[SPOILERS] The Suttree Gambit: Catherine of China

[suttree]

German Gooey to the left of me, Retap to the right, HERE I AM....
I attacked Gooey today, WHAT WILL HAPPEN???!?

[suttree]

Oh noes! German Gooey researched HBR as his first classical tech and attacked! I bet that he wouldn't attack so I will suffer losses WHAT WILL HAPPEN???!?

[Krill]

Suttree stop being a dick and sending what is essentially the same trade offer every turn.

[HalIncandenza]

Thanks Krill and Xenu for your help!
It's interesting how people can see things in different ways!

1. Joey seemed to name a city on our border ~ my naming scheme.
2. Stabilizing our border after our initial clash seemed important, we were both behind, and I had incentive to focus my efforts on Retep. Maybe Joey understood that? Worth exploring.
3. The city was still garrisoned after our peace expired, so I offered g/t for Joey to remove the garrison.
4. Joey seemed to negotiate - I added marble to my offer after he suggested I remove the garrison from my marble city in exchange.
5. I earned a GG in our skirmish for Amphib swords, very useful! Best directed against retep! Provoked Joey
6. I offered increasing amounts of gold per turn, Joey preferred to build a couple hundred hammers worth of trash.
7. Maybe Joey didn't want to lose the wheat? I could offer him that too.
8. Joey spent 0.5sec every 24h playing a diplomatic game.
9. I clicked through 20 or so spite offers after Joey threw a hissy fit.

I'm not Joey's anger management coach!
I'll do better to cultivate a greater contempt for others in the future!

Bedtime Story

I open my eyes. 'Please don't think I don't care.’
I look out. Directed my way is horror. I rise from the chair. I see jowls sagging, eyebrows high on trembling foreheads,
cheeks bright-white. The chair recedes below me.
'Sweet mother of Christ,' the Director says.
I'm fine,' I tell them, standing. From the yellow Dean's expression, there's a brutal wind blowing from my direction.
Academics' face has gone instantly old. Eight eyes have become blank discs that stare at whatever they see.
'Good God,' whispers Athletics.
'Please don't worry,' I say. 'I can explain.' I soothe the air with a casual hand.
Both my arms are pinioned from behind by the Director of Comp., who wrestles me roughly down, on me with all his weight.
I taste floor.
'What's wrong?’
I say 'Nothing is wrong.’
'It's all right! I'm here!' the Director is calling into my ear.
'Get help!' cries a Dean.
My forehead is pressed into parquet I never knew could be so cold. I am arrested. I try to be perceived as limp and pliable.
My face is mashed flat; Comp.'s weight makes it hard to breathe.
'Try to listen,' I say very slowly, muffled by the floor.
'What in God's name are those . . .,' one Dean cries shrilly, '. . . those sounds?’
There are clicks of a phone console's buttons, shoes' heels moving, pivoting, a sheaf of flimsy pages falling.
'God!’
'Help!’
The door's base opens at the left periphery: a wedge of halogen hall-light, white sneakers and a scuffed Nunn Bush. 'Let him
up!' That's deLint.
'There is nothing wrong,' I say slowly to the floor. Tm in here.’
I'm raised by the crutches of my underarms, shaken toward what he must see as calm by a purple-faced Director: 'Get a grip,
son!’
DeLint at the big man's arm: 'Stop it!’
'I am not what you see and hear.’
Distant sirens. A crude half nelson. Forms at the door. A young Hispanic woman holds her palm against her mouth, looking.
'I'm not,' I say.

password is pb21suttree

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yes, very interesting how people can see things in different ways.

1. I don't know anything about what's going on between you and Jojo in game because I'm not very closely following this game.
2. Everything you indicated in points 1 through 9 very well could be absolutely true (I'm in no position to dispute your account, I have no information of my own).
3. Everything you indicated from your perspective is completely irrelevant to the person you're communicating with in game, in this case, Jojo, because he probably has no idea why those trade panels keep appearing, and reports to have been annoyed by the persistent nature of the proposed illegal trades (cities trades are banned, right?)
4. So I posted publicly to no one in particular saying it would be good to knock it off, not calling you out, and probably using more than the bare minimum number of words to say so because that's what I usually end up doing (see also: this post).
5. Not Suttree but yet another Non-Suttree Suttree account replies with a sarcastic explanation of how his opponent clearly didn't understand the intended diplomatic overtures and irrationally responded (and if he did send a bunch of random hissy fit offers then yeah, it was an irrational response....but you saw how it got annoying, right? That was his point.)
6. Suttree appears to rage quit the game by posting his civ login password. Why? Because of my post or Krill's? Mine was non-offensive, Krill's was offensive, but that's the same thing as saying Krill wrote it half the time. Not something to be disturbed by, obviously. So...?

No one is calling for you to stop playing, just to stop sending repeated trade offers because another player requested that we ask it of you. It's a no diplo game or I'm sure he'd have contacted you himself.

[Krill]

...why is your tag line 'suttree died' Hali?

[WilliamLP]

So... I saw on a lamp post somewhere a sign saying "help this civ find a home". And I've heard a few things about adopting pets whose former owners were, shall we say, a little emotionally volatile. I really have no idea what I'm getting into with this game, and this thread doesn't tell me much. So let's take a look around:




I've got a peaceful open border with Retep to the east, and very tense one with Joey to the west. He has a lot of HAs built up, but I've got more than adequate spears to deal with it. I don't know what's up with the 4 sword raiding party on the boat S of At Love! The scout shows that The Blackjack has 3 axes to defend, so swords aren't going to be doing anything here.

There's still quite a good chunk of unclaimed land around on the seas, it would seem.

Let's see if we can get any information from recorded history:

Now, I've lurked a couple of G. Joey's other gigs. And he'll go ham on you and think you're literally the worst person ever for moving your scout onto a hill three tiles northeast of the next city he wants to settle. But in this game, as far I can tell, Sutt was the aggressor early, and there's been enough fighting for a GG and several cities to change hands. Thankfully I'm actually completely unspoiled on his thread in this game, past the very beginning when Parkin was involved.

I see G. Joey as that guy who is either your worst enemy or your best friend willing to get your back, but he's very particular about who he'll respect. As far as pure Civ skills, I see him kind of like 2metraninja, quite competent and experienced in certain aspects, but brought up in a very different metagame. (Now, I'm actually kind of sad I never got to experience the height of the old time Civ 4 ladder game.)

Joey is Ind / Cha / Vikings, and has 14 cities. He has the G. Lighthouse, though it's the nerfed one similar to RtR. I believe the Viking naval movement bonus from their UB is still intact.

My other dear friends:

Retep is Exp / Cha of Inca with 15 cities. This is with the weird new Terrace where, on first glance, one has to wonder what is the real actual point? Retep, well if you imagine a guy from the 1700s and who looked a lot like Mozart and acted a bit like him and was into writing music and playing harpsichord and was pretty good at both, that's kind of what he is in comparison to Mackoti. He can play a very respectable macro game, and he can go on tilt and check out, and we seem to be seeing the former version here. Though, his macro game is by no means anything like the Plako / Novice / Seven level.

Barteq, we just have contact with to the south. He is Fin / Cha / Zulu, with 16 cities and Henge and the Hanging Gardens. He seems off to a fine start. I know basically nothing about this guy.

Zanth, we see to the North. I think is playing this on his own now, but I'm not sure. He used to be teamed with Bacchus. I have a lot of respect for Zanth and I think he's very able and eager to learn. An aspect of playing strength that isn't so obvious is just consistency and emotional stability.

Speaking of which, there's my civ. Suttree can be scary and brilliant when he's focused and left to concoct a plan. See his game with Oxy in PB14, which was a macro planning tour de force. He tends to be very focused by numbers and formulas. But, it happens that Civ 4 is a game that is very amenable to that, as long as you're left alone to carry out your grand plan. Suttree also can check out and shut off, which I guess was what was happening in this game.

Anyway, we have 13 cities, and are Ind / Cre / China.

Let's check some other info:






The entire religious tree is empty, which makes sense as Cre. Suttree just finished Archery with a lot of overflow.






This is quite a few swords! In this mod, I think they have C1 for free but no other features. I guess I don't really get it, they still seem like a pretty mediocre unit. Axes still beat them handily. And my first instinct is that they're not really good enough to make attacking before siege very viable: because they're still so weak against axes they're not able to change the game in their era the way vanilla Praets can.




So, #2 in land area! And #3 in food. You know what? I had no idea what to expect coming in but this is a pretty solid position! And the field isn't terrifying. Mackoti or Seven aren't in the game and running away or anything like that.

The bad is that we have Cre / Imp, which are both heavily weighted toward the early game. So we were supposed to get out in front ala Joao. And the Fin civs are going to have a very nice advantage later on, because Fin in this mod isn't much worse than in vanilla BtS, in my opinion.

To my taste, I would have wanted more scouting. There's too much fog when I really want to know about the big picture and which potential settlements are more or less contested. We have open borders with Retep, let's send a scout in there! And as Imp, we perhaps should have had more focus on rexping to these islands sooner.

The war and spite with Joey is very clearly a lose-lose situation right now. So the first attempt at bettering this situation:




Yes, I'm feeling sheepish about war right now. I'm pretty sure the rules in this game don't forbid or discourage this kind of diplo signal. This is the part of Civ that comes down to perception of people. Does he read me as someone who is weak and an incompetent defender? Is he someone who will treat a signal like this as sincere? I'm not sure, but I think with the change in leadership here there's a non-zero chance that we bury the hatchet, and that's clearly a win for both civs. And so it's the best chance to improve this position in the medium term.

Some graphs:

These is quite good news, given that Retep recently fired off a GA and so his lead in GNP and hammers isn't permanent.

Suttree has been using the whip quite meticulously and exactly, it seems. Based on looking around, I think we could really benefit from more vertical growth in some cities and so or tech, I'm going with Calendar now. I think we can survive without Construction for a few turns.

Let's do a Krill-style update, just this once. I made some changes to builds and micro later, but this is what I was left with:

This is the capital with an academy. It seems like the cottages could be better developed, but then it's probably been working the ones that other cities have right now. A forge for happy cap would help here, to me that feels like a higher priority than rax / stable. I think I would have had a shared grass farm available here for more flexibility with growth.




This looks like an HE city to me. I don't think I like this place being raised as a hybrid commerce city. I think I would have put down some farms and specialized this for hammers, to put toward multipled IMP settlers and grow more quickly between triple-whips.




Decent city, I'd like more food available here. I also am not feeling the direction to push military everywhere right now. Joey is building up to counter it just fine, and there's still some peaceful expansion to do!




Suttree has Moai allocated elsewhere, but I'm kind of tempted to put it here, under the theory that an ok Moai city now is better than a fantastic one far later.






I don't get the barracks build here. Seems to be an intended future NE site. Suttree spawned 2 scientists, one for an academy and the other may have bulbed something.




Suttree seems to prefer plains river cottages over dry grass cottages. I'm not sure about that, for a city like this that really wants more food surplus.






This will be a brilliant commerce city. I probably would have made a grass farm to speed it toward the happy cap, even if cottaged later. I'm focusing workers to improve the sugar ASAP, next turn right after getting calendar. So I'll get an immediate +1 happy everywhere, which this civ can really use.




Again, I feel like I want more food here. Suttree really dislikes grass farms I guess... I'm not sure who's more of a noob, me or him.




We're IMP, so why are we slow-building a settler in a low hammer city?




This would be another fine Moai site. Markets are double speed as IMP in this mod, and they're a fine building with two happy resources for it, but I'm not sure I see the urgency to build them absolutely everywhere so quickly. I'm not so sure we shouldn't have been pumping more settlers instead of some of them, and having a few specialized pure hammer cities.




This is the actual earmarked Moai site... And yeah it would be great to get it there. But it will also take forever and need to use whip overflow. Are a few extra hammers per turn somewhere down the line worth the opportunity cost? I'm not sure. I'm thinking of trying to get it somewhere that has more natural hammers and/or natural food surplus.

[Commodore]

Great update! Looks like you're in the best takeover position since the era of mackcousin.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 119:

G. Joey offered back Sheep for Sheep. I interpreted this as the try-hard move where he wants to signal peace without letting the other players in the game know, so I didn't accept. But I'm still hopeful.

Obviously, he needs to be watched very closely. He's from the ladder meta, and combat tricks are what he's focused on. And I don't think he'll make mistakes of underestimation, the way he may have vs Haram in another game.

I had 5 workers in place to improve sugar, to get ready to globally raise pop a bit. Dyes are next. I'm adjusting focus to dial down military (I'm already #1 in soldier count!) and dial up settlers and grabbing land. I'm IMP, might as well use it while it's still relevant.




There was a settler that seemed to be directed to a NE island, but I re-prioritized it to take a few more turns and grab the really nice looking NW island earlier instead. The sword raiding party is going to go try and take a barb city. I checked, our score is 143 / 2104 land tiles. That is a lot of land left on this map, fair share is 260+ tiles for each of 8 players! Much of it may be over the water. I think Suttree let rage and spite stop him from seeing that his play has been quite fine to put him in a very strong position, getting over concerns about gaining or losing a couple cities worth of tiles depending exactly where borders lie.

I think CoL is the next tech here. Breakeven is at 40% right now, it will be nice to get courthouses up to start raising that up or at least keep it from falling further. Banks are half price for IMP in this mod too, that will be a key tech eventually, and nicely compliments the desire to fast-expand early.

[WilliamLP]

Just random thoughts:

Retep thinking he's in some kind of nightmare having me spawn as his neighbour is kind of amusing. I really didn't know this until until actually logging into the game.

Literally every game I've ever played, Azza has been hanging out in the bottom half. It's pretty amazing. Is this really fun? The resources to be a better player than this are quite present.

I really start to notice the ways that Suttree has layed out his cities that I would have done differently. I'm not sure if it's better or worse. He likes a much sparser road network than I do. His dotmap wastes a few tiles, e.g. a couple of river tiles that are bugging me, and his general layout is a little wider than I would use. I'm really tempted to fully spec out a couple of his cities for pure production, which sadly may mean farming over some cottages that have grown to village level. Is this just ridiculous? I'm not sure.

Seeing how someone different than me operates makes me want to study dotmaps and improvement choices of the very top players a little more. Suttree just does not farm non-resource tiles. I'm not sure if that's defensible or not.

This is ToW, which is more like vanilla BtS than Krill's mod is. And so the choices are a little easier. E.g. workshops are just simply bad, for quite a long time. And the whip is mandatory, for cities that have the food to support it. I have to get used to that for this game, since I'm used to RtR where it's much less clear.

I don't have a great feel for how much the econ will crash with a few more cities. I'm very used to either playing Org, having a fantastic shrine, or both.