[PB69] Naufragar turns over a new leaf. Randomly.

[Mjmd]

As long as you don't name it "Knight" or an actual unit name its meh.

That's exactly what he did though.

I remember bringing this up somewhere earlier as unsporting, but was shot down, so it's fine I guess.

Ah I thought he named it "wretched knight". Then yes I'm not a fan either.

[naufragar]

Which city did you raze? Southern one?

Mhm. Snuck a couple of horse archers in. Probably did Magic a favor burning it due to maintenance.

Took peace with Magic and all it cost me was 100 gold in tribute. Magic spent something like 1800 gold in Knight upgrades, so I...uh... don't want to fight him anymore. All in all, taking that first peace as early as I did and letting Magic eat Miguelito so quickly backfired horribly. At the time, I was worried about a Mig stab and Magic's army. Might still have been right, but feels rough for Magic to have 150% of my city count.

Birthed a great prophet. Bulbed most of Civil Service. And when I say "most," I do mean "most."


   

[Tarkeel]

Birthed a great prophet. Bulbed most of Civil Service. And when I say "most," I do mean "most."


   

At least you got the full benefit and no waste!

[naufragar]

At least you got the full benefit and no waste!

That's the kind of optimism I need! And now we have Bureaucracy! (Everybody else is Vassalizing or Despoting. Pind was in Buro for a while, but swapped out.)


I hope this screenshot explains why I'm trying to constantly war-peace Magic. My gold savings rate is bonkers. (My actual tech rate isn't that good. I get a lot of gold from my shrine and the Minaret.) I'm also way behind Magic in production, but I just need more time to turn my gold into some sort of security. Bing is in a league of his own, but he doesn't border me, so until I can cut through Magic, he's not my problem.

The real danger of Magic is that he can outscale me (Colossus, Protective Intercontinental Trade, way more cities than me). Here's a fun pic:


He doesn't have a city that can work that windmill. The only legal city plant would have no food. Has he reached the stage where it's profitable to plant foodless cities? That's scary. (And the name change is funny, but it's not in response to my chariot Knight. This was renamed first and actually gave me the inspiration.   )

[naufragar]

Up at 3:30am this morning and there's no turn to play (although PBSpy tells me that this very minute Magic is logged in sniping cities from Superdeath ) so my insomnia is your turn report.

Commodore in his PB69 report said something to the effect that Civ4 is a scaling game. There are a lot of mechanics to make things more expensive as the game goes on, and you're expected to exponentially increase your outputs: more tile simultaneous with cottage growth. In these natural pitbosses, it's hard to scale. I don't have cottages. I have plains farms. And I've failed to gain more tiles.

So today, I planted my first new city in 80 turns:


It picks up no new tiles, but it can immediately work the dye plantation. After planting and spreading Buddhism, the city was a net -1gpt for my empire, so this'll tick up to positive once the temple completes. I've given Commodore the dye resource to hopefully keep him happy.

At my capital, you can see the Taj two turns from completion. This isn't really scaling. After those brief 8 turns of golden age, I'm back to normal velocity, so let's see how far we can run with them. I'd be shocked if anyone snipes this. I don't think anybody's anywhere near Nationalism. Magic has a Great Engineer in his pocket. Don't know what he'll do with it. Probably looking to pop his second golden age soon.

With Magic's most recent raze-and-resettle at the expense of Superdeath, he's up to 18 cities, so almost double my count. One would hope that the other players are starting to get very worried about him:


But Bing has his hands full. Pind doesn't have an attack vector and is sweeping up all the rewards of peace, and Commodore is in his favorite position of just out of the winner's circle but close enough to potentially write the comeback of the year story.

I'm also very worried because Crop is one of those scaling factors. I've got advantages of my own:


But I don't know how best to capitalize. I came to the heartbreaking revelation last night that Conquistadors are not going to do any good against Magic's cavalry-sniping Ballista Elephants. (Seriously, Cambodia has been nuts on this map.) I probably still continue on to them for security. In the meantime, I'm practically salivating for this golden age.

If I understand EP spending (and Pindicator doesn't increase his against me), I'll have his graphs next turn. He's got Printing Press and is moving, likely, to Replaceable Parts, and he owns Sankore, so his GNP is likely roughly even with mine.

[Tarkeel]

Don't forget that conq's receive defensive bonuses though!

[naufragar]

Yes, I completed Taj and earned myself an astoundingly golden age, but too often these reports focus on the big events, so let's take a second to appreciate the story of the coastal squalor that is Dunwall:


Dunwall and its sister city of Roggenbier sit at the end of the world, quiet and cold. But Dunwall with its 9 coastal tiles and silver resource slowly but surely adds to the wealth of the empire. More importantly, it signals our diplomatic intentions to Commodore. Here theses two happy cities process amicably. Commodore has, by my count, cashed in 3 Great Merchants here, keeping his tech competitive with the rest of the world. And today, he cashed in yet more great person(s?) for Chemistry. Commodore is Germany and has just unlocked his unique Grenadiers 5k+ beakers before anyone else. We'll see what he does with them. He now has excellent security, but I suspect he'll still get outscaled. Does he use them offensively?

As a sidenote, I love watching players that play "cool." There are quite a few "good" players around, who made a good plan and execute it competently. There are much fewer who make plans that make me cheer. Comm is one of those.

Let's look at more cities. This is Geidi Prime (the second. The first was burned by Ginger).  It's an example of why Taj was so good:


Admittedly, this city is the one that benefits the most, but the principle remains: I'm in serfdom with a lot of 1h/1c tiles, which become 2h/2c in the golden age, for a 100% yield improvement. Compare that to a 4c town tile that gets bumped to 5c for a measly 25% improvement. Yeah, I'm a happy little civver.  Oh, and I swapped out of Org. Rel. for Theocracy.

But the fun doesn't stop there. Here's my cap:


We go straight from Taj to National Epic. If I did my math right (and I never do my math right), I pop my next Great Person in 10 turns, 2 turns after the Golden Age ends. I have yet to pop a GP golden age, so I get to hop right back in pretty much immediately.

But what are we going to do with this speed boost?

Don't forget that conq's receive defensive bonuses though!

I should be more open with my thinking. I'm just addicted to playing coy. I don't have a great overview shot, so instead have the screenshot I take every turn to track Joker's garrison:


I need more land. It's not feasible to take it from Commodore, especially since he and I have mutually demilitarized, and that is super valuable in a free for all game. I neighbor no one else. I want Ginger's old land. (And let's ignore the foreign policy disaster that let Magic take it uncontested.) So no matter what, we have to keep the goal in mind: take Ginger's old land; consolidate our borders.

The two ways we can fight this are 1) with harassing stacks pillaging Magic's improvements and ruining his Serfdom economy. For this plan, we use Guerilla 2 muskets or normal Conquistadors in little groups that make trading hammer inefficient. The reason ballista elephants ruin this is because 2 elephants for 120 hammers trade out against 1 conquistador at 100h, and those 20 hammers of difference are neutralized by defenders advantage and travel times. If they were normal elephants, I could use mixed musket/conq trios to be just insanely annoying.

This leaves option 2) get the bigger stack. This is difficult given the current power differential and the fact that next turn Magic gets to start churning out Agg/Pro muskets, which are the bee's knees. Power graph below:


It's still likely correct to just churn out conquistadors until the cows come home and try to build a bigger pile than Magic can using these upcoming golden age turns. It's just gonna hurt.

And lastly, the choice of target is still a riddle. I want Ginger's land. Do I go for it immediately? If so, can I defend the crucial Cathy Ames against a retaliatory strike from Joker's garrison? Can I go for Joker and free up all that cultural pressure? I'd have to walk on flat land against a mess of knights (more than are visible, since next turn Magic's culture takes over the pass from his original territory to Ginger's and can strike with his Ginger-garrison knights). Do I go north to Ban, which is likely more vulnerable, but completely in the opposite direction to my strategic objective and still has the problem of the revenge strike from Joker? Man that city is a thorn in my side.

[naufragar]

There is an ancient curse recorded in HOSAV: "May you play interesting Civ4 games." This here is one of those interesting Civ4 games. Just as I start making plans...


Magic popped a second great person, so he can throw his own golden age whenever and build up Tokugawa's Muskets. Although small chance he prefers to build banks to turn his massive, massive empire profitable? That's just as bad.

Not shown on the event screen is Pind getting Rep Parts a good 8 turns before I thought he would. His tech is monstrous (equal or better than mine outside of Golden Age) and now his Production is almost as good as mine while I'm in a golden age. Meanwhile, Bing has started digesting Superdeath, and Commodore is making Grenadiers before the rest of the field has Muskets.

A pox on interesting games!

[naufragar]

I'm reminded how freaking terrible it feels to play against CtH Protective when you don't have any intercontinental trade of your own:


Mercantilism will never be worth it for me, while Magic can pop into it for a massive, massive GNP increase. Were I to go for Merc, all of my cities would lose at minimum 3gpt and the best they could gain is a 3gpt merchant. Ugh. The above is Magic's hammer production. It's going into either Super Muskets or Banks. Gross.

Pind at least seems to recognize the threat:


Although in 20 turns, Magic will have cannons and be essentially unassailable.

[naufragar]

AI diplo can be incredibly frustrating. (Admittedly, still less frustrating that actual diplomacy with words. )

From Pind:


Translation: I know you're rearing to go, but it's going to take me 20 turns to get a stack of rifles together.

From Bing:


Translation: I need 40 (freaking forty!) turns to digest Superdeath's empire. Then I'm ready to fight Magic.

Fellas, I've been promising you that I'm going to hit first. I've been promising you that I will bear the brunt of retaliation. Magic cannot defend against both North and South (in Pind's case) or East and West (in Bing's case)! Literally cobble together whatever 2-movers you have on hand and reap the rewards of me throwing myself onto the rival top power. You don't have to individually be stronger than Magic. Holy smokes. If another player were offering to draw an opponent's army clear across to the other side of the empire, I wouldn't be trying to dissuade said crazy person.