Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

Now that is annoying to no end, What is that city state dreaming about? I will rest a turn and hope that the city state attacks. If I attack the following turn, I surely hope it's not enough for the city state to take the city then.

I can move my slinger across the river hoping it will run into my path. However, on T17, I have to move back to protect the settler on T18. Worth a shot, I think
and that map hack Where do I find it?

[BRickAstley]

Y'all are working great. Now if only the stupid barbs and CS would cooperate!

Sorry again for not going back around and getting to that camp earlier. Hopefully you knock it out in time!

[Singaboy]

@BRick,

no worries, it is all fine. In hindsight a lot of things are easier said than done. So far, we still have the barbs glued to their camps.

Turn 15:
Barb camp alert! And I mean a new camp. I only spotted it when the screen moved while saving the file (I always get the map to shift to the east nowadays, I wonder why). It's circled in red near the National Wonder. As we are still building settlers and workers, this is a little tricky. Maybe the northern Roman warrior should get after it once the current scout has been eliminated. The camp surely will have its own scout as well. 15 turns with 4 barb camps is quite something. At least we are bound to get the Eureka for BW, hopefully for archery too.

My research for pottery is a  micrometer away from finish, hence I will get a big overflow into Irrigation. I need to find out whether this custom UI shows the research progress in numbers somewhere, so I can switch when I get to 40% of it. Since the Inspiration should come in on T20, I might not be at 40% yet then. This requires some micromanagement.

As for the barbarian situation, I heal my 55 health warrior, hoping that fool from Antananarivo attacks. If that really happens, the odds should be a lot higher. It still takes at least two hits to take it out and I surely do not want to be the one preparing the camp to be cleared by the city state.

I move my slinger across the river E. This way, I could attack next turn and on T17, cross the river SW in time to escort the settler. Let's hope the scout moves SE onto the hill or plains. It might well move a little east (tile between deer and citrus), that's my first guess. Let's hope it gets trapped and together we can take it out.



By the way, once the southeastern camp is cleared (let's hope this takes place next turn), the ! scout will run rampage and attack anything in sight. I recommend promoting the warrior immediately. You don't want to lose it against a mad scout.

[Sullla]

Thanks for spotting that barb camp! It's visible in my screenshots and I did not see it. This is indeed pretty bad from a barbarian perspective to get this many camps in such a short time. That camp to the east is within range of a horse resource too; hopefully we can keep it from erupting units. I sure hope the other players are being harassed by barbs as badly as we are.

[shallow_thought]

Thanks for spotting that barb camp! It's visible in my screenshots and I did not see it. This is indeed pretty bad from a barbarian perspective to get this many camps in such a short time. That camp to the east is within range of a horse resource too; hopefully we can keep it from erupting units. I sure hope the other players are being harassed by barbs as badly as we are.

At least you're Rome - turning some of those hammers you're not spending on monuments (and perhaps granaries) into (effectively) gold and XP isn't too bad. And it's not a disaster to build an extra warrior or two either.

And, yes PBEM2 seems to have turned Singaboy into a top-class barb spotter. Good to have got something out of that game!

[Sullla]

This was a frustrating turn.



This was the combat that I've been dreading ever since the last turn was played. I knew that the odds were slightly less than 50/50 to take out this barbarian spear, but that barb scout will be here soon. I had no choice, I had to attack and hope for better than average luck. It did not arrive; once again, my unit took more damage than it received despite the +2 strength edge. That's now two consecutive turns in a row where my unit had an advantage of +2 strength and took more damage than it received. Average luck would have seen our warrior take that camp and we'd be sitting pretty; two rounds of poor luck now leaves us in a tight spot.

Now under normal circumstances, our warrior would promote to Battlecry next turn, gaining 50 HP back in the process, kill the spear, and that would be that. But the problem is that there's a barb scout off to the west by that wheat tile. It's going to move onto the tile west of the warrior next turn, and I'll have no choice but to promote the warrior anyway, because right now the unit is at 16/100 HP and it can't initiate any more combats without dying. That lets the barb scout walk into the camp and - of course - this is a camp with horses nearby so it will start spewing out barbarian horsemen way too early in the game to deal with them. I don't see anything else we can do here. It's exactly what I detest early game warfare in every Civilization game. Way too much turns on the outcome of individual dice rolls. This game is way better than Civ3 in that regard, but it's still super annoying.

Singaboy, if you see anything that I'm missing here from a tactical standpoint, let me know. I don't see any choice other than promoting next turn, then hoping that the scout won't cause the camp to erupt too badly, and then killing the barb spearman on the following turn.



At least the positioning is better up here in the north. My builder gained vision on the other barb scout when it moved to the sheep tile, and that set up my warrior to move onto the forest tile indicated. Now the barb scout is trapped if it tries to move either east or southeast. It will be stuck on either tile for lack of movement points and the warrior's zone of control. I'm expecting it to move southeast to go after my builder, but that's OK because even if it takes the builder, my warrior would immediately recapture it by killing the scout. Singaboy, I'm assuming that your slinger needs to head back west to cover the settler as it comes out of Xian. I think my warrior has this barb scout pinned, but feel free to help out if you think you have the time available.

Pottery research finished, on to Irrigation.

Elsewhere, that city state warrior continues to camp out next to the barb camp in the far west in infuriating fashion. Either attack or move away please - stop sitting there doing nothing. I have no idea what to do about that. And then the game somehow ended its turn and passed the savegame file to Woden before I even had a chance to look at the score screens. Super duper irritating. I hope the turn isn't quite as frustrating for you Singaboy.

[Singaboy]

Turn 16:

Sulla's frustration is understandable. However, with barbarians, it's better to be patient and not lose your cool. That will only make things worse. The situation as it presents itself at the beginning of the turn. Russia's early city capture really pays off. Emperor K now has 2 techs and 1 civics, just like us. His team mate doesn't fare as well though.
Our score is 28, as I just got pottery too, in perfect sync with Rome.



The barbarian situation is no doubt worse than we could ask for, but we decided to neglect military a little in order to speed up China. I suggest that after its first settler, Rome starts pumping some military to take care of the barbarians and Buenos Aires.
Anyway, I think, it is safe to say, you need to promote your warrior where you are and then take out the camp on T18, hoping no unit has spawned. I read an interesting thread on civfanatics where barb camp behavior is being discussed and something like 'boldness' plays a role. The more and earlier you attack and defeat barbarian units from a camp, the less likely it spawns more units. It seems to be coded.

Well, I decide to attack the spear in its camp, as the city state is a mere bystander. I don't want the damage to be too big for Antananarivo to be easily able to step into the camp. Hence, I am quite happy with the outcome of the attack.
My warrior goes to 35 health and the spear is down to 35 health too. If the city state attacks now, it would be an attack 30 versus 28. Only in the most lucky circumstances, can the city state defeat the spear. I certainly wish for them to attack, just shy of defeating the barbarian spear.
If nothing happens, I could heal again for 1 round and then attack. I will have a look next turn. My warrior is 1 exp away from promotion.

By the way, I moved my slinger south in order to make the slinger head for Rome's warrior. Not sure whether that works. Unfortunately I can't afford to attack next turn as I need to escort the settler west in 2 turns.



Xian will grow next turn and then shrink again the following turn. As far as science is concerned, I will need to research up to 50* 0.4 = 20 beakers. This will be a little tricky. I estimate to have an overflow of around 3 beakers from pottery. Currently, I am making 4.1 beakers a turn, but next turn, it should be 4.8. This will last for 1 turn only though. This means by T20 (when the Eureka comes in), I should have 20.1 beakers getting the technology right away. We shall see how this plays out.



So, heads up Sulla. Promote your warrior and give them hell after that. We should get lucky sometimes too. Maybe I can even clear my camp next turn and you can eliminate the northern scout.

[Singaboy]

This is copied from the civfanatics discussion: If that attribute really works this way, our two attacks on each camp would have dropped boldness by -60, hence we should not be overly worried. Let's hope there is some truth to it.

I think the answer is that a Barb camp can gain boldness and when it reaches higher levels the spawning rates increase. There are also a few random elements in there that make the spawning variable. It makes sense that you would see this behavior from a camp at the end of an uninhabited peninsula, because the camp probably got activated, spawned all it's units, didn't lose much boldness and gained some with +2 per turn and some early kills.

<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_BOLDNESS_PER_CAMP_ATTACK" Value="-30"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_BOLDNESS_PER_KILL" Value="15"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_BOLDNESS_PER_SCOUT_LOST" Value="-5"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_BOLDNESS_PER_TURN" Value="2"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_BOLDNESS_PER_UNIT_LOST" Value="-10"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_CAMP_COASTAL_SPAWN_ROLL" Value="6"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_CAMP_EXTRA_DISTANCE_PER_LOW_DIFFICULTY" Value="1"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_CAMP_FIRST_TURN_PERCENT_OF_TARGET_TO_ADD" Value="33"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_CAMP_MAX_PER_MAJOR_CIV" Value="3"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_CAMP_MINIMUM_DISTANCE_ANOTHER_CAMP" Value="7"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_CAMP_MINIMUM_DISTANCE_CITY" Value="4"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_CAMP_ODDS_OF_NEW_CAMP_SPAWNING" Value="2"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_NUM_RANDOM_UNIT_CHOICES" Value="3"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_RELEASE_VARIATION" Value="20"/>
<Replace Name="BARBARIAN_TECH_PERCENT" Value="50"/>

[Sullla]

Yeah, it was just a frustrating experience that last turn. I spent so much time thinking about this last night that I think I saw a better sequence of moves (after playing the turn of course). I could have moved the warrior west on my turn like so:



The barbarian scout is on one of the two circled red tile. That move would have blocked the barb scout from returning back to the camp itself; assuming it moved east, I could have attacked with the warrior and redlined the scout, then promoted to Battlecry off the experience, and then still had time to kill the barb spear in the camp before the scout could make it back. Because of the warrior's zone of control, the barb scout would have to loop all the way around, one tile at a time, to make it back to the camp, or else cross the river and then delay three more turns of slow movement that way. Moving west onto the hill would have been the better play because it would have taken the dice roll out of the equation here. I wish I'd seen that move yesterday, sigh.

I don't read the message boards that much at CivFanatics anymore, but that sounds promising. Do you have a link to the thread where they're discussing this boldness mechanic? Oh, and I think you played the situation with the camp in the west perfectly. The city state warrior won't do enough damage to take the camp if it attacks, and if it doesn't, we'll heal a few turns and take the camp ourselves. Nicely done.

[BRickAstley]

Also even if it spawns something, the spawn can't immediately move right? Then you can still whack the warrior and take the camp. Yeah the remaining units will Zerg rush you but it cuts off the flow of new ones.