[SPOILERS] yuris125, pitboss 76

[yuris125]

Pindicator declared on Commodore. Guess he's ok not contesting my land with Thoth? I couldn't do more to invite an attack from him, Farmer has had a single longbow for defence this entire time, no units at all on some turns

This game has been a bloodbath, we're not at T100 and already had half a dozen wars, including the long one, with Thoth staying at war with me for half the game

[yuris125]

I'm probably dead this turn, Thoth should have enough to kill 6 longbows I managed to put together in the last city




My postmortem thoughts didn't change, I probably could have built more siege units to damage Thoth's stacks before they could attack, but ultimately it came down to the numbers - I just couldn't keep up with Thoth's production, and lack of horses made it harder to stop his siege units. Maybe I could've lasted a little longer, but in the end, me dying now is a direct result of underestimating the threat of Thoth's attack 60 turns ago

I'm somewhat surprised Pindicator didn't make a move to contest my territory with Thoth. With no one else able to make military gains, it seems likely that Thoth will absorb my land and win from there

[yuris125]

After reading everyone's threads.... my biggest mistake was missing the Civil Service bulb at the start. The second biggest mistake was underestimating how early aggressive civs would re ready to pull the trigger on an attack

The way I should've played this opening was hard teching Feudalism and bulbing Civil Service. Earlier Bureuacracy and defenders capable of stopping anything Vikings could throw at me before zerkers - that was the way to go

Hope we keep experimenting with less traditional setups. The discussion around the archipelago pitboss setup suggests that many aren't interested in later era starts, but I'm sure we can put together groups for more games like this

[scooter]

Sorry to the other Started Next To Vikings player. Also looks like you had some brutally timed RNG swings early in your war with Thoth. I really appreciate you reporting it though. It was really interesting to read from your POV.

But the idea of culture flipping barb cities was needlessly cute. I was too scared of an idea of attacking fortified longbows on a hill, but as shown by others, it could've been done profitably and without relying on luck of culture flips, even if I did manage to get enough culture to trigger them

Yeah, it's really easy to forget that Swords are really good at this use case in CtH - I say as someone who also somewhat overlooked them here. The city attack boost on Swords can really be felt and made them pretty hammer efficient against the Longbows. (It also reminded me how much Longbows rely on promos.)

Pindicator declared on Commodore. Guess he's ok not contesting my land with Thoth? I couldn't do more to invite an attack from him, Farmer has had a single longbow for defence this entire time, no units at all on some turns

I read your thread first because it's no longer "in progress," and I figured it was a shorter read, but I admit I was sort of hoping to understand why he never dogpiled you too. Turns out, you didn't know either.

After reading everyone's threads.... my biggest mistake was missing the Civil Service bulb at the start. The second biggest mistake was underestimating how early aggressive civs would re ready to pull the trigger on an attack

The way I should've played this opening was hard teching Feudalism and bulbing Civil Service. Earlier Bureuacracy and defenders capable of stopping anything Vikings could throw at me before zerkers - that was the way to go

It's hard to do a post-mortem when so much of the game was dominated by the way the map was played. On a different map, I think your leader/civ would have been really interesting to see play out. I was really strongly considering Gandhi to pair with America for obvious reasons.


I didn't see a ton of discussion over how you intended to use your PHI-discounted UB. One of the things I was thinking of with PHI was trying to get Education quick to setup an early-ish Oxford build. That was at least back of my mind with PHI, but it was thrown out when my capital burned. I was imagining GLIB + PHI + early Oxford being pretty strong. That path is even stronger with the free Scientist your UB gets. Were you thinking of doing much with that, or not so much? It was tough to tell given that the game made it impossible for that stuff to matter almost immediately with the Viking invasion, but it looked like you were more focused on the religious game than your PHI-discounted UB. (Possible I missed it if you discussed it somewhere, I do tend to skim over pre-game stuff.)

Hope we keep experimenting with less traditional setups. The discussion around the archipelago pitboss setup suggests that many aren't interested in later era starts, but I'm sure we can put together groups for more games like this

I'm with you on this as you know! I would like to declare war on "let's do our 120th attempt on ancient normal games," but it's tough getting signups. I wonder if it would be easier if we were able to mod CtH to fix the religion issue with later era starts, which is just generally a hassle and remains the main drawback. I thought the free tech concept was incredibly fun and would genuinely play a modified version of it again, but it was surprisingly hard to convince 4 other players to play it.

[yuris125]

I was indeed planning to have a great scientist as the 2nd or 3rd great person for an Education bulb, and see how Russia's UB performs in CtH. Great Library was also on my list of highly desirable wonders, and I did have a list of techs I wanted to bulb. Unfortunately Thoth's attack put an end to those plans

It may have looked like I was prioritising religion, given how early I founded Christianity, but in fact I had no particular plans on the religious path apart from "it's really easy for Gandhi to get an early great prophet, access to Theocracy is important, why not bulb it early and get a holy city to put pressure on the barbs". Monk economy is something I would like to try one day, but in this game the intention was to see if I could get value out of Russia's uniques

I don't want to put all blame on the map, I definitely made a fair share of mistakes, and think this pick could've worked even in this setup, with better scouting, and without underestimating the Viking threat (which meant that even a city 4 tiles from my capital could be boated from the fog)