Thanks Cornflakes. You are correct. Chariots obsolete at knights (shown in civilopedia). I world-buildered a test game, and yeah, the chariots don't queue upgrade. (I was remembering my earlier sims when warriors changed to spear builds perhaps?)
I logged back in to change chariot to axe builds and saw these:
It's late here, and I'm wiped, but these seem pretty straightforward? Rusten has ambitions down superdeath way and is getting tweaked by Mackoti. He wants to signal peaceful intentions. Works for me. Mack has been positioning units aggressively on my border; Rusten hasn't. Easy choice. Accepted.
Commodore presumably is about to hook up a second source of gems? I can't think of anything special silver does, like wonder bonus etc. Presumably, I'm the neighbor farthest away, so he doesn't have to tie himself to trade with someone he might fight eventually. I am still many turns out from hooking up my own gems, so I accepted. I think that's all there is to this. I can't understand the reason for the trade otherwise.
Next turn I'll worry about this:
Next turn, I'll move at least one chariot back to Assassin's Redoubt. Mr. Cairo's chariot has nowhere to go, but I doubt he knows that. I really would prefer not tracking that chariot when I need to show Mack that I have plenty of units on his border. Such is life.
That's enough civ for today. Next turn we see where Mackoti's saber rattlers go.
In fact, he moved the horse archer out of sight. I don't think Mackoti's the kind of guy to give his victim a ton of advanced warning, so perhaps a show of force was always the intent? I'm swinging back around to thinking he's locking down that NW-N area for himself. Still, I'm building a ton of units.
I came to this turn all riled up to talk military-industrial strategy, and I see no reason to change that just because I'm not at war. I've dialed in research to Horseback Riding. As far as I can tell from the diplo screens, Mack doesn't have iron, so no swords yet. Everything of his I've seen gets chewed up beautifully by archers. The cities I think he may go for are either walled or on hills. (Built yet another set of walls on the front line. Thank you, stone.)This makes archers an incredibly efficient trade against horse archers. I can whip out archers no problem, so I'm building one or two, but they can wait behind the axe builds. The trouble is if Mack puts together a big combined arms stack and burns my land to the ground. I doubt he'll do this, because he doesn't actually gain much, despite how awful it would be for me. He needs to take the cities, or the land just gets whipped to stubs while I lose my tile improvements. So. To attack out from cities, I need axes. I also need axes for when he gets catapults. Catapults are really the be all and end all of military tech for this era. Enough cats mince knights. Without cats in his stack, I can build up behind my walls, take the pillaging, and eventually repay it. With cats, I need to be proactive. To do that, I need to flank with horse archers, but I assume he'd have a few spears, so I need enough axes to get through the horse archer and spear bodyguard, so my own horse archers can get favorable trades and start bombing catapults. (Btw, I note that in this version of RtR flanking damage is reduced.)
So we're building axes. Once Horseback Riding comes in (2 turns), we switch to mounted archers. The question that has to be answered in two turns is, "Do I need catapults of my own? And when?" This doesn't change too much. I either go for Construction first or Metal Casting, but I've already said how badly I want metal casting. I'm 9th in MfG and 7th in Crop Yield (and my demos always look a hair better than they are because I play early before other players complete tile improvements, settle cities, etc). I'm basically out of land, so I need to start workshoping my plains (can't irrigate) and raising my happy cap. "Markets?" I hear you say? Yes, but they're so darn expensive and I'm not enamored with their bonus. Capitol's working on one. Slow as Christmas.
On the domestic front, want to know how lack of scouting can screw your dotmap?
I've mentioned, and you've no doubt noticed, that Factory Drift strands a grassland tile. I thought I could catch it with an island city, but now I'm not so sure. (I might also be in a race. Adrien has founded either 1S or 1N or the rice I believe. Rick had eyes on his settler and roading workers.) Regardless, if Factory Drift were 1S both of those future city sites could be shifted 1E and be so so much stronger. The one nearest to Factory Drift is filler and doesn't matter, but the one near the southern gems would have first ring food! In the story of my sloppiness which is this game, I actually didn't realize I had to dotmap like this until this turn. There's a settler under that worker who was going to plant 1SW of the sheep (i.e. 1E of the current dotmap), but I didn't realize it screws the area in between. There's a way to do it differently: the middle city gets moved to the desert 1NE of the X, but that truly would be a filler city. Given it'll take me a while to found that, maybe that's ok. The short term trash that is the gems city is really discouraging. Maybe I grab first ring food and disregard the later dotmap? I don't know. This is infuriating. I'll play around with other combinations. Basically, this city is me being impatient about me getting my gems. (Did a quick glance: TBS and Commodore only have one each of silver/gems, I believe. So perhaps Mack was just quick on the draw to grab both. No player I know has hooked up gold. I've met about half the field, perhaps the other half has completely different resources. More likely, treasure islands in the seas. That would be due east of me. You can see that big patch on my mini map. The civ4 map generator is fine making huge expanses of empty ocean, but my metagaming sense is telling me that would be boring for multiplayer, so there's something there.)
I thought about it and then accepted. I know I'm smiling at both Mackoti and Rusten, who seem to be poised to end up at opposite ends of the local hegemony pole soon enough, but the truth is, I'm very happy to have good relations with both. Mackoti's empire is way too big for me to have any realistic ambitions against in the foreseeable future, and Rusten has eyes on every angle I could attack him plus seems to pay very close attention. Again I hate (hate hate) conceding the territory between me and the sovereign formerly known as Aretas, but Mackoti's troops are in position and mine aren't, and as I've mentioned probably half a dozen times, there's a slightly better food layout for the Aretas position to plant south than me to plant north. For reference here's the Mackoti front. Note the facing of the new chariot. Moved in from the Rusten front?
I'm not treating sheep for sheep as an NAP. My units are still getting cranked out. Maybe in a post mortem, lurkers can tell me how I should've handled foreign policy towards Mack and Rusten. I need to actually hook my health resources to my trade network. I'm running out of ways for neighbors to show their good nature.
Adrien beat me to that island by a million years:
Because he has three units visible, he made at least two galley trips. I probably should've known I'd be too late. There seems to be one island at the midpoint between each pair of players. I colonized the one between me and Rusten. (The spot was favorable to me, and Rusten didn't found coastal right next to it.) So I'm nonplussed that Adrien got the one I didn't head towards at the start of the game. (Look at all that desert. Ew.) That island can support at least two cities. Maybe three if he gets ambitious and the island is big. Adrien is Mao (Exp/Pro), and right there with me on the demos. I won't be dislodging him from the island any time soon. I am fully aware that I'm about to run out of land and need to find a way to keep expanding. I'm also aware that my neighbors are Rusten, Mackoti, and two Protective players who are doing just fine. Finally, I'm super aware that I continue to plunge like a stone in the demos. For reference:
A far cry from my brief moment of glory as #1 MfG & Crop. Another item for the post mortem: I don't whip nearly hard enough. I'm fine in the early game when I've micro'ed everything and I'm whipping off unimproved tiles. When I have improved tiles and big cities, for whatever reason, I grow soft. Sure I've got a few 1-pop whips of lighthouses and granaries coming up, but I don't set up 2-pop cycles nearly well enough. This is almost certainly a factor in my slow down. I've got to figure out how to crank my production high so I can turn what is a decent city count into a whole bunch of catapults+whatever hitter is on hand soon. Get busy living or get busy dying, I suppose.
Hmm. I'm 6th in power (5th before a couple whips). Maybe I overbuilt troops?
Just kidding.
My neighborhood is armed to the teeth. (4 of the top 5 are around me. Superdeath, admittedly, is not an actual neighbor.) Part of my jump up the scoreboard is Horseback Riding. Now cranking out a few horse archers.
Hello 2metraninja!
Edit because I'm lazy: Does anyone have a link to Cyneheard's combat spreadsheet? I'm only finding references to it, not the actual thing. (Dead link.) No reason for asking.
Thank you very much! It will be probably ~6 turns before anything bears fruit (and there's the chance that knowing the odds actually dissuades me), but I hope I can finally provide a bit of . Also, Dave, I am the shyiest of lurkers, so I haven't commented on EitB 49, but I'm loving your thread.
What's that you say? You want a big honking map stitch? (This is gonna be a bandwidth heavy post. Sorry!)
I'll talk about geopolitics at the end. But I know why you're really here. In-depth look at the build queues and tile assignments of every city in the empire.
Our capitol. It's not much, but it's ours. You see me rocking a size 7 cap. I tell myself that size doesn't matter. We'll drop the scientists to start growing next turn, reaching size 8 when the whip unhappy wears off. Who knows when the market gets finished. Presumably after the academy. Man, have I misused this capitol. Oh well.
Exhibit A for why I need to blow my happy cap sky high. 9 hills, 7 of which are riverside. This city in my dreams is food neutral at size 14, gives its cottage up to the cap, and works 9 mines, 2 workshops, and an ivory. Heroic goes here please. I chose not to whip the horse archer. (See? Soft.) It will be unhappy for one turn, then the previous whip anger expires.
Poor sandy Fort Survivalist. Just two pop whipped a horse archer and I very well might whip another in two turns. For how much I denigrated it when I settled it (and seriously, who wants an early city with this much desert?), it has really pulled its weight, especially with the copper and furs. It probably eventually takes the deer from Solid Domain and works workshops. Idk. I'm glad for what it's done, but it really is a little bastard.
A stable? Really?! Yeah, yeah. What else am I supposed to build? I'm kinda out of city spots; I guess I could always use more worker labor. The plan is to squeeze a stable in before forges. I'll want all the xp I can for my knight offensive. Rusten's culture is spilling onto the northern two plains tiles. I forgot to check this turn, but he's out-culturing me. What did I say about madrassas? You can see I'm feeling safe towards Rusten because I'm not building walls. Optimism. Pass it on. The great people plan is to produce a scientist for an academy at the capitol, and this guy will be for our golden age swap (hopefully into Bureau/Org Religion/Hinduism? Idk. I'm not a scientist). Long term plan for this city is still the same: farms and workshops, but mostly workshops.
Boy, good thing my happy cap is so bad. Otherwise, I'd have to improve tiles.
We now enter the "cities working unimproved tiles" part of the tour. This is the likely first target for Mackoti. It's decently garrisoned. It has walls. We'll see what happens. If I can keep all its tiles and if I can safely improve them, this city won't be half bad. It probably won't be specialized at anything. Workshops, farms, mines. I'm kicking myself that I cottaged the tiles I did. No chance for irrigating the upper grasslands now.
What am I doing? Why am I working a grassland forest? The real answer is that I want to grow, but I still need the hammer to get the archer done next turn. Need that archer done then so it can be MP somewhere else. Don't make it any less ugly. Solid Domain will never be mommy's favorite, but it is, well, solid. It'll give up its deer, but still be a decent production city. Those two forests will help it towards its forge.
People's Teeming (and yes, there should be an apostrophe. Blame civ4's character limit.) just got brutalized to produce a horse archer. This city won't do anything you can't guess. It grows onto coast, then gets whipped, then grows, then gets whipped. This is where Solid Domain's archer is going.
You know, I think I never announced when I founded People's Teeming (previous city) and all the later ones, so welcome into the world Greenhouse Gate, which isn't actually that green. I think when I settled it, I wanted this for a great person incubator, but I don't know if there's really enough food. Regardless, that's the plan. More farms than workshops. Bring on civil service.
I think this is the first truly risible thing I've shown this turn. Commander's Keep is going to be our Moai...in 250 turns. It'll get a tiny bit of worker help to improve the horses and marble, but I micro'd that poorly and that support will be late and little. But let's not focus on the game at hand! Let's dream about the possibilities for an early-ish Moai here. I have an archer on the way. After Moai, this will get strengthed, so Rusten doesn't get any funny ideas. Late game, this hopefully becomes an excellent naval pump.
Why am I building a galley? Because I'm an idiot. On which, more anon. Ignore that settler there. He was supposed to go to the island nearby. (On which, more anon.) You can also see that a coastal city just by itself is pretty much break-even for cost. Maintenance goes up for every city when a new city is planted (as does civic maintenance), so this isn't really true, but eh. Would be nice to have a second intercontinental trade route. On which...
Assassin's Redoubt is my "I'm out of land, but all the cool kids are still planting cities, so I better, too" city. It will get gems eventually. It doesn't invalidate any of the strong plants Rusten has on my east. It's also on flatland on the Mackoti front. I don't regret planting it. Land is good, but this is a pretty uninspired spot. Sorry, little A.R. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but I scream into a pillow whenever I build a monument. But here, I very much want the extra cultural vision ASAP.
Sorry! I should've warned you. I know brave men faint at the very sight of Liberty Rock. Women avert their eyes as it goes down the street. Children cannot comprehend how human beings would choose to live in such a barren waste. Liberty Rock is proof positive that I am out of settling ideas. Look at this hellhole. Fort Survivalist is Disneyland by comparison. Now, there's no use crying over spilled milk even when that milk is a delicious organic 200 hammer +1 trade route to all coastal cities treat unlocked at sailing. But boy I could've used it. If Adrien and I have fixed our borders here, staring each other down across a galley's ride worth of water, this city is going to be strategically important. It'll also grab the peak to the west to keep vision on that whole area. I should be able to hang onto the gems forever. I will build a cathedrals and run nothing but g-d d-mn artists if I have to.
And those are the cities. Let's talk a little about the state of the world, and then I'll ramble about where my civilization goes from here.
When I played the turn, I was 7th on the scoreboard. I’m going to talk about the people above me to sort of diagnose what’s been happening globally. I’ll mention maybe two or three beneath, because they are my civ heroes. Score is not an accurate measure of who’s doing best. It is heavily biased towards land points and wonders, so people with kinda meh wonders and crappy land (and who is the desert king, I ask you? ) have inflated scores.
Above me currently are, in order, Rusten, Mackoti, TBS, Xenu, Plako, and Gavagai (whose war chariot my workboat in the SE just met). Rusten has played his socks off (or, played my socks off, or, um. Look, he has done incredibly and since I haven’t lurked games he’s played here that surprised me. He grabbed an early religion as well as the oracle and yet didn’t fall behind on expansion. I don’t know what he oracled, but he landed the Statue of Zeus, which, for a Charismatic leader, is excellent. Makes me think he oracle something artsy, but I’m not sure. He lost a city to Mack, and I hope there’s animosity for a long time, but something tells me they’re both too professional to get dragged into vendettas. Rusten has been at war with superdeath for a while, but I don’t see any war weariness between the two, so who knows what that’s about. (Superdeath offered me copper for copper last turn. I refused, not least because I don’t know what that means. I don’t have a reason to antagonize Rusten yet. In a perfect world, neither Rusten nor Mackoti would feel comfortable attacking me because of fear the other would interfere. Pipe dreams, perhaps.
Mackoti waged a successful war against Aretas. This took longer than expected, and I wonder what the story is there. (BGN interference?) Despite Aggressive and an early archery, Aretas was not equipped to resist Mack. The outcome is a whole ton of land that Mackoti now gets. He has also boxed me in with his units. Perhaps civ historians will look back and say I should have pushed North and Northwest and not let Mack body me. Tough, but maybe. Mack’s power has flatlined as he consolidates his holdings. Have no doubt that he is using his gigantic crop yield and mfg to race to knights. Maybe he hits Cairo. Maybe he hits an unknown neighbor to his west. But maybe he hits me.
Hot take: TBS is pretty good at civ, you guys. Don’t know if anyone’s noticed that yet. He settled five cities the turn before he landed Hanging Gardens. Then he whipped five times. The man can micro. He’s distant, so who knows what his situation is. He borders Commodore and superdeath. I bet those are fun borders.
Xenu, ah Xenu. In the pick phase, I said I didn’t know why I loved his combo (Hatshepsut of Greece) but love it I did, and now I see why. Admittedly, many combos that land a religion and the Pyramids are set up to do well, but with the easy civic swapping and cheap libraries (cheapish. Krill, give me back my Cre discount. ) and the added happy of a religion, he’s doing really well for himself. If I wasn’t rooting for myself, I’d be rooting for him. (Didn’t go with restricted Pericles/Greece, but I suppose that’s forgivable.)
Plako I can’t really comment on. He landed the Great Lighthouse, which, now that I wrack my brain, I remember he really like way back in the BtS era. That alone, especially so late, is not enough to put him towards the top of the scoreboard. I assume it’s just the usual quality Plako play. (Playko? No, no.)
I just ran into a war chariot of Gavagai. Notice anything about his city list?
For starters, it’s as long as my arm. (I have short arms.) But more importantly, those cities are Egyptian and Sumerian. B4ndit (Zara of Sumeria) is currently far behind the other players on the score board. Seeing as he’s purplish and I just met Gavagai in the Southwest, I’m guessing that the yellow and purple cross hatch you can see on my map stitch is where Bandit meets Plako. Rough.
Then there’s me, floating along on land points consisting entirely of desert. There is one general theme for the top seven. Four of us are imperialistic. Imperialistic is such a good trait, but before any hotheads start thinking about taking a nerf bat to it, know that this map was almost a perfect storm for it. The map wasn’t stupidly lush, but it was big, both absolutely and relatively, and the relative part is more important. There are about 15 tiles between players’ capitols. Imp was able to fill those out very fast. On a more confined map, Imp can still do this, and it can be even more annoying because Imp can grab land that you could’ve sworn was yours, but on smaller maps there is counter-play. If I grab a city spot that is 6 tiles from my cap and 4 from yours, you can react. If I grab a spot that is 8 tiles from my cap and 6 from yours, I’m still encroaching, but your ability to react is weakened. (Please don’t nerf Imp. I love it, and it loves me.) It’s obious why the other three players in the top 7 (TBS, Xenu, and Gavagai) are there. TBS and Xenu, apart from generally strong play, also landed wonders that do great things for them. Hanging Gardens I usually despise, but TBS obviously did it the right way. Pyramids (especially with Spiritual!) are beautiful. Gavagai, if I read the diplo screen correctly, settled 9 cities and conquered 4 from Bandit. I assume he channeled his scary unique unit into his strong position.
The two others I’d like to mention are BGN and German Joey. They both play excellent civ, and they’re great to lurk, so they’re two of my favorites at RB. German Joey is at war with OT4E, who just took a city off him two turns ago. (I think. Recently, regardless.) He’s been missing turns, so I assume the war is damaging his game, which is lowering his morale, which is damaging his game. This is a bummer, because as mentioned back in the pick phase, he’s Charlemagne of Mongolia, which seems as fun as a barrel of monkeys. BGN I don’t think has been attacked, but I’m not sure. He’s Boudica, so as long as he limps to Guilds, he can start churning out triple promoted knights and smash. (Barrack, stable, vassalage.) I think he borders Rusten and now Mackoti so who knows if he has a prime victim.
As for me, I’m out of good land. I’m surrounded either by superpowers or defensive leaders. I think my GNP is ok, but I’m not sure how to judge it with all the binary research everyone does. My one saving grace is that my land area is pretty good, and I haven’t had the happy cap to really open up my stride and use it. But that is cold comfort. (Would you believe that I forgot to take a demos screenshot for the turn 100 jubilee? Maybe I’ll go back for it, but holy smokes, I want to put this turn to bed.)
I mentioned possible and I’m afraid I’m probably going to disappoint. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the ripe target of opportunity rhymes with shmotective shmali city on a shmill. Pic unrelated.
My reasons for wanting to go for this should be obvious. I need more land. I want a second intercontinental trade route. Adrien picked a good spot. This invalidates any city I can plant on the east but leaves him one to back fill in the island's southwest. But f me, protective skirmishers are just something else. Three units (2 horse archers + axe) could take it if it the dice weren’t absolutely terrible, but I’d need two galleys, plus with that pig, he could whip out another skirmisher the moment he sees them. (Paired galleys are kind of a giveaway, no?) Plus this assumes Adrien doesn’t reinforce just for safety’s sake. The plan as it stands is to wait for 3 horse archers + axe and see if there’s still only one skirmisher. In a perfect world, the turn before the galleys are visible he whips out a granary. It’s not looking likely. Sorry guys. Protective archers skirmishers in hill cities.
If this fails or is aborted, the next thing is cats. Hopefully we don’t have to wait until knights. This island is such an appealing target because Adrien and I don’t actually have a land border. This could in fact be a localized campaign. If he makes that city into a fortress the only realistic other alternative is Mr. Cairo, who is also protective. And if I win, all I do is lengthen my border with Mackoti.
Ok. I’m done. Let’s hope someone kills me off before the next big update turn because this took forever. If anyone has any questions, please ask! But I might answer after a nap.
Opened the turn up to another trade offer from superdeath. (Previously, he had suggested copper for copper.)
I'm getting gems from Commodore, so this trade would be bad for me. Even if it were of even value, this looks way too much like an alliance proposal. I have no interest in teaming up with superdeath against Rusten. (Neither has caused the other any war weariness? What's going on over there?)
Here's the turn 101 demos.
Overbuilding soldiers. I changed a horse archer build to a market, but the moment I logged out I regretted it. I just don't understand how to build markets, and I don't have much else to build. I'll probably log back in to fiddle with the queues. Mackoti's power is still flat on the graphs. If that stays true, I might be able to grab Calendar before Construction. I'm 6 turns out from Metal Casting, I think. You can see from the Rival Worst column that somebody, probably Bandit, is not long for this world. My spot as second worst in Approval Rate is only driving home my continual happy woes.
Also, hey! There's movement in the import-export screen! Somebody has alphabet. Well, next time I log in, I guess I go through the diplo screens of every other player I know to see who it is. (Joking, I think. Open borders should show up on the big spider web of relations, right? And I don't remember seeing anything there.)
Guys, I logged back in to figure out better build orders, and I just have to say wealth builds are nuts! In exchange for halting all infrastructure development needed for long term growth and unit production necessary for geopolitical relevance, I was able to save a couple turns on tech!
(Am I doing this right?)
I truly don't know how to effectively use wealth builds, since they aren't on my horizon in single player. I switched a couple cities to wealth and cut Metal Casting from 6 turns to 3, which I really, really didn't expect. The builds that stalled were all non-essential, so I can afford to take a three or even just two turn pause to get metal casting sooner. I do have a question though: what happens to overflow hammers from a previous build? They seem to just disappear when switching to wealth.
(May 27th, 2018, 14:23)naufragar Wrote: I do have a question though: what happens to overflow hammers from a previous build? They seem to just disappear when switching to wealth
The overflow is 'saved' and applied to the next build.
. Also, Dave, I am the shyiest of lurkers, so I haven't commented on EitB 49, but I'm loving your thread.
We'll drop the scientists to start growing next turn, reaching size 8 when the whip unhappy wears off. Who knows when the market gets finished. Presumably after the academy. Man, have I misused this capitol. Oh well.
Rusten's culture is spilling onto the northern two plains tiles. I forgot to check this turn, but he's out-culturing me. What did I say about madrassas? You can see I'm feeling safe towards Rusten because I'm not building walls. Optimism. Pass it on. The great people plan is to produce a scientist for an academy at the capitol, and this guy will be for our golden age swap (hopefully into Bureau/Org Religion/Hinduism? Idk. I'm not a scientist). Long term plan for this city is still the same: farms and workshops, but mostly workshops.
The real answer is that I want to grow, but I still need the hammer to get the archer done next turn. Need that archer done then so it can be MP somewhere else. Don't make it any less ugly. Solid Domain will never be mommy's favorite, but it is, well, solid. It'll give up its deer, but still be a decent production city. Those two forests will help it towards its forge.
) have inflated scores.
) and the added happy of a religion, he’s doing really well for himself. If I wasn’t rooting for myself, I’d be rooting for him. (Didn’t go with restricted Pericles/Greece, but I suppose that’s forgivable.)
(Joking, I think. Open borders should show up on the big spider web of relations, right? And I don't remember seeing anything there.)
