The Way of the Civ Player - Ichabod and Wetbandit's PB13 Spoiler Thread

[Ceiliazul]

good report, always like a good long term macro plan.

[Ichabod]

good report, always like a good long term macro plan.

Thanks.

BoM will stagnate at size 16, most likely. It gets +3 happy with a forge and another happy with Silk, getting to 16. It needs 17 health, due to the forge, and it'll get it with the deer at Slow's lands.

I'll try showing some special cities more often, saying what I plan to do with them. I'm not entirely sure about most of them, but posting will likely help me to decide.

[Ichabod]

Just posting here so I remember -> Need to start two settlers, to settle the two island cities north of Slow. War will probably be faster than I expected.

[Ichabod]

Report will have more pictures than words, because I'm not very creative at the moment.

Old Sarai was defended by a spearman and a warrior.




1. C1/Shock Phalanx vs. Spearman - 98.8% odds - won flawlessly
2. C1 Phalanx vs. Warrior - no picture of the odds - won with 3.7/5 health

City was captured and kept, giving 96 gold.




It was renamed The Art of War, for obvious reasons, and it kept a granary, which is a pretty good result, since I didn't expect Slow cities to have much in the way of infra. Caturing this city denied Slow of his only source of horses.

Capturing the city also gave me vision on West City, which revealed Slow's main stack, trapped in the island.




It'll be a bit more costly to take this city (I'll get a Trirreme in BoM and divert the galleys I currently have to ferry some troops), but I'm under no threat of a retaliation by Slow, what with he only having one galley. I need to take this city to make TAoW a decent city and because I don't want to deal with motherland unhappiness. I left 2 phalanxes and a spear defending, but I'm reinforcing the city with another phalanx + spear + WE soon (in preparation for taking West City too). Ah, I'll probably declare war and try to capture the other city dtay planted on this island, after I deal with Slow.




Ning-hsia was defended by a single warrior.




3. C1/CR1 Sword vs. Warrior - 99.1% odds - Won flawlessly

City was captured and kept, giving 78 gold.




It was renamed The Locust Tree (because it has a lot of forests nearby - I wasn't creative when I played the turn either) and also kept a granary, which is very nice. I'm diverting some workers to this area, because it requires quite a bit of love. Chopping those woods will make these cities develop faster.

Capturing Ning-hsia also opened up some road movement for the rest of my stack, which enabled me to do this:




Final screenshot of the war theater:




Notice my second stack ready to pillage Slow's copper next turn. I think this war will likely go pretty smoothly.

---

I'm about to settle another city, peacefully:




---

The scout I unloaded at FinHarry's land met Mackoti this turn. He has 20 cities and generates 150 gold per turn at 100% gold (not sure it's 100%, but is pretty likely). I have 15 cities and I get 100 gpt at 100% gold... Yeah... Things are not looking that good right now...

[wetbandit]

Well done! Especially fortunate that granaries were preserved.

That's annoying that he has so many troops in West City, have to commit a more troops than you'd like to defend Art of War so he can't snipe it from his one galley.

Lots of capture gold to fund the run through the bottom half of the tech tree...

[Ichabod]

Regarding tech, I'm going for Literature first, because I think getting the HE in BoM is the best investment we can make in the next couple of turns. After that, I need to study the tech three a bit better, but it's possible that we'll forgo a lot of techs (CoL, CS being prime examples).

[Ichabod]

I think Slow deleted some workers, which I think is very unsportsmanlike... One thing is to defend with all you got, another is to just hinder your opponent, by taking away what would be rightfully his.

Well, whatever, no point discussing the same thing yet another time.

[Ceiliazul]

Deleting workers seems to be an accepted thing around here. hey, at least he left you all those trees, there's plenty of workers that'll come out of there once the chopping starts. seriously, that looks like ai land you're capturing.

[Ichabod]

Deleting workers seems to be an accepted thing around here. hey, at least he left you all those trees, there's plenty of workers that'll come out of there once the chopping starts. seriously, that looks like ai land you're capturing.

To add insult to injury, he deleted the workers after chopping a forest.

[Ichabod]

Next turn will be the decisive one from the war. Karakorum was way more defended than I antecipated. It has 13 units (I'm not counting the warrior and archer) and a catapult, with almost no promotions, that can hit my stack of 8 units + 8 catapults in defensive terrain (hill tile) and good promotions (agressive combat 1 + at least another one). Only 4 of Slow's units get odds on my catapults, the others are coinflip odds or less (I even promoted my two cats with 5xp to drill + shock - suboptimal, I know, but better to be safe than sorry). Some initial combats, baring very bad luck with his only catapult attacking, are in the >90% odds for me.

On one hand, if he attacks and I get lucky, I may end up taking the city with few losses (some of my units get incredible odds on defense against his). On the other, if he attacks and gets lucky, everything we accomplished so far may be lost. If he doesn't attack, I reinforce my stack with 2 more units and 2 more catapults, making the attack even less likely to succeed.

We will see... I'm pretty nervous...

Ah, I'll do a proper update tomorrow. This is just a preview.