Can we see some pictures please?
Surprise! Turns out I'm a girl!
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picklepikkl embarks on the Fool's Journey
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August 24th, 2016, 11:48
(This post was last modified: August 24th, 2016, 11:49 by picklepikkl.)
And away we go once again. Two weeks of no turns meant I was really scratching my head -- what were these workers doing? what was the point of this stack here? what the hell was past me thinking?
Sian must have had a lot of money in the bank when he gave up on the game -- I logged in to see Dreylin, who had just gotten Rifling this turn, with way more Cavs and Rifles than I was expecting. I decided to withdraw my exploratory northern stack and reinforce my stack going after his southern cities (sigh, if only I'd succeeded in keeping it when I conquered it from Sian). I also sent a peace offer demanding his southern four cities -- I don't expect him to accept, but maybe greenline is pressuring his north hard enough that he'd be willing to do it. The real objective was to focus his attention on the south; I have in Strength a stack of seven rifles ready to advance into attack range of his Promised Land city next turn, and I know from Trireme scouting that his isthmus city is stripped to the bone. Hopefully I can get him to pull more forces into his heartland so I can seize that city in two turns. Research-wise, we're heading to Assembly Line, which will turn on our Assembly Plants. Germany was a -1 civ back when this game began, but we've done OK, and we're going to reap dividends by industrializing faster than anyone else can (Organized boosts factory production, and Germany's UB builds faster if you have Coal hooked up). We're also going to swap out of Nationhood -- drafting has been great, but once it costs 2 pop to draft Infantry, it seems less worth it to me. After Assembly Line, there are a few options -- we could go for Fascism for the first-to bonus, we could research Steel -> Railroad, we could swing along the bottom of the tree for Physics -> Electricity -> Industrialism (Girls und Panzer!)... not sure yet. Next turn is 125, which is enough like a round number that I will do an overview post. (August 24th, 2016, 11:48)picklepikkl Wrote: And away we go once again. Two weeks of no turns meant I was really scratching my head -- what were these workers doing? what was the point of this stack here? what the hell was past me thinking? I believe city trades were banned... They usually are to stop someone dying spite gifting to a third party. Don't worry, Dreylin can just refuse though. Assembly plants were shown nice in 33 - they and a quick power plant after have an incredibly short payback time - you get them up and in like 10 turns they have paid back the hammers. Chasing any wonders? Or going all out down the warpath now? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Ugh, really? That's a shame; what on earth are you supposed to extract from a defeated enemy in exchange for not pursuing total war? I guess I could take ruinous reparations... In any event, equal tech war is a mug's game. Unless Dreylin out-and-out collapses or proves to be more vulnerable than I think, I'm just going to poke a bit more and then sign peace so I can industrialize. Will come back once I have an actual advantage (he's forever away from Infantry). In other news, I am annoyed that Cavalry upgrade to helicopters and not to tanks.
The Pentagon is the only Industrial wonder I really want. Statue of Liberty would be lovely, but is almost certainly sewn up by greenline. Three Gorges Dam also has potential, but Plastics is a hell of a long way away, and given that it requires Industrialism to research, possibly the wonder I am building then is instead "a shitload of tanks." Just need to figure out how one maintains health and happiness in an era where everything is getting obsoleted...
Aha, thanks.
Mostly, I'm trying to figure out if I can afford to depart from Hereditary Rule for the sake of Universal Suffrage/using the fact I was first to Communism to snag the Kremlin. Especially after all my heavy drafting, I might have to rely on culture slider for a while...
August 25th, 2016, 01:16
(This post was last modified: August 25th, 2016, 01:37 by picklepikkl.)
Bonus post courtesy of my insomnia.
I realized that US requires Democracy tech, which I will not have before my Golden Age ends. This presents me the following trilemma for what to do on my next turn: A) Ignore US/Kremlin abuse, swap to Bureau like intended, stay a monarchy. B) Swap to Bureau now and start building Kremlin, swap to US when Democracy tech comes in assuming I successfully nab Kremlin. C) Make no swaps at all; if I'm going to have to eat a turn of anarchy anyway, why not stay in Nationhood a bit longer for more Rifles? It's not like I'm in Assembly Line yet. The problem is Anarchy length; if I'm reading T-hawk's expose on the mechanics here correctly, the fact that the game is on Quick means I should be able to swap 2 civics with my current number of cities and have only 1 turn of anarchy, but I'd really rather not be wrong. In conclusion: dang, I wish I'd thought about this before I played my turn, but I was really excited to be moving again. EDIT: I plugged the formula into WolframAlpha as the following inequality: floor(floor(1 + 2 + floor(x * 9 / 100) * .67) * .5) >= 2, and got a lowest integer x of 23. This implies that I'm safe to swap 2 civics at once on a Small Quick Ancient-start map and only have 1t Anarchy up until I have 23 cities. Just to check that my inequality wasn't giving me nonsense, I adjusted the .67 to 1 and the 9 to an 8 (reflecting Standard size and Normal speed) and got the same value that T-hawk calls out in his post, that the 13th city causes an extra turn of anarchy when swapping 2 civics. In conclusion: dang, I still wish I'd researched Democracy before Corporation, but the extra rifles from a continued draft might be nice anyway. Hooray for math!
August 27th, 2016, 22:05
(This post was last modified: August 27th, 2016, 22:08 by picklepikkl.)
T125:
 Somehow, Dreylin managed to whip up a whole bunch of Cavs and rifles and hit my invading stack in the south really hard with them, with enough left over to laugh at anything I could retaliate with this turn. The survivors have retreated, in the hopes that greenline's advance in the north forces Dreylin to pull stuff out -- not bloody likely, but miracles can happen. I am forcibly reminded that Dreylin was part of a team that emerged as the early frontrunners in PB33 by virtue of applying exactly this era of warfare to the problem of "my opponents have stuff and I want it" and that I am well out of my warfare league. In response to "I am probably not getting many cities out of this war," I have started or queued up a couple of settlers to fill in marginal locations I never got around to. I'm in State Property now, they'll be profitable practically immediately, and I have plenty of worker labor to help them boot up.  In my attempt to reclaim self-esteem and also claim territory, I have advanced six rifles, one musket, and a cav in range of John Wycliffe, which is defended by one good unit, one mediocre unit, and some medieval trash. Here's hoping he doesn't have enough stuff in range to fort this one up as well. If I can capture this on my next turn, I will probably go ahead and offer peace -- war weariness is kind of painful (I'm only avoiding running culture slider this turn because I swapped my spare Calendar resource for greenline's Whales), and I would like a moment to breathe while I tech to Infantry and come back for revenge.  Here is the aforementioned six rifles and one musket stack, and the event log of the last turn. You will note, in addition to my units getting spanked (fair's fair, the previous turn's assault on Thomas Hobbes had gone unreasonably luckily for me), Jowy getting ready to win the game. It might already be too late for my Kremlin play, but by golly am I going to try -- I did notice that he used up his Great Engineer on this GA, which means I don't have to worry about that particular dreamcrush, at least.  When I said "getting ready to win the game" I was by no means joking. Please note that this was taken while I was still in the last turn of my own Golden Age. I think all that's left is for me and greenline to fight over second place, where by strict score rules he is already there. This is one of the reasons I offered to concede the game back when Sian flaked out. Oh well; I will do my best and we'll see how it goes. Researchwise, Jowy is going after Steam Power, which I am going to assume means his next target is Railroad. He lacks most of the prereq techs for Assembly Line, in any event. Railroad is great for him, because it means that nobody can profitably attack him until Marines and Tanks for fear of being Machine-Gunned. Giant city-by-city coverage under the spoiler: In conclusion, I'm bad at war and expansion, yet somehow still doing OK in this game. Not bad for first MP outing and, like, third Civ 4 game overall; let's see if I can bring home a silver ring.
Have to run to celebrate a friend's birthday, so played the turn pretty quickly. greenline advanced a bunch of units on John Wycliffe, so Dreylin pulled units out as opposed to pouring them in. I then got an unreasonably lucky roll with my Pinch cav and took the city with no losses. greenline is a bro, assuming he doesn't go ahead and war me now for the city.
In the continuing saga of Thomas Hobbes, I have put fourteen cavalry on a staging tile. If I look at Thomas Hobbes next turn and think I can take it with that, I will go ahead and do so. If not, I will offer peace. Steam Power came in at EOT. We have three sources -- two already hooked up, one on a workshopped tile that I will leave as such. Our GNP is pretty sad; we really need to get back into Bureaucracy.
August 29th, 2016, 10:29
(This post was last modified: August 29th, 2016, 10:30 by picklepikkl.)
Played turn 127 this morning like I promised.
I simmed out my attack on Thomas Hobbes, which Dreylin defended with six rifles (Worldbuilder is great, especially if you're comfortable hopping into Notepad++ and editing stuff directly), and to my surprise, fourteen cavalry didn't seem likely to take the city, at least not with sufficient strength left over to hold against the likely counterattack. It turns out that hills + 40% culture + city garrison equal tech defenders goes a long way into making a defense hard to crack. Dreylin: much better at war than I am. So I offered white peace. Maybe I could have gotten money out of it, but eh. Hopefully greenline can continue to press him in the north. Overall, I'd say this war was a wash for me -- sure, I captured two cities, but they were whipped/drafted into the ground. I lost a fairly core city, and when I captured it back it had no infrastructure left, and another one of my cities was razed and had to be resettled. Meanwhile, most of my 18-turn Golden Age was spent on wartime production and I did a great deal of drafting and whipping, which you obviously don't really want to do in a GA. What I need to do now is rebuild my economy, industrialize, assemble a killing force of Infantry, and come back in ten turns with a tech advantage to finish the job. Assuming Jowy doesn't go to Alpha Centauri within those ten turns, of course  .
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