[PB74 SPOILERS] scooter's Bluey Adventure

[scooter]

What's funny is I've been offering him peace periodically for like a month now. It was clear he didn't have enough to capture (or maybe he did at one point?), could not reinforce, and could not ferry home. He had the chance to teleport these home back when he still owned that city, and I could not understand why he would not accept. And now after all this time he randomly decides to offer me peace? I wonder if he thought they would teleport clear across the map to his two island cities miles away? No idea. But instead they've teleported to a spot where he's surely going to be able to retake a city. I'm guessing Gavagi had no idea these units were over there - he's never sent a boat over this way.

[scooter]

Also, I dunno where to put this other than in this thread spoiler tagged, but one humorous detail subbing for Amica:

So Amica has an enormous army but just two cities, so naturally he's losing plenty of money at 0% science. It appears he's just been steadily abandoning cities but keeping his army and never fighting. So he's really close to striking. I of course had the obvious idea to revolt his religion and civics to buy 2 turns of "free" military support because his cities were so unhappy they cannot even work tiles at size 1.


And then he was still losing -5gpt while in Anarchy? Uh, what? How is that possible?


Turns out he was gifting Commodore 5gpt for unknown reasons...???


My best guess is they had some sort of gold for gpt loan deal that Amica forgot to cancel. And you'll have to ask Commodore to find out how long exactly this arrangement has been going on. Lucky him.

This is a very serious and real game of Civilization 4.

[Mjmd]

I mean other players can't read this, so I don't think you would need to spoil. That is interesting; assuming you cancelled.

[Qgqqqqq]

I would assume the opposite. Wouldn't seem appropriate as a sub to reset diplomatic relations, or even alert the player to something they may have missed.

[scooter]

I canceled because I didn't want to be the first (?) player ever to go into strike while in Anarchy. I assume he would have noticed when he ran out of money completely. In general all this did was delay striking by 1T, which means it's probably time to slam the stack into Pindicator and live with the consequences given that those units are going to start disbanding soon.

[scooter]

Pindicator better kill Amica this turn.






Because I did something silly when Pindicator captured the final continental city. (Amica already had this unit sitting - I did not build it.)






As far as I can tell, he did not see this.






Granted, this will probably be razed quite quickly by one of the neighbors, but who knows, maybe they let it slide another dozen turns or whatever.

[scooter]

Time for a rarity - we're going to report two entirely different civs in different parts of the world in one post.





Miguelito offered this to me, and I guess why not? I have nothing else to use my money on, so I accepted. Might as well be the bank. I wonder if I could convince someone to sell me a second city.




Also, it appears I outlived Zulu after all! On to Amica:





I really hope Pindicator doesn't notice what I did until after he takes this city.





Perhaps the worst city I've ever settled. We'll see how long Tarkeel and Plemo let it live. Honestly, it's sort of in their interest to let it live because it leaves Pindicator with WW I assume? I guess it's pretty tame in CtH so who knows. I would have placed it on the hill to use this grassland tile (which was farmed), however last turn I had already moved the settler before noticing Pindicator invaded the island. So, minor issue.

[Qgqqqqq]

Placing on the hill would also render you invulnerable until paratroopers, if your neighbours kept borders closed.

[GT]

Ok this game has generally gone very poorly for a variety of reasons. It became clear as I explored that I got the severely short end of the stick as far as capital and surrounding land goes, so that sapped some interest from me, and then I generally just did not have time to devote to this game. Also it felt very bad being next to Rome and Kublai Zulu. This was compounded by the fact that the Zulu player (GT) appears to be a maniac. Allow me to demonstrate.





He just randomly sent an Impi at me despite me being like 12 tiles away. Okay. I mean this was partly because I took forever to get Copper hooked, so maybe he noticed that, but still. Anyway, I don't remember the exact numbers, but at the time vodka indicated 3 warriors would have a good shot at killing an Impi, and I had no choice but to bank on that. I stuck a worker on the Ivory thinking it would prevent him from attacking a second time into The Show, but I realized later that does not work. Again, my attention level in this game has been quite low. Also having to pause to spam out some warriors right before Copper really set me back once I realized the Impi was going to arrive like 1T too quickly for me to complete an axe.





However, he elected to capture the worker and sit on it. I think he got greedy and thought he could keep the worker?





However I got tremendously lucky and the first warrior did enough to bring me into coin flip range with my second warrior, and I won it. Because the third warrior was produced EoT, GT never saw it and likely thought I got insanely lucky on a very foolish attack, which amused me at least.





However he followed up by planting this city. WTF. That is 4 tiles from my capital and like 12 from his. Look at all that land between! This is amongst the most bonkers plants I've seen in a long time. However, the problem is it claimed my horse so I couldn't build Chariots. And he parked a couple axes in there, and the city is protected by a River and he's Creative, so he'll get a border pop and 20% culture. So there was really nothing I could do. (FWIW I had a settler completing on this very turn to walk towards this spot.)


At this point this at least gave me an objective for this very doomed game - exact revenge on the guy who 2v1'd me along with the mapmaker(s). So I got myself trade connections with players and started begging. Just asked for horse constantly. Everyone constantly said no. Until.





Yeah baby, let's do this.





Thanks to my warrior I know he has no Impis in the area at least, just the axe pair. Some whip/chops real quick and we're ready to roll immediately.





Won. Left the Chariot there - what's he going to do, attack out?





City is doomed I think. As long as he doesn't complete a unit end of turn. I played second, so he can't whip responsively, so it's really just a matter of whether I'm severely unlucky on his unit completion timing.






Wouldn't mind this, we'll see what he does.

First of it, congratulations on surviving me. I couldn't kill that Uber-Elite-Archer of yours fast enough, and by the time I had shipped some units and got your defenses down to 0%, Gavagai attacked me and nothing mattered anymore. Why I didn't peace out earlier: Gavagai mostly attacked me with knights, and I barely had any Impi's on your final island, so it didn't really make a difference. Eventually, I realized I wanted the units beamed to my remaining island, but the game mechanics didn't worked out in that way (I thought so, but I still hoped it would beam them home..)

Now, about that first war between us: I was attacked by Xist (the Roman player) very early on. As he had copper in his starting city after moving the settler and gotten lucky with it. I managed to throw him back, but my economy sucked (he plundered my lands, and more military than I'd usually have) - that was all about 1R earlier having another axe or not.

So I had a bad economy but a large military, and yes, I have seen that Yishun was a really nice spot for a city, but obviously very aggressively.

But if I wasn't too greedy, I might actually have pulled my first attack off.

If I didn't held position (to defend the worker) but rather retreated the Impi to 8-8 of the city, I would have seen the copper (not yet connected, and I believe I would have been able to plunder it just in time) and probably been able to permanently cut you off from it, with Axes incoming fairly soon. Without copper, I would have quickly won against you - unless you went to research Archers and just played it defensively till the end. But, in that case, I could have probably held Yishun easily, and eventually just catapult you out.

And yes, I didn't know about the third warrior rushed in the city - and I indeed thought you were incredibly lucky winning with that second warrior (Well, you were..)

And yes, I should have guessed you get horses somewhere else, and should have Impi's in place.. it's always the same in MP

When you took Bishan (without a fight) in the third war, I kinda knew we'll have another war quite soon - and I squeezed out those catapults.. and that time, enough Impis.. I don't know if I had more battle luck or if it was average, but when you let me strike Bishan with your stack inside, it was the deciding battle. After that, I just took too long to take your cities, 1-movers... meh...

Honestly, it was the Roman player (Xist) kinda pushing me into an aggressive strategy with his rush on me, and you were the only victim around when I sent my Impi out.. If I had lucked out more, I might have gotten your land much earlier, giving me a much stronger powerbase.. that lone Impi, and later my inadequate defense of Yishun in the second war between us, lost me any chances. I'm sorry I was so aggressive against you, at times I thought I better attack Gavagai while he was still digesting Rome, but I feared it would have been a 1vs1 where I might get backstabbed.. (I can't comment on more recent events, as I read the other stories now)

The map was very tight, and I knew I settled very aggressively, I just expected your attack to come a bit later (the second war between us) and giving me time to have some Impi's in place.

You played definitely better considering your bad starting position then me, so well done.

[scooter]

Thanks for coming by GT! Yeah I blame the map way more than you. We were both put in a tough spot. I'm dying to get my hands on the WBSave and run it through novice's tool to see. Hope you didn't take offense to me griping a bit in here - it's just how it goes.


I do think there's a world where you could have rushed me off the map given my very awkward strategic resource situation, but yeah it's hard to do it when I can just request it from another player. I actually came around to thinking attacking me made sense given that the map meant I had literally nowhere to go except through you, so it makes sense for you to get first strike.

And yes, I didn't know about the third warrior rushed in the city - and I indeed thought you were incredibly lucky winning with that second warrior (Well, you were..)

Yeah, I figured this might be super tilting to you. If I were in your shoes I'd be so mad that my opponent did something so reckless and got rewarded for it. Of course, using 3 warriors is not so reckless - though still a little reckless - but yeah you not knowing the 3rd one existed probably made it very frustrating.

When you took Bishan (without a fight) in the third war, I kinda knew we'll have another war quite soon - and I squeezed out those catapults.. and that time, enough Impis.. I don't know if I had more battle luck or if it was average, but when you let me strike Bishan with your stack inside, it was the deciding battle. After that, I just took too long to take your cities, 1-movers... meh...

Yeah by this point I was a bit too detached from this game. If I had done a quick sim or even simply counted your units, I would have played differently. Our stacks were somewhat similarly sized, and so having first strike mattered a lot. I just quickly eyeballed our stacks and didn't think you had enough, but I did not even count the units to double check let alone a quick Vodka test. Once my stack was gone, it was all over.


Also, I've mostly been playing sequential games, and that cost me here! Gavagi warned me that you were going through his land to snipe that city of mine. I planned around having enough units in there. Problem was I was first in the turn order, so my whip did not complete in time. Had I remembered that basic issue, I would have moved another unit in there - I had them in the area! Making such a basic mistake shows how quickly I was playing those turns.