[SPOILERS] Rowain and the USA

[Rowain]

Ichabod captured anotehr City-state climbing to 11 cities (and menawhile 23 districts) . As a result I signed Alliance with Bacchus. He has a lot of Elephants and some Barb-troubles.

[Rowain]

On Turn 142 I signed the alliance with Bacchus getting visibility of his Units:




Now on turn 155:




Not much movement there. Meanwhile Ichabod has settled 1 new city, conquered Jerusalem declared war on me and conquered Erie. I guess Bacchus has resigned some 15 turns ago and just mails the turn in waiting till Ichabod wins.

Current stats:




I don't know how much money Ichabod has but the turns before he declared war he made ~100gpt.

[Rowain]

Some news from India




and some from Ichabod

[Rowain]

As the game seems to come to an end some thoughts about the game map etc..
Big Mistake on my part: No going after field-cannons earlier. I could already field some of them which would hamper Ichabods attack a lot better than the crossbows and Muskets I’m currently fielding.
Not so well: The first war with Ichabod: While I did complete my objective (making sure he didn’t gain anything from his war with suboptimal ) I had to raze the city and lost too many Units in the process.

Very well: The first war against Arabia which gave me control over the space between us.
The second war with Arabia as it was a very swift conquest.

Unwelcome surprises by the game:
a) Increase of Archer-costs happening shortly before I could upgrade my slingers.
b) Stockholm demanding a Viking Longboat
c) Arabia while being dead still getting the last Prophet.

Hampering facts from the map:
a) No early resources at the capital for the early Eurekas. Having an Irrigation needing Luxury with no chance to get that Eureka early was sad news.
b) No stone or marble for the masonry-eureka
c) No easily mineable resource and no Iron close by and only 1 Iron at all.
d) City-states: the east had 1 commercial far north 1 science (Hattusa which IMO Bacchus should not have captured -we might have gotten more out of it) and 1 Industrial while the west had 2 religious, 2 science and 1 or 2 more (cultural ?) CS

[Japper007]

Your point about the early resources/Eurekas is a very good observation. That's really something we should pay more attention to in upcoming PBEM's, though it is already better in the later semi-handcrafted ones already (this map was just rolled to "good enough" IIRC). Looking at starts from a civ 4 "total foodhammers" perspective is a flawed way to judge mapbalance. I'd for instance prefer a start with Flatland mines and quarry resources over a start with lots of deer, forests and bananas purely because of the Eurekas, even though the latter has better yields.

[Rowain]

I don't think it pays to be overly active on resource balance. The CS-placement is IMO the most important thing. Depending on type and closeness you get early science and culture and have easy-to-capture developed cities for the taking later.

If this map had absolutely equal resource distribution the result would still be the same. Ichabod would still steamroll Kaiser and capture 2-3 CS. Even if he doesn't declare war on me he can easily capture Genoa, Stockholm and La Venta and have twice as many cities as anyone else by using far less settlers or hammers for development.

He didn't even need to finish off Japan. He could as easily sign peace with Kaiser and let him and suboptimal fight for Kikyo while he captures the CS in his vicinity. At the end he would have 10 cities while everyone else sits at 5 and that for exactly 2 settler built.

Don't take this as diminishing Ichabods skill. He played his usual strong game with very effective wars. He chose the right pantheon for it and executed the attacks in great way.