[SPOILERS] Serdoa goes to war II

[regoarrarr]

And lastly turnupdate. Yeah, I'm learning how to up the thread-postcount, guess which thread I click most often in PB5

That's right! Feed the post-count!!!

Enjoyed catching up on your thread - you look like you're doing quite well here

[Serdoa]

Thanks rego. Though I think that scooter is actually winning this. Not that hard when everyone is either limited by time constraints (Brian as far as I can tell at least) or gunning for me (Commodore, Lewwyn). I'd be happy to leave Lewwyn alone, but his actions are telling me that he rather expands in my directions then in scooters, despite scooter having now the most land (behind me due to the bomb) and by far the most pop.

Honestly, I'd say scooter has this won barring any grave misplays. Yes my economy is better right now (not hard with Pyramids + PHI) but not by that much if I discount culture. He has more food by far (nearly 60 food lead) and I have a slight mfG-lead. That mfG-lead is gone as soon as his cities are finished growing and actually work mines too. His food-lead is nearly impossible for me to catch as I lost a city and a settler and have to produce military like crazy. Yes, still less then if I had to defend against Commist with LBs, but still too much. It boils down to me playing AW while he is playing AP

Well, anyway, Lewwyn brought as I thought a spear killing my chariot. I used my axe and killed his spear in return. I'll have a WE on that island next turn, settler the turn after and hopefully an archer as well. Maybe thats enough to finally settle it. Oh, and I got lucky, winning at 32% against his galley near my elephant city. We had those galley sitting next to each other for some turns now but I never attacked till now. Reason? Twofolded:

1.) I have finally finished the Trireme and moved it to the elephant-city. Even if I lost, I should be good to defend with the Trireme.
2.) He had a settler and another military unit in his city last turn. Both gone this turn. Has he loaded them on the galley? I don't know, but I won't risk that he shuttles them directly onto the tiles I want to plant a city at and where I have even built the road to already. I'll rather take a 33% chance to not let him do that then trying to raze the city later on.

I'm sure that I'll going to read after the game from him too that I am cheating because I didn't attack earlier. But yeah, there is reason to my decisions.

I'll also going to produce at least 3 more settlers quickly. Just need some more workers too. And troops. Oh, and infrastructure would be kinda nice to build too. All that fast research doesn't help much if you can't build the damn things you researched ^^. Well, I should still have the whole Aest-> Lit -> Music-line above all others (though that is only so helpful unfortunately) and also all techs that anyone else has except Machinery. I'll have Feudalism in 2-3 turns I guess and Machinery should only take a few more turns. Guilds after that and then finally Banking. Maybe I can get that by T90? I'll probably bulb it as my next GP was born, again a GM. I had hoped for a low odds GE or a GS but well, I run mostly merchants. Not the worst outcome though. I could even think about settling him. 13 turns till I would bulb. In that time he'll produce 13 food and adjusted 117 gold (78+50%) and 68 beakers (39+75%), or a total of 185 commerce. Bulbing will yield around 600 beakers I guess. So around 45 turns till breakeven, though some of that is provided upfront + the added food, so maybe only around 35-40 turns? That actually sounds like settling would - again - be the better alternative. Well... wait. I'll also need ~4-5 turns to tech Banking + to switch into Merc.

Oh, crap, scratch that. I'll need it for the GA so that I can actually switch my civics to Mercantilism. Probably should try to get in the GA CS as well and maybe Philosophy even before it. Though that also means I need to build a Monastery in Kipling to get at least one Buddhist missionary over to my cap to actually get anything out of Pacifism. Or I'll take Taoism, I don't think anyone will beat me to it. Hm... If I had the spare hammers, I could of course build the Paya... just need 150 raw hammers for it I think. Thats only 3 settlers, who cares Ok, so better I research techs, I have more GNP than hammers.

1st Tech path: Feud -> Machinery -> Guilds -> Banking -> Philosophy -> CS
2nd Tech path: Feud -> Philo -> Machinery -> Guilds -> Banking -> CS

2nd one would get me the religion earlier (and therefore more reliable), would also make it so that I don't need to get a Monastery + missionary in Kipling (more time to produce Archers) and would not delay Mercantilism if I switch into it anyway only after getting Pacifism as well. What would make sense, because I probably can get at least 2-3 GP out of my first GA.

Ok, now for production. Does it make sense to produce Archers right now? I feel like my best course of action would be to produce the needed settlers and have them sit and wait some turns (and get some workers as well) till I have Feudalism, so that I can produce their LB-escorts. 2 LBs, 1 WE, 1 Axe for the really annoying parts of the world (nearly everywhere) and 2 LBs for the quiet parts of the world (one spot only ).

Lastly, again about the game: I shuttled 2 more WEs into Kipling as Commodore can bring 8 X-Bows and 1 Spear next to my city this turn. Another 2 Swords are nearby and can reach the next turn. I have now 6 Archers, 4 WEs and 1 Axe in the city. I'll whip it next turn for another Archer and will overflow from that into another one. I can also get another Archer next turn + 2 more WEs in 2. I hope that is enough to keep the city. I'll probably produce 2 catapults and will move them in the city via galley-unload. I am not sure but I think I will have movement left on them when I do it that way, yes? If so I could unload them and attack the same turn with them, before he can retreat. That would be godly.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, if you unload directly inside a city (or a fort) the unit keeps its movement.

[scooter]

Reading through your thread now. This was a longer post, but it strikes me as one of the most valuable posts in any of the threads thus far:

<snip>
Back to my introduction. I have ignored the fact that this map screams for a economic solution being NOT the cottage-economy. It is lush but does not have many rivers. It is AW so traderoutes are only internal. It does have some water tiles, but only around 2-4 per city. Everything should have told me "Get the Pyramids". And taking into account that I have no way to pop my borders AND there is stone in the capitals BFC (which also is a 5yield-tile without the jungle and with an improvement) it really should have been obvious how my research path should look like. But as I said, I ignored that entirely, just concentrating to do shiny micro.

Too bad none of the rest of us figured this out on time. Though with the way things were rolling, I'm not actually convinced cottages were impossible, but certainly not as strong.

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....stcount=42

This whole post was a fun post. Not much to comment on, but I think it was a fun way to evaluate everyone. May have to steal it at some point.

I'm using airlift quite frequently now. The empire is big enough that especially the one-movers need some time to reach their destination. And settlers are much quicker. So I have moved several settlers alone (having normally vision enough to be sure no surprises wait in the fog as I settled most cities with overlap) and simply airlifted an archer as soon as the new city was founded. Also workers are great to airlift, being able to get them from the middle of my empire to the outer reaches in half (or even less) the time it would cost to travel their via road is just great.

I had a feeling this would be really useful. Glad to see it has been used to its fullest extent. I admit I was pretty surprised you were the only one who took PHI, I really wanted it and nearly took it anyway after you took the leader I wanted. Also this post:

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....stcount=90

Glad to see Brian actually did harass you with his chariot as I was trying to get him to do so . I moved my soon-to-be-dead scout right at you, hoping Brian would attack it and see your settling party . Unfortunately PHI meant you were fine. Oh well, was worth a shot.

And just for information of the lurker crowd: I was made aware of the discussions about me cheating. No I didn't receive any information about the game itself, just that I was called a cheater directly and indirectly by some of the players of this game as well as from some lurkers. That's why I still haven't played the save, because I am considering dropping out.

This is just too bad as it was not true at this stage of the game. I read the other threads before this one on purpose, and there's no real signs of people calling you cheater. Honestly, the only true "accusations" came when everyone was mad and rage-quitting. Too bad. Getting lucky happens, and people venting out of frustration happens. Anyways, on to more interesting things.

Regarding those unit logicistics, they are actually one of the parts where my pick really shines, as it would be simply impossible with 2-move-galleys. Quite happy with the Vikings tbh. Probably would be even more happy with Aztecs (not sure if Brian still hasn't reached CoL, otherwise he should easily be able to whip himself back into this game imo).

Yeah I'm noticing you've done an amazing job of leveraging your picks. The Viking galley games have been fun to read about. Why Aztecs though btw? I felt taking their Sac Altar from the start as a bit of a sucker's choice in this game because the capital seems better suited to vertical growth than heavy whipping. Maybe I'm wrong though.

I would stop him if I could, but I can't. Commist won't (and can't imo) and scooter is - again - the big winner, as I suspect Lewwyn to come for me. Thats actually one of the most annoying things in this game, scooter is left alone from all of us. Or at least I think thats the case looking at his food graph.

FWIW, I was frequently flashing my strongest units at my neighbors (elephant at Commodore, Keshiks at everyone else) so that they knew I was ready if they came. That seemed to dissuade people. Plus I rushed hard to get boats into both vulnerable bodies of water to make sure naval raids on me were impossible. So it wasn't quite so much everyone ignoring me as I got things in order. Also, I was getting a wave of happy sources at this time and had been whipping hard prior to this, so my food spurt at this time was all my cities growing onto improved tiles thanks to my army of workers. So that's the explanation there.

This is about when the thread ended, and you talked about state of the world. Honestly, I had my chances of winning floating around 25% or so when the game ended. After reading Commodore's thread and now yours, it was much higher than I realized - closer tothe 50% range probably. You really invested a lot into taking Kipling and holding it - saw in Commodore's thread you had something like 8-9 units in it. I knew you had kept and Music-bombed the city from seeing the culture and the city name that clearly was something Commodore settled, but didn't realize it was such a hot war. I do think PHI was pretty amazing in this game - airlifting is a huge military bonus here. It's why I just ran home after razing Sigtuna - I knew I couldn't compete with your airlifting. Also had no idea that was slated to be your GLib city - I couldn't compete with you on GLib so I wasn't even going to try.

Finally, I am sorry for all I wrote yesterday. Feel free to be mad at me. But again, it rose out of frustration at the game ending over something I wrote in my spoiler thread which shouldn't be possible. Anytime I pour a lot of effort into writing a nice thread and then find out the game might not have died if I had just written less, that's really frustrating. So I took it out on you. You played a nice game, and it's too bad we won't get a show-down in the late game or get to see if the cottages could catch the Pyramids. Good game.