The Way of the Civ Player - Ichabod and Wetbandit's PB13 Spoiler Thread

[Ichabod]

I missclicked while looking for odds and lost one of the phalanxes defending DesertedProphet!!

Holy shit!!

Luckily I could whip another phalanx there...



Argh, if I played this game in a smarter and more careful way, I could be on a great position. Loof at those beautiful islands to settle. But, no, I lost a stupidly settled city and I'm fighting unneeded wars...

I gotta be honest here, I'm lacking passion for this game, for a lot of reasons. I think I'll look for a substitute, maybe there's still time (while I still haven't destroyed my position).

Sorry, wetbandit. There's a reson why my forum signature was "Worst Teammate ever"...

[wetbandit]

No apologies, there's still time to improve the position. From what I saw last night, it might be possible to get another 2-3 cities and focus on Island colonization.

I can play some turns in the interim, maybe if you take a break for awhile you'll rekindle your interest.

Edit: Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to play turns Thursday-Sunday as I'll be traveling. My laptop doesn't like RBMod and crashes everytime I load it. That said, let me know if you want me to play some turns.

[Ichabod]

I traded our only gold for Bacchus only gems. We will get another gold soon and Bacchus will get another gem soon too. I'm really happy with this, because we have 3 happy resources right now!

Next turn I'll post some pictures. I'm still frustrated that, if I wasn't such a dofus, our position would be incredible... Slowcheetah probably gave up on the game, so we could take him out with phants + cats and get loads of land. We can still do that, but not as optimally... Blah!

[wetbandit]

There's still hope!

New complication: Barb city spawned 2E of the horse between WLP and our land. Good city location except that it has little first ring.

[Ichabod]

Maybe slowcheetah already showed this in his thread, but I'll show it too, for the lurkers to see that we aren't just uninterested players. We are actually doing things to win the game.

After whipping his Civ to the ground:




And likely chopping all those woods in his land, Slow made a huge army. I was trying to fix my sucky economy while still expanding (probably a bad idea) and I got a bit laxed on my war efforts (and I can't read power graphs properly, since I thought Slow had way less units) - stupid libraries! Anyway, here's what happened:




15 units, 9 keshiks, 5 axes and 1 spear. I had the units you can see in the city (hill city, 20% culture). The phalanx on the gold was there to kill a barb (losing that gold would really hinder me) and couldn't get back to the city in time, due to turn split. I whipped the spear in production and upgraded the warrior to a spear, losing 80 hard-earned gold (yeah, economy sucks, that didn't help).




I was confident that I would lose the city, but decided to defend and kill a lot of those units. Plan was to rebuild and take everything from Slow with cats + phants.

Anyway, here's what surprised me after civstats showed I didn't lose a city:







I guess I had big RNG luck, can't say for sure. I had a formation spear, for example and some promoted units (everyone was combat 1). Anyway, that was 9 keshiks, 2 axes and 1 spear for 2 phalanxes and 1 spear. A profit of 9 keshiks. Previous exchanges were 2 keshiks for 2 chariots and a phalanx (the one I misclicked). So, Slow lost 655 hammers and I lost 200, from what I can see. That was a pretty good exchange for me.

I couldn't revenge kill any of his units, but he couldn't kill any of mine units too. He offered peace and I accepted. I think Slow is out of the game with this attack having failed. My thinking is, I need to tech currency (can't pass up so much commerce), HBR and construction, than I can take all his cities with cats + phants. That's the plan for now. I'm still at war with WLP, but he's fighting me, retep and Bacchus, so I wouldn't expect too many units coming from his side. I'll divert my troops there for a bit, I guess - need to keep an eye for slow.

GG will probably be settled on the Capital. I'll use the Capital as a production city when it's time to build cats, so 5xp cats will be good (other cities can't match my Capital's production).

---

My first offshore city:




Gave me a boost with the 2 commerce TRs. I'm up to 4 happy resources, since I'm trading gold for gems and ivory for silver. The other ivory there I'm thinking of gifting to retep.

Demos:




I'm failing hard in the economy management game. Needing to maintain a huge army isn't helping me, I'm number 4 in power, while WLP, retep, Slow and Bacchus are likely the others in the top 5. All those units were supposed to be libraries, lighthouses, granaries and all my whipped citizens were supposed to be working cottages and being scientist. DP, the city slow attacked, is constantly on the 2/3 whip angry area and MoK, the closest city there (my only one with a library), too. That's a big loss in development. DP could be size 8 working 6 fp cottages, cow and gold, all with a library, if I hadn't been attacked. Well, it was the only thing for Slow to do with his land and I was stupid in not having more units there - Slow got unlucky and I was saved.

I'll probably fall hopelessly behind in tech, so I don't think my game has much future (I need 18 turns to get currency in break even mode, while my current gold is only wnough for 2 turns of full research - I think it takes 8 turns in full research for currency, just to show how I miss those 80 gold from the spear upgrade). I'll try to conquer Slow and bully WLP, while still settling the islands nearby (the islands are waaay more contested than I thought initially). After that, I'll probably be invaded by Infantry against maces...

I'm getting some good pop points in the next few turns, so I think I can squeeze some more commerce...

[Ichabod]

I really need to get to currency fast, so I think I'll change some tiles to prioritize commerce. I'm up to 10 cities and I'll surely have an 11th one to be the second offshore city by then. That's 22 more commerce, quite a big boost.

[Serdoa]

I haven't studied any other threads (if I did I couldn't write this now), but looking at the demos I don't think you do as bad. Hard to judge without an overview shot of course, but with some if you have happy left for pop growth and can work some more cottages that should get you some way. Lets say you can grow 14 pop, two in each city (I just assume that you have at least 7). That's 28-42 gold more per turn. That should also mean around 80 beakers per turn. That certainly is not great by an stretch, but it is workable. Also looking at the average you are not that far behind either. And you lead in food and are close to first in mfg.

Also your approval rate and life expectancy do tell me as well that you do have some spare happy and health to grow into. And with Currency you suddenly look much better. You just need to get it, which you probably can do till T110 or even earlier, depending on the pop growth and if cottages are in place. And that would be at least 16 commerce more due to the trade-routes.

[Serdoa]

Growth -> Commerce -> MfG

Doesn't make sense if you stunt your growth to get more commerce (except for really strong commerce tiles like gold) because whatever you get more now you lose out on much more in the long term by delaying growth. And that delay will stay for your whole game. Pretty much getting Currency 2 turns later is ~50 gold lost (in your case). Growing a city a turn later keeps in effect for the rest of the game if we assume either constant happiness increase or constant slavery-use.

[Ichabod]

I haven't studied any other threads (if I did I couldn't write this now), but looking at the demos I don't think you do as bad. Hard to judge without an overview shot of course, but with some if you have happy left for pop growth and can work some more cottages that should get you some way. Lets say you can grow 14 pop, two in each city (I just assume that you have at least 7). That's 28-42 gold more per turn. That should also mean around 80 beakers per turn. That certainly is not great by an stretch, but it is workable. Also looking at the average you are not that far behind either. And you lead in food and are close to first in mfg.

Also your approval rate and life expectancy do tell me as well that you do have some spare happy and health to grow into. And with Currency you suddenly look much better. You just need to get it, which you probably can do till T110 or even earlier, depending on the pop growth and if cottages are in place. And that would be at least 16 commerce more due to the trade-routes.

I have quite a bit of room to grow with my cities (I can get them to size 8, Cap size 9 - most of them are lower than size 5). The problem is that a lot of my cities are really commerce poor (like, not even grasslands to get cottages - and I'm not talking riverside grassland) and/or sharing/low food (I needed to divert some settlers away from better but not very safe land) + all the whipping. Of course, I think only 3 of my cities don't have a granary (the ones I just recently settled), so growth should not take that long. As bad as it sounds, working coast/lakes should give me a decent boost for the next turns.

By the way, my offshore city gets a source of gems, so I'll not be in such a bad position if my happy trades are cancelled.

[Ichabod]

Growth -> Commerce -> MfG

Doesn't make sense if you stunt your growth to get more commerce (except for really strong commerce tiles like gold) because whatever you get more now you lose out on much more in the long term by delaying growth. And that delay will stay for your whole game. Pretty much getting Currency 2 turns later is ~50 gold lost (in your case). Growing a city a turn later keeps in effect for the rest of the game if we assume either constant happiness increase or constant slavery-use.

Yeah, my idea of prioritizing commerce is over MfG, not food.

I'll post some overview shots of my civ, so everyone can see my bad management. It's important to notice that I only recently managed to get happy resource deals, so some cities that could grow into good tiles aren't there yet due to this fact.

If I got a Buddhism spread from WLP, that could be helpful (10t for barracks culture to expand borders is painfully slow)... It's a bummer that we are at war for so long. He didn't want to accept a peace deal (likely afraid that I'd settle in his face on the 10t time), but he already offered a cease fire. I think I'll reoffer that (and right now, I don't want a peace deal).