Brick by Brick (Spoiler Alert!)

[Commodore]

Ultimately, what this game has reaffirmed for me is that you cannot win at Civ IV unless you are of yourself the best player in the matchup.

Uh, Serdoa might have words with that one...

I'm sorry you weren't having fun in the end, for what its worth I really enjoyed your reporting and thoughts. Now that you're done, I'll also offer my 2c: If I was pursuing offensive warfare in your situatio, I would have gone with cavalry attacks on border cities and that most brutal of all venues, naval actions. Without machine gun cover, cannon are just too brutal otherwise.

I hope you do opt to play again and are able to find the joy in simple happy civing, an ideal I'm still imperfectly pursuing myself. My favorite game here is still PB5 where I just played with my little sideshow, just indulging in telling stories and punishing someone who helped my enemies in a good clean war. It's fun!

[TheHumanHydra]

Ultimately, what this game has reaffirmed for me is that you cannot win at Civ IV unless you are of yourself the best player in the matchup.

Uh, Serdoa might have words with that one...

Serdoa was defeated by said "weird stuff" - people (including himself) making irrational decisions for emotional reasons. That said, I did say I was overstating my case for effect.

I'm sorry you weren't having fun in the end, for what its worth I really enjoyed your reporting and thoughts. Now that you're done, I'll also offer my 2c: If I was pursuing offensive warfare in your situatio, I would have gone with cavalry attacks on border cities and that most brutal of all venues, naval actions. Without machine gun cover, cannon are just too brutal otherwise.

Thanks. I was thinking of this, 'cause I knew you were going to say it. I'm not sure it would have worked (as in I don't know, not that I'm challenging you) - pre-war, Old Harry had much of his forces, most of them rifles, disposed in his border cities as if to forestall just such an attempt. I'm not sure cavalry alone could have broken through that, and reintroducing cannon into the equation would have brought us back to square one. In a game with spies enabled, sure, I could have revolted all his defences down and rode right on through, like thestick did recently. Maybe withdrawal cavalry would have worked, like at Lancaster and Forest Green? Besides the tactical issues, though, the central problem is that leaning on cavalry would have forced me to rely on city builds/whips to develop my forces, preventing me from assembling anywhere near the forces I did with drafts. That, of course, speaks to a deeper problem with my play, that I struggle to develop a competitive conventional hammers-base - possibly due to working insufficient tiles, possibly due to drafting. As for maritime ops, geography largely precluded them - he had only one, relatively marginal city (Forest Green) on my eastern waters where all my ports were, and on his western waters where all his boatable cities were I had only one, recently-founded port (Fort Dawnguard), which did all it could (continuous naval whips as soon as humanly possible; it whipped a second ironclad the last turn I played and would have followed it up with a second galley). In any case, thank-you very much for the constructive feedback, which I will think about and try and integrate if I do play again in the distant future.

I hope you do opt to play again and are able to find the joy in simple happy civing, an ideal I'm still imperfectly pursuing myself. My favorite game here is still PB5 where I just played with my little sideshow, just indulging in telling stories and punishing someone who helped my enemies in a good clean war. It's fun!

Yeah, if I ever do play again, if people will have me I'd like to stick to the idea of playing in a game in which I'm way outmatched anyway, so there's no pressure on me to win. Just focus on improving my micro against the bar of better players for the time they let me, then practise my defensive warfare skills a bit in a hopeless situation. Invested in improving, so as to enjoy the game, but never successful enough to feel the stress that makes me not anymore. I would do this, but (in an unrelated issue) I've discovered I really like being able to choose what to do with my evening (playing and reporting on Civ does take the whole evening for me), which is often Civ but sometimes not, and "PYFT" doesn't really lend itself to that. That's why I was on-board with that "at your own pace" game, which for apparently inherent reasons never got off the ground. Anyway, thanks for the well-wishes.

[TheHumanHydra]

How do you guys defend against attacks from the fog? Like, the one-turn kind you can't react to? Do you stash strong defensive units even in your "safe" cities? I've resisted doing that all game because it feels really inefficient, like what the AI does in single-player. Do you maintain some sort of continuous exterior screen, with ships or something, so you can't be surprised (again at the cost of many tied-down units)? For the record, throughout this game I had signs marking "danger tiles" from which fast attacks could occur, and I planned accordingly. There were several such tiles around Aquanauts, for instance, but I knew I had time to react because all my opponents had was galleys - and all approaches to the city were about to be covered by ironclads. That commando-road thingy - I don't know if I would have thought of that, probably not, but Machu Picchu is in the friggin' middle of my empire - why should I have to defend that?? [calmmm] Anyway, any tips?

[Old Harry]

How do you guys defend against attacks from the fog? Like, the one-turn kind you can't react to? Do you stash strong defensive units even in your "safe" cities? I've resisted doing that all game because it feels really inefficient, like what the AI does in single-player. Do you maintain some sort of continuous exterior screen, with ships or something, so you can't be surprised (again at the cost of many tied-down units)? For the record, throughout this game I had signs marking "danger tiles" from which fast attacks could occur, and I planned accordingly. There were several such tiles around Aquanauts, for instance, but I knew I had time to react because all my opponents had was galleys - and all approaches to the city were about to be covered by ironclads. That commando-road thingy - I don't know if I would have thought of that, probably not, but Machu Picchu is in the friggin' middle of my empire - why should I have to defend that?? [calmmm] Anyway, any tips?

Knowledge is power! You had visibility on the city the galleon got built in (the turn before you razed it!) and I was just lucky you missed it. Perhaps a sentry-net in Azza-controlled waters? But I'd like to think that bulbing Astro was really good play that you shouldn't be expected to react to.

If the rest of the thread is anything like the last three pages I can't wait to read it!

[TheHumanHydra]

Yeah, I really must just have missed it, despite checking that city's garrison every turn. My play was really thorough, if not necessarily the best-directed, so I'm disappointed to have let such an important thing slip past me (literally).

[Old Harry]

I loved this post - it made me look at the whole game through different eyes, then decide my original eyes were better. Then get confused and want to use one of each:

The war with Old Harry - I promised you an analysis (the following consists of summary - elaboration - broader analysis; I apologize for the repetition). The first phase consisted of me ingloriously losing two cities to Old Harry because I defended them inadequately like Hitler in that video from earlier (one unit apiece). But I was planning to attack Old Harry anyway, and this caught him by surprise.

That you were planning to attack me really wasn't a surprise. I'd been expecting an attack from the moment that Serdoa knocked me down since my northern cities would have fitted in with yours so nicely. The surprise was that it took so long for it to materialize. In fact part of the reason for my alpha strike was provocation while I had enforced peace with Azza:

Turn 144

<snip>
I'm hoping to burn Ollantaytambo (Archer) and Huamanga (G2 Longbow) in two turns time. It'll take two c1 knights to get Huamanga as there is now yellow culture on the tile south of it. Ollantaytambo on the other hand is still a sitting duck. I'm going to need four fast workers south of Halifax for the road and fort (although I have got a plan for not needing a road there, we'll have to see if it'll work).


Burning those two cities won't damage Hydra too badly, but I'm hoping it'll demoralize him a bit. Ideally it'll provoke him into putting his army in harms way in my borders where I can cat it to bits, but if not then I'll probably sit back myself and just shore up the defenses...

Anyway

What actually happened was my army of cavalry, riflemen, and catapults advanced toward Barnet while Old Harry furiously upgraded his units to grenadiers and built and then whipped more. His capacity to summon an army was greater than I'd hoped and as great as I'd feared. Upon reaching the gates of Barnet, it became clear I had no hope of taking the city. While on the flat ground before the city, Old Harry struck, sacrificing all his catapults and twice as many hammers as me to kill two-thirds of the all-important cavalry that covered the rest of my force. I retreated to the hill tile from whence I'd come; Old Harry healed a turn, then struck again, this time achieving hammer parity. I estimated that counterattacking would be equally or more favourable than retreating, and sacrificed half my catapults and a few other units to kill twice their value in hammers. When Old Harry accepted peace, my sizable number of surviving units, against all expectation, marched back home in safety.

I hadn't thought of it like this, but now that you mention it it's possible that trying to kill your damaged units was a mistake, or possibly that accepting peace and not fully destroying your damaged units was a mistake. Anyway my thinking was something like this:

Turn 153
<snip>
This is a little worrying - maybe that immediate danger isn't really over... I did kill a few of his units last turn, but nothing like as many as the new ones he produced . I need to polish off his big stack as quick as possible before this lot turn up.


Just to be sure I sacrificed another fast worker to be sure he can't get any more rifles or cavs onto that hill next turn.

I think the delay on your graph spooked me and at that point I was still a level behind you in tech, and while my economy would have been better long term I wasn't going to catch up if I had to keep building slightly worse units than you and wasting my money on upgrades.

Meanwhile, in the south (Old Harry's north), I sent ten riflemen that couldn't make it to the front in time toward Lancaster as a diversion, accompanied by three cavalry to stave off grenadiers and no catapults. Instead of defending the city with everything in the area, Old Harry left behind two riflemen and an archer and abandoned it to the wolves. They devoured the city and its defenders with no losses. Then Old Harry accepted peace. I did not succeed in razing Barnet, but I did raze one other well-developed city, entirely unanticipated and realistically improbable. What's more, though, my complete diversion of Old Harry's troops in two theatres apparently allowed Azza to advance his limited forces to threaten his former city of de_inferno, home to the Mausoleum of Mausollos, and compel Old Harry to give it up. I felt that the destruction of Lancaster more than compensated for the loss of my much less valuable cities of Ollantaytambo and Huamanga earlier; this was icing on the cake.

So the suicide-attack by 70+ units into determined opposition and far greater numbers resulted in an attritional victory on the scale of two to one, the survival of two-thirds of those forces against all odds, the destruction of one city by a diversionary force with no siege support (and its survival), the enabling of the capture of another, highly valuable, moral victory (revenge and the "last word"), and a peace that needn't have been given. Given the forces and resources arrayed against my armies, this was the best possible outcome, and a substantial victory - one that shouldn't have occurred. I can only conclude that for Old Harry, something went very wrong. That something (and here's where we begin to get to the controversial part) was that he refused to wait, to defend.

So I think that the thing that went wrong was:

Turn 154

<snip>
After which I have a bit of a rush of blood - every one of these losses was at better than 50%, some were as high as 70%. I'm not happy. Especially about Beliarius. Worse, now I have a lot of grenadiers sitting unprotected on flat land and Hydra's units will start healing. If only I'd killed his great general medic. I think I need to move my city garrison out of Barnet to cover the injured units.

Mostly it was that I could see the little red lines on so many of your units and I didn't want them to recover. The temptation was too strong... More important though, as I think you noted, I wasn't sure what Azza was planning (still no idea unfortunately) so I wanted to have our fight over and done with ASAP just in case. So either staying at war for the war-weariness or not attacking your stack on the hill could both have been better options, but in the bigger picture I needed peace. To be honest at the time having survived at the cost of Lancaster seemed like a win to me...

On your wider point about the overuse of attacking over defense, I blame collateral. At least cats only seem to hit four or five units, but cannons seem to get 7. Right now in the demogame (not for Troll eyes)

I'm looking down the barrels of over 30 cannons! Now how on earth do I defend against them? That's over 200 collateral hits - if I stuffed 100 units into the city they would each be knocked down by 20% even before the overwhelming-odds attacks began!

Then once I've used my collateral on you I have to try and kill the units I've damaged because otherwise you'll just sit and heal. It's all so unfair! Anyway I guess I'll be able to judge the theory better in a week or so...

Anyway, that's all for that. Ooh, I'm scared of the responses to this post. Just remember, if you attack my argument, only do it with meticulous preparation and overwhelming firepower.

[novice]

Cats collateral six units, cannon seven.

[Old Harry]

I've been through your whole thread now THH, is there a test?

I was pretty happy to play on, but given that the other three players weren't enjoying it I didn't want to prolong things. I think we were fairly even at the end here. You could have carried on teching without throwing your army at me if you didn't want the game over so badly and I should have tried to play that last attack so that Halifax could survive. By the time you got to state property and got economy-parity I would probably have caught up on all the other tech so it might have been a spaceship ending, and no-one wants that.

I should probably try to claim a win on the grounds that I upset you with boats twice :P but I don't think either of us had the upper hand particularly at the end, so do you want to call it a draw?

[TheHumanHydra]

For the record, since you brought up that defensive post, I do think and did at the time that you attacking was absolutely the right policy in our last/current war. You had so much collateral, and beyond the number of collateral hits, they were all 12 strength as opposed to five before - as much as many of your hitters! Not even infantry could stand against that (which is BS).

Anyway, I have no opinion on how to call it beyond what I've already expressed in this thread (though that's very gracious of you, thank-you). You're right that a lot of it had to do with my will to continue the game; I had no desire to play through parity to space or modern war - but I may well still have launched that attack anyway (or maybe I would have withdrawn when I saw your army composition and simmed the results - who can say?). I'm not really fussed about whether it was defeat or a draw - I'm mostly just really pissed at myself for all the mistakes I made this game, including allowing myself to be boated.

Actually, looking at the pbem list, it appears a lurker decided you won because I apparently conceded (I did say you deserved the win). They were also nice enough to comment on my mental health; I really appreciated that.

[Old Harry]

I'm not really fussed about whether it was defeat or a draw -

In that case I'm not going to look a gift-win in the mouth!

I'm mostly just really pissed at myself for all the mistakes I made this game, including allowing myself to be boated.

So you didn't notice how I completely failed to react to Serdoa's military spike as I thought he was fighting you, or how I could have switched to police state against him and got 25% more units to the fight, or how you kept distracting me in the south and burning my northern cities? We all made mistakes in this game, the important part is finding someone to blame (which is why I'm playing PB13 with Fintourist!)

FWIW there are two things that I think would have swung this game in your favor, everything else is just window dressing:
1. Your second or third city, Aquanauts, was very far from your capital and while it was a great site it just couldn't justify that distance early on, meaning you were teching slower than Serdoa and I. I think it should have been the first city settled in the second ring of cities (another mistake I made was to value the silver and gold sites above it, so Lancaster didn't get founded til late on and so got boated by Serdoa and razed by you) and that perhaps your city layout could have been altogether tighter given the maintenance costs.
2. Exeter had the pyramids in, if I hadn't got it back from Serdoa I would never have caught back up. In fact I sacrificed my capital to get it back. But you could have had it fairly cheaply with your knights and sat in Police state churning out units for the rest of the game. If you'd judged your war with Serdoa a success after burning his capital and come for Exeter there would have been nothing I could do. But then I was so backward it was reasonable to assume you could have it whenever you wanted. I have to give Mackoti's "build Pyramids->win" technique a lot of credit.

Actually, looking at the pbem list, it appears a lurker decided you won because I apparently conceded (I did say you deserved the win). They were also nice enough to comment on my mental health; I really appreciated that.

Hmmm, I think you should change that if you want to. Also I don't remember being left in peace - Azza attacked me too!