[spoilers] Mr. Cairo PB73

[Mr. Cairo]

Well, it's been a while, I'm sorry to say I clearly didn't succeed in my plan to be more involved in this game, but various irl circumstances kept me from doing much more than playing my turns. Not to say I was checked out of the game, just checked out of talking about the game. But that time has hopefully passed, and just in time for interesting things to happen in game, which I'm sure the lurkers are all aware of as Luddite actually posts.

But the circumstances are exactly what I feared would happen if I was unsuccessful in killing Luddite early on, which is exactly what happened. An unstoppable force of Artillery and AT has arrived. He must have timed things quite well, I had little warning as far as his power graphs went, the spike was drastic and sudden. I may have spent a few too many hammers on non-military things, but I don't think it would have made a difference really, I have done some sims and I think I've need over twice as many Musketeers as I have right now to defeat this stack in the field. What would have made a difference is positioning, and in that regard I didn't think ahead when the threat materialised.:




So, as I said, I can't defeat this stack in the field. So I'm not going to try. I'm going to use my mobility, now that he's stuck in my territory where he can't use his Fast Workers, and go straight for his cities. I think my only real hope is to eliminate him before he eliminates me. So that's the plan. If I had a few more turns, I might be able to build enough cats that I could deal with his army, but not really, after all, Artillery doesn't suffer from collateral. And he'd probably still be able to burn my most important cities before then.

[Qgqqqqq]

Thanks for the update!

[Mr. Cairo]

Well, it's gone about as badly as it could have. He had units in the right place by his cities to start hurting my stack. He got a GG spawn at the exact right time and place to enable him to give an Artillery an extra move and hit my stack when I wasn't expecting it. He attacks a musketeer with a spear and gets two hits off, My Musketeers fail to land any hits when defending against ATs. etc.

In retrospect I made plenty of mistakes. I was too cautious when I needed to be decisive, I was too reckless when I needed to be cautious. While bad luck has played some small part, it was my poor play and Luddite's excellent play that has led to these circumstances. I'll keep trying to do damage and defend as well as I can, but the end is inevitable. If anything spectacular happens I'll post it here, but I'm pretty sure all that's going to happen is I'll keep losing musketeers and be unable to deal much damage in return.

[Mr. Cairo]

Well, I got some good luck. Managed to kill an AT on defense, and that left his other AT and GG Arty vulnerable. So I was able to kill both, losing two Musketeers in the process. I have four fully healthy one coming down by boat, two very injured ones that got away, and one slightly injured one that will probably get killed by some Swords/Axes. Or another AT that he just finished. I also have some units, Musketeers and Cats up my my cap. I'm tempted to just once again go around his stack once it's deep in my territory and head down to his land. I have cities pretty far away from his stack, and I could burn roads behind me as I go.

[Mr. Cairo]

Sometimes things are just annoying. I burned his city with my musketeers from the boats. Lost one, against the odds. Fine, it happens, that's ok. Final Musketeer one with full health. It was attacked by an Axe, which had 3% odds, and still managed to hit my Musketeer four times, enough that the Spear that attacked next had no problems. I knew I would lose that Musketeer, but it should have taken three ancient era units, not two. Oh well. This kind of thing is bound to happen. I'm sure over my entire Civ 4 playing "career" the odds have averaged out to the middle.

[Mr. Cairo]

It's hard to remain positive or even neutral/objective when the bad luck just keeps on piling up. I lost a galley battle this time. On the defence. With two mostly healthy Musketeers inside. I should have offloaded them, they probably would have at the very least killed some swords and the like before dying, but it seemed to me that the play with the most upside, and with a more than decent chance of occuring, was the rely on the good odds my defending alley would get and escape with two Musketeers.

Also, sorry for not putting up any screenshots. I just got a new computer, and couldn't figure out how to take them, and then forgot to ask here (which is what I'm doing now). I used to use the printscreen button, but that didn't work properly at first, just opening the clipping tool (which I can use in a pinch), but now does nothign at all. The usual shortcut keys for Civ 4 and Steam don't work either. The Civ 4 one because of BUG I'm assuming, and the Steam one befause of using the wrapper I'm assuming. Does BUG have it's own screenshot shortcut?

[xist10]

You can/have to deactivate in the settings that Win 11 opens the clipping tool on printscreen.

[yuris125]

PrintScreen should work in Civ, modded or not - I haven't had any issues once I deactivated opening Snipping Tool with PrintScreen (under Accessiblity -> Keyboard, or just search for snipping tool in settings)

If it doesn't work, you can go back to using Snipping Tool with WinKey + Shift + S

[Krill]

If you are playing in windowed mode, the window needs to be in monitor designated as primary, and cannot be in any other window. Maybe this even applies in fullscreen mode.

[Mr. Cairo]

Thanks everyone, changing the settings re:snipping tool worked like a charm. Here's some screenshots:



Here's where I'm heading down to his cities with my meagre force: 6 Cats, 5 full health Musketeers, and two very injured ones that I'll send around to one of my surviving cities to heal. His stack is mostly arty, with a couple ATs and an Axe or two. I doubt I'll manage to do much, especially after losing those two on the galley, but it's drawing him away from my remaining cities, so there may be opportunity there.



Here, I'm hoping I can ambush his remaining forces around here, kill them off, and possibly even retake my capital. If he heads to Tours with that Arty and AT, I might be able to take them out with the four musketeers I should have by then.