[SPOILERS] GeneralKilCavalry and Irismono - Harmony Spawned from Discord

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Turn two of the war. We've lost a skirmisher in the north where our galley landed and an axeman i believe. We killed the offending praetorian (it was going to get three promotions, I had to stop it), but it seems that the axeman will be killed.

We had four options:



Attack towards white rabbit, away from gav's core cities in the northeast I presume.
Attack towards the capital head on - probably impossible with our puny stack.
March towards White Queen - The option I chose (perhaps unwisely, but oh well)
And march towards a city farther south.

I chose white queen because it will place the largest pressure on gav. However, I think I rushed the move and should've gone to the forest 1S . (The idea of my move was to cut off the banana to prevent regrowth of the city and a second praet whip, which it probably has). The stack will be retreated as soon as possible into the jungle.  

On the southern front,

My sims convinced me very quickly that defending this turn and waiting for the other 3 catapults is by far the wisest choice. If gav decides to stupidly attack this turn, his stack will be gone. If he moves towards my core, I will lure him in a bit more (an additional turn) to get the maximum strength counter attack.

Diplomatically, I looked at Chumchu's screen.

My gut instinct is to avoid trading with him. He's surely acting as a gavagai buffer state.

[Adler]

Push and make attempt to raze White Queen imo.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Been busy today, here are some screenies.

Naval invasion coming up. Now, I'm not sure obviously what units gav has loaded here, but given that he attacked our galley beforehand, one galley is probably unloaded. Not very pleased about this as we don't have triremes yet.


We're signaling full retreat in the north. gav has some sort of great general and I don't like that very much. No way we could've taken his city. Damn preats....

Not sure what gav is doing here. His best move is to move right on us through the jungle here. then, we have to move our forces farther away, forking sea horse city and our northern city. If he does press on, he will almost certainly lose tweedle, as we have two chariots in place for that. If he keeps retreating, however, I am confident we can crush his stack.

Adler and I had a very lengthy discussion about strategy, but this is the crux of it all. For now, we will try to clear out gav's southern cities and take them for ourselves, denying him of calendar happiness (observant lurkers would have noted he researched it). We also talked about whether or not we should subsidize chumchu with copper, decided not to for now, unless our happiness problem gets worse (3 whip unhappiness in major cities, 6 in the northern city).

[GeneralKilCavalry]

So, gav and I are both regrouping as it seems. Gav has pulled up a great general to the front lines, while we have started to consolidate our force (It'll end up around 10 cats, 10 axes and 10 skirms). Economically, we are both tanking in a race to the bottom.



gav's GNP is as down in the drain as ours.

In the north, I maneuvered two chariots up to threaten his city, but it has a praet in it that will heal. No chance in taking that city, although pillaging the silk might be quite worthwhile.

Galleys continue to threaten us, but we should have 4 next turn, and will go on a major naval/amphibious offensive towards the north, hopefully with 3 galleys with good odds.

The situation in the south:



I am cautiously optimistic that gav has misjudged the situation based on his retreat. If he had pushed forward, he would have easily been able to fork with his stack and use his secondary stack to threaten one of our two frontier towns. Gav is going all in here, foolishly pausing to build his stack up. He's given time for us to chop down the jungles near Tweedle. I hope to catch him out in the open or at least a open hill tile and hit hard with the catapults.

An interesting situation, however, would be if he stays put and lets his economy recover. We could attempt a strike elsewhere, but his tweedle stack would be a permanent threat, tying up most of our forces. Unlike four days ago, however, I think that gav won't be pursuing persistent courses of action. His lack of updates in his thread signals a certain disinterest in the game, I think, which means his strategy will likely be dominated by a drive to deliver one final crushing blow. This is all theorizing and psychology metagame at this point.

I think one of my weaknesses as a player is underestimating the value of scouting and contacts and being really passive in moving my starting scout/warrior. However, I have been keeping track of the global situation with score changes, and I think the power dynamics of the game are settling now.
Tier List!

Tier 1:
Superdeath - he'll take out chumchu (superdeath is fighting/bordering chumchu, which is clearly signaled by the -2 score decrease on turn 112 by chumchu from losing a tile due to culture and other previously noted score changes). I think he will be able to pull ahead and hopefully begin to threaten gav?
Alhazard - seems like he has been consistently fighting donovan and getting the upper hand, with donovan losing a city on 107. Commodore and Regentman are too weak to truly benefit from a Donovan conquest.

Tier 2:
gavagai - if his economy was any better, he'd be top of the tier. However, he's really behind.
Us - we're in it to survive, not win at this point, but anything can happen... We're probably better off than any tier 3 civs.

Tier 3:
Commodore - Little I can say to be frank. He's lost his capital and two wonders, set back enormously, but perhaps he can recover? Top of tier 3
Donovan - not enough info. He seems to be losing to alhazard though and is in a war with three people based on score - never a good situation to be in.
Chumchu - gav is probably propping him up one way or another, but he'll fall eventually
RegentMan - he must be putting up a tenacious defense, but at the same time he is not whipping that much? He'll be knocked out eventually, bottom of the bottom tier here.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I was thinking a bit about my tier list and realized there was a lot I needed to elaborate on that I didn't, especially with ranking superdeath higher than Alhazard. I'm also waiting to play the turn with all the recent delays, so thought I'd write something up.

First, it seems to me that if superdeath acts quickly enough, he can strike devastatingly into gav's lands (or, perhaps, I really hope he does). I don't know enough about the situation with Alhazard/Commodore/Dono/Regentman, but not being (as of yet) able to take out a dogpiled Donovan suggests a certain... timidity? Maybe I am looking too deep into this, since it doesn't seem like Commodore has been whipping recently so he may not be at war. On the other hand, recent events confirm that chumchu is being battered - superdeath feels confident enough to capture the city.


So far this is not enough evidence to rank as I did. However, I had the fortune to 1v1 Alhazard recently in a ladder style game. His play is consistent and he warded off my attacks really well, but his dev slowed in the medieval era.

To be fair, I had a more advantageous start, but I had reached nationalism by the time he was saving up for civil service.

Also noted was an avoidance of wonders, which was a bit strange.

The other point I really wanted to make is that Alhazard has a good trait combo to superdeath's excellent one. With the luxuries chumchu has on his trade screen and financial and charismatic all combined, SD has all he needs to grow size 15 cottage monsters. Alhazard is constrained - creative loses value further into the game. Organized will help Alhazard reduce maintenance on dono lands, but financial will be superior long term.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Sorry for the lack of update, but nothing is happening on the front lines except for a massive mobilization by gavagai, who has finally outpaced us in score. He has also switched to researching HBR. Waiting for the imminent attack...

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Signed peace with gav. He is whipping more than I expected, as he has hooked up 5 happiness resources. Damn that early silver

He's moved his stack off to the north entirely. Perhaps he is going for the easier target of chumchu finally? I doubt it, but one can hope.

Going to try and rebuild some semblance of economic stability and rush to currency, but I don't know how much it'll do for us at this point. I made some critical mistakes by not going hard after gav and taking more risks. Survival is the antithesis of victory. Pics will come in a few days, but before peace was signed, gav had a total of around 22 praets, 4-5 axes, a few chariots.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Gav keeps whipping and whipping. Civstats shows an insane 11 pop whipped last turn - that's the size of my capital and about 1/4 of my total pop. Absolute insanity. I am of the belief that these are 6 catapults he has whipped, but i'm not sure. Gav was 100% doing some tech manipulation to hide his true research intents, switching back and forth between HBR and construction, but an image from turn 120 says construction 1 turn.



Frankly, gavagai will just out-produce us to the point where we will either not have enough catapults to take his stack down to 4 strength from 8 strength praets, or not enough hitters to capitalize on the damage of catapults.We ought to have around ~17 catapults and ~35 hitter by the time war is resumed. The catapults amount to 6 hits on units from collateral if I recall correctly, and damage to the unit attacked. Say gav brings up around 45 units total (an overestimation, I think, or at least, many of those will not be 8 strength combat 1 praets).

Our 16-17 cats will do around the following:
With drill - deliver significant damage to one unit in stack, 0.6 collateral to the other praets. So, after 17 catapults, we'll have that amount of heavily damaged praets and a a bunch at around 6 strength. Against our axes, his stack (only about 15% have shock) will have 25% odds on defense, so we should have a good chance to knock a bunch of units out, however many of our "hitters" are simple skirmishers, which will only be able to do so much. Using the collateral damage promo will give only 0.1 more damage per collateral strike, however vastly diminish survivability and damage to individual units. Detailed simming will come with war, of course.

If, however, gav splits his stack, with small forces moving in to foolishly attacked walled cities with skirmishers, we will once again deliver a setback and go on the offensive. His current troop movement has been to place the large part of his stack up north, and keep some promoted units and a medic3 chariot in the south.

In terms of foreign relations, perhaps I should cancel ivory<->corn to chumchu to accelerate his defeat? Maybe prevent him from whipping an extra few units? having SD on gav's borders would really help right now, though I doubt SD would bother to pursue gav after a war that has lasted most of the entire duration of the game as it seems. Going to mull over this till the next turn.

On a side note, we have 4 galleys now. I will probably split them, with two in the south and two in the north, with the southern ones attempting to launch a sneak attack if possible.


All in all, this game is really slowing down to the unfortunate turn pace and the extremely damaging wars. For a game on its 122nd turn, the scores are very low.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Building up forces for the final?? battle. Tentatively switching to metal casting, which we probably should have done in the first place (not that many beakers were generated), wtih 22 bpt. Unit maintenance is way too high to do anything else.
I checked the foreign advisor, and it seems that unfortunately, chumchu's copper supply has resumed:



Demos haven't been looking great for the past 50 turns, they're pretty constant really.

Building the one city we could have built during this whole time would be absolutely worthless without colossus, we'd be losing money from increased maintenance way  too hard.
Here is the situation on the southern front:

And the Northern Front:

The location of other gavagai forces are a complete and utter mystery to me. I am assuming some convoluted attack plan. Hopefully, he does not attack by sea en masse - I wouldn't really be able to counter one from the southern flank. If he's bringing up a bunch of catapults in addition to one of these stacks, it won't be too much of a catastrophe, but will be hard to manage. These maneuvers are raelly confusing frankly, specifically the disappearance of his stack with axes. If he attacks piecemeal like this, this will be our chance.

A probable attempt to counter attack will come through the north towards white rabbit across the river. The goal will be to take it without his stack reinforcing it in time and capturing the city instead of razing it. It seems to be a good choice as there really are no productive cities to his north and skirmishers should be capable of defending a city on a hill. Additionally, with 3 chariots in my possession, any city defended by a lonely praet could be taken with some decent luck.

Any lurkers know of a good guide for understanding line-of-sight in civ 4? The little peak jutting into my terrain really bugs me now that the jungles/forests are out, and am too lazy to sim - I do most of my thinking about the game on the train.

[Old Harry]

Peaks can always see 2 tiles except over a forest/jungle hill iirc.