would take one of the above.

[Cornflakes]

What went wrong this game? I started strong. Had a minor setback early thanks to Impi pressure, but managed to put the defensive axes to good use capturing Woolly Mammoth from the barbs. Despite not having any early traits as IND/SPI I managed to land Oracle and overtake 1st place in all relevant categories by T75:

T75: 

1st place in all relevant categories! This is with 100% research slider on a double-arrow tech and Oracle culture, but rival best has Stonehenge or one of the creative civs. I swapped a single citizen (newly grown this turn) from a grass forest to plains forest to get #1 on the MFG category. After taking the screenshot I dialed back the research slider and whipped off 3 pop but remain first in food and decent in the other categories. Here is the end of turn demos shot:

   

My score has skyrocketed recently and with Oracle and my demos I don't think I'll be able to slide into the mid game under the radar.

30 turns later around turn 100 I'm still in a good position, although by this time I am out of room to expand with the fewest number of cities. Looking at my dotmap I don't see how I could have settled any better. Here's a current screenshot of my core:

   

I could have squeezed in one more poor foodless not-even-fishing-village city in the jungle north of Woolly Mammoth. I could have split off one of the clams from Missing Link to a city 1SW of silver, and looking back that site would at least have turned a profit for no risk. Those 3 forests could have been chopped into basic infrastructure and then grow onto all available coast, then stagnate on a couple mine and plains cottages. But still this is clearly not enough land to ride to victory, and expansion is required through the sword and hammer

As we hit turn 100 I've got forges up and running throughout the empire with MFR nearly double my closest rival, and I think this is the point where I went wrong:

Was out of town when T100 came around, I’ve been working overtime squeezing in the turns, and turns themselves now take as long at turn + report back 50 turns ago. I’m still #1 MFG by a margin of about 115 to 65. My food has stagnated and dropped to #6 but I think I ran out of land quicker than other players.

Elkad signed peace so nothing interesting to report there. Research is a little slow at about 10% now. I have obtained Code of Laws so expenses will start coming down, which is even more important because inflation hit starting T100 I believe. I’m tracking inflation rate, we’re at 5% already by T107 so inflation will make a noticeable impact. 3 courthouses will be finished end of turn and then it’s back to Research builds to aim towards knights

In 7 turns I’ll have a pure Great Engineer to bulb Machinery. 20 turns later I’ll have about a 70% chance at another engineer to bulb Guilds. In these 27 turns I’ll need to research currency + archery + iron working + Monarchy + Feudalism + HBR (total around 3000 beakers, 2400 raw beakers). My plan is Guilds + MFG > >>> win. For 25 turns I could devote half my MFG to research and get 1500 raw beakers. I’ll surely be able to get the necessary beakers for the rest. Then it’s a dice roll on engineer to bulb Guilds or another 10 turns if I miss the engineer.

Unless something changes (like Elkad tilting and throwing everything at me) my tentative plan once I hit total war mode is attack Superdeath first for Pyramids to enable Police State. From there roll over Superdeath completely to eliminate any accumulated war weariness. After that, evaluate and potentially launch a decapitation strike against the then-strongest GNP to ensure I’m not facing the next generation of military.

Maybe I’m delusional about the long vs. short time horizon planning. It’s quite possible that someone focusing on GNP could reach the next generation of military tech, but I think in a 7 player game I’ll be quick enough and be able to pound through the rivals. Once I reach Guilds I may pave the cottages with water mills for the production.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think the correct play from this position was to turn the MFG advantage into an immediate army via HBR + Construction and conquer someone right away rather than waiting 25 turns putting a significant portion of my MFG into wealth/research while my rivals caught up in development and teched forward (I was very surprised by the overall rapid tech pace of this game ... compare to PB 44 for example).

[Cornflakes]

Mr. Cairo is eating Donovan now. It's JR4's turn to move. JR4 has no land border with Donovan so he can't easily pile on and take some cheap pickings there.
A) Try to take land from strong neighbors with little chance at victory like me, Superdeath, and Wetbandit. I don't see JR4 winning by getting bogged down with any one of us.
B) Sit back and tech while Cairo eats Donovan cheap
C) Attack Cairo and knock him down

What will it be?

[Cornflakes]

It hit me that Civ 4 is actually a 1UPT game ... except that each 1 unit consists of ever-growing-numbers of fractional components. At the start of the game you might have 1 warrior, then axe + spear, then 6 swords + 8 HA ... then 16 knights, 12 crossbows, 32 catapults, and a billion ancient units all assembled together into a STACK OF DOOM!!!!! (as my thread title puts it). And the numbers just keep growing, by the Industrial era there are 100's of infantry, cavalry, and cannon on the map ... So many units to keep track of and shuffle, yet all that really matters is the size of your doom stack (and your tech but that is obvious). In fact, Civ 4 is actually a 1-unit-per-front game! Civ 6 has its own carpet-of-doom and logistics issues, but overall my experience with Civ 6's movement rules is favorable. And late game Civ 6 turns take much less time compared to Civ 4 leading to an overall quality of life improvement.
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Anyway, back to the game at hand. My goal on the Wetbandit front was to knock out the tech leader and hopefully spark something that I could take advantage of. The knock-out has been accomplished. Any further gains into Wetbandit will only be indefensible against Cairo (and full-out-conquering was never the plan). The turn just rolled so this screenshot is from last turn, and I'll put the follow-up screenshot from this turn afterwards.

   

The above screenshot is a turn old now, but my Sentry knight inside of Cairo's captured city somehow died losing that vision. Cairo's army in the west has recently captured DZ's city there. I captured Wetbandit's northern city for the capture gold to help keep me solvent for another 2 turns (cost only 1 trebuchet). In retrospect I should have razed that city instead. I need to send a strong signal to JR4 that I'm not strong enough to face Cairo alone and razing cities instead of capture is a good start. At the time I took this screenshot I was considering withdrawing from my first captured city Napolinguini in order to try and trap Wetbandit. 

   

Any units that Wetbandit used to re-capture I'll be able to kill. Wetbandit's main stack is located in his capital. If Wetbandit moves his stack up to Orange, I'll be able to kill it. If Wetbandit slowly advances without recapturing then I'll have the option next turn of holding in place or withdrawing further east. The main goal now is to convince JR4 that the time for action is now.