[SPOILERS] Will: Thread title to be decided

[WilliamLP]

Situation turn 50:

I need to to think about this one a while. Perhaps I'm just being out-played here.

- Harry is in position, indeed, to try and prove this plant is defensible.
- Harry didn't chop Henge yet. But he got a second warrior into Dragon Age.
- Harry got (I think) his first Axe in Colonization. At least, there is no 6 point power spike in his graph visible.
- Two workers are in sight. My scout still has a move, probably to get the heck away to not be free lunch for the axe.
- Wounded warrior has 30% to win vs the top defender but surely there's no point in taking that attack.
- I could move my wounded warrior W onto the forest to harass the worker but he is just going to defend with the axe. Maybe it's worth it anyway to get the axe off a road. It may not matter.
- How fast can I get axes? TBD can get them EOT 51, 52. Placeholder can get them EOT 51, 52 I think.
- So that's: T54: 1 axe attack (not enough). T55: 2 axes. T56: 4 axes (require road on "r" spot). Maybe there's a way to get a 3rd one out of TBD by that time, not sure.
- I do have the promo edge, particularly with the barracks in TBD.
- Do I have any tricks here? I'm not seeing any, without horses.
- Is there any way Harry could have an axe in the fog 1NW of Dragon Age? I don't think so? I think the power graph only lags one turn and not two? But I don't remember the exact mechanics.
- If I move the second warrior in right now, and there is no defender in the fog, I have some odds to raze Dragon Age, but they aren't good at all. The first win would be dead even (C1 shock warrior vs warrior with 25% city bonus and 10% fortify) and then the second a little below 50%. So 15-20% ish probably. So I think I can discard that plan.
- Any merit to using my scout as a sacrificial lamb, moving to the hill 1S of Colonization? Harry can kill with the axe but it would reveal the fog for me and get the axe off of the road network and give me a chance at a 4 vs 2 warrior attack if Harry has nothing in that fog square 1NW of Dragon Age.
- Harry teched again. I keep saying it's archery but this time maybe it really is.

I'm thinking I just have to go for the plan of piling on as much force as I can. If he can deal with 4-5 AGG axes to attack on T56, well good game, I'll play on with my puny empire. I'm going to sleep on it but I think the plan is fairly clear here.

This is why being 1-2 turns ahead in terms of micro plans and unit position can be the difference between a competive game and a losing one. Shrug! And perhaps this sittuation reveals the folley of not going straight to AH.

Edit: Played the turn. Nothing fancy, I just backed off. Going to wait for a few axes and see. Maybe OT4E will help me out in the south, who knows.

[WilliamLP]

And so I bet Harry is just going to chop walls now isn't he? Ah shucks, I'll keep him honest but yeah I think I was just simply out-played.

[WilliamLP]

Dreylin got Henge! I'm so glad Harry didn't manage to pull that off. Maybe he even got fail gold?

I'm still just ashamed I let him plant on stone uncontested. I have no excuse at all for sending a warrior on a long scouting excursion instead of having one or two there for permanent border visibility. I certainly deserve to be on the lower half of tier lists for such dumb play, haha.

I need to think about what I want to do with this game now with a cooler head. I realized that just whipping axe after axe and piling up 40-50 turns of unhappiness isn't going to make this game fun. Civ 4 is, very strongly, a defender's game, and graphs and vision make attacks based on 1-movers seldom a profitable move. I knew this going in. One specific flaw in intuition I had was, I forget completely about the 25% city defense for warriors. This, plus fortify bonuses, makes even producing my own with shock, en masse, rather underwhelming.

Strategy like this is one thing I'd need to improve to be better at this game. I need to totally reconsider my opening theory too. In particular I probably under-value earlier plants at size 1. What do you get out of these:

- A pop point that can work something.
- Compared to the usual opportunity cost of a pop, because of the city square, 2fpt, plus 1hpt, plus 1cpt.
- Plus 1gpt for a trade route, minus maintenance. (Plus 1gpt in the capital for the first plant).
- Possible bonus for planting on something.
- Resource capture in 3x3 block (including forests).
- Ability to pay 10 culture for another 12 squares of resource capture.
- Scouting of the 9 city squares, plus barb spawn-busting. Animal blocking.
- Ability to convert 22 food to 30 hammers a few times, happy cap permitting.
- Ability to convert 22 food to a pop point, doing this 1->2 is the most efficient way to get another citizen, maybe not including a settler.
- Ability to sink multiple happiness counters at once: 2 whips in 2 cities dissipates twice as quickly as in one city.
- Fort functionality to add defense to many units, warriors, archers, etc.
- Block 5x5 square for other settlers.
- Ability to build units in a better location.

And a bunch of other stuff, surely, very small things for later like a place for a university to reach Oxford and stuff like that...

An early game comparison is 60 food-hammers for a worker who is going to mostly chop, for a ceiling of 20 hammers every 4 turns, so paying for itself in 12 turns. (Minus the future cost of the lost forests.)

There's probably some math I could do adding up all those components above for a comparison to this. Or, surely, SevenSpirits has a thread here somewhere where he's done this analysis more effectively than I could, haha.

So anyway, stream of consciousness on civ mechanics aside. Going forward from here, I think I just lick my wounds and keep trying to play economically with the land I've got until there's none left. I'll have my first axe next turn, but I'm still going to try and use long term thinking and manage the happy cap with my whips.

Archery may have been not necessary or useful this turn, but it was only a three turn tech, so it can't hurt that badly. I think I discard the Judaism plan now for good, even after getting Myst, and go for AH as a more normal play to have more tactical options. Maybe, backed into a corner, this is even a game for HBR. I keep changing my mind, in not very productive ways.

Should I take peace with Harry? On the one hand it's kind of a jerk move not to. But on the other hand if OT4E sees the ongoing war and sees my power spike up, he might consider an attack or aggressive push of his own. And anything that increases Harry's chances of being hurt helps me out in this game. So there's no shame in a self-interested legal move. I wish OT4E were playing longer than 8 minute turns though!

Oh, I spotted Donovan Zoi's W2 scout. He's the one who has already eaten another player of course. He's most likely to the south somewhere.

[WilliamLP]

So, I'm basically moving warriors around Harry's border like headless chickens lol. Maybe it will confuse him.

After archery and an axe, I'm actually #1 in the game in power rating on the demo screen now. I realize this is not something to be proud of!

I'm still hoping OT4E will put some pressure on from the south so we can slow this guy's crazy growth rate. I mean, 6 cities by turn 53, what is up with that?

To think with more game awareness I could have AH and a chariot or two skirting Harry's borders right now, oh well.

[WilliamLP]

My current goals in this game are:

#1: Harry does not win.
#2 (Secondary): Survive to the end with a respectable empire.

So I'm trying to be a serious thorn in his side right now, without totally trashing my economy. That would just allow me to be conquered in 50-ish turns anyway. But this is an always-war game for me, and a meta-goal is to make all of you dear readers think twice about planting something that aggressive against me in my next PB game if we are loving neighbours.

Most of my ability to harass leans on OH not being able to build Immortals yet. I'm hoping he was/is going for an econ play like Oracle or Judaism, and doesn't have horses hooked yet. 2-movers would completely shut all my junk down and force me to build spears.

- I laid a long-odds trap last turn, moving my scout onto Z with a shock warrior 1S to counterattack if my scout got lucky rolls on defense. And it almost worked! The axe is down to 2/5, the warrior had 26% odds on it. Maybe I should have taken the attack - it's not clear that a warrior will ever be more useful again vs getting a 1/4 chance of killing an axe! But I moved NW to make things more complicated for him. (Incidentally there's still a bear in the vicinity down there!)
- I can move a shock axe and a warrior to invade onto A next turn. Harry has at least two axes, but I know two of them (including the one in the screenshot) are wounded. The second one needed to fend off a barb warrior 1E of Colonization, so at least I know it hasn't had time to heal and gain fortify bonus.
- He's going to have a hard time dealing with a shock axe cost-effectively here... unless he has Immortals in which case I'm simply crushed.
- My shock warrior at Y is intended to be another prickly distraction.
- TBD's borders pop in 3 turns, which will unlock 6 more forests. Those are all going toward military. I have five workers now to get this going.
- I'm working really inefficient tiles in TBD this turn to leave an axe at 4/35, so I can get another double-whip in on pure military, in two turns.

My empire looks pathetic because I just double-whipped a couple times. Hooking up Ivory and Furs will help with vertical growth a little. I just whipped a settler, and I'm hoping to settle X on turn 60. Chops into Placeholder should overflow into another couple axes.

Untitled is painfully slow to grow vs the insane viral growth that Harry is doing... but I don't think I had much choice but to make that my third city for copper. It has a granary now but it won't actually be a decent city until I can pop borders and somehow improve and work the corn on the NE peninsula.

I'm still considering, how much faster could my expansion have been in this game? (Leaving aside allowing Dragon Age to plant, which I've already beaten myself up enough for!) Could I have kept up with Harry at all? Or can I blame the map and no decent food tile for a second and third city, instead of my own mediocre play? Without me here, I think Harry may have been poised to take the lead in this entire game. (Or maybe even with me here, haha.)

As has been the story for many turns, I wish OT4E would wake up and smell opportunity here!! But he played another 6 minute turn, argh.

I'm completely ignoring Elkad at this point. I don't see any signs of him getting feisty.

[WilliamLP]

Current state of my troll adventures:

On defense, my sacrificial trolling / scouting warrior won a 10% fight against Harry's spear! I'm sure he was very rightfully angry about that.

Harry got 3 axes and Walls in Dragon Age, which shuts down my ambitions to do immediate damage there. Still, I made him commit a lot there without any actual losses (other than falling behind in economy haha). Without extreme C&D I can still expect an immortal to pop out of the fog any given turn, so I'm backing my units off, though I'd like to advance for troll purposes. When I have a larger stack with a spear maybe I can be far more annoying still.

My horses popped up in a location I can't complain about. I had a settler half way to the X site, but he's now turning back, going to settle on the blue circle hill. The nice part is I'm already roaded most of the way there and have 3 workers in the area.

There's a danger that my relevance could sunset pretty quickly. Relative to the world I'm rather behind, 23/24 in land area for instance! My two granaries have pumped a lot of stuff though. Next turn my army will be 4 axes and 1 spear.

I'm not going to win a race to anything at this point, so I think I need to go for the normal plan of Writing into a Library in the capital now, and working on a few more cottages. Mysticism was a conscious but bad decision. Archery was just me playing on tilt. Revealing horses a little earlier would have saved me at least 2 back-forth settler moves. Really though, without fishing tech start and more optimal play I bet I could have had everything I do and seen horses 10 turns ago.

TBD gets a border pop next turn and I'll start improving the furs. At this point I think I need the X site, and also the gems site N of it, before thinking of any serious military push. I should have more than enough to prevent another forward push site from Harry up there though.

I now have all the relevant graphs:

Elkad isn't showing anything. OT4E doesn't seem to have an axe yet. He whipped 3 times last turn though, so hopefully it was some units to prod northward. The fact that Harry built a spear means he was concerned about something, not sure if me though, if he's doing extensive C&D and knows my tech precisely.

My better-lucky-than-good spear kill may flag a dip in Harry's power, which would be a great signal to OT4E that this war isn't entirely phony.

Rusten got Oracle, more good news that this is another overpowered early slingshot that Harry missed.

I'm actually kind of enjoying being the bad guy in this game.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 59:

Untitled whips a barracks for the border pop. It still hasn't produced anything for the empire other than hooking up copper, which isn't ideal for a 3-city challenge.

Ivory is hooked next turn. Furs on T63. This will give me a bit more happy cap room and I can triple-whip my next settler bound for X. I'm going to want to get the north gems hooked up next.

Harry declared on OT4E!! And OT4E is starting to spike power! I love it! It's cold to say, but I think Harry's winning chances may already be nearly wrecked. He invested in Masonry (and surely Myst since he needs a way to pop borders). There's no way his plan was to do that and miss Oracle and Henge. And I think he's under far too much pressure to consider something like Pyramids any time soon. So his IND trait may turn out to be kind of a brick. He hasn't teched in a while so he might even be going for the Poly / Judaism plan himself...

I have 4 axes shown. With more boldness and/or better unit micro they could be more advanced than they are, but next turn I can consolidate 2 groups of 2 next to each other, which is really going to be hard for him to deal with. I would love to cut the road off Dragon Age and pillage its food tiles making the horrible thing a pure liability.

With Masonry and maintenance cost from 6 cities, I don't  really think Harry is likely to have horses hooked yet. But even if he somehow does have an immortal or two, I can try to make sure he can't get any better than a 1-1 trade with an axe at best. I'd like to not even let him have 1-1 trades for anything.

I'm the soldier count leader in the whole game by 8k, and he has wars on two fronts, this can't be a situation Harry and Fintourist are delighted with!

[WilliamLP]

Turn 61

A barb warrior threatens Untitled. I'm able to defend, but only with a zone defense C1 warrior with no fortification. If I lose this, I cry and the rest of the game laughs at me. The barb might have as high as 21% chance here, and ah crap, I thought it was much lower. 25% fortification brings the chance down to 4.4%. This could be yet another humiliating learning experience!

Here goes the Hail-Mary attack on Harry! 4 axes, 2 with shock, are in his lands. I don't think he'll have Immortals yet, but even if he does we're both going to take some losses. It looks like I'm cutting off his axes in order to threaten Colonization, but what I'm really after is to get him to slow his growth and maybe pillage his road connection and 1-2 of his food. The axes on his road should cut off his stone access for walls, if he didn't whip them already.

I have a spear lagging behind the stack, it may help out if I need a strategic retreat.

Harry's power rating is through the roof, but he has to worry about OTE4. Interestingly, Elkad and Harry haven't made contact! So Elkad doesn't even know I'm in a war. His low score may suggest he's either playing very suboptimally or he's being held back with a scuffle with someone else. I know that DZ is down there with [Edit: Holkans] somewhere...

Despite high power I'm not really worried about any counter-attack harry can execute before construction or HBR. Moving in with 1-movers against Aggressive would just be suicide.

No Name Yet was planted, and horses will be hooked in 2 turns. Furs as well, for another point of happy cap.

[WilliamLP]

Oh snap!

   

So, the damage is being done - this will crush Harry's growth curve.

Now, can I be rightfully accused of throwing my game to spite him? I'm not sure, to be quite honest! I think my long term success in this game was / is quite directly tied to how much land Harry is able to grab. And if I were to just let him expand in peace I think I'd be looking at a losing economic war months down the road, during the age of Cavs or something. And that is simply no fun.

Now, (assuming I don't lose a city to a barb this turn) I'm somewhere in the middle of the pack, but I have a strategic future, with some land for expansion and a long term plan to expand through war to the south. Or, heck, maybe even the west.

Since this is my thread, I'm going to take the most charitable view on my own play, haha. That is, proving to Harry that his expansion was an over-extension.

[Dark Savant]

No one else has commented in your thread for a while, I just wanted to let you know the dead player is all here.

And other lurkers, too.  You'll excuse us for not being able to say much.