[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

For a while I thought you or Mardoc might've been blocking a neighbour from contacting me, since I figured being wedged between two other civs wouldn't have been fair from a mapmaking perspective.

Ah, right, that's something I meant to comment as well. Yeah, you definitely drew the short straw reg being in the middle. Sometimes one can overcome that (e.g. pindi eating Barry Lyndon in this game), but it was definitely a serious disadvantage for you.

Definitely agree that the movement of troops out of Dental Plan was an error, I thought I'd have a couple of extra turns to build fortification bonuses and Boo-urns was my best hammer city so at the time it seemed worthwhile to try to defend it, but I regretted it as soon as you rolled up those couple of turns earlier than expected.

Or you could have moved everything out of Dental Plan and stacked everything into Boo-Urns. Mardoc would have surely preferred that Although that would have left Nothing At All completely alone so also beyond possible emotions from earlier conflict I can see selection of Dental Plan as a justifiable choice too.

[Azza]

Definitely agree that the movement of troops out of Dental Plan was an error, I thought I'd have a couple of extra turns to build fortification bonuses and Boo-urns was my best hammer city so at the time it seemed worthwhile to try to defend it, but I regretted it as soon as you rolled up those couple of turns earlier than expected.

Or you could have moved everything out of Dental Plan and stacked everything into Boo-Urns. Mardoc would have surely preferred that Although that would have left Nothing At All completely alone so also beyond possible emotions from earlier conflict I can see selection of Dental Plan as a justifiable choice too.

Could've done that too, but I stuck with Dental Plan because I considered that border to be an active warzone knowing that I had my plan to raze his capital.

[Old Harry]

Eh, every turn I survived was a mini-victory to me, even if you could've crushed me earlier. In the end I was just aiming for as much whip unhappiness as I could muster since it's always good to have a goal, no matter how futile it is in the grand scheme of things.

Ha! How high did you get it in the end? I think we're still running about 50 turns of whip unhappy in Lucky even with a Sacrificial Altar...

More general observations about your game:
- I felt that your early expansion speed was good and in the early game we thought with OH that we were pretty unlucky with having you as a neighbor. Of course the conflict between you and Mardoc changed our luck.
- That being said it seemed to me that you spent too many hammers on monuments and too little on granaries as your early infra builds and you would have needed more/some cottages as research quickly became the weakest link of your economy

Definitely underbuilt cottages, but from memory I was building granaries as first build unless I needed the monument for food sources. Also, early expansion was strong, but you guys successfully forced me to the west (combined with failed scouting of the east) which seeded the conflict with Mardoc. As always seems to be the case on slightly larger maps for me, my initial expansion was strong but things didn't come online like I hoped they would in my head, I lost sight of the need to continue to expand and simultaneously failed to expand my economy, and ended up in a situation where I knew I was fucked well before the Mardoc wars.

I think the monuments were a result of your dotmap being quite widely spaced, planning on working all the tiles in your cities later on in the game - I think I'd have put your second city 2NE of Boourns and a third NW of Boourns to give a lot more overlap and tile-sharing. Then I *think* our settler forced you to settle Hello Joe 1NW of where you originally planned too? If you'd put the city 1S of where you did you wouldn't have needed the border pop at all, but the plains hill would have been the best plant...


Anyway the question I'm most interested in: When we attacked it probably wasn't a shock, but had we disguised our power spike well enough that it was a surprise?

[Old Harry]

Could've done that too, but I stuck with Dental Plan because I considered that border to be an active warzone knowing that I had my plan to raze his capital.

Oh, and we have to give you massive thanks for that plan! Without that crippling blow we'd have struggled to plough through Mardoc even worse and might have even waited until Cuirs to attack him. It would have been really interesting to see how your war turned out if we hadn't interfered...

[Azza]

Eh, every turn I survived was a mini-victory to me, even if you could've crushed me earlier. In the end I was just aiming for as much whip unhappiness as I could muster since it's always good to have a goal, no matter how futile it is in the grand scheme of things.

Ha! How high did you get it in the end? I think we're still running about 50 turns of whip unhappy in Lucky even with a Sacrificial Altar...

I think Aurora Borealis had 72 turns of whip unhappy at its peak, while Nothing At All was somewhere in the 60s.

More general observations about your game:
- I felt that your early expansion speed was good and in the early game we thought with OH that we were pretty unlucky with having you as a neighbor. Of course the conflict between you and Mardoc changed our luck.
- That being said it seemed to me that you spent too many hammers on monuments and too little on granaries as your early infra builds and you would have needed more/some cottages as research quickly became the weakest link of your economy

Definitely underbuilt cottages, but from memory I was building granaries as first build unless I needed the monument for food sources. Also, early expansion was strong, but you guys successfully forced me to the west (combined with failed scouting of the east) which seeded the conflict with Mardoc. As always seems to be the case on slightly larger maps for me, my initial expansion was strong but things didn't come online like I hoped they would in my head, I lost sight of the need to continue to expand and simultaneously failed to expand my economy, and ended up in a situation where I knew I was fucked well before the Mardoc wars.

I think the monuments were a result of your dotmap being quite widely spaced, planning on working all the tiles in your cities later on in the game - I think I'd have put your second city 2NE of Boourns and a third NW of Boourns to give a lot more overlap and tile-sharing. Then I *think* our settler forced you to settle Hello Joe 1NW of where you originally planned too? If you'd put the city 1S of where you did you wouldn't have needed the border pop at all, but the plains hill would have been the best plant...


Anyway the question I'm most interested in: When we attacked it probably wasn't a shock, but had we disguised our power spike well enough that it was a surprise?

Ironically, Boo-urns was actually settled to claim the pig and cow and be on the plains hill without needing any monument for border expansion to the detriment of my long term dotmap. I might have built a monument before a granary if I didn't have pottery early enough, but the intent was to not need one.

With Hello Joe, I'm not sure whether I'd scouted the sheep before I settled that city or if I'd even noticed your settler. From my report on t53 my plan was to settle where I did, but I hadn't uncovered the sheep at that stage nor a unit heading in that direction.

I didn't really pay much attention to your power because I knew if you were to attack, I was fucked either way. You disguised it well enough that I didn't notice from my infrequent checks, but that's not saying much.

[Old Harry]

Turn 178

The aftermath of our magnificent victory over the Sprungfoldian menace sees us settle the last city we can fit onto our continent. We're at 51 cities now - 46 of them on this landmass and eligible for the Statue of Liberty.


With Oxford complete our GNP is looking pretty good (400 ahead of our nearest rival).


Gertie will get the Great Person eot, the Spy and Prophet pollution are annoying as Kirby has 15% and 4% chances of those respectively.


Our stack of seven Frigates moved into dtay's waters. We're out of reach of his eight Frigate stack (highlighted) and we've drawn a lot of units away from the border with Krovice (the labels should all be up to date). We've also got another seven Frigates that could join the party.


Our 5-move Galleon grabs another 4XP towards our GG (and will become a 6-move Galleon next turn) by killing a galley - only 5 more XP needed.


dtay just left two Rifles in Avendale after those tiles flipped, Krill didn't seem too keen on me watching what he was up to though.


BGN has Cossacks now, which is a little troubling.


But his navy is not in position to hit us. These five galleons are the only ones I've seen, so unless he's got a very sneaky plan going on I think we're safe.


Demos and power. Now including TBS and William.

[Old Harry]

By the way Azza - Dazed and Q are both looking for permanent subs - if you wanna get back in the game...

[Azza]

By the way Azza - Dazed and Q are both looking for permanent subs - if you wanna get back in the game...

Nah I'm done with Civ4 as soon as PB21 is over for me.

[Old Harry]

- If we grab corporation first our max beaker rate goes well above 3000 and Replaceable Parts maybe even becomes a 1-turn tech thanks to known-tech bonus.

I just did some calculating: Getting Corporation after Constitution only delays Democracy by one turn and gives us ~1000 extra beakers. Ignoring the Golden Age (starting t183), known tech bonus on RP and Rifling and the fact we can only research at 100% until t184 our tech path is:

eot179 Constitution (1500 overflow)
eot182 Democracy (2800 overflow)
eot183 Corporation (1252 overflow)
eot184 RP (200 overflow)
eot186 Rifling (200 overflow)

or

eot179 Constitution (1500 overflow)
eot180 Corporation (0 overflow)
eot183 Democracy (2500 overflow)
eot184 RP (1300 overflow)
eot186 Rifling (1300 overflow)

Nah I'm done with Civ4 as soon as PB21 is over for me.

Crumbs, what are you going to do instead?

[Fintourist]

How does it work with your overflow games if we start building SoL a turn later? 1000 (adjusted) beakers is a decent amount so if it works reasonably well, I would be happy to 1-turn corporation first.