[PB72 SPOILERS] Aetryn learns humility

[BING_XI_LAO]

Well, I made a brutal mistake.

T178 I wanted to wait and see what Bing selected for researching before I played, since it would affect my tech choice (I have tech vision). So even though Xist had logged in and played, when I logged in I immediately changed my mind about playing my turn and logged back out. Then later that afternoon in a few spare moments between work and dinner I noticed that Bing had played, so I logged back in and saw that Bing was on something that didn't effect me, so I ended turn.

But I never actually played the turn! I never went through and moved units, and I never looked at my cities, which I usually do every turn to see what they are producing. I realized it a bit later and was like eh, so I lose worker moves for one turn, it's not that big of deal.

Well, it was a big deal to someone who actually sent units to attack me on T178, that I didn't bother to respond to because I didn't play my turn.

Someone who then razed a city T179 without me even realizing the city was under attack.

Anyway, this involves combat results, and it was totally my fault for getting discombobulated and thinking I'd already done unit moves and city inspections when I hadn't, and assuming all I had to do with my turn was check the tech selection and go. So I don't think it's fair to ask for a reload, nor do I think it would be granted.

But this pretty much ruins my game. I was already dubious on how playing was interacting with my life (work, prayer, other commitments), and this just solidifies the fact that I shouldn't be playing this game. So I'm going to scale back my level of effort, make sure my turns get played, but not spend a lot of time on it - just defend, select reasonable techs, and get on with life. I will probably report significantly less going forward, just summaries of where things are at.

Sorry to all who were enjoying a fairly tense 3-way game, but hopefully this clears the way for an actual clash between Bing and Greenline, since they don't need to worry much about me now.

[BING_XI_LAO]

FYI, I never spent on espionage, it was all buldings and automatically assigned Spies.

[greenline]

Getting through the thread, some comments:

I'm honestly not sure exactly how I was keeping up in expansion early on with IMP. I had early granaries set up with EXP, but I don't think I did it in the most efficient way. But both of us were still well behind Bing / civac at that point. Micro wins over traits, I suppose!

I didn't realize how severe the skirmishing was between you and Rome early. Good work on keeping a cool head in a stressful environment! An early game war was definitely something I wasn't hoping to deal with in pitboss games.

I was skeptical of the Metal Casting first plan, but with Colossus it definitely seemed the right play, and the Theology bulb into AP was definitely an inspired use for a prophet. Along with the HG play.

For most of the early game, the reason I was lagging somewhat on military was just because I could not afford to build any more. I had the hammers to spare, but for many turns I was losing gold at 0% science and any extra would bankrupt me. I don't think Bing was eager to attack at that point because he still had a lot of green land to settle and protective archers would not be cost effective to chew through.

On a similar note, the reason I was skeptical of attacking Bing with phracts was that he had a large strategic depth with no one to help split him, and he had built Angkor Wat + started whipping like crazy by the time I had 8 phracts available. If I had gone all in on Pyramids I could have arrived at guilds much earlier and it would have been an option, but it was not to be.

 on the core city Xist razed. It's hard to keep playing steadily on with losses like that, as I and Bing both later found out.

My phract stack was never quite enough to brute force Neapolis without siege. By the time I brought some catapults over Xist had made a megastack of cats and pikes I couldn't break. So the best thing to do was hold in my own fort and wait for cannons.

9/9 
Greenline on Democracy. I think this was a mistake for the record. If Greenline ends up losing this game this will be one of the key decisions. This is a win more decision. These can work out, but risky. 

I don't fully agree with this assessment. Going for democracy I didn't see as winning more, but something to keep me in the race. When I burned the merchant getting to MinInc I assumed I needed another big advantage, and Statue of Liberty seemed a good one. It did keep my tech ahead of Bing's even after I lost my shrine+Hq. The mistake of it was that I spent 8 turns building it that could have been 8 more defenders for my shrine city, but that plays into the general crisis I had of "How do I keep pace in tech with Aetryn while Bing is running 100% gold to upgrade every single piece of mediaeval trash he has to invade me with." I'm not sure if there was a good answer to that problem.

This is impressive as hell. Bing was last of the big 3 to assembly line, so this has to be all with no production corp, no factories (I went back into glance around and confirmed none to be seen), just drafting and naturally producing. You have to wonder why the heck Greenline thought walking into Xist was a good idea. I mean he probably didn't expect to be destroyed, but still. Also shown Aetryn needs to get in GEAR!

Again, its impressive because look at this production. Greenline had nearly DOUBLE his. He got caught flat footed building buildings probably (I saw some colosseums for instance). Also 100% regrets the win more play of going for Democracy atm. He could have had assembly line earlier and SoL would have been a lot of infantry. Aetryns will also be shooting up with all his factories and coal plants finishing. 

The factories and WW buildings were definitely me being greedy. But the MFG graph was somewhat misleading. Most cities would take 4 turns or more to build infantries without the factory + coal plant. Once I had those set up in my core that was how I was able to rebuild after Bing wiped my defending stack. A lot of my MFG was stuck in my ironworks city which could output only 1 unit per turn.

I'm not sure exactly why Bing dithered after taking Creation. I think it was because he burned basically every single cannon he had taking the city. I had a few garrison defenders left and it would result in ugly losses to push through those without siege, which he could have done. From what I gather in his thread WW had become significant.

CreCon culture is... broken. I wonder if the corp nerfs in the latest version will reel it in a bit.

I was checked out enough in the late turns that I never noticed you were sending a stack to attack Creation.   on my part. I didn't really have any plans to attack you after I saw you had reached industrialization - at that point I recognized the tech difference would make it a futile effort, and decided my only option for winning would be taking easy gains from Bing where possible. Then artillery / machine gun mechanics dashed that plan. Thanks for not razing the city at least - I didn't accept Bing's peace offer in part because I wanted to honor the fish / fish deal.

2) The Mining Inc race I "lost". This was almost certainly not worth the Great Merchant Greenline spent on it, as he had Biology for AGES without a merchant to found Cereal Mills. Of course, he was also in Mercantilism to power up his specialists and maybe didn't want a second corp? Either way, this let me get Cereal Mills to pair with Kremlin which is utterly absurd. And Creative Construction was incredibly good on this map. I pushed back Bing's territory so much, and earlier I pushed Greenline off the lands he conquered from Xist. The culture also set up point #4 below. Probably on a map like this with lots of land but also lots of narrow chokes, we underestimated culture.

Agreed. I went for biology for the food, but I also had a couple of chances to roll a merchant and failed. I think part of the reason we blew the merchant to secure MinInc was not knowing if we could make it to biology first - we thought it was likely you could get there first on a beeline.

[Mjmd]

I liked you attacking Xist. Bing was just too strong to make a lot of gains, but Xist was weakest and Aetryn wasn't looking that strong, so you rightfully felt like there were some gains to make and keep there. One of the things I've pointed out in other games but also this one is I don't think you had a scout with Aetryns army. So when Xist went and killed it you didn't know to move in until after he could get back in position.

I think the play was either Democracy for guaranteed SoL OR assembly line finishing of Xist OR just assembly line and wait. Honestly the thing with mining inc is that getting that multiplied by factories and coal plants you can pretty easily guarantee SoL anyways.

I wrote a bit about cre con a couple times. In brief I think it definitely over performed this game due to shape and amount of land.

[aetryn]

Getting through the thread, some comments:

I'm honestly not sure exactly how I was keeping up in expansion early on with IMP. I had early granaries set up with EXP, but I don't think I did it in the most efficient way. But both of us were still well behind Bing / civac at that point. Micro wins over traits, I suppose!

I didn't realize how severe the skirmishing was between you and Rome early. Good work on keeping a cool head in a stressful environment! An early game war was definitely something I wasn't hoping to deal with in pitboss games.

I was skeptical of the Metal Casting first plan, but with Colossus it definitely seemed the right play, and the Theology bulb into AP was definitely an inspired use for a prophet. Along with the HG play.

For most of the early game, the reason I was lagging somewhat on military was just because I could not afford to build any more. I had the hammers to spare, but for many turns I was losing gold at 0% science and any extra would bankrupt me. I don't think Bing was eager to attack at that point because he still had a lot of green land to settle and protective archers would not be cost effective to chew through.

On a similar note, the reason I was skeptical of attacking Bing with phracts was that he had a large strategic depth with no one to help split him, and he had built Angkor Wat + started whipping like crazy by the time I had 8 phracts available. If I had gone all in on Pyramids I could have arrived at guilds much earlier and it would have been an option, but it was not to be.

 on the core city Xist razed. It's hard to keep playing steadily on with losses like that, as I and Bing both later found out.

My phract stack was never quite enough to brute force Neapolis without siege. By the time I brought some catapults over Xist had made a megastack of cats and pikes I couldn't break. So the best thing to do was hold in my own fort and wait for cannons.

9/9 
Greenline on Democracy. I think this was a mistake for the record. If Greenline ends up losing this game this will be one of the key decisions. This is a win more decision. These can work out, but risky. 

I don't fully agree with this assessment. Going for democracy I didn't see as winning more, but something to keep me in the race. When I burned the merchant getting to MinInc I assumed I needed another big advantage, and Statue of Liberty seemed a good one. It did keep my tech ahead of Bing's even after I lost my shrine+Hq. The mistake of it was that I spent 8 turns building it that could have been 8 more defenders for my shrine city, but that plays into the general crisis I had of "How do I keep pace in tech with Aetryn while Bing is running 100% gold to upgrade every single piece of mediaeval trash he has to invade me with." I'm not sure if there was a good answer to that problem.

This is impressive as hell. Bing was last of the big 3 to assembly line, so this has to be all with no production corp, no factories (I went back into glance around and confirmed none to be seen), just drafting and naturally producing. You have to wonder why the heck Greenline thought walking into Xist was a good idea. I mean he probably didn't expect to be destroyed, but still. Also shown Aetryn needs to get in GEAR!

Again, its impressive because look at this production. Greenline had nearly DOUBLE his. He got caught flat footed building buildings probably (I saw some colosseums for instance). Also 100% regrets the win more play of going for Democracy atm. He could have had assembly line earlier and SoL would have been a lot of infantry. Aetryns will also be shooting up with all his factories and coal plants finishing. 

The factories and WW buildings were definitely me being greedy. But the MFG graph was somewhat misleading. Most cities would take 4 turns or more to build infantries without the factory + coal plant. Once I had those set up in my core that was how I was able to rebuild after Bing wiped my defending stack. A lot of my MFG was stuck in my ironworks city which could output only 1 unit per turn.

I'm not sure exactly why Bing dithered after taking Creation. I think it was because he burned basically every single cannon he had taking the city. I had a few garrison defenders left and it would result in ugly losses to push through those without siege, which he could have done. From what I gather in his thread WW had become significant.

CreCon culture is... broken. I wonder if the corp nerfs in the latest version will reel it in a bit.

I was checked out enough in the late turns that I never noticed you were sending a stack to attack Creation.   on my part. I didn't really have any plans to attack you after I saw you had reached industrialization - at that point I recognized the tech difference would make it a futile effort, and decided my only option for winning would be taking easy gains from Bing where possible. Then artillery / machine gun mechanics dashed that plan. Thanks for not razing the city at least - I didn't accept Bing's peace offer in part because I wanted to honor the fish / fish deal.

2) The Mining Inc race I "lost". This was almost certainly not worth the Great Merchant Greenline spent on it, as he had Biology for AGES without a merchant to found Cereal Mills. Of course, he was also in Mercantilism to power up his specialists and maybe didn't want a second corp? Either way, this let me get Cereal Mills to pair with Kremlin which is utterly absurd. And Creative Construction was incredibly good on this map. I pushed back Bing's territory so much, and earlier I pushed Greenline off the lands he conquered from Xist. The culture also set up point #4 below. Probably on a map like this with lots of land but also lots of narrow chokes, we underestimated culture.

Agreed. I went for biology for the food, but I also had a couple of chances to roll a merchant and failed. I think part of the reason we blew the merchant to secure MinInc was not knowing if we could make it to biology first - we thought it was likely you could get there first on a beeline.

The stack only went in to attack Creation after you had basically broken it to try to pick off Bing's weakened units before they could heal, but Bing spotted them and retreated rather than lose them. I'm glad you were able to retake it in the end. I'm sorry we had to fight, as you were friendliest to me most of the game, but unfortunately that's the nature of war games.

Agreed that, on this map at least, CreCon culture was bonkers when paired with free speech. You asked a few times in your thread why I was razing and refounding cities. That's why. 3nd ring borders in 2 turns instead of 5+ turns of anarchy followed by having to overwhelm previous culture. My entire eastern campaign against Bing relied on tile flipping the area near Rome to make it impossible for it to him to attack it and then getting approaches to his cities though cultural pressure, and at the same time it made it hard for him to attack into me.

I totally understand being broke in the early game, as I destroyed my tech pace early and only pulled out of it with the Colossus play, which was great since I had 4 coast cities with FIN lighthouses at the time. I'm not entirely sure how Bing did NOT go broke with all his cities early.

I hope absorbing some of the catapults in the early bit of the war with Xist helped you move in a bit. I admit I vastly underestimated how brutal Xist would be on the defensive.

[aetryn]

Well, I made a brutal mistake.

T178 I wanted to wait and see what Bing selected for researching before I played, since it would affect my tech choice (I have tech vision). So even though Xist had logged in and played, when I logged in I immediately changed my mind about playing my turn and logged back out. Then later that afternoon in a few spare moments between work and dinner I noticed that Bing had played, so I logged back in and saw that Bing was on something that didn't effect me, so I ended turn.

But I never actually played the turn! I never went through and moved units, and I never looked at my cities, which I usually do every turn to see what they are producing. I realized it a bit later and was like eh, so I lose worker moves for one turn, it's not that big of deal.

Well, it was a big deal to someone who actually sent units to attack me on T178, that I didn't bother to respond to because I didn't play my turn.

Someone who then razed a city T179 without me even realizing the city was under attack.

Anyway, this involves combat results, and it was totally my fault for getting discombobulated and thinking I'd already done unit moves and city inspections when I hadn't, and assuming all I had to do with my turn was check the tech selection and go. So I don't think it's fair to ask for a reload, nor do I think it would be granted.

But this pretty much ruins my game. I was already dubious on how playing was interacting with my life (work, prayer, other commitments), and this just solidifies the fact that I shouldn't be playing this game. So I'm going to scale back my level of effort, make sure my turns get played, but not spend a lot of time on it - just defend, select reasonable techs, and get on with life. I will probably report significantly less going forward, just summaries of where things are at.

Sorry to all who were enjoying a fairly tense 3-way game, but hopefully this clears the way for an actual clash between Bing and Greenline, since they don't need to worry much about me now.

Yeah, this post didn't age well. MJMD managed to shake me out of my funk. It's not clear here, but I actually declined to finish Economics because I didn't want to coin flip the merchant when I felt like I was out of the game and wanted Greenline to have it. That's how sad I was.

[BING_XI_LAO]

civ4's internal development emphasis certainly makes it a lot more depressing to go into decline, than in a strongly combat-centric game

[xist10]

One of the things I've pointed out in other games but also this one is I don't think you had a scout with Aetryns army. So when Xist went and killed it you didn't know to move in until after he could get back in position.

I think you underestimated how much I saw thanks to the captured cities.
I had city visibility in my old cities for nearly the whole war - and I think already the pikes in Neapolis that Greenline needed Catapults to break the city.
If I needed to hurry back I would be able to do it. Maybe not fast enough to save Neapolis, but I would save Antium.
My army was out of place one or two times, but only when Greenline‘s army was out of place too.

[Mjmd]

Razing and replacing cities is also just safer a lot of the time. Both Aetryn and Greenline had points this game where the cities they took ended up being liabilities.

[aetryn]

Razing and replacing cities is also just safer a lot of the time. Both Aetryn and Greenline had points this game where the cities they took ended up being liabilities.

Which is probably an underlooked benefit of IMP. It also makes border plants that get lost early not that big of deal. Like, I was totally happy to cede Gao in order to burn Antium and kill off its culture. Didn't exactly take me a long time to replace it and I hadn't even spread corps to it yet.