Cheater Hater, Ruler of the Modbreakers

[Cheater Hater]

New turn has rolled (and yes, I never got to the T131 report--deal with it, I might put a summary up before I get to this turn), and already there's a surprise--Azza has taken/burned a city from Mardoc. I have no clue--I'm going to play the turn shortly, and I'll see if Azza and FinHarry are still at war--presumably not, since Azza taking on two wars at once seems like suicide (though of course, I have no clue of either side's power, and probably never will :/ ).

Edit: Turn played, no peace yet, lots of seafood is gone
I offered straight peace this time--honestly, this might not be the best pure strategy play, but I'm not taking Plano if no one else shows up and I'm sick of this war. In addition, I'm still thinking about if my only good play is to take Prairie Village from dtay--I'll discuss this more if I decide to report this turn :/

[Cheater Hater]

T132 Report:
Yes, I skipped the T131 report--the most important things that happened there were that FinHarry offered me Iron for free (I don't know if he knows I don't have Iron Working yet, or if I happen to not have Iron in my borders--I really hope it's not the latter ) and that I offered peace to Whosit after the impending removal of my seafood by his Galleys. He didn't accept (probably because I requested 50 gold, a seemingly reasonable request considering I still have more power than him, just finished taking his northern cities, and he still has 2 people fighting him), and I offered straight peace this time. That probably isn't the right move game-wise (I could pillage the road, move all the troops out of the borders, and have no consequences other than the seafood pillaging), but I'm sick of this war and want to start looking at what's next:


Yes, I probably could take Prairie Village if I wanted, but dtay still has a massive amount of power. I need to wait for the seemingly-inevitable dtay vs Krill/novice war to jump in and expand (taking Prairie Village and Plano maybe?), but it seems like neither civ wants to commit to military action of any kind, even against a crippled civ.

Other than that, there's still a lot of action happening on the foreign front:




Wow, two new wars! WilliamLP declaring against MYKI isn't that much of a surprise, given the scoreboard, but Azza declaring against Mardoc is shocking, especially considering Azza's war against FinHarry is still going. We'll see how those wars develop--hopefully we lose more civs soon

There's also something else we can see in the foreign screen--but it's shocking for a different reason:


Yeah, dtay has Paper already--this is worrisome. At least I'm up Mediation on him!
In addition to the shown techs he's up on me, it appears he has both Engineering and Paper. Still, that means in addition to the Knights we can see, he also has access to Maces and Pikes--more things to worry about.

Now, we have the domestic overview--shed a tear for all the missing seafood




The most important thing here is that I'm going to resettle Mirrodin next turn. Other than that, I whipped Kamigawa for my first Courthouse and moved some troops around. I'm not doing a troop overview this turn (it's in the Dropbox if anyone cares), but it's basically the same as before.

Now for demos and stuff:








Not much new--my GNP has increased, but my Production and Food have dipped.

[Cheater Hater]

Seriously, no peace yet? He didn't even take straight peace? Just to confirm, I can actually offer peace treaties, and don't have to rely on ceasefires, right? I didn't offer anything this turn, and I really, really don't like the prospect of just offering a ceasefire where basically nothing changes other than my troops aren't in his territory.

Again, there's no reason for him to not take straight peace--as a reminder, dtay and Krill/novice are still at war with Whosit, even if they won't actually attack him--or is Whosit being stubborn with them too? Prairie Village and Krill/novice's gem city are within striking distance of Whosit's stack, and if he takes my peace offer, he could attack one and try to get back in this game--I don't know how many troops Krill/novice have in the gems city, but I think Whosit's stack could easily take out the 4 Knights in Prairie Village. I mean, Whosit's path to relevance involves two of the three military powers in the area fighting (dtay, Krill/novice, and me), and if he has the same graphs as me, I'd assume he'd place the chance of 1 and 2 (dtay and Krill/novice) fighting higher than 1 and ~6-10 (dtay and me), and as such, it makes more sense to make peace with me, wait for the inevitable war, then jump in on the side of the winner.

Anyway, just had to get that rant off my chest--full report should come soon-ish.

[Cheater Hater]

Uh, dtay? Could you at least respect the turn split before ruining me for no reason? I'll admit I didn't get a picture of the foreign screen this turn (heck, I even forgot the actual demos screen), but it appeared that he was still at war with Whosit (though I may have mistaken that line for the Mardoc-Azza war). I'm assuming he only burned Mirrodin (that I just founded this turn), and if that's the only thing he wants to do (possible, especially considering he can't afford to keep his guard down against Krill/novice, and that will cost him the game as the leader more than randomly burning one of my fresh cities) it's annoying, but not game-breaking (it's similar in hammer cost to Whosit pillaging all my seafood). If this is an actual war though, this seems monumentally stupid--is dtay intending on delaying the inevitable war with Krill/novice for the continent until after I'm dead? Again, I'm above-average in power, and it's going to cost a lot of power to wipe me out--if dtay has my graph, he knows how quickly I built up my power against Whosit, and now I have forges to expedite the process.

Of course, I don't know what this means for me--my ultimate hope is that FinHarry will prop me up some more after realizing I'm at war with dtay now. Do I need actual Iron Working to build Knights, or is just having Iron enough? Feudalism was only ~8 turns away at 50% (slightly below break-even), so if I get an infusion from FinHarry, I could finish it in a couple turns, whip some Longbows, and hold onto my core. At this point I don't know if I want to write a mostly-irrelevant report though

Edit: Wait, did dtay actually keep one of my cities? How the heck did he take Tarkir? Why did he take it now? I did move out some units, but I still have a ton of units floating around--not to mention I don't think he had visibility into Tarkir.

[Ceiliazul]

dtay switched with Whosit, who allowed him to double-move. This was for turn-pace reasons, as Whosit is taking a while to finish his part I guess.

FinHarry propping you up... aren't they already giving you iron?

To be clear: dtay did not double move you, right?

[von Adlercreutz]

Did you ask for gold or tried to get a loan?

[Cheater Hater]

Again, I haven't logged in since I played my turn yesterday--my understanding is that I can't log in outside my side of the turn split, is that wrong?

No, dtay hasn't double-moved me, he's always been playing after me. The turn split up until this point was me->Whosit->dtay and Krill/novice (Krill/novice always seems to play after dtay, but I don't know if this is coded into the turn split--the mention of a 4-way turn split in the tech thread makes me think it might have been?). Apparently now the turn order is me->dtay->Whosit->Krill/novice, I guess? Except that dtay has logged in after Whosit (and after novice's first look-in, for what that's worth), right before the apparent reload. Again, if you can log in outside of the split, that's fine, but contrary to how I've been playing.

As for FinHarry, again, the iron does absolutely nothing for me right now--the only reason I don't have any is because I haven't had the time (or reason) to research Iron Working, and I assume the mapmaker wasn't mean enough to deprive anyone of iron.

[Ceiliazul]

you can log in when it's not your turn split, but can't move things or change builds or whip things... which is really hard to police and easily devolves into problems. So in general it's not a good idea to log in outside your split, but it's not illegal either. These issues are why strict legal rulesets in early PBs were transitioned "don't be a jerk" rules of the last few PBs.

[Cheater Hater]

Pictures are here, if anyone cares
I still don't like this--I explained all the reasons why dtay shouldn't be taking me over in the previous rant, but it's happening, and it doesn't matter. Somehow dtay plopped over 20 knights in the area of Tarkir, and Zendikar, Mirrodin, and Regatha are all dying this turn. I have like 5 Elephants to fight the Knights, and most are on the other side of the map, a couple are still healing, and it's not going to be worth anything. Seriously, why should I even try to defend this? Assuming dtay isn't stupid enough to run into my Catapult stack (which he knows exists, since he had a knight scout it in Whosit's territory), he can take all my cities (or at least the core of Ravnica and Theros--Theros is basically dead already--and leave me nearly as worthless as any Parkin-bot waiting to die). This was fated as soon as Whosit blocked off all my expansion by settling Plano and overbuilding military--if you're wondering, that was 3 months and 50 turns ago, so I've had no reason to play for that long. Again, did I have any shot at that point of surviving long-term, much less being competitive? I had 2 choices:
1. Overbuilding military myself, surviving any invasion attempts but falling behind in tech, then getting invaded when my army becomes outdated
2. Continuing the farmer's gambit, losing the majority of my territory when Whosit attacks and becoming irrelevant
I don't see anything else that could change that--the biggest practical change of fate (ignoring pie-in-the-sky plans like rushing Whosit) would be settling around the Plano site instead of Tarkir--but that site probably just incurs Whosit's wrath sooner, since I didn't have the production to defend it at that point.

Seriously, what part of the Civ4 special sauce am I missing at this point? The main thing PBEM58 taught me was that my city placement was horrible--what does this game teach me? That the farmer's gambit prisoner's dilemma is a horrible thing baked into Civ? That mounted units are always going to be over-powered compared to 1-movers (outside of something drastic, like making the difference 4 vs 3 instead of 2 vs 1, or completely overhauling unit balance)? That I should never play a non-mirrored map again? That I'm never going to like Civ4?

That last point is serious--that Greens-Mentors Pitboss game that just popped up in the general forum appeals to me, but I really don't know if I should get involved in playing another game again--I thought about joining PB22 and PBEM61 and 62 (since I felt I could handle 2 games time-wise at least), but passed on them based on my experiences here and in PBEM 58. In all honesty, I don't know if playing is what I want--what I really want is an experience like I had in the intrasite demogame (and PB14 to a lesser extent) where I'm involved, but don't have the pressure of everything every turn, hoping someone doesn't knock down my sandbox. I don't know what the difference is--I suspect some of the differences include both me not being directly involved in everything, as well as full diplo (which reduces some of the prisoner's dilemma aspects).

If any of the lurkers have any suggestions, please let me know! I like a lot of the process, but I can't take these lows that well. On your side, I'm sure you want keep someone who tends to follow RB culture (especially the in-depth reporting, which everyone seems to like) around. I've even thought about posting something like this in the general forum, where more people can see it and give opinions, but the problem with that is that a lot of my feelings are tied to my current games, which makes it difficult to explain without spoilers.

[Bobchillingworth]

I haven't been following this game very closely, so I don't know about specific actions you could/should have done, but I can tell you that at a certain point there isn't much you can do when the numbers are badly against your side. If all of your neighbors have comparable land to your own and they keep waging wars of conquest against you, you're going to get dragged and eventually ground down, unless they make serious tactical errors- which doesn't seem to have been the case here. Basically, I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Not every scenario has a strategy that can turn it around.


As for your future participation, perhaps find a vet and try out that new, explicitly "greens" PB? I do hope you sign up for a new game, your reports are very thorough and well-written.