I didn't see any problems, especially since I didn't leave you any worker management tasks and basically just said "Kill Caledorn", which I will note that you did not do. So, some work to do there. To be fair, I did say to be cautious.
Cal used his GG to sprinkle XP on LBs in his capital so I'll just keep waddling up units until I can overwhelm him. Probably attack in 3t? He can only get one LB per turn. I can add a new combat 3 knight each turn that gets ~30% odds to win before sending in the cats, so it's only a matter of time. I figure I can sacrifice three cats, depending on whether the attacking cat gets any hits in, and then clean up at over 80% odds. The city in the south will be dead in 2t unless I get horrible combat luck. I'm starting to see some WW in my cities (not sure when that first showed up or what the mechanic for that requires, whether it is just units dying or the length of the war too?) so I would like to finish this thing up ASAP but I'm going to have to wait on the galley for the island city. What I don't want to do is rush and have units die unnecessarily that will cause me WW unhappiness. To mitigate this concern, and because my workers have a surplus of turns available right now, I'm going to divert for Calendar (finally) and get the Incense, Spices, and Silk online. Paper should still finish next turn and a few turns later I can bulb Education. I've been saving a few forest chops here are there for Universities (or the Russian replacement) so I'll hopefully get Oxford up before too long.
Worth mentioning, I'm #1 in power now. Suck it, Xenu (who always tells me I don't build enough units).
We appear to have made contact with pindicator, I don't remember having met him previously. Do you recall where we made contact? He now has Paper and also knocked out a quick UoS, which I'm glad for. The monk wonders to this point have been split up. TBS got AP, maybe dtay will take Spiral Minaret?
He's at war with England. This feels like a bad time for England to have to defend against an invasion from the east. I'll support this mission and hope that troops flow east. England is easier to crack open than Q-zantium. Q has built a lot of LBs, but I'm going to have to fight my prideful, darker nature not to pummel him next.
Since Cal isn't attacking out, I'm depriving him of hammers. He's been building lots of LBs in his capital without whipping now that he's in Bureaucracy. Now he'll at least have to whip. I'm not sure if that is actually good for me, I want that city nice and tall. My cats are in place now, his capital dies next turn. I also expect to take Topaz.
My GNP is very average on a tech that several civs already have. I'm still trying to sort out how much known tech bonus is propping up some teams, but it is clear to me that I'm lagging behind the leaders here. I need to get out of wartime civics and build up my empire's commerce efficiency. I need courthouses, universities, and the freedom to build wealth. To help me ease into this, I settled the GG into my HE city. This will let me build 10xp knights even without Theocracy, allowing me to swap into Organized Religion and get some of these courthouses down. Soon, but not yet. This is all contingent upon me not just pressing the attack into Q.
Cal's known defense. He's upgraded all of his archers into LBs now. I'll brood over this later maybe but I don't have time now.
The only significant change is that after taking this picture I logged back in to swap the missionary in Yellowstone for Taj. I really can't justify sandbagging that for any reason without intel on my likely competition. I'm not swapping into Pacifism anyway, so starving the NE city isn't really the plan. I'm winging it at this point though, so who knows what I'll do.
A discerning sleuth will notice that this and the last picture are taken after Q declared war and razed my border city, recently taken from Caledorn. I had messaged novice while he was still logged in, and before Q played, to let me know when he was done so I could log back in. I didn't want to make him wait for me to load in. Q logged in during the 2 hours that novice was in game, declared, and razed the city. Last turn, or maybe the previous, Q closed borders with me. I'd had a worker sitting in his border city to spy on his war with Ruff. I just thought he was getting rid of prying eyes. Instead, he attacked with a cat and killed my injured knight, a mace, and maybe an archer. I didn't think he'd be coming for me, and I think probably it was a mistake on his part. Certainly I underestimated his attention span and didn't properly defend a border city. I'll have to think how to respond. The obvious response is to finish Cal and continue westward once everything is healed up. I can probably pick a few cities off Mardoc's rotting corpse easier, and England as well. They're both occupied right now and Mardoc is fading fast. I don't know how OH/Fin would react to me poaching a few cities on my coast, but I've got the #1 army now so they've got to at least consider that. I'll run this through my mind later.
Well, I made that easier on Q than I had remembered. on me...
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So reporting on this game has become difficult. I'm enduring some tough times right now and this game is a very minor concern in the grand state of things in life, but it remains a source of distraction for me that I still need. I'm going to keep playing but the reporting will probably suffer. I should at least be able to manage dumping pictures. I hope you guys enjoy them.
(October 16th, 2014, 22:20)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: So reporting on this game has become difficult. I'm enduring some tough times right now and this game is a very minor concern in the grand state of things in life, but it remains a source of distraction for me that I still need. I'm going to keep playing but the reporting will probably suffer. I should at least be able to manage dumping pictures. I hope you guys enjoy them.
No sweat, Boldly.
Life comes first. Virtual Empires a distant second and lurkers of virtual empires are even lower.
...bummer tho because you're doing pretty well. Is there a light at the end of the stress tunnel?
(October 16th, 2014, 22:20)Boldly Going Nowhere Wrote: So reporting on this game has become difficult. I'm enduring some tough times right now and this game is a very minor concern in the grand state of things in life, but it remains a source of distraction for me that I still need. I'm going to keep playing but the reporting will probably suffer. I should at least be able to manage dumping pictures. I hope you guys enjoy them.
No sweat, Boldly.
Life comes first. Virtual Empires a distant second and lurkers of virtual empires are even lower.
...bummer tho because you're doing pretty well. Is there a light at the end of the stress tunnel?
The hardest part is over, thanks. My wife's medical procedure went well so the immediate medical concern has been resolved. We're just sorting through the emotions now. This does help, having the concern of uncertainty removed, so stress will lift layer by layer with time. Having the game to play is a good distraction.
Game: I captured Cal's capital and southern city last turn at the cost of a couple of knights and a pair of cats. ~15 pop added with the captures. Cal is down to 3 cities.
I captured Topaz and Amethyst (capital) at the cost of 3 catapults and 2 knights.
I finally got graphs on OH/Fin:
SA whip economy. They have pulled back on building units so they're going to consolidate gains with infrastructure builds and war later with better units. As for where they'll war, I don't know. I expect the ditch to keep our interests separate and our armies untangled.
T149
The war between England and Cyne turns out to be an English invasion. Good idea. There is just no way that Cyneheard should have been able to poach this location a mere 6 tiles east of the English capital, much less keep the city.
Longbows are a pain in the ass. It turns out that Caledorn did not get an event that was putting drill on his troops, but that he was just promoting that way. He's corrected that now, promoting CG instead.
A bank for Yellowstone, then Paper, then Education in a double bulb (unless I lose the 4% odds to the Artist).
OH/Fin have steamrolled another couple of cities. For a while I thought about trying to secure the coastal cities but in the end I think that would just breed more conflict and less security for both of us.
Q has holed up in his fortress waiting for the end to come. It won't come quickly, I'm not going to blunt my army against this thing just yet. I'll see if I can bypass at blitz to other cities to the rear.
Just checking one last time to see what he has before I plunge the knife in his back...
No hard feelings, pal.
T150 demos, stats, etc:
I'm pretty sure this GNP is inflated by 5-6 wealth builds. I want to make sure I have enough gold to get to Economics so I can swap into Free Market by the end of this GA. I debated swapping to OR but I have several units finishing EoT, so I'll just do the swaps to Free Market/OR at the same time on the last turn. I also considered Nationhood to draft some cheap maces in cities where I have plenty of happiness but decided that I didn't want to give up the research power. I can't make it to Free Market and give up Bureaucracy, so the maces lost out. They would probably end up being cheap city garrisons anyway, so not a high priority.
Pindicator is making use of Qin, scoring the efficient worker wonder on discount.
It galls me to have so many jewish cities feeding gold for dtay's shrine and lack my own.
For the curious. I need courthouses and more trade routes, then we'll be flying high again. More raw commerce from trade routes, less expenses from courthouses, more beaker efficiency through cheap PHI Russiaversities (whatever they're called) and cheap Observatories at Astronomy. The future looks good, once I stop building units. I just want enough units to conquer another civ's worth of land or two. Earlier in the thread mackoti commented that I'd need ~60 cities to be competitive. I'm halfway there with a serious hammer advantage right now over near opponents (excluding OH/Fin, who should mutually look to avoid conflict with me if they want to win). Q'zantium is turtling up, I'll see how close they are to having phracts in a few turns. I'm also going to poach some coastal cities from England, and perhaps do more than a little raiding if things look promising. We'll see.
T150 world at war. Mostly just me, actually. I'm at war with 4 right now, but Azza doesn't count. This doesn't show everything, Cyneheard/England for instance, but it is still funny to me to see how many relationships are tracked here.
This is what constitutes the #1 army in the world. My job will be mostly to continue building catapults to whittle down the fortress cities and to blitz my stack through backlines and sweep weakly held garrisons aside. Cal has just been a slog once he's gotten LBs in place. I took a chance here and there but lost a key roll on one city and now I'm going to be looking at ~6 LBs instead of the single Vulture that I couldn't kill with two chariots. So it goes.
Dtay is growing his many cities tall now and consolidating his gains. Krovice #1 land area. I did not realize they had done so much fighting. They are right on par with me on city count.
Overall, I'm pleased with my position so far. I've rebounded a bit from my doom and gloom pronouncement from ~15-20t ago. Has it even been that long? It's amazing what a massive army and a little bloodletting will do for generating some enthusiasm. I'm happy that I landed Taj, but disappointed that I allowed dtay to take Liberalism. If Pericles is good for anything, it ought to be Liberalism. I got sidetracked with some fluff like Angkor Wat and the Music Artist that ought to really have been more knights sooner so that I wouldn't have run into so many longbows against Cal but that's a mistake that has now been learned and is water under the bridge. Going forward, I'll see how much I need to invest to take cities from England. If it is too costly I'll just keep the coast to protect my core. I should take three cities at minimum.
I'd be interested if a lurker could eyeball the scoreboard and make some kind of interim report on how geography has impacted the game. Looking at what I know of the world, the civs on the outside of the continents seem to have done well enough while teams facing more opposition on the interior seem to have suffered a greater share. At a glance, this makes sense. Less fronts to defend means less units required means more workers/settlers/snowball. Cal is getting eaten. Azza was between OH/Fin and Mardoc and got eaten. Mardoc is getting eaten because Azza sapped his strength and because OH/Fin have a healthy appetite. Wetbandit and Nakor are in a duel and seem evenly matched, kind of. Etc, etc.
Gold and a granary. I think I just sacrificed two catapults and had good odds (above 85% IIRC) with knights thereafter.
I met Zanth. He is in the process of invading MYKI. Watching the scoreboard indicates that MYKI is fighting both Zanth and WilliamLP, so he won't be long for this world. Zanth needs more cities to catch up. I'm not sure MYKI will provide all that he needs to really make up ground.
Wetbandit is putting together a good-sized stack in Numberwang, his two front border city. I'm countering by loading in catapults and building a couple of pikes. I'll move my crossbows here to garrison as well, allowing me to send my knight back to the mainland fighting. I can one turn a castle here as needed during the golden age if he moves up a slow stack. I'm covered by a surprise mounted attack for now by the river and my 2 pikes and 2 spears. A slower moving stack will get to face my catapults which should buy me time to get more units into the city.
I finally made a GG medic. I looked at options for trying to make a true supermedic, woodyIII/medicIII, but that would require a melee/gunpowder unit and 7 promotions, so 50xp. The best I can do right now is 30xp on a melee unit (barracks 3, SoZ 3, settled GG 2, Theocracy 2, GG 20 = 30), and I'd have to then sprinkle xp from two subsequent GGs to get to 50xp. Not worth it. If AGG, I'd only need 37, which would probably be worthwhile. I wonder if OH/Fin have considered this with an old jaguar? The woodyI promo would reduce their cost to 37. These combo woody/medic healers are a blast to rampage around with. If I were Monty of Aztec, this guy at 26xp would be all set at woodyIII/medicIII.
Code:
melee = 10 in theocracy
XP for promo: 2 5 10 17 26 37 50 65 82 101 122 145 ... N^2+1
As is, I'll content myself to save the last promotion for morale to get me extra range so I can heal separate stacks over a greater distance, if that ever is needed. I'm holding the promo until that time in case another use becomes available.
In his fight with Ruff, Q kept his siege stack behind the fortress stack so I'll need to locate that before moving against him. For now, I have good visibility to ensure he isn't making any aggressive moves toward me. I'm planning on testing the limits of Ruff's patience by using his roads to try to maneuver a mounted stack through his territory to see if I can probe for a weak spot. They have enforced peace right now so Q may have moved more units in my direction until he absolutely has to move them back to a broader defensive posture when the enforced peace with Ruff expires. Q lacks Engineering but I'm guessing he is headed in that direction.
In anticipation of finishing off Caledorn, I used my sentry worker to finish a road connecting my new land with Ruff's road network. This is not guaranteed to work. Ruff is prickly when it comes to allowing units in his territory but he may see this as an opportunity to finally crack Q. It's worth a try.
I'm hopeful that I'll get enough capture gold to avoid running further wealth builds on my last turn to research Economics before the end of the GA. It really is time to start working on infrastructure. Even assuming that the cities that are building wealth would be working on units, that's only 12/26 cities. I need to swap to OR, spread Taoism, and throw down some buildings to get my economy roaring again.
Giving up 800 beakers per turn while I'm in a golden age is not a great sign. I'm also giving away a lot of trade routes right now.
Any questions?
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My play during this turn was interrupted when my wife came home yesterday very upset. I logged out before finishing the turn but prior to logging out I had completed unit moves near England. I'm just putting this here now before I get a complaint about him having been double moved next turn when I declare on England. Al units in that area are unmoved as of my second log in this afternoon. I only had worker moves and city management left to finish up today.
Hopefully I didn't mess anything up.
So, some work to do there. To be fair, I did say to be cautious. 
on me...
![[Image: T148%20combat%20log2.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59892754/PB18/T148%20combat%20log2.JPG)
![[Image: T148%20combat%20log1.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59892754/PB18/T148%20combat%20log1.JPG)
I'm at war with 4 right now, but Azza doesn't count. This doesn't show everything, Cyneheard/England for instance, but it is still funny to me to see how many relationships are tracked here. 
