[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[Grimace]

Welcome to the Hall of Shame Grimace. I hereby dub thee Grimace The Unready.

Now that I'm a lurker...

Actually not true, it was Grimace of the Crappy Economy. I was at 0% science and +2 gpt. I COULDN'T build more units without having them get disbanded anyway, or at least I couldn't build enough to matter. I mean, yeah, it was largely my fault my economy was tanked, but I drove it into the ground trying to keep up militarily and I was at my saturation point. Sorry that it messed things up for you, but my sole goal was to stay in the game as long as possible, which is why I moved most of my good stuff across the strait. And it worked. I wasn't the first to die.

[MindyMcCready]

With regards to research, once I turn tech on (at a -200gpt) we would get Polytheism, Monotheism, & Monarchy each at 1T. And then Philo in 2T. I am considering doing that one before Poly, just to ensure we found the religion before Commodore goes back to it. So basically, next turn I would switch on research to 100% to get it in 2T from now.

I agree with the move to Philosophy immediately. MC switched from Compass to Meditation(1T) so he might be trying to disguise his move to Philosophy. Since we're 95% (or more) likely to land that GS. Caste + Pacificism have a lot of synnegy. [EDIT: Pacifism only gives 100% GPP to cities that have that religion,...so we won't likely be adopting that civic until we've spread whatever religion that we want]

MC taking that city may have changed everything. We're much less likely to be facing a like-sided stack of units until we try to push into Wendys. If Gavagai's threatened from both sides and forced to choose, he's going to want to protect his core. However, MC is NOT currently at war with Gavagai. We're going to have to be careful if Gavagai gives OB to MC. MC would happily raze a few of our future acquisitions.

If I've counted your forces correctly, it looks like you've committed 38 units (minus whatever stays in Arbys). If that's correct it sure looks like Wendy's is on the menu. I want to continue to encourage you to keep the units together as much as possible so that we have a chance at taking Wendy's.

One other attack possibility:
-Once our stack is SE of Popeyes. Take Popeyes.
-Stack moves NW-NW from Popeyes.
-Next Turn W-W-W
-Next Turn W-NW-SW
-Next Turn take Wendy's with collateral.
Then we take the rest of the cities with back attacks or reinforcements. These cities are small enough that they're not going to whip out very much and it would allow us to grab the hilled defensive city of Wendy's before CBs make an appearance. Gavagai will not be able to raze any cities since he captured and kept them. So he won't be able to disrupt us too much.

I'm not sure how serious I am with this suggestion. Just dabbling in thoughts while looking at the map. It would be very unwise if MC and Gavagai had OB for example.

Once those military builds complete, I'd sure love to see forges in all of our larger cities. Combined with our new shiny religion we'd be getting a 50% production bonus on all infrastructure builds for catching up in development. Since we're not in slavery, we probably need to finish those military builds.

Tech Path:
Once we land Philosophy we are only 2 techs away from Nationalism. Civil Service + Nationalism itself. Can you see if we can land that tech by the end of the second GA? If we can,...I'd say screw all other considerations and go for that. The sandbox you provided indicated 3 drafts per turn. With +2 Happy from Nationhood and the current happy that we have, we could be cranking out 30 units every 10T while sitting in builder mode. Remember that scary Gavagai added 2 HA per turn or MC added 2 Knights per turn. Can you look into that next turn because that's all we need to finish off Gavagai.

Lastly, I assume that 2 settlers to not tempt MK for too long are high on your priority list.

[HitAnyKey]

On phone and about to go to sleep so just a quick note regarding what you posted.
Gavagai and Commodore do have OB. They've had it for quite some time. MC has OB with Gavagai, Donovan, and Elkad if I recall correctly.

[MindyMcCready]

I was at 0% science and +2 gpt. I COULDN'T build more units without having them get disbanded anyway, or at least I couldn't build enough to matter.

That surprises me. I certainly wouldn't have guessed that your economy was that bad.

That last city that you planted was a real money pit. I don't think that it would have ever paid off with no food.

Sorry that it messed things up for you, but my sole goal was to stay in the game as long as possible,

Well we screwed you pretty badly with our chokepoint so you probably didn't owe us anything at all. Retep's actions meant that the game didn't become too unbalanced at that point.

As for staying in the game as long as possible,...did you realize that your 40H G3s had 75% chance defending against a C2 Knight? If you had moved everything that you had into your hilled capital,...Master Commodore couldn't have touched you until he *produced* and then moved catapults into your territory. From the safety of your capital or Wagner,...I thought that you had a very good chance of defending.

So are you sure that retreat was your best option?

One last consideration for you in the future,....with Retep going on a razing and pillaging spree,...we would have been encouraged to take a shot at Master Commodore's units in your territory had you simply defended from your strongest city while maintaining OB with us. That type of intervention (based completely off of self-interest) might have disrupted Master Commodore's chomping on you.

[MindyMcCready]

On phone and about to go to sleep so just a quick note regarding what you posted.
Gavagai and Commodore do have OB. They've had it for quite some time. MC has OB with Gavagai, Donovan, and Elkad if I recall correctly.

Thanks. So we kind of screwed up what could have been: Gavagai trying to kick MC off his landmass.

Instead, Gavagai isn't going to be poking MC especially when he sees the size of the invasion force that we've assembled. MC is now Gavagai's ally despite his infringement. He'll allow MC to keep OB in the hope that MC tries to go on a razing spree while Gavagai dreams of us knocking each other out.

So we have to proceed carefully. This went from fun to very dangerous very quickly. Wendy's is definately off the menu until we see what else happens. We could really use a spy in that area if possible.

[Grimace]

That surprises me. I certainly wouldn't have guessed that your economy was that bad.

That last city that you planted was a real money pit. I don't think that it would have ever paid off with no food.

Agreed, it was not a great decision, but I wanted to protect that flank from you guys. You'd already started settling that island south of me and I wanted to makes things difficult for you. In retrospect it definitely hurt me more than it helped me, but I had hoped that the culture generation from my religion might gain me the seafood at some point.

Well we screwed you pretty badly with our chokepoint so you probably didn't owe us anything at all. Retep's actions meant that the game didn't become too unbalanced at that point.

Yeah, I was pretty pissed off about that city. You beat me there by about 5 turns. But that's basically the core of what happened to me...all of my neighbors expanded towards me, despite some of them having significant backlines. Having read through your thread, though, it looks like you didn't know how much space was on the other side of you when you made that city plant. Not that it probably would have changed anything even if you had.

As for staying in the game as long as possible,...did you realize that your 40H G3s had 75% chance defending against a C2 Knight? If you had moved everything that you had into your hilled capital,...Master Commodore couldn't have touched you until he *produced* and then moved catapults into your territory. From the safety of your capital or Wagner,...I thought that you had a very good chance of defending.

So are you sure that retreat was your best option?

One last consideration for you in the future,....with Retep going on a razing and pillaging spree,...we would have been encouraged to take a shot at Master Commodore's units in your territory had you simply defended from your strongest city while maintaining OB with us. That type of intervention (based completely off of self-interest) might have disrupted Master Commodore's chomping on you.

I'm don't know if you saw them, but MC had about 10 crossbows as well. I'm not sure what my odds in the same situation would have been, but it wouldn't have been as good, and I had no real counter to them. All that would have happened is he would have had to wait for them to catch up. He also had a number of Shock knights which would have given him slightly better odds. Maybe I could have held my capital if I stacked all of my units in it, but retep was already on the warpath and although I wasn't surprised by your passive assistance, I knew you couldn't actively engage because he did the declare war/make peace with you to guarantee 10 turns of uninvolvement. So maybe I could have held that one city longer, but I thought my long-term survival odds were better if I just moved my army across the water, especially since Gavagai was battling Borsche. I had several galleys and a couple of triremes, so I hoped I might be able to raid some of the cities if MC left an inadequate garrison behind. Didn't work out because he kept the cities well-garrisoned, but it seemed like my only play.

[HitAnyKey]

Not gonna bother with much in the way of other screenshots for this turn other than the usual.

Last turn I ran 3 Artists in Sonic for 1T to instantly get the borders to expand. This allowed me to drop my stack off 1S1E of Popeyes, with it still in my culture. Therefore no expense for having the stack outside my culture this turn. And some for loading up the galleys with the second batch, since the galleys are all within my borders.
Gavagai had moved his sentry Chariot into Popeyes with his Archer. He also didn't whip anything in that city this turn. I actually expected him to do so upon seeing my stack of galleys in Arbys.
His stack of WEs also stayed where they were last turn.
I logged back in and took a screenshot to show the specifics:



There's also that 1WE that is joining that stack from the north, and I saw a Spear that he has started moving this way from a couple cities away. There's one spot in the center of his empire that I do not have city visibility on, so I suppose there couple be some Catapults in that area, but otherwise I don't see any other than just that 1. The rest of his Numids and WEs are on his western empire, probably starting to make their way back east after taking that last city from Grimace. I should have counted, but I seem to recall seeing about 6-7 of each type. Or something like that.

[HitAnyKey]

Ok, logged in again to grab that western front. These are his two other stacks of military.





The rest of the stuff in his cities are all Archers, Axes or Warriors. His capital having the most units at like 3 Archers. So the only stuff I can't see are what is in/around Leptis and what is at the city he just took from Grimace. There might also be a city in that southern darkness too which I can't see. I seem to recall seeing in the diplo window a city name that I couldn't find on the map so there has to be one hiding somewhere.

[MindyMcCready]

Nice job with the artists.

Some housecleaning:

1. Confused needs a wb. Sonic?

2. Hungry's got a lot of work to do. Can we bypass that LK in order to start a Forge in that city? That city is probably the only one that has a chance of putting out a wonder. We have 2 wonders to choose from Ankor Wat in order to run 3 priests.
We'll need that city to grow to max size as soon as it completes it's GP.
We'll also need to workshop those 3 grass tiles.

3. Sore will also need a forge if it doesn't have one. Would this city be a candidate for Taj? This would be a major haul if we could get it. Given the 50% marble even failgold wouldn't be a problem. But 20-25 cities getting an extra GA would be very valuable.

4. We need 2 settlers ASAP. We need 4 settlers soon.

5. Can you post the ETA for Nationalism? And if you're onboard with that plan? Civil Service is the only other tech I think. Sadly that will end our cheap swords production. MC just grabbed that tech so we might be in a race for Nationalism.

6. Popeyes looks like a good location for Shakespear's theatre. A mace or musket every turn will be a good way to 'enhance' our claim over Borscheland. The idea would be to sit at size6 and draft every turn. Without thinking too much about it, that size most easily allows a draft each and every turn as I understand it. That city also has enough hammers to get Shakespear's done quickly enough. We'll need to get 7 theatres as soon as we have time for Drama.

7. We should start thinking about the Forbidden Palace in order to get back into a tech leadership position. McDonalds? Or the edge of our mainland.

8. Did Donovan launch a GA or is he just advancing that fast?

[HitAnyKey]

1. Already have a WB that will be at Confused in 2 turns. It's currently sitting under that Galley that is 2E of the city.

2. I had already been debating about having Hungry switch off the LK onto a Forge, so yeah, I fully agree with that one. Once it's done with it's GP, it'll be quick to produce stuff since right now to run all those specialists it is not working any of those good mines.

3. Already have Sore building a Forge as well. I highly doubt that we'll beat Commodore to the Taj, but getting some failgold for it would sure be nice enough as well. Especially since he just got himself another great person (Prophet) so it's possible he'll be kicking off his own golden age soon.

4. Already started 2 settlers as well. One from Stressed that will be done in 3 turns and another from Adventurous that will be done in 6 turns. (I think)

5. When I'm able to log in, I'll get this info for you. Sadly I have to wait for Gavagai and if it's the same as this past turn, he won't be playing until like 1-2pm tomorrow.

6. What is this Shakespeare's Theatre you are talking about? I don't even see it in the list of Wonders in the civilopedia. EDIT: Oh, just realized you are referring to the Globe Theatre.

7. I was already thinking about locations for the Forbidden Palace as well. And McDonalds is exactly the spot I had in mind.

8. I'm pretty sure I did not see Donovan kick off a GA. So that is just their normal graph.