[Spoilers] naufragar's fist full of pesos (Montezuma)

[naufragar]

I encountered my first chariot:


He can kill an axe basically for free. (27% chance to lose the chariot.) Pharsalos looks impossible to capture. The cultural defenses plus the hill seem insurmountable. Plus, I believe that city is a natural fortress: a 1-tile chokepoint on a hill. Nasty.





I hope that my going first isn't what enables SV to stuff enough units in the city. Oh well. Ziankali continues to rise in power. I don't know what he has, but I'm pretty sure it could kill me. My only hope is that he has a weaker neighbor somewhere else and he doesn't want to fight the #3 power. But I certainly don't feel like the #3 power with my handful of axes. Suite has passed Ziankali in crop yield. (And Suite is Spi/Pro!)

One final note: you can see I've left only one axe in my city near nane. It will be interesting to see how he acts once peace is up.

[Rusten]

At least he goes into a war prep phase before attacking again. And your economy is worse.  

The second sentence explains the first. Also, welcome back!

I will point out that Miguelito thinks I should expand peacefully and Papa Bear thinks I should conquer more than one city. I am in the middle of these two viewpoints. Therefore, I am a moderate.

Cheers, happy to be back. Your threads are always amusing (for all the wrong reasons).

[naufragar]

What's more likely, that my failures should be attributed to misplay or that the RNG, mapmakers, opponents, and even game designers are all conspiring against me?  

But even I occasionally make mistakes:


I wasn't thinking and I didn't attack the phalanx on flat land. Woke up halfway through the turn. Disappointing. As expected Pharsalos is well defended. Note the facing of the top defender.



It looks like that even though Pharsalos is on a choke point, SV has city to the Northeast.

Since I'm compiling evidence that nothing is my fault and the RNG is cruel, notice how every foreign city in this screenshot has received a religion spread while precisely zero of mine have.


I'm also still on my original happy cap. Don't have the tech to unlock the Classical era resources. But perhaps my land is actually good?   I've been whining about the lack of, well, anything, but look where my Crop Yield is:



I'm 36th in Crop Yield (and 45th in both GNP and Mfg) out of 47 living players. How in the world am I beating anybody in Crop? In my western city, for example, I'm refusing to work two food resources in favor of grass cottages because I'm bumping so hard against my happy cap. Let me say that again. I'm working two cottages over two food resources because I'm in such bad shape. But somehow that crop is competitive with my eastern colleagues. Crazy game. But I stand by most of my decisions.

There's only one that I deeply regret. But I'll leave it to the reader to figure out what.

[naufragar]

I'm scared.


I've offered peace to SV so I can pull some troops back. If he's quick on the draw, he can replant the razed city, but very soon Ziankali's gonna hit somebody. Soon he'll have vision of my second city which is defended only by a single spear. (Free religious spreads. Aren't they nice. )

Edit: Also there is a teeny, tiny chance that SV boats my capital...

[naufragar]

Edit: Also there is a teeny, tiny chance that SV boats my capital...

Would you believe that only last turn I 1-pop whipped a spear into the cap? It currently has the Ambush Archer plus the Spear. No clue what's on the boat, of course. If he's got two axes, he could disembark on my cottages and be a real jerk. (Unlike me, who only burned a city.    ) Now, I hear you thinking, "naufragar, you really scuppered your development." coughRustencough This is true. But in conjunction with my misplays, I'll point out that among my first 5 cities, I have 2 grassland river tiles. (4 if you count the other 2 that Suite settled for first-ring and snatched.)


Whereas Ziankali, from his first 4 cities, has...21. I have never criticized a map or map maker and I'm not going to start now. I love LotC and whoever checked the map, and I'm glad to play in this crazy, crazy game. Just please remember, nothing is ever my fault.  

SV didn't accept peace, obviously. I assume that's because he saw my cap only had one unit in it last turn. Wonder what it'll take to get peace, because I'm not taking Pharsalos without catapults, and since I'm going to die before I get catapults...


That's just an awesome city. Like damn. Pharsalos is SV's most recent city (not counting the one I burned). He's had no pressure on this side. Even if I manage to bottle him up, he's gotta be happy with that as his frontier. What a sexy city.

[Rusten]

There's only one that I deeply regret. But I'll leave it to the reader to figure out what.

Ignoring the capital seafood whilst simultaneously settling your 2nd city with no new resources?

RB game reporting is entertainment and your threads represent physical comedy. And I mean that as a compliment... sort of 
You stumbling your way through this game is like Frank Drebin sneaking into Ludwig's office, with all sorts of random chaos and disaster. Hopefully you'll stumble upon a miracle in the end somehow, much like that character. Just keep your spirits up.

Oh and Pharsalos is only 7 tiles away, maybe you could've settled it? It being his most recent city and all.
You're right about the river tiles being ridiculous long term, but the early game is mostly about food resources, so it's not a great excuse.

[naufragar]

Ignoring the capital seafood whilst simultaneously settling your 2nd city with no new resources?

Sort of! I actually stand by the placement of my second city. I knew where Ziankali was, and based on the tech thread I was absolutely certain copper was at the capital. As it was, he still could have killed my second city, but if I planted for any of the food resources he could have killed me way too easily. I lost a scout and a warrior to barbs in the east before I could find the eastern cow (so I was trying to scout!). The only food resources I knew about were 5-6 tiles away from me towards Ziankali and our capitals were 10 tiles distant. People at Civforum were saying that if they were playing Joao, they'd focus on peaceful expansion but one axe would have been too easy. The big regret was teching Masonry, which took time away from Fishing and Sailing. In a vacuum it wasn't stupid to think I could have landed a religion, but I should have realized how bad my land was.

Not having Sailing is coming back to bite me:


By the way, does anyone know how the strike mechanics work...  

You're right about the river tiles being ridiculous long term, but the early game is mostly about food resources, so it's not a great excuse.

I have to disagree. I have 1 police unit for each of my cities and then 8 for an army. SV has the same number of cities as me and a 9 unit strong standing army (at least. That's just what I can see). And yet my tech rate (while I've got the silver) is 0. This is a Deity, Huge map. That kind of discrepancy in tech power was ridiculous from like turn 50. Granted my cities are smaller. Part of that is from needing to build an army to get a food resource above 4f, but part of that is also that SV has an ancient luxury.

I had planned a bitch-fest for turn 100, but I've been spurred to jeremiad by SV's invasion. I'll put it in spoilers if people want to skip useless whining. Again, I'll emphasize that the mapmakers and players are all lovely people. I just need to rant occasionally or I get rusty.

What the ever loving fuck. I've mentioned the river thing, something that should be instantly obvious even from the most zoomed out view. It's grates worse because the beautiful western rivers wind all the way around the exterior of my empire, like they were perfectly placed to be closer to Zinkali and Suite. (Some forgiveness if they're modeled on real rivers. Danube?)

Here's an overview.


Fair, sheep aren't the strongest resource and floodplains aren't resources at all, so I guess it's fine that Ziankali has two sheep and a floodplains 3 tiles away from his capital. Speaking a little more sanely/objectively for a second, the philosophy of this map was clearly designed to be weak as a whole, probably weaker than even a random map. This was LotC's philosophy with the first draft. In theory, I have no problem with weaker maps. The problem in practice is that small imbalances in the map and between combos become huge. It doesn't matter as much if there are a few more 4f tiles for one player while his neighbor gets 6f if the total amount of food is high. But if the land in general is commerce poor, the difference between being Financial and not being Financial becomes even more relevant, for example. On a personal level, I enjoy richer maps because they give a player more opportunities to play. You can see how well you develop your empire, rather than settling a city by your only cow and praying it's enough.

Enough levelheaded discussion. Back to ranting.
What the devil is this?


Kreutzberg has fewer cities than me but has somehow found 3 ancient era luxuries?? Presumably he started with Silver, so be it. (And yes, I did notice the names.)

I made a strategic error when attacking SV. (You may think this should go in the actual report instead of the rant section, but bear with me.) My error was not that I sniped a city when I was on a coast without Sailing, believe it or not. The error was not checking the PB73 map before I did:


You bet your ass nane is separate from SV by water. SV's only two neighbors by land are aspi and me. Aspi is doing great, so I should have realized I'm the appropriate target. SV should cause me as much pain as possible because I'm the expansion vector. So why in pluperfect hell do I have 5 neighbors by land (so, not counting Aspi)?

I'm fine with having five neighbors by land. I'm fine with having essentially no river tiles. I'm fine with not having any nearby horses. (It actually looks like plenty of people didn't get nearby horses. Strange that everyone gets capital bronze to axe rush but can't found their 2nd city for horses.) I'm fine not having any ancient luxuries. I'm fine with rolling Monty. I'm fine only settling cities for Animal Husbandry resources despite needing Agriculture for the capital while being Hunting/Myst. I just get a little exasperated, well, having the maximum number of neighbors by land, while having no river tiles, while not having nearby horses, while missing out on luxuries, while rolling Monty, while being perfectly screwed on techs. I leave out the (by now expected) little love bites of the RNG such as getting two negative events and losing a decently important 85% battle. Fuck my life.

As said, I am a chalice overflowing with love. I have no regrets participating in a really amazing pitboss: 52 players on a handmade map 15 years after civ4 came out. It's all part of the process.

Oh and Pharsalos is only 7 tiles away, maybe you could've settled it? It being his most recent city and all.

And of course this vitiates everything I've ranted about. I do believe I was a bit doomed from the start, but that will always be thrown into doubt: if I were a little sharper, I could have settled my pink dot peacefully and not built up my army, which means I might have taken SV's deer if not actually stolen Pharsalos. All along the way there were improvements I could have made. If I made them, would I have overcome the imbalances of the map? I guess that's what makes the best players so impressive. Me, I'm just an angry man in a feather headdress.

P.S. Naked Gun (and Police Squad!) are art.

[Mjmd]

I wouldn't want to try to balance an Earth map that's for sure. I mean other than the horrible lack of resources, the main thing is that your Poland and have no safe back lines. And we all know what happened to the variouis nations that were where Poland is.......

[Charriu]

... they've build a great empire in the form of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth.

[Empirate]

Those Polish-Lithuanians must have quickly settled for cows and pigs in the southeast then. Reaching the mouth of the Danube before Suite, and the sweet grasslands along the Dnieper in Ukraine would have been their prize. An empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea! Endlessly cottageable green lands!