The Way of the Civ Player - Ichabod and Wetbandit's PB13 Spoiler Thread

[Ichabod]

By the way, I still don't have a HE unit, so I could use my GG for that (+ getting a supermedic or a super unit). My best xp unit has 7xp, I think (and will kill a barb for 8xp soon). Since I'm planning on attacking slowcheetah and my teching sucks, I think 5xp cats are better than the possibility of getting the HE built in the future, by the time I reach literature. I'll probably get a 10xp unit very soon too, either warring Slow or by barb killing.

[wetbandit]

Nice defense, I'd be interested to see how the numbers shook out. Still pretty risky by Slow considering that he'd basically need to steamroll past DP with a majority of forces intact and down into the core to have a chance at leaping back into the game. I'm also interested to see how he lost that city to barbs some time ago, I bet that heavily influenced his decision.

I don't think there's too much reason to be melancholy about the game. Sure, it's not the perfect play so far, but it's not like Plako will sail north any time soon with a Galleon Armada full of Cav. Your civ is still locally strong with expansion and development in many directions, peaceful and by conquest.

I don't have anything to add more than what Serdoa has more clearly stated. The Expansive bonus further encourages growth by reducing the costs to do so. Even with a few libraries, Scientists can help somewhat with the research and a GS would be helpful. I can't imagine it would be around by the time a GS is born, but if you clear Alpha after currency, you can bulb Philo. I'm not sure that's the optimal path, in any case.

Settling the GG sounds better than a super-unit, you'll probably chance your way into a 10XP unit by the time you start considering Lit.

[Serdoa]

As for slows attack: The Formation-spear should have been str 12.6 if he was fully fortified. That's bad odds. And you had 3 more spears + 4 phalanxes. Even the Phalanxes got str 8.5 against his str 6. Looking back at your screenies the first 5 Keshiks he lost against spears. And that was what he had to expect to lose as all those fights were at bad odds for him (less than 20% most likely). Then he attacked your phalanxes, still at probably only 25% odds (3 of your phalanxes had at least C1, right?)? At that point he had lost 8 of his 9 Keshiks and still had really bad odds as another of your spears defends before your (most likely unpromoted) Phalanx.

So at least with his Keshiks he must have hoped for a few lucky wins because by the odds he had to assume to lose all of them for nothing. And nothing would mean that you still have 4 Phalanx, 4 Spears while he has just 5 axes and 1 spear left. 8 of your units against 6 of his? He realistically could never hope to take the city if he didn't get lucky with the Keshiks. Maybe in the next turn if he had some more troops coming or you forget to send more units. The former I can't say how likely it was but as nothing showed up till now it seems rather unlikely and the latter... well, I would not count of my opponent somehow forgetting that he is fighting a war Especially as he should have had vision of at least one other unit from you. Even if he had won all fights, you still would have had 2 spears at least, most likely another whipped unit, the phalanx that was outside. That's already 4 units, at least 2 undamaged against 6 most likely damaged to highly damaged units.

No, I'd say if I didn't get the odds wrong, that attack was never going to succeed.

edit: And yes, I'm slightly bored right now

[Ichabod]

I studied my situation a bit and decided on a plan. I'll save gold for 4 more turns, waiting for libraries to be completed on BoM and HP, and then go full steam on Currency, likely getting it in 4/5 turns.

Let's take a look at the cities:

1. BoM - I'm not sure if I should be working these horrible cottages here, but my previous games ended up in disaster due to too few cottages. So, I'll work cottages in this game. BoM will be 1-pop whipped after 3 more turns of production, finishing a library in 4 turns. Notice the military instructor - it's a short term investment, not a long term one.




2. HP - Similar to BoM, library to be 1-pop whipped after 3 more turns of production (that's why I'm working the mine). This is one of my best cities right now, since it wasn't massacred by unprofitable whips due to being far from the frontlines.




3. MoK - Not sure how this city got all the infra it has. It had a lot of trees to chop, I guess. The barracks is a relatively new build - I was chopping a unit for the Slowcheetah attack, but since that failed, I diverted the chop onto a rax. It won't be useless, since this city will probably help in the war effort. 2 whip unhappiness here, so I'm stagnating the city with the scientists.




4. RatT - The copper city. It can only grow with shared food from BoM, so it won't grow very high anytime soon. The queue shows a lighthouse and galley, but there's a chance I go for a settler here next, to get a second intercontinental TR before currency. After that, military.




5. DP - This city could already be a monster, if it wasn't for all the fighting and pillaging. If I get a GS from MoK, it's likely to be turned into an Academy here, though I'm still undecided about it. Plan is to finish the library, maybe with a whip, definetely with a chop from that remaining forest.




6. TFH - Yeah, horrible, horrible city... I settled it for the horses, since slow early attack was all axes. It has a fish, which is being used in TP right now. My plan is to whip the city next tun to complete the lighthouse, than work the 2 lighthouse lakes, while waiting to get the fish back. Should have been a backfill city, but plans change during war. What hindered this city a lot was the second ring food.




7. BGA - Another resource city, this one settled for the ivory. It's a slightly better city, due to wheat on the first ring, but it was so far in my backlines that it wasn't the perfect settle. The settler for this spot was going to claim lands in the north, but since WLP didn't agree with those plans of mine, I had to divert him to a different place. Clams will be netted next turn, when the city grows. As bad as it sounds, this city will likely grow on coastal tiles...




8. WF - Yes, a very suiting name for this city. No food resource except for a fp farm... It was settled for the gold, both the commerce and the resource (I'm trading the other gold for gems) - I was really fighting for happy due to all the whipping, so I had to do it. After currency, I plan to get some of the fp and grass cottages, plus that oasis, and grow the city a bit. It'll never shine, but, oh, well. If I had settled this city instead of my dumb plant near WLP, I'd be in a way bertter position right now... Well, maybe WLP would be stronger too (since he lost a city because of the stack he moved to attack TooManyKojiros).




9. TEB - My first offshore city, It'll be a very good city after a billion years of development and worker turns. Rice, gems, clams, ivory + grassland. Pretty nice. Idea is -> whip rax, cross my fingers to avoid a jungle spread to the gems... At least this is giving me 9 commerce on the other cities by itself...




10. TP - This city shows why I love creative... It'll take a billion years to get off the ground in normal speed. It's not a good city by any means, even with the border pop, but at least it'd have a unique fish. Maybe I shouldn't have settled this (or should have settled it 1W, but that would waste a forest and it'd be worst long term), but HP was building a Settler to avoid growing into unhappiness and I ended up with an extra settler that was afraid of approaching WLP. So, here's what happened...




---

These are my cities. I have a couple of continental spots left to settle, nothing really that good. I have a lot of islands spots, but those are pretty contested. And I have mortal enemies that will end up giving me their lands. But I'll show more of this later...

Anyway, I'm trying to focus a bit on economy right now. If WLP can give me 10 turns of peace (I don't mean enforced peace, just no attacks), I think I'll be in a decent position to start pumping military to attack Slow. Mayeb not the best long term plan, but certainly a way for me to keep interested. I have double the number of cities of Slow and way more potential. And I'm agressive. I'll also hope that he just gives up on the game and start mailing the turns, instead of getting Gers and Raxes and attacking me with shock Keshiks in 10t time. Gotta keep an eye on the power graphs...

[Ichabod]

Should probably have switched a mine for a farm in RatT, but forgot. I worked the mine last turn to get the WB for BGA in time for netting the clams when it reaches size 2.

[Ichabod]

By the way, of the opponents I have contact with, Fintourist/OldHarry are in a pretty good position. 10 cities, already have currency (56 gpt, if I recall correctly), good amount of happy. I think they have an island start with isolated starting island, so I bet their power is pretty low. They'll probably zoom ahead in development soon, but I think they'll keep their guard down for too long, trying to catch the big boys (plako and co.). So, maybe a naval assault from my veteran-bloodthirsty army of Tensais can give them a nasty surprise later.




I'm putting my EPs on them right now, still some turns until I get the 30 needed for graphs (I focused all my EPs on slow for a bit, because he was doing the same to me and I couldn't afford to lose his graphs). And I'll likely have to spend EPs on WLP soon too...

Ah, notice that I have TRs with some players that I don't know. I have a WB that can hopeffuly meet plako and Dalphir (not sure if there are connections).

Mostly_harmless can sign open borders already, so i guess he has alphabet. He doesn't want OB with me, though... That's a shame, could use the commerce...

[Ichabod]

Nice defense, I'd be interested to see how the numbers shook out. Still pretty risky by Slow considering that he'd basically need to steamroll past DP with a majority of forces intact and down into the core to have a chance at leaping back into the game. I'm also interested to see how he lost that city to barbs some time ago, I bet that heavily influenced his decision.

I don't think there's too much reason to be melancholy about the game. Sure, it's not the perfect play so far, but it's not like Plako will sail north any time soon with a Galleon Armada full of Cav. Your civ is still locally strong with expansion and development in many directions, peaceful and by conquest.

I don't have anything to add more than what Serdoa has more clearly stated. The Expansive bonus further encourages growth by reducing the costs to do so. Even with a few libraries, Scientists can help somewhat with the research and a GS would be helpful. I can't imagine it would be around by the time a GS is born, but if you clear Alpha after currency, you can bulb Philo. I'm not sure that's the optimal path, in any case.

Settling the GG sounds better than a super-unit, you'll probably chance your way into a 10XP unit by the time you start considering Lit.

I think bulbing Philosophy is an interesting choice, especially considering Alpha is better on RB mod (enabling OB). But I'd only want to do it if we can get Taoism for a state religion. And I don't think we can win this race...

We'll see, though. The problem is that going Alpha means not going Construction/HBR, so it's not just a question of waiting for the GS to be born and see where we stand. We'd need to plan beforehand and make a decision likely after currency. I actually did exactly this bulb on PB7 and it was a decent choice, I think.

As for slows attack: The Formation-spear should have been str 12.6 if he was fully fortified. That's bad odds. And you had 3 more spears + 4 phalanxes. Even the Phalanxes got str 8.5 against his str 6. Looking back at your screenies the first 5 Keshiks he lost against spears. And that was what he had to expect to lose as all those fights were at bad odds for him (less than 20% most likely). Then he attacked your phalanxes, still at probably only 25% odds (3 of your phalanxes had at least C1, right?)? At that point he had lost 8 of his 9 Keshiks and still had really bad odds as another of your spears defends before your (most likely unpromoted) Phalanx.

So at least with his Keshiks he must have hoped for a few lucky wins because by the odds he had to assume to lose all of them for nothing. And nothing would mean that you still have 4 Phalanx, 4 Spears while he has just 5 axes and 1 spear left. 8 of your units against 6 of his? He realistically could never hope to take the city if he didn't get lucky with the Keshiks. Maybe in the next turn if he had some more troops coming or you forget to send more units. The former I can't say how likely it was but as nothing showed up till now it seems rather unlikely and the latter... well, I would not count of my opponent somehow forgetting that he is fighting a war Especially as he should have had vision of at least one other unit from you. Even if he had won all fights, you still would have had 2 spears at least, most likely another whipped unit, the phalanx that was outside. That's already 4 units, at least 2 undamaged against 6 most likely damaged to highly damaged units.

No, I'd say if I didn't get the odds wrong, that attack was never going to succeed.

edit: And yes, I'm slightly bored right now

I'm curious now, so I'll look at the odds in the combat log and post them here.

[wetbandit]

BoM is screaming for a lighthouse; I wonder if 2-pop whipping a LH with minimal overflow and regrow onto the library is better?

Pro: Can give corn farm to RatT, BoM picks up +4 food between clams and lakes, likely makes up commerce lost from not working cottages, at least in short term.
Con: It would delay Currency, losing the +25% beakers during 100% research in addition to lost commerce from extra pop working commerce tile. Can't grow much more as we are at happy cap. Loses time growing cottages.

Without doing any math, we are cash starved and faster currency probably helps much more. Expansive gets double-speed markets, too, making that a more viable build everywhere.

What are you thinking about teching after Currency?

That GS will be done in 15-16 turns, so he's either going to be an academy or a GA, I imagine. In 16 turns, I could see someone else having the same idea and bulbing Philo, perhaps that's why Mostly_Harmless has Alpha. Don't have any other beneficial civics, tech would need to clear Monarchy at the very least for HR. I could see IW as an option to help clear the Jungle on the island and get a 2nd +2 TR city.

[wetbandit]

Ah, cross-posted.

I think the Philo bulb could be a very tight race. The GS birth bottlenecks Philo and it seems doubtful that someone else wouldn't have the same idea and could execute it within 15-16 turns in a game this big.

The downside to spending time on Alpha is losing the 4-5 turns researching something else plus the potentially small returns from OB. OB is helpful if a 2nd Island city isn't settled and we don't sign with overseas Fintourist/Old Harry. It doesn't seem that many of the other civs on this land mass have options for an overseas city. Doubtful that any have enough pop to generate a +3 overland route, but I could be wrong. Probably giving more away to them in OB than what we would gain if we don't have a 2nd Island city.

Oh yeah, Construction/HBR. The very historical Japanese Zou Brigade (WE) stomping out the Mongolian menace.

[Ichabod]

Yeah, lighthouse on BoM is being delayed way more than it should, but that's just how things rolled. My thinking was always that we have enough food even without it, so I ended up prioritizing other things. I'm hoping we can finish the needed infra builds in BoM soon (I laso want a rax there, for 5xp units).

Regarding a second 2TR spot, I'm eyeing this one next:




1W of the corn, most likely.

Interesting thing about markets, by the way. I didn't remember about that. It's a pity that we only have 1 of the happy resources doubled by markets right now. Slow has 6 silks, though, and fur too, IIRC. That's a potential for a big happy cap for our good cities (BoM, HP, DP, TEB - hopefully Slow's capital too ).

I'm still udnecided about what comes after currency. My current prefered option is Construction. It's annoying that Keshiks get flank attack against Catapults. But, well, if Slow wants to attack Spears/WEs with Keshiks, that's not exactly so bad for us. I'm really interested in seeing Slow's power graph 10t from now. If it stays flat, he probably gave up on the game.