[Spoilers] naufragar's fist full of pesos (Montezuma)

[Rusten]

By the way, does anyone know how the strike mechanics work...   

The first hit is free, but then you start losing units at an increasing rate. Some things are immune, examples being settlers and single-unit garrisons. It's weighted towards disbanding weaker units and units not in friendly territory IIRC.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

When your'e negative gpt, an increasing amount of units are killed each turn (0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, etc.) So on turn 50 of the strike, 25 units are killed. Doesn't sound like much, but you've sacrificed 600 units by now.
- it doesn't matter if you're -1 or -20,000.
- One MP unit per city is immune to being killed off.
- settlers are immune
- boats containing units are immune (note: a boat carrying a knight, for example, will die. The knight is not immune and then once it's dead the boat is too)
Therefore a boat containing a settler is completely safe.
- Units that were just born are immune for one turn (so if you weren't trying to spread to islands, your execs could survive to spread to another city <6 tiles away.)
update: Units in neutral/enemy territory are disbanded before others.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/l...t-14835470

For the most part, they die in this order, but sometimes a few from one group seem to survive and die later with the next group.

- Triremes die first (frigate, privateers, airships)

- Quechua (neutral) and also Triremes in my culture

- Catapults are next to die (and quechua randomly mixed in).

- Then all trebs

- Then all Artillery+cannon, knights!!,

- All empty transports (neutral). (Execs on boats are safe as long as there is military to kill.)

- defensive military (neutral): I tried longbows--and expensive Infantry (280h). They randomly die as a group too. update: also Quechua inside my borders started dying, even cannon knights at lower odds.

- knights/cannons inside my borders die

- Missionaries (neutral). Might be important to note that these save my workers that are out traveling or forting metals or whatever.

- Execs (neutral)

- workers (neutral land only)

- scouts/Explorers (neutral) mixed in with galleys/galleons (in my culture)

- Now Workboats in neutral water before execs)

- Execs in my culture

(then caravels? )

- workers in my culture

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/l...t-14839136

[naufragar]

Those Polish-Lithuanians must have quickly settled for cows and pigs in the southeast then. Reaching the mouth of the Danube before Suite, and the sweet grasslands along the Dnieper in Ukraine would have been their prize. An empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea! Endlessly cottageable green lands!

Ripe for Polish-Lithuanian Sacrificial Altars.

SV saw that I only had two axes, so he didn't promote after burning my silver mine:


So I kill his phalanxes.



I think SV, like many players, didn't account for just how bad wounded units are, so he didn't promote. I flawlessly lost a 30% axe vs axe battle which made me very nervous, but we got there. I lost two axe in the process. I've highlighted some carnage occurring up north. I left an axe fortified on a wooded hill since I couldn't retreat it, and it killed a chariot at ~40% odds.

It is turn 100, so it's time for....
THE TURN 100 Omphaloskepsis
Customarily, I'm told, one does a big overview on turn 100. Usually I go through each of my cities, but that would cause me too much pain.

Here's the Northeast:


I know SV has at least 1 axe and 3 chariots (one of which is combat 1) in the fog. If he were particularly nasty, he could try to bypass my stone city and go for the horse city. I have safety hammers in a spear there and should be able to whip it with plenty of time to spare. I've put both an axe and a spear on his deer. I wanted to have the axe stay home, but I'm trying to game the strike system. Losing a spear to striking would be double plus ungood. For what it's worth, and honestly I'm super over it, but for what it's worth, if any two of the six non-river cottages I'm working were on rivers I wouldn't be in strike. Or heck, if they were all just plain coast. As it is, I'm pretty sure I can't avoid losing 2 units. (I didn't account for the happy hit from silver. My bad.) But as I said, I'm super over it. For what it's worth.



I'm trying to use my scout to watch over Suite as subtly as I can. He can kill my southern city at will, and he should know it. He has visibility. This might be an area where I would be too aggressive. Suite's power is rising, so maybe he's waiting for the right moment. (Suite is a far better player than me. It's tough to complain when Saladin (Spi/Pro) is dominating...)



And here I was saving those forests for Math chops into forges...

Ok. I got the usual turn 100 whining out of the way on turn 99. In lieu of that, I'm just going to go through some of my decisions this game in the spirit of petulant self-justification. Mostly because it's perhaps easy to see the outcome and assume the worst about the process that got there. (But yeah, in civ only results matter.)

I was born Montezuma of the mighty Aztec nation. On turn 7 I met Joao nee Ziankali of the mighty Portugese empire. Joao of Portugal gets to Bronze Working before Monty. From the previous game and from the tech thread, I was very confident that Bronze was somewhere in the cap's BFC. When I met Ziankali I simmed out how fast he could get Bronze Working with my start. I estimated turn 36. For what it's worth, even a queue upgraded spear would've been super deadly that early. For reasons known only to God and Sigmund Freud, I sent my starting scout West instead of East. The resources out west were 5 tiles (cow) or 6 (pig) from my cap. I knew Ziankali's cap was 10 tiles away. I founded my second city at minimum distance from my capital on turn 36. (I could have been a turn faster.) Instead of founding min distance, I could have founded 5 tiles away from Ziankali on ~t37. I didn't finish researching wheel until turn 41. It would take until turn 42 to connect my copper. Had I settled that further city and Ziankali pushed out an axe, it would have been dead and my game ruined. Perhaps other players would have just rolled the dice and trusted Ziankali to play a builder game, and if he did axe rush, chalk it up to a doomed game. I'm not that player. I stand by my second city placement as the only possible one.

During all this, I lost both a scout and a warrior trying to scout the East.


This shot, taken on turn 43, shows where my last eastern scout died. If instead of going directly east, I went south and found the pig, how would the game have been different? Who knows. I probably would have founded for it over the cow+clam site (although that's the only site with two food resources I'll see until I find SV's Pharsalos). Thinking again about resource poor maps, when there are few resources, if you scout towards to 4f instead of the 6f, your game is significantly altered by pure luck.

Unbeknownst to me when I took the above picture, Ziankali has two axes in the area: one with his new city, one 1E of the pig. He can eliminate me from the game at this point despite not having committed to an axe rush. (Take city, pillage copper, kill.)

This is from turn 74:


I've just whipped a settler. Where would you send it? Notice SV's borders by the deer. I grant that reasonable people would do different things. Me, I founded a weak city next to the cow one tile off where it should have been. At this point I have no military.

From turn 85 but before the military build up:


I have a respectable military because Suite has settled two cities on the river to my south and Ziankali founded the minimum distance horse city. In this exchange with nane, I end up tying him for this city spot despite it being 10 tiles away from my cap and only 6 from his. (This is a guess. I haven't seen his cap yet this game.) Pharsalos has not been founded. If I turned and went for it right now, I would beat SV to it by something like 2 or 3 turns. I don't have vision on the spot (mea culpa) and given my settling pattern it would be an extreme reach.

As you know, nane put a settler on the hill and I took an 85% shot to kill it and its axe escort. I lost. I took a look at this map and thought that I had no better option than to fight nane for it. I preferred that over retreating and settling the deer tile. Reasonable people may disagree here. It would have ceded all those river tiles to Holland and nane as well as lost the horse.

That crazy amount of build up was necessary because nane had defender's advantage and a much shorter travel time (along with a happy resource, so he could whip deeper). By whipping so hard and so fast, I scared him off. We ended up not fighting over that hill, and after that first skirmish, our war was bloodless.

We now enter more recent history:


I'm feeling the bite of the whip. Most of my cities have 2 whip unhappy and I only have +1 happiness for a happy cap of 5. This isn't great for a tech rate. (But again, had I not whipped that hard, nane would have taken the entire river area.) At this point I had another choice. Creative SV has two cities that will pour second ring culture onto that deer tile. It doesn't seem wise to settle a city minimum distance from both of his and hope he never attacks it. I could have settled where the barb ruins are. I could have given up on new food resources and just stagnated on river tiles. Maybe that was correct and I could have hoped I would find an opening against Holland or nane. Maybe I would have survived longer but it wasn't a winning play, I don't think.

I didn't adequately prepare for the threat of being boated and SV blew up my economy. The end.

This was all blatant self-justification but I write because it's very easy to look at the state of the game now and dictate the best path: Trust Ziankali not to axe me. Settle for the southeastern pig and river. Push towards nane and SV and try to steal their cow and the northern deer. Then die because you've got a spread out empire with enemies on all sides. I've tried to lay out "what did the President know and when did he know it." Honestly, while my micro in places was downright trash. I stand by my macro decisions.

P.S. I had said my one regret was Masonry. Turns out I don't regret that. I only was on Masonry for a turn before switching to Fishing. Barring that one turn of Masonry research, I got Fishing as early as I could after (in some order): Agriculutre, Mining, BW, Wheel, Pottery, AH. Turns out the reason I wasn't using my seafood was the combination of bad tech rate and atrocious starting techs! As you can imagine, I wrote all these words mostly for me. This game has been one heartache after another, and this is my way of saying I'm ok.  Don't take that away from me. Or do. I value lurker feedback.

[Miguelito]

Great entertainment, as always. But you're wrong on one account: it's never that other players are better, it's always the map's fault!

Still, the Greece war... so in the end, having attacked 2 neighbours and worried about invasion from the other 2, you attacked SV over that one deer, with your army not even in position after the Carthage war. Yes I know that you are starved for food resources, but still. I think with a city S of stone you could have had one border with prospects for peace at least, and be getting up those riverside cottages that you so crave.

[naufragar]

But every time I turn around
Cats got their hands out wanting something from me.
But I ain't got it, so you can't get.
Let's leave it at that, cause I ain't with it.



SV and I just signed a peace treaty, so I moved my troops to a tile that nane can see from his peak. I've been checking pretty regularly, and nane does not have horses in his diplo screen nor is anyone I know trading them to him. That speaks to some bad intentions on my neighbor's part.  

But that's an inconvenience. The real nightmare remains the same:


Suite's been whipping pretty hard too.

Still, the Greece war... so in the end, having attacked 2 neighbours and worried about invasion from the other 2, you attacked SV over that one deer, with your army not even in position after the Carthage war. Yes I know that you are starved for food resources, but still. I think with a city S of stone you could have had one border with prospects for peace at least, and be getting up those riverside cottages that you so crave.

True. This might've been the best play. But pushing up on SV wasn't too hard. The trouble is that I'm an idiot and didn't appreciate the naval threat until too late. I was playing fast and loose up north and I was still never worried about him pushing back on land. But yeah, in the larger geopolitical view, perhaps I shouldn't have antagonized Greece.

[naufragar]

Massive traffic jam at the start of the turn. Real report to come once I finish the turn, but in the meanwhile:


Hmm....

[Rusten]

Congrats on the religion!

[naufragar]

Congrats on the religion!

Yeah, this turn was a happy one. Nane and Holland (my two eastern neighbors that I attacked unprovoked) look like they're poking units towards me, but other than that, this was the best turn I've had in a while. I was able to get that second city down on the Greek border. Looks like he was roading to resettle, but I didn't see a settler anywhere nearby. Ziankali can probably still kill both Kreutzberg and me:


But we're just trying to keep hanging on for One More Turn ™.

[naufragar]

Not too many pictures for this turn. Ziankali did take a city off of Kreutzberg and lost only a couple horse archers (?) in the process. His power is still over double mine. Holland is rummaging around my borders with an axe and nane has sent a chariot into the fog between us for some nefarious reason, I'm sure.

Apsi built a library before me in a contested border city and will therefore steal my clams:


This makes me sad. A city with only a +4 food surplus is not inspiring, and I've got two of them. (I've got 2 more cities that will have a +4 surplus in 20 turns when they can steal tiles from SV. These kinds of surpluses do not make for happy sacrificial altars, not that we're living that long.)

Speaking of SV, do we think he is improving the deer so he can get some use out of it in the short term or is he chopping the forest as a middle finger to me?


Of course, if he plans to kill my cities once the peace treaty expires, improving the deer is the best play.  

My tech rate is still well and truly dead. As I grow onto dry cottages, I gain +1 commerce that is pretty much instantly negated by the added maintenance from the pop point. The current plan is to save gold until I can pop two scientists for Math and Alphabet. Hopefully by then (some 40 turns from now), I'll be able to afford Currency. Yeah.....I'm dead.

[naufragar]

How kind of SV to connect our two great nations with a road.


Wonder what that's for. Especially since he could have already 1-turned my city with chariots. I'm sure I'm missing something.

I signed peace with SV on turn 101. I've triple checked the math on my fingers, but this should mean he can't declare war until turn 111. I can get a spear into the stone city on turn 110. All I see from him is 2 chariots and 2 phalanxes, so I should be ok, barring terrible luck. He could always direct his focus to my sad little city on the coast and boat it, but there's not much I can do. I'm also trying to prepare in case SV celebrates the end of our treaty by immediately gunning for my silver again. I really, really, really don't want to use the whip. But I am a timid person. I've drawn arrows where I'm vulnerable. I've circled my backlines cities in fuchsia.



Ziankali made peace a couple turns ago with Kreutzberg after only taking a city from him. (No dip in his power.) Suite is at war with someone named Konsul. I haven't met him, so he must be South or Southeast of Suite. It's very good for Suite if Kreutzberg survives as a buffer state between him and Ziankali. Aspi, for what it's worth, gave me an apologetic fish when he founded on the stone island. I would be flabbergasted if he attacked me from across the water.

I'll lead with Crop Yield:



Because it softens the blow a bit of GNP:



I'm just kind of holding my breath and hoping none of my neighbors notice me.