Gaspar & Noble make their triumphant? return; mostly just get asked about "The List"

[Gaspar]

A few added/modified thoughts on Noble's preceding post...

Noble is too hard on everyone - most of all himself. Perfect is the enemy of the good, etc. The overwhelming majority of the "mistakes" that Noble quotes above can be attributed to basically two primary concerns - that we have not played this game in like 5 years and you forget stuff, and also that we made too many assumptions.

The biggest errors we've made so far were:

1. We minimized how much shitty start techs hurt.
   
2. We made a bunch of assumptions regarding the shape of the landscape based on Serdoa's scout movements, which is silly, because Serdoa is just as rusty as we are.
   
3. We got way too deep into a microplan before discovering the location of copper.
   

All that said, I don't think we're in bad shape. A little behind but we still have plenty of reasons to be optimistic. We probably want to get that scout off firing west rather than north to meet everyone else. We probably want to scrounge a moment for a scouting workboat. Basically, we just need to get a bit more of the map revealed and prioritize getting the land nearby settled (and defended) and then go from there.

[NobleHelium]

3) I should have noticed the EP bit earlier but I've been a bit deflated by the game recently, mainly because a variety of factors have caused this game to be nothing like I envisioned it.  When I discovered Civ4 and specifically CtH was active on RB I had high hopes and probably an unrealistic vision of how a game might look like.  And the game has really turned out nothing to be like that, starting with the map.

I would like to know more about what you envisioned it to be.

That is complicated and requires backstory.  It is not really related to mod design if that is what you are asking about.  If you'd like to hear about it you can get me on GChat using the email address in the organizing thread, or on Steam under this username. I am also on the (largely inactive) RB Discord.

[pindicator]

I don't take it personal, Noble, and I'm glad you both are posting criticisms. There's like 2 big things i wish I could change with the map. Maybe 3.

People who know me IRL say I'm too hard on myself but generally I don't believe most people are hard enough on themselves

[Gaspar]

I don't take it personal, Noble, and I'm glad you both are posting criticisms. There's like 2 big things i wish I could change with the map. Maybe 3.

People who know me IRL say I'm too hard on myself but generally I don't believe most people are hard enough on themselves

I can definitely name more than 3.

[pindicator]

If you haven't mentioned them yet, I'm all ears. No idea if I'll be making maps again but I still like the feedback

[NobleHelium]

Played turns 35 and 36. Finished rebuilding the sandbox.



Beyond the silvers is a decent albeit small river valley.  Maybe we'll try to claim this, maybe not.  Mulling it over.  A lot will depend on what happens in the next 10 turns of course.  Remember we want a defensible border against SD.



Lewwyn grew his capital to 5.  Bob teched Wheel.  Serdoa probably teched Fishing? But then there is 5k population unaccounted for. Serdoa's second city already grew to 2 though, so that doesn't make sense either. Hope I can figure this out later.



Rusten regrew his capital to 4.  SD also grew his capital to 4.  Lewwyn appears to have grown his second city to 2 and founded a third city, although I'm not sure on this.  Why do I get the feeling other people did not have super awkward food and forest placement at their capital?

[Gaspar]

Turns 37 and 38 have been played.

I shall call this report Two Scouts, in honor of the best episode in the history of television - Two Cathedrals.



Anyway, on t37, we met Lewwyn and Serdoa's scout reappeared. Lewwyn's appearance is welcome as it means we don't have to go find him and he's too far away from us for us to need to care about him for a good long while. Serdoa's scout presented a different issue. The gold city (hereafter to be referred to as Solaris Temple) is the next plant and while it is not aggressive, its better for all involved if Serdoa doesn't know its coming. Well, timing-wise we need to start roading south of the city on t38, so we didn't really like the idea of Serdoa's scout seeing that.



As you can see, the option we decided on was to move the warrior 1S. Serdoa would see this with his natural move east and then hopefully decide to move SE afterwards to avoid conflict. If he moved to the jungle tile, we'd get the option to take a 78% shot at his scout to prevent him seeing the worker moving south and roading. Well, we opened the save to this:



Lewwyn got the message but Serdoa didn't. Who had t38 as the first combat of the game? Who had it as us attacking Serdoa? Well, winner winner, chicken dinner if you did...



3xp and 6 GG points, thanks for playing.

On the same turn in the east, our scout was presented with this question:



I debated moving to the same tile as SD because we'd get slightly better odds than Serdoa's scout did being on a forested hill if SD decided to wardec and then attack after the teleport. Noble then chastised me like a small child for even suggesting it and we decided discretion was the better part of valor and discovered SDs great north for our troubles.



Beyond that, over the last two days Noble has simmed until his fingers bled and my head hurt from listening to him bitch about it. Where are we at from all that? Eh, we have a plan-ish for the next 3 city plants which will no doubt be fucked by pindicator placing horse wherever the largest logistical nightmare would be and uh, that's about it. Here are the last two turns of demos:

[novice]

That’s... aggressive. What diplo options are available in this game?

[NobleHelium]

Relatively traditional No Talking except we have the added "declare war on X" and "stop trading with X" diplo options from SP.

[NobleHelium]

Played turns 39 and 40.



After the scuffle with Serdoa's scout he did not accept our peace treaty offer, which is definitely something we considered.  Normally scout kills mostly happen without much incident in vets games, but his refusal of a treaty indicated that something may be up.  So we promoted to C1 and although I was sorely tempted to attack Lewwyn's scout as well for C2 or Shock (92% odds), we simply moved one tile ahead to take advantage of the vision across the lake.  And we see that Serdoa has a city just to the south, within range of the pig but not claiming it until the border pop.  While this could be his second city, it is most likely his third city, settled just on t39.  So we are in a settling race for the gold, one for which I am hopeful for because he just settled a new city and he is not IMP.  The worker micro is lined up and we shall see what happens.  Lewwyn gets a front row seat.



Serdoa finished Pottery and planted his third city.  Lewwyn got his early holy city land points.  There's other stuff but I'll have to try to figure that out later.





No significant units from Serdoa yet. He may have three warriors though.