Worst Turns Ever

[Fintourist]

The actual worst civ turns/feelings that I've experienced are more related to various kingmaking issues, but when I count those out I think I'll have to give dtay the honor of the hardest single blow. Dtay commando-razed our capital in PB13. Of course I blame OH, because he was turn-playing at the time and overall it was not that important, because due to suttree conflict and couple of other reasons we were out of the running already and just trying to provide a good game for the remaining contenders. So probably I've so far survived without game-losing surprise attacks and can't really compete with many of the previous posts and of course not at all with rego. Below is anyways the relevant turn report by OH, which overall is pretty entertaining..

Turn 248 part one

I don't think so.


I do think so. I offered the same back to him.


And we should have saved ourselves 30 gpt by waiting for this! I accepted, and we could declare-peace Mack to cancel the other one, but then he might offer it to our northern neighbour. So perhaps not.


These are what's left of the six commando infantry that it took to burn Agincourt. We'll need to kill them this turn. Then we turn our attention to getting reparations... At least this screwed dtay's peacetime trade bonus with Mack. We can end up ahead here, but only if we can take dtay's capital off him and get it producing like Agincourt was. That's not going to be easy. In the mean time should we think about putting Wall St or Oxford somewhere else?


This is where Commodore struck.


Our new capital - anyone know why the game chose a size 14 city being pressured on Mackoti's border for us? We lost another 1% on the rice tile even putting 120 culture into it last turn - I'm going to bet that Mack is gearing up for a culture win, so we just need to accept that we're not getting it back and work out what size Konig can survive at. I'm farming one of the workshops, I think we'll lose another in the next ten turns, but after that we should get a little grace.


Bureau is no longer a good option, so lets switch to Nationhood. I guess slavery is a good option too right now, I just wish we'd got fascism to allow police state... Dtay has Artillery, which means a land war is going to be tricky, but he isn't getting Oil from anyone so naval stuff should favour us. Right now Scooter has one source of oil and plako, Mack and Com have two each. Should we offer plako something for his oil?

Turn 248 part two

So onto the fighting, first we repulse the invader scum.


pinch Inf vs C4 commando inf 64% LOSS
C1 Inf vs injured C4 commando inf 99% WIN


C2 pinch Inf vs C4 commando inf 65% WIN
withdraw II cav vs C4 commando inf 59% withdraw LOSS
But that injures him enough that a CIII Inf gets 85%, but should still get enough XP to promote to Commando next turn... WIN
Finally C1 inf vs injured C4 commando Inf 99% WIN

We're left with one 17 XP Infantry after that. Should perhaps have been possible to get another, but the other two are 15 and 16 XP, so not far off...

In the east this galleon has been lurking with intent for a while, the Machine Gun and Infantry in Fortunato make attacking there a no-no, but Berlin should be possible to take.


C2 Amphi Infantry vs 80/100 CG2 Infantry 34% WIN


C2 Amphi Infantry vs musket 96% WIN
86 gold doesn't seem like a great reward. I burnt the city but won't delete the Inf, just in case dtay doesn't fancy risking the battle.


We're now, painfully, 2XP away from that Great General and two turns of research away from Mil Sci. Where else can we attack?


Oh, I know... Now the odds aren't great here because Milos is on a hill, but we've got two airships in position to scratch the top defenders and some amphi cuirs to clear the way for our brave boys. This chap won't win, but should get a hit or two, allowing our Infantry to get odds... (there is a 20% chance he gets no hits) Interestingly it doesn't mention withdrawal, does that mean that amphibious attacks remove your withdrawl odds?


C2 amphi Cuir vs scratched C2 formation Inf 1% LOSS (3 hits)


C3 amphi Cuir vs C1 Inf 1% LOSS (0 hits )
C2 amphi Cav vs C1 Inf 3% WIN!!!!!111!!
And we have our Great General

I'll leave it at that for now, I'm going to play the rest of the turn tomorrow, perhaps with a bit more feedback. Things to do:
- Revolt to Nationhood/slavery
- Upgrade Ironclads to destroyers
- Decide whether to research Mil Sci or save cash for upgrades
- Take Milos and put enough Machine Guns in it to hold it.
- Whip and draft a bunch of units
Anything else?

It's almost 5 AM in Finland and I just came out of a club so put the following comments into proper perspective!

Fintourist thought progress (wasted edition)

1. Nooooooo! Fu dtay! Nooooooo! This hurts!!

2. How did this actually happen? Did he build railroads inside our borders and then declare? I somehow thought that you can't build railroads inside your opponents borders, but never bothered to check the actual mechanics. Partly because I was overconfident and thought that dtay would not have balls to attack us (he has been very conservative and passive the whole game), partly because I was simply too lazy.

3. Damn it.

4. Good job dtay I think both me and OH appreciate these kinds of attacks.. even if we happen to be the targets Even more respect if you are actually ready for what now follows...

5. Just for the record, the fact that this happened was clearly our mistake, but I'm not blaming you OH for the least bit. First, because at this stage of the game it's extremely time-consuming (and also difficult) to check all the attack possibilities every single turn. Second, I know that your RL is extremely busy. Third, Despite knowing that you are busy I haven't logged in for several turns. (I'm sorry)

6. Anyways, let's not be disappointed!! Let's enjoy this! Our game has been struggle since the very first turn. We lost 15-20 turns immediately because miserable start resources etc., our aggressive suttree attack lead to a 50+ turn grudge war where 90 % of his cities ended up as gifts to mackoti and our squeezed geopolitical position has been a complete nightmare! Losing one sucky capital does not change a single thing! It's not like our economy matters anyways! It's struggle all the way!

7. I repeat, let's enjoy this! Let's make dtay pay the iron price!

8. That being said: I definitely don't want us to go full suttree towards dtay! Yes, I'm happy to attack dtay and fight the war kind of like it were a zero-sum game. But! If mackoti (or anybody else) attacks us opportunistically I don't want that we gift our cities to mack (leave them undefended, gift them in peace deals or whatever) just so that we can maximize the damage to dtay.
First of all, I think that's extremely lame behavior. Something that I have despised earlier in this thread.
Second, I see dtay's attack mostly as "strictly business". Our unit positioning has been pretty aggressive during the last ~20 turns so we kind of asked for this. And I think we could have well done the same thing in his position Well, who am I kidding, we would have made at least 10 different plans to sack Agincourt and several other cities if we were in his position At least if we were feeling suicidal..
So... what I'm trying to say.. If we are attacked by someone, I have no problem with making peace with dtay and concentrating our forces against the new aggressor.

9. Anyways! I'm happy to see that you have taken proper measures to revenge this sneaky attack! Controlling the seas should not be too difficult with oil advantage, so let's do that (it's important) and try to take the island off dtay while threatening multiple other border/coastal cities. Or how do you see our targets!?!? Let's try to avoid losing more cities to commando strikes, especially keeping Jamestown safe is important!

10. Keep up the good work and I repeat, let's not be disappointed! This is a perfect invitation to have some military fun! Even if someone would say that our position was fine on T0 or T50, this game definitely was a mess by T150, there was nothing to lose at that point and even less now, let's make sure that both ours and dtay's game is even more mess by T275!

11. Aaaand let's try to chat tomorrow (today)

[Old Harry]

Great idea for a thread Scooter!

I've had a few headbanging turns to wallow in:
- My first PBEM when Serdoa attacked me and I thought my game was over before it had even started
- The capital raze in PB13 by dtay was painful, but being a pitboss meant civstats warned us and I waited until I was feeling good about it before logging in - I'd guess PBEM's cause more heartache as you don't get the warning
- My troubles in PB30 came early enough that I wasn't that invested in the game, so I don't think it really ranks

But the worst one I can think of didn't even involve a war - it was ~t150 in PB18 and we'd just researched Economics and were polishing off Mardoc and Azza while gearing up to attack dtay to try and slow down his runaway.

We weren't in a golden age so revolting to Free Market would cost us a turn of anarchy, but we thought we'd have some fun first and capture a city or two (can anyone guess where this is going). Here is the turn report:

Turn 149

To solve our happy and health issues we offered Ivory to Wetbandit for his Dye, cancelled our Iron gift to CH and offered Iron for banana to Cynheard.

Fintourist bombarded Troubleshooter down to 14%, took Purge at the cost of one Knight and Yellow courtesy of a HA withdrawal (approx 50/50 not to die) and a flawless Knight win (which he claimed he'd lost, the bastard ). We made 173 in capture gold, which doesn't sustain us for too long, but is welcome all the same. We should take TS next turn, Blue on t152, Green on t154 if we wait for cats or t152 if we just throw a bunch of Knights at it. Violet could fall the same turn as Green with luck, the cats are probably more useful at Communist, which should then fall around about t155 and free us from war weary hell. BGN has a galley that could hit Yellow next turn if he wanted, but he's busy fighting a lot of other battles at the moment, interfering here wouldn't be wise.


Next we revolted to Free Market... We'll have to see what these screens look like next turn.






Oh, but hang on. Next turn?


Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111!11!!!!!!! We checked the formula and capturing Yellow put us over the one-turn anarchy limit . With 33 cities it's 1.99, with 34 cities it's 2.02. Stupid game . Looking on the bright side we save 11 gpt in unit support costs .

Demos (not looking too good right now) and power.

Fintourist said it best:

This is possibly the biggest mistake of our civ career. You can imagine how frustrating it is when you spend time every turn to win a hammer or food here and there and with one click you waste ~800 gold, ~250 hammers, ~150 food surplus, some EPs and new cities will take longer to come out of revolt... That's basically what that one extra turn of anarchy costs us

Free market will be awesome though, >200 commerce extra per turn so it's worth even 2 turns of anarchy. But you know, if we had just revolted at the start of the turn we would not have wasted all those aforementioned resources. This is basically a comparable loss to simply deleting a great merchant or something like that.

You know, we even had discussed about anarchy turns a while ago, but we did not search for the exact formula and when we played last turn it did not cross our minds that new captures (and specifically that 34th city) might push us over the limit..

Oh well, gifting one extra turn to all our opponents is a big setback, almost a game-losing move. But now it's already a sunken cost. We just need to keep pushing and win this thing despite handicapping us.

What really hurt was that we thought we were in with a shout - bumping along in the top five in such a big game, and to lop off a turn of potential at that point felt way worse than PB13's capital raze.

Oh yeah, and then Grimace provided some - in hindsight - spectacularly incorrect commentary:

Oh, I think one extra turn of anarchy is unlikely to be the sole cause of not winning. I think it unlikely that anyone plays a perfect Civ game, so if you don't win, it's probably because of a series of mistakes rather than just one.

Given that we ended up tying the game with TBS and had numerous times when we brought forces to bear on dtay and then on TBS just a turn too late to do the real damage we'd hoped for I think this mistake really did cost us... (But ninety nine times out of a hundred Grimace would have been spot on.)

[dtay]

Our worst turns are... closely intertwined

Mine is def the turn in PB18 that both saw Finharry begin their war of naval terror, AND had Pindi's Chucklenaught-led devastation of my cavalry offensive, resulting in him successfully defending himself against rifles and cavs without I believe even gunpowder.

So as I'm guessing people are aware, I had twin err, lets go with disasters last turn.

On the Pind front:
Pind wiped the cavalry stack. Honestly I should have done a sim for this one, all the material I'd seen of Pins v 22 cavalry, but did not. From the looks of it Pind lost a lot of his CHKs and a few knights, so he certainly took losses, but def a huge hammer gain for him.



Razed the cities to get the culture pressure off. I probably should have made this compromise earlier, I could have had both of these cities razes and the one I lost up north, AND keep my cav stack if I hadn't been greedy.




Anyway, I probbaly have to use the artist on the holy city (or maybe one of the front cities, I'll look at the expected borders, but very probably the holy city. That'll give me a defensible front and hopefully I can hold the holy city and the 2 cities beyond it.



On the lovely new naval front (ie: PB13 redux)

Finharry declared war, moved a bunch of ships into forking locations, and razed a pretty unimportant city I took from CH. I think I'll hold most/all of my cities next turn (exception below), but a few of them are close calls. I had just enough troops to give every city I think a reasonable survival chance but I'm stretched thin.







This one is the weird. there are 3 galleons, so 9 troops, but didn't attack deshpite probably being able to burn a city. I kind of suspect some of these are empty. We'll see, if they aren't they can raze at least 1 city of their choice.

What should help is astro at EoT, then upgrades and overflow into frigates to clear out the intruding navy. Except OH frigates aren't far behind



Overall shot



Demos




Grand Strategy -
Well this is a huge setback. The romp through Pind is def over, I don't have the material and obviously can't transport it over right now. I'm going to for the immediate future just try to hold what I have and hopefully get some peace deals. I offered one to Pind just to see, but I doubt he'll take it.

The MAJOR fear is Krovice piling on. That would be... bad. I think in that scenerio we might be looking at "suck up anarchy, get into nationhood, draft EVERYTHING." That'll crash the econ, but should put a stop to any enemy advances. Frankly, I'm vaguely considering preemptively doing that just to send the signal to OH and Krovice that there will be no gains here. I really need to convince krovice to not start a war in the first place, not just deny them gains in the event they do, cause it'd still be pretty fucking bad for me.

[EDIT SPOILER FROM THE FUTURE] Krovice joins in [/EDIT SPOILER FROM THE FUTURE]

If I can get ahold of the seas, or at least PART of the seas, that will hopefully free up some coastal garrissons whcih I can then transpot to Pind-land and put on the krovice border.

Broadly speaking, I bet this puts BGN in pole-position. I'm probably still in contention to win, but i doubt i'm the front runner in a few turns. Though really I might already have priced this in, b/c what is happening is pretty close to what I feared my geographic position would lead to.

[Sareln]

I think my worst turn (of many candidates) involved getting boated by Fintourist, I'd need to look it up.

[Fintourist]

I think my worst turn (of many candidates) involved getting boated by Fintourist, I'd need to look it up.

Yeah.. One's worst turn is another's favorite turn..

***

And OH, yeah that anarchy screw-up is definitely a strong candidate. You had turn-played most of our war turns and I just wanted to quickly burn/conquer couple of cities as well... And IIRC the really big benefit from not revolting immediately was just the ability to read demos and other financial metrics later during the turn if there would be any interest in that..

***

Dtay: Yeah, that was definitely one of the big turns of PB18, when not the biggest. Pindicator was our hero.. Our naval front could have been much worse for you IIRC. I think if we had had our ships in place one turn earlier (see the above anarchy mistake ) we could have burnt ~6 cities from the fog, but disappointingly you increased your defenses at the very last moment.

[Jkaen]

Due to the awfully bare map I wasn't that invested in the game to be honest, but I would say having a mistform turn up and camp my city from about turn 25 onwards in FFH2PBEM6 was a pretty bad turn