[Spoilers] Dtay's first PB: When you play a game of CIV, you win or you die

[dtay]

Parthenon completed, getting to slightly-unfinished great scientist then starting golden age next turn (calculations show this gives me enough time to revolt into then out of pacificism). Reasoning behind that timing incidentally is its a pain to get the great artist/merchant to the same location right now, and that means if I declare golden age after the scientist birth there's a 50% chance the scientist gets used. Incidentally, if anyone knows a way around that, i'd love to know, but as far as I know the only way to select the great person(s) used is to put them on the same tile.




But you'll really just wanted to see the warzone. I'm feeling pretty confident. SlowC probably won't be able to reinforce much now since Ichabod is attacking, and he currently has 7 units to attack with. He basically can't win the first 4 combats, and even after that he has sub-50 odds of beating the formation spear in two combats, and only barely above 50% odds for the others.




This means, given my 4 real defenders and 1 meatshield (the chariot), he has little to no chance of taking it in 1 turn. Then the new formation spear (and formation ax) move in, and the city is locked down v the current army (which should be down 4+ units and severely injured).

The logic behind moving the units onto the hill:
1) It shows my hand, which hopefully will induce SlowC to sign peace rather than damage both of our armies. I care, since a) I want my army, and b) I want SlowC to fight off Ichabod.
2) They're not really that exposed, so the downside is low. He'd have to sacrifice two units then injure 2 others to kill them, essentially securing Milos's survival.
3) In the unlikely case he somehow takes Milos (and doesn't raze) I won't have an amphibious penalty in retaking. If he does raze, same thing but for cleaning up his army.
4) It lets my galley turn around sooner for more reinforcements, if this proves necessary.

Sidenote: I'm mortified at my own misuse of the word "odds" (it is not in fact interchangeable with "probability") but incapable of stopping. Also I obsess about my stats class to much...


I'm hitting the happy cap again in the capital. I offered a massive luxury trade with Scooter (I give him 3 luxuries (including Ivory) that I have duplicates of for 2 luxuries Scooter has 1 of) to try and boost the happy cap. If he doesn't accept, I'm building that chariot for another MP unit. Go hereditary rule.




Demos:



I'm happy with the GNP number since I'm running breakeven and I bet the leader is on 100%. I have a lot of culture inflation though from the wonders and libraries. (I think I have more libraries than most people). The food position is improving as well. I don't lead in MFG which is rare, but I'm deliberately not working a lot of hammer tiles to grow EC and Riole right now. And I still only trail by 3.

[Rowain]

Reasoning behind that timing incidentally is its a pain to get the great artist/merchant to the same location right now, and that means if I declare golden age after the scientist birth there's a 50% chance the scientist gets used. Incidentally, if anyone knows a way around that, i'd love to know, but as far as I know the only way to select the great person(s) used is to put them on the same tile.

I strongly recommend to test it but isn't possible to select the GP used by selecting them ? like you would select several units. say 2 workers or such. shift(?) + leftclick IIRC but as said best to test it.

[Cheron]

The GPs used for a Golden Age will be chosen based on distance to capital (by Civ4's distance metric), nearest go first. Then it's by date of birth, IIRC, but I'm not sure about that second part.

Just selecting them won't do the trick, unfortunately.

*back to lurking *

[dtay]

Thanks for the GP knowledge!

Slow agreed to peace, but only after sending 3 keshiks into the killing fields. Odd choice ifyou ask me, because the result of those three battles was extremely predictable, and I actually took more damage than the expected value:




Anyway, I now have 10t of peace to actually build up Milos. Then... retake West City.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Looking good. Keep it up!

[dtay]

Slow is emptying West City... yes... yes... continue...




We have our first death:




RIP mostly_harmless. Your wonders live on in the Mackoti big blue [green] blob (Europa anyone?)

Speaking of Mackoti, from reading around I get the idea he's considered the best of the best... and now he has something like triple everyone elses space and a monster capital



I think he has to be considered the frontrunner right now, despite my wonder-inflated score


First market and forge are about to finish:




And a lot of my other cities are building wealth so I can get Philosophy as soon as possible, (and then shoot off my 2nd golden age)

[dtay]

Been a bit without an update. Nothing happened the last few turns, just fiddled workers around and waited for philosophy to finish.

Taoism got a free spread into Riole, which could have been bad if it caused my missionary to fail, luckily:




And that was the sign for the return of...
Operation Golden Era

Riole's GPP production:



Going to produce a total of 1144 GPP during the golden age there. The first great person is obvi a scientist, the 2nd is yet to be decided. If I pick non scientist I have a non negligible chance of getting scientist anyway cause of the great library. Another scientist is always useful, I could use it for a later Astronomy bulb or something. Maybe I get RNG screwed on the first GP and get an artist, in which case the 2nd needs to be a scientist. Anyway, I have 4 turns to think about this.

Current tech plan is to tech all but a small part of paper, then just build up gold, then finish paper and the great scientist on the same turn, immediately bulb education, then start burning through gold reserves to tech liberalism as fast as possible. I could maybe look into trying to pull off a massive overflow trick like RB pulled in the demogame, but I think that's beyond me at the moment. I'm not rocking the research power RB was.

This means there's some chance I get liberalism stolen from me, but since I'll be able to see people's techs with paper I can check if anyone's close. That's not foolproof, since someone (scooter/pind or mackoti most likely) could pull a birth scientists, immediately bulb edu trick or something, but the capacity for instant research seems a lot lower here than the intersite game (no bts-financial, worse land).

Demo's at 100%:



on GNP/MFG, but that food is worrying. Someone (mackoti, almost certainly) is beating my food output by over 100. 4 others are ahead of me by an unknown (and hopefully smaller) amount. This suggests my MFG/GNP standings aren't sustainable without expansion. I have little room to expand peacefully, there just isn't food on the frontier. Time to start drawing up concrete war plans...

What the rest of the empire is up to:








TBS is scouting me out with a sentry chariot. I'm going to culture boot it off the hill in 2 turns though.

[dtay]

Other thing I'm checking is if making a GP out of Briggs is something I want to do. To be decided this turn.

[dtay]

To the players once you can read my thread: Sorry everyone for needlessly delaying the game. I saw I hadn't ended turn (i completed the turn towards the beginning) with about 6 hours left, about 4am local time, but accidentally fell asleep while studying until after the clock ran out. Hopefully won't happen again.

All right, turn report. I accidentally got Paper, oops. The beakers from my scientists were enough to finish it off last turn despite 0% science. Oh well, not too much loss besides other teams can see what I'm doing a turn early if they think to check the tech screen... which they haven't been doing all game.

Notice the cultural control here, I should take these next turn right?




Demos, down a whole 100 CY to presumably the new score leader, Mackoti.



Completing a bunch of libraries this turn to set off my University building spree. I should get all 7 before the golden age ends. Then I need to see about getting stone off of plako. Offer 10gpt or something?

[Ceiliazul]

yes should flip next turn. what's your plan to catch up to mack?