PBEM5(Q) Everybody Wang Kon tonight!

[scooter]

Very nicely done . FIN Colossus Uber Alles.

[AutomatedTeller]

well, like I said, it's not over with. I have a big power lead and a tech lead, but it's not like I've got tanks and he has muskets. I have cannons, he'll get cannons soon. By then, I should be part way to rails or infantry and probably fascism, kicking off a GA to get into bureau and police state to kill some of the war weariness. After that, it's time to give up the collosus fueled goodness and go to physics->artillery.

My guess is that the game is over before then, though.

[AutomatedTeller]

This kind of screams "TRAP!!"




(yes, that is 1 archer in Zendikar, a bunch of units in NuevoCairo)

But it might scream "boy,i'm stretched!!"

So I'm going to take the bait on it and move all my mobile units down in position to kill Zendickar, with some rifles along for support. He has enough rifles to hit my rifles and kill a couple of cavs, but I'll still have a lot of mounted units able to kill Zendikar unless he has another stack of rifles somewhere I don't see. Which is possible... but he has a lot of units (25+ in Riften), with my 20+ units staring at him in the jungle.

[AutomatedTeller]

pretty sure I broke his back this turn. I took two cities, Zendikar and Riften. I got lucky in Zendikar - only lost 1 cav. Riften was bloody - 11 cats and 2 cannons did a lot of collateral and I lost some units taking the place, but he had moved all his cavalry out for a strike on Efrafra II, which should fail.

Taking those cities gave me (fortunately) extra gold, which I turned into a CGIII LB->rifle upgrade - vs cavalry, on a hill, behind a river, with 60% defense, is something like a 42 defense. I whipped in another rifle and upgrade a HA to a cav, and have 2 pikes, so I'm not worried about his 7 cavalry. I did draft a rifle and finish one in NIMH and moved those up, plus a couple of mounted units. I think his cav may try to take riften back - I have a LB and a Grenadier in it, not the strongest defense, but I'll be able to kill whatever he puts there, I'm pretty sure.

I got a GG, which will go to a mil academy in breakfast flock, making more of those 11 xp cavalries.... He's got chemistry and is a GA, so cannons and grenadiers soon - I can kick off a GA, though, and at the end I'll have infantry and will be in police state, so...

It's just clean up now. I'm going to kick off the GA once I'm sure that I can get to fascism in 9 turns and I'll dump out of nationhood into bureau as soon as I have assembly line.

[AutomatedTeller]

PB34s spoilers

Over in PB34s, Scooter has been planning a knockout blow on commodore with commando cavalry, only to have Commodore hit HIM with a commando rilfe and kill his cap.

Tatan has gotten a ton of GG and I haven't seen an attached GG yet. Perhaps he settled them in various places, but he could, conceivably, have a variety of commando units once he gets Mil Science... and he has chemistry, so that could be at any time.

[AutomatedTeller]

Tatan is willing to concede - he's willing to play on if I wanted, but I figure it's a game and I see no point in asking someone to play and watch his cities get taken.

Besides, I'm about out of city names.

So, i said we could stop, kicked off my 3 person GA, for the heck of it (something like 6 turns to infantry, faster once I switch to bureau).

Good game, Tatan!! I've enjoyed our rematch.

I'll do a final overview of the civ in a little while.

[AutomatedTeller]

Very much enjoyed the game - once again, Tatan was a fine opponent. I think I got lucky, at several times:

1) Very early, when he sent 2 chariots and 2 archers at Red Wall Abbey - I managed to kill a chariot at very bad odds with a bowman. That made Red Wall Abbey completely safe and gave me a useful unit. Also, he didn't continue with his archers, which could have been very annoying.

2) Him bouncing off the spear at 100 Acre Woods. I think the city would have held there, anyway, but that would have been a bad city to lose at that time.

3) 1st Great Engineer. The engineering bulb was probably the game turning point. That meant I didnt' have to research at least most of engineering, which meant I could get to guilds faster and get to mercantilism while still in a GA. Pikes nerf knights, especially with some catapults and 3 tile movement. Huge.

4) The stupid luck on the knights at Manor Farm. I killed a stack of his without loss, and from there on, he was pretty much on the defensive. He didn't come into my territory at all from then on.


So, luck was important. But this was also a game that played to my strengths, which is peaceful building, getting a tech lead and exploiting it.

Things I did well:

Oracle was great for me, forcing my opponent to slow tech to CoL and allowing me to go up the music line and build the epics/GLib without any interference.

Moving my cap was the right move, too - Watership Down was an excellent Fin cap, Thinking about it, one of the farms was probably a better location. I think I leveraged Fin pretty well - collosus was a nice investment that paid off well, too. Collosus, as an investment, is useful for a long time on a game like this.

I kept from over extending myself, most of the time, and I did manage to anticipate his Manor Farm attack. He likes feinting.

Burning his one city in the north early was kind of lucky - he just didn't even see a HA roaming around. Easy to miss with this much land and with the acivity going on. I'll have to remember that for the future... random units showing up while other stuff is going on can have an effect on the game.

I still am not sure if Centaur Aisle was a good idea or not.

Mistakes

I made a few. I got my share of sand kicked in my face with them, too.

1) AH, then Hunting->AH. Quickly pointed out as a mistake, and it was.
2) building 2 scouts. Not smart. one, maybe. two was useless
3) Settling order. RedWall Abbey was smart, but the farms were settled way too late. I think i should have gotten 100 acre woods earlier and the farms much earlier. The coastal cities could have been built later and that I founded Centaur Aisle before Zuckerman's Farm is a bit odd, now that I think of it.
4) Keeping Riften on my first attack. Should have just razed it.
5) Sending bowmen in late (after he got chariots) and not putting them on wood hills. Honestly, just giving an imperialistic civ more GP points is a bad idea.

Some pics:

Final Demos:


That's with a GA.

Cities:




GP:



This was a large advantage for me - I got a lot more GP's than him (well, not GG - I'm not sure how many he got) 2 free (music and Econ), but generating 11 is pretty good. Shrine, Settled GP, I think 3 bulbs (Engineering, Edu, Printing press), 6 for GA, academy - must have been 4 bulbs, don't remember what the last one was.


units built/lost/killed



Dunno what to pull from that.

Buildings built - probably too many forges for a non-industrious civ, but hey.




Final Military:

[Tatan]

*nods* Scooter's advice is good. Self-deprecation aside, Tatan actually has a fair bit of MP experience, with a lot of the experience apparently in the "getting ass kicked educationally" department, so I wouldn't feel too bad, and Catherine will have a faster start than Wang Kon, it's a given.

So true. Still plenty of room for improvement, though.

Oracle was great for me, forcing my opponent to slow tech to CoL and allowing me to go up the music line and build the epics/GLib without any interference.

I agree. I think it did stunt your growth, but you managed to overcome it pretty handily, and me getting Sac Alters that early would have probably won me the game (as you mention somewhere in your thread).

PB34s spoilers

Tatan has gotten a ton of GG and I haven't seen an attached GG yet. Perhaps he settled them in various places, but he could, conceivably, have a variety of commando units once he gets Mil Science... and he has chemistry, so that could be at any time.

I wish I had thought of that. :\ If I had put more effort in I feel like I really could have leveraged GGs better this game, but oh well, by the time I got 3 or 4 it was mostly too late to make a difference.

3) 1st Great Engineer. The engineering bulb was probably the game turning point. That meant I didnt' have to research at least most of engineering, which meant I could get to guilds faster and get to mercantilism while still in a GA. Pikes nerf knights, especially with some catapults and 3 tile movement. Huge.

Out of curiosity, if you hadn't gotten a GE and hadn't been able to bulb Engineering, do you think I could have burned more cities? How much of a difference did getting Engineering a few turns earlier make?


Anyway, I quite enjoyed this game, even at the end when I was struggling to mount a defense. GG, man!

[AutomatedTeller]

hmm. I don't know. ht bulb saved me 3 turns of engineering research, but I presumably would have gotten to bulb Theo with a priest, which saved me 2 turns.

So, i guess I would have been 1 turn later to guilds and banking, so I would have had no knights ready when you hit me. So, i think you would have been better able to hit NIMH and I would have had a smaller reserve to protect Zuckermans' farm.

I would have been scrambling a lot more, though, that's for sure. And I would have had fewer knights for the manor farm defense. I think one of those might have gone through better - something would have been weaker. In any case, you would have taken fewer losses everywhere, so might have showed up somewhere with a stack of 20 knights...


I thing I forgot to mention about luck - in the early mid game, at one point, Tatan had a WII Jaguar within 2 tiles of an empty Zuckerman's Farm I couldn't reinforce in time. Fortunately, he didn't move in such a way that he could see it was empty, so I didn't lose it.