Well ... I'm basically dead this game. 
I'm in really hurry now - tomorrow I'll explain why ... if somebody is interested ...
I'm in really hurry now - tomorrow I'll explain why ... if somebody is interested ...
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[SPOILER] Asoka of Aztec - Ioan(76)
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Ioan76 Wrote:Well ... I'm basically dead this game. Go on then.
And on the sixth day, god created Manchester.
[SIZE="1"]Played: PBEM13 (China), PBEM17 (India) Helping out: PBEM23 (Egypt) Dedlurked: PBEM15 (Ottomans) Globally lurking: more or less everything else[/SIZE]
September 2nd, 2011, 04:00
(This post was last modified: September 2nd, 2011, 05:52 by Ioan76.)
Ok - I'll try to explain now what happens :
Nicolae razed my Holy Jewish city and with relatively light losses. Still don't understand how this happens - but seems that I had some disastrous odd-rolls in defensive there ... We clashed for 2-3 turns there - managed to kill some wounded units as sort of revenge but clearly he had a good result in North. I analysed the power graph and my assuption was that - beyond that stack which razed my city of Aurita he should have still some sizeable forces available. What could be their disposal ? I assumed that he keep a good part of his army near border with Sareln ( because their 10-turns Peace Treaty also expired and so on ) - and the South front is relatively lightly defended. But probably this was more a wishful thinking then a correct estimation anyway ... because ... read further why ...  So I assembled a ... "medium-stack" in order to beseige the ex-city of Lacrimioara ( re-settled and renamed by Nicolae ). I saw that the defense was indeed not too big ( and included several axemans not macemans ) but ... seems that this was a trap ( probably there was few knights & macemans kept behind the city beyond my visibility range ) - because last turn my stack was obliterated by a vigurous counter-strike with extremly minimal losses on Nicolae side ( only one catapult and one maceman or so ). Again - it seems that all bad rolling happened to me in this battle.  So now I'm in a vulnerable position both in South and North front with Nicolae ... and if/when he will put in line several gunpowder units imunes to walls & castle defensive bonus - 2-moving Musketeers or even Cuirasiers ) - I'll be in reaaaaly deep shit.  The only chance - again ! - is an attack from Sareln ( who research Gundpowder too ) but ... honestly, he seems a far too prudent player to attempt such a bold move. 
Managed to play my turns over weekend - one/day ... still OK considering the RL situation.
As an update : - Gunpowder will be completed at EoT - but I'm afraid that is already too late for it ... - All quite on Western Front ( at least for now ). But Nicolae is extremely dangerous in this moment - his UU is a 2-movers + Knights ... sound reealy bad. I started to train several pikemans to counter a blitz-attack on my two southern cities because if any of this will fall ... my capital will be an easy target too ... Also started to gather several catapults in an attempt to produce some collateral damage ... even I'll probably not reach 10 of them until invasion will occur. - On Eastern Front the situation is somehow better : GingerEagle move another stack in south part of our borders but - after sacrificing 3 catapults for collateral damage - my knights & HAs had/has superb odds against his units ( >80%  ) and his stack is now reduced to half. On north the situation is a little bit more serious - as he started to bring pikemans too for coverage and I managed to kill 2 of his units/turn with the loss of 1 knight ( for red-lining the pikeman ). - Sareln is researching Guilds right now ( will complete it this turn ). What the hell he wait for ??? 
I analyzed a little bit more the situation while waiting for the next save ... and it seems almost impossible - considering the huge spike in power graph of Nicolae - to effectively defend all ( potential ) 4 cities which could be easily reached by his 2-movers forces.
Anyway ... let's see what will happens next - this "silence" is veery dangerous. 
Well ... I didn't received yet the save from Nicolae but it becames clear for me now why the western border was quite for last turns.
A quite impressive stack of 2-moving Musketeers and not Knights but Cuirassiers invaded my teritory and are in position to attack city of Garofita this turn - which is defended only by 2 pikemans, 1 longbow and 1 crossbowman. Actuall he probably will choose to ocuppy it instead of razing it ... So ... from my point of view this game is clearly lost/ended - it time for an analysis of my play ( and especially of my mistakes ). For the moment I'd considered that I did some small, somehow reparable mistakes ( placement of cities was not always good, consumed first GA just to get Code Of Laws because maintenance cost started to hit hardly and so on ... ) but most important I did two really huge mistakes : 1. I was too much tempted to give to Jags a try ( never play with them against a human player ! ) and neglected the fact that - due to availability of Copper without roads ( just with BW and a mine ) - I could attempt a rush just with Spearmans & Axemans. I still consider that Nicolae was somehow lucky ( or actually Agg trait helped him ) to kill my "scouting spearman" just with warriors just before I could combine the axeman with it ... but this shows that I could had a good chance not to eliminate him from the game but to cripple seriously his expansion/development - a chance which I didn't exploit properly. Anyway I can't be too angry to these Jags - they are pretty uselless in rushing a competent human player - but they did a good job in capturing barbarian cities on this map, providing sort of "easy to deploy defense" and even sucessfully harrassed GingerEagle ( OK - he is not a comparable player with Nicolae but I'd still give some credit to that pairs of jags which harrased him for the fact that my empire is much more extented on the East that in the West. ).
2. This is a little bit more complex - and somehow reflect one of my flaw in Civ-play style : I started with aggresive intention this game ( more due to fear to not be overrun by a rush of better promoted axemans ), build several units for the Western front ... which didn't managed to do anything significant actually ( just increased my maintenance cost
) and when I settled the border cities with Nicolae I was somehow forced to keep them as defenders ( and for some turns the total maintenance was a real issue ). Probably I'd managed to recover this - but now came the big part of this mistake : when I started to expand in order to re-establish city-numbers parity with Nicolae ( which had a really good start from this point of view ) I basically neglect almost totaly to check the power graph ... and I was hit reaaaaly bad by the Nicolae invasion in South. This may be not important - but the fact that I didn't dispatch enough defenders in the city of Lacrimioara ( which was intended to be my GP-farm ) and I lost it/its spot ... completely ruined my planned strategy to keep up the science-race via Caste System => tech-bulbs. Some more thoughts ... latter on.
As an observation : this second mistake is unfortunately quite common to me - we/I neglected in similar fashion the power-graph indication in Pitboss 4 games and was hit badly by Luddite's army.
Seems that one thing that I need to improve is capability to read demographics & to install sort of reminder like : "Check graphs at least at every 5 turns !!". 
Few ideeas about what I did good in this game ( to avoid complete nervous breakdown
 ) :- Built Stonhenge ( even before the Industrious' GingerEagle and before Sareln which has his UB using it ! ) - this proved extraordinary for expansion and, probably even more important, to resist to Nicolae's culture ( and also to not let my cities without +20%, +40% defense bonus in front of his default-promoted units ).- Made good use from/occupy barbarian-cities ( BTW - most of them appeared on the map in spectacular good locations ! ). Hmmm ... should think more about something positive too ...
Well - as expected another of my city was razed ( 3 turns ago ) and now 3 gunpowder-ear stacks - 2 medium size and one reaaly big
- invaded my teritory and are in range to conquest another 3 of my cities ... Not even this is the biggest problem - but Nicolae is 1-turn away from Rifling, which will makes him basically invulnerable. At least I'll amuse myself with GingerEagle's units this turn. Probably is time to propose officially to end this game and to proclame Nicolae as the winner.
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