picklepikkl embarks on the Fool's Journey

[BRickAstley]

Wish we could help man.

[picklepikkl]

Thanks, Brick.

I have my workers on arbitrary railroad duty, now, since my transit corridors have all been built and my mines have all been boosted. Apart from that, I'm mostly just building a bunch of machine guns and econ buildings. Don't think there's any more attacking out for me this game; Jowy has Artillery, greenline Industrialism, and both have oil-based navies. Their Powers are spiking. Either they each turn to the side and attack their other neighbors, or they fight each other and probably greenline loses. Either way, I think the resolution of this game is in their hands now, not mine.

[picklepikkl]

Dear Diary,

Mood: can't be arsed. Just building a bunch of machine guns and hiding in my cave. I think overall engagement has dropped, since neither greenline nor Jowy want to make the first move and nobody is updating their threads. Any lurkers want to ask if people are willing to call the game in score order?

I've been amusing myself by trolling Dreylin; he left a Worker in Cavalry range, so I sniped and deleted it. He revenge killed it with a Rifle, but didn't cover the wounded Rifle and moved yet another Worker out to improve the tile, so I obviously went for the counter-revenge kill and deleted that Worker too. He counter-counter revenge killed and this time left only the Rifle, which I'm not going to bother spending a Cav to counter-counter-counter revenge kill.

[picklepikkl]

So. Third place of four. Not terrible for a first MP outing with basically no SP experience, especially one in which I was the target of the world's first hot war. I was also about to Great Engineer Eiffel, which wouldn't have changed anything but would have been Kinda Neat.

Things I think I did well:
* I was a tech leader from the midgame until near the end, where I started falling behind the two leaders significantly.
* Chained three Golden Ages together, which was cool as hell.
* Despite horrific inexperience, fought off an invasion and went from being down two cities at the start to up two at the end.
* Eventually pulled ahead in the postcount/view competition.

Areas where I lacked:
* City specialization. I seemed to default to mixed hammer/commerce in most places, which meant I needed to build all the efficiency improvements everywhere.
* Great Person generation from more than "one city running a ton of specialists" and "incidental wonder GPP".
* how do I fight offensive war aaahhh
* how do roads work lol
* Overvalued Bureaucap in the late game/my civic game in general.
* Recognizing what wonders might be useful for my strategy and assigning them appropriate priority. Missed both Kremlin and Pentagon this way.
* Recognizing when it's time to settle backfill.
* Never did raze Bumbo.

Time to go read my opponents' threads. If indeed PBEM75 happens (74C/D? shrug), I'm up against gingereagle, AdrienIer, and either Dreylin () or whoever else wants to replace Sian for the sequel game. I'm pretty sure if Dreylin had been in from the start, he'd have been a lock for winner's bracket.

[Jowy]

* Never did raze Bumbo.

 Hail Bumbo! The land grab probably contributed a lot to my lead. I was at most scared when your power was on the rise. The timing worked out well for me though.

[Jowy]

You played really well for someone without experience btw.

[greenline]

So. Third place of four. Not terrible for a first MP outing with basically no SP experience, especially one in which I was the target of the world's first hot war. I was also about to Great Engineer Eiffel, which wouldn't have changed anything but would have been Kinda Neat.

Interesting; what was your ETA to Radio on the last turn? I was planning to build the thing myself. I think my cap could have finished it in 4 turns or so after I built RnR on the last turn.

Other thoughts:
I canceled OB with you early because I assumed you had got currency before me and that I would be losing money on trade routes. Not actually sure if that's how it works though.
I was wondering why you slowed down on settling so hard after the first 50 turns... infrastructure is indeed a deadly temptation.
I believe the marble with the copper for copper deal was to try and act as a bribe for an alliance vs Sian. At the time I wasn't sure if him moving his knight stack would mean attacking me at the center or hitting you instead. I didn't have a use for the marble at the time either (no Lit, so no epics )
(I'm still not sure why Sian decided to switch targets at the end. My border city had a bunch of pikes in a castle, but still would probably have fallen to sheer numbers eventually. I did spot his stack with a scout on the turn before he moved it, so maybe that was a factor)
I wasn't sure why you wanted to jump right on Dreylin again ASAP; I thought you would have seem Jowy as the bigger threat at that point. That was the reason I didn't even try sniping any of Dreylin's cities with boats, as Jowy had a huge stack sitting near my center city ready for a backstab.

[Dreylin]

Hey Picklepikkl, so sorry to (belatedly) hear of your loss.

I think things would have turned out differently if greenline had joined in - although he'd probably have seen the gains and you'd still have lost a lot of troops. In your position, I might have just split the stack into two at Hobbes and in the center, used your 2-movers to take Hobbes and then stuff it full of Inf & MGs and basically dared my to try to retake it. Then maybe a swing along the coast with Galleons to hit the vulnerable backlines while pushing down the (better) defensive terrain in the middle.

[picklepikkl]

* Never did raze Bumbo.

 Hail Bumbo! The land grab probably contributed a lot to my lead. I was at most scared when your power was on the rise. The timing worked out well for me though.

You played really well for someone without experience btw.

Thank you for your kind words! In the words of HPMOR!Hermione, "We can do anything if we study hard enough!"

If Sian had decided to go for greenline instead, I would have finished my journey to Rifling, made a zillion cav, attacked Bumbo, and probably gotten rekt by Cannons because if there's one thing this game demonstrated it's that I don't know how to fight offensive war yet, but it would have been a very different game. As it was, I had to draft and whip super hard, and my economic strength went tumbling down.

So. Third place of four. Not terrible for a first MP outing with basically no SP experience, especially one in which I was the target of the world's first hot war. I was also about to Great Engineer Eiffel, which wouldn't have changed anything but would have been Kinda Neat.

Interesting; what was your ETA to Radio on the last turn? I was planning to build the thing myself. I think my cap could have finished it in 4 turns or so after I built RnR on the last turn.

Other thoughts:
I canceled OB with you early because I assumed you had got currency before me and that I would be losing money on trade routes. Not actually sure if that's how it works though.
I was wondering why you slowed down on settling so hard after the first 50 turns... infrastructure is indeed a deadly temptation.
I believe the marble with the copper for copper deal was to try and act as a bribe for an alliance vs Sian. At the time I wasn't sure if him moving his knight stack would mean attacking me at the center or hitting you instead. I didn't have a use for the marble at the time either (no Lit, so no epics )
(I'm still not sure why Sian decided to switch targets at the end. My border city had a bunch of pikes in a castle, but still would probably have fallen to sheer numbers eventually. I did spot his stack with a scout on the turn before he moved it, so maybe that was a factor)
I wasn't sure why you wanted to jump right on Dreylin again ASAP; I thought you would have seem Jowy as the bigger threat at that point. That was the reason I didn't even try sniping any of Dreylin's cities with boats, as Jowy had a huge stack sitting near my center city ready for a backstab.

I think I was 1t away from Radio when I hit my last End Turn? Not sure how much the GE would have gotten me towards its total cost.

I did target Currency early, so as to avoid the then-useless-to-me monk part of the tech tree on my way to Code of Laws, but if cancelling OB with me meant some of your cities went back to 1c trade routes, you were causing yourself to lose money in order to hamstring me. That may have been worth it! I don't recall the situation, frankly.

I wanted to jump on Dreylin because I had an overinflated opinion of the value of Infantry (I saw +25% vs. gunpowder and went "ah yes, this is what I use in this era!" as opposed to holding out for Panzers and Bombers), and I thought that the two of us together could force a collapse quickly. Also, I needed to make a play against Dreylin to remain in the game; my economy fell way behind in the first war due to losing a core city and drafting/whipping super hard, so I needed his land to be secure against Jowy and maybe eventually launch a spaceship. I'd never been hostile with Jowy and had city visibility on him, so I didn't really think of him as a huge threat.

Hey Picklepikkl, so sorry to (belatedly) hear of your loss.

I think things would have turned out differently if greenline had joined in - although he'd probably have seen the gains and you'd still have lost a lot of troops. In your position, I might have just split the stack into two at Hobbes and in the center, used your 2-movers to take Hobbes and then stuff it full of Inf & MGs and basically dared my to try to retake it. Then maybe a swing along the coast with Galleons to hit the vulnerable backlines while pushing down the (better) defensive terrain in the middle.

Thank you for your kind words.

Yeah, that would have been a better play that would have delivered me some gains. I didn't understand just how powerful collateral could be as a defender; I don't think I ever used a siege unit the entire game (I built some, but, uh, you killed them all before they could attack ), and I was totally inexperienced with Civ 4 war, so I made a really bad strategic call which then resulted in really bad tactical calls.