[SPOILERS] Yuris125 tries to win a game of Civ5 before it fades away

[MJW (ya that one)]

Civ 5 tech stealing works oddly.  The time needed for the spy depends on the cheapest tech available, but once that time is fulfilled, then you can take any available tech.  It's a strategy to deliberately leave something cheap (Optics or Compass on land maps) unresearched and available to exploit that timing quirk.

Didn't they change this to the median tech or am I misrembering?

[T-hawk]

That could be true, and sounds reasonable. Having cheap techs available still drags down the cost/time then.

[yuris125]

After the first steal time to the next one is scheduled to take 90 turns! and I stole the most expensive tech. so not quite sure how exactly it's calculated... doesn't make much sense to me. maybe I should try moving the spy around... The first steal took 14 turns

[T-hawk]

Nobody seems to know how that Potential value actually works.  The time is some combination of that, your spy's experience level, the cost of the target tech (which itself might be the minimum or median or something else), and any anti-spy buildings that might be built in that city (if you have a spy there, you can see the city for if they're in there.)

[yuris125]

As I'm sure you know by now, Ichabod sent some Frigates my way. Since I still use Triremes for naval adventures, I don't have much to counter. This is the beginning of the end

At least Nic (who's after Ichabod in turn order) offered peace and a lux trade immediately, which I was happy to accept. So I have no distractions and and don't need to cover other fronts while trying to defend the best I can

[yuris125]

I think I covered most of what was going on in this game, but I have one thing to add. Not trying to blame the mapmaker or anything but I was curious about why most if not all RB games are played on pangaea maps. Now I have my answer. Once Ichabod conquered both other civs on his continent, and no one was able to make significant progress on ours (think in the end Tombouctu was the only city every to change hands until Ichabod's final attack?), there was no realistic way to stop Ichabod from running away. Not only because intercontinental invasions are difficult logistically, but also because they require you to strip your own land bare of defenders. And I wasn't comfortable doing so in the face of Nic's aggression in the early game

Because of this, the only realistic way of staying competitive with Ichabod for me was to conquer someone on my continent. Perhaps the decision to attack Nic and not HAK was a mistake, and I likely didn't play out the war particularly well. But the pressure of making something happen asap definitely played its part in forcing me to rush the attack and hope my superior numbers will do the trick despite hostile terrain and Nic's competent defending

[Nicolae Carpathia]

My plan in the face of Ichabod's conquest of his island was to go full bore eco, and that meant allowing you to take and keep Hanoi without a fight, and that meant you completely enveloped the Tomboucto salient.

And yeah, that Harar terrain was awful to cross. I didn't even try and contest it, just keep you out of bow shot of Harar. The deliberately inefficient road from my capital to Harar (I could have saved some gold in maintenance costs) meant that I could always reinforce faster, and roll up the western flank with first-initiative crossbow fire. Those things are your bread and butter unit, especially if you have a road network that can concentrate all your firepower onto a handful of chokepoint tiles. That was my key advantage against you, I had an already built road in front of Harar, that could be used to quash any attempt of yours to build your own road along the hilly ridge 2N of mine. Your one attempt at breaking out on the stone tile, I could road up and shoot those few tiles to pieces, but you could not due to the jungle hills blocking shots from your hills. The one tile you could shoot was the cows, and fortunately for me I did not need to occupy it.

But in general, I think you played pretty well. It turns out that this map was actually really good for wide empires, I fell behind badly after my initial wave of cities ("of course Ethiopia goes tall with Tradition"), but it turned out to be a bad choice, due to the high resource diversity of the surrounding lands encouraging expansion (that was one nice thing about this map).

[chumchu]

I think Ethiopia can go wide very well, the stele is the main thing about the civ and it is magnified by wide empires and so is religion.