[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[naufragar]

Opened the turn up to an open borders offer from Mackoti. I declined for two reasons: I don't want him scouting me, and I don't really want to be the one to help out the game leader. Mackoti so far only has routes with Xenu, who wanted to move a scout through, so perhaps Mack doesn't have alphabet? I built a catapult in Harmony Valley, which Mack saw if he was checking, so now he knows I'm building cats. Hopefully that's something of a deterrent. He's hooked iron and maybe hasn't taken a detour for alphabet. Knights are coming, friends. I'm putting 7 EP into Adrien and Rusten and 8 into Mack. I'm sure that's going to look aggressive, like I don't want them tracking my demos, but oh well. Rusten has open borders with me, so he can always check our border for troop movements. Mackoti and Adrien both have decent vision into my lands. Adrien and I are probably never going to be friends this game after that island grab, so I'm not going to try.

I love you too, Org.



So, I have a few questions. Actually, I only have one.


What's the road for, buddy?   (Just kidding. I know what the road's for.       ) Clearing the jungle gives me vision through the channel. I should have realized this was why Adrien was clearing the jungle and building the cottage together. I've added units to Lincelt. Garrison is now 2 archers, 3 axes, and a horse archer. 2-movers from MUSA can appear on my mine 1SW of the city whenever they want, as can two 1-movers if the galley is full. I do not like it, Sam I am. I do not like the sneaky plan.

Ok, before you see the next screenshot. Write down how many units you would want in your capitol if you were simultaneously at war with Rusten, Dtay, and TBS. Got a number?


I mean, let's just digest this shot. Dtay, who is at war with Superdeath, has an un-escorted settler 4 tiles from Superdeath's cap? (I haven't been following civstats too closely, but I think I would've noticed if superdeath had lost a previous capitol, so I assume this is the real one.) Ok. Dtay settler defenseless and spotted on the border. 13 archers, 5 spearmen, and 1 dog soldier garrison in cap. Also, a banana. Dear mapmakers, if the price for banana was being surrounded by belligerents, I can live without.  

Since I've shown you so many good pictures in this thread, indulge me a weird one.


In the top left is the chariot from the previous picture. Off the screen to the bottom right is the last position of our work boat before Gavagai killed it. My screen is large, but that's nothing compared to just how madness-inducing terrifyingly gigantic this map is. This thing is nuts. You could fit a game just in this blackness I'm showing you. Wow. I'm impressed. Guess I never felt the scale until now.

On our latest episode of naufragar doesn't know civ4 rules:


I thought I could get a peek at Rusten's capitol, but apparently vision doesn't work the way I think it does from water tiles?

I'm burying the lede, though, because I founded Nessus Shining.


And my empire-wide costs went up by 7 gold. Shoot me in the face. I hadn't even considered the vision that hill 1NW of the city would give. What a beautiful tile. I gotta admit, when I saw Cairo's garrison, berserker instinct took over and I started ordering a couple units down this way. I mean seriously! I could knock over that city right now! Cooler voices in my head prevailed, and I'm not launching immediately, but you better believe I'm accelerating. No way are we waiting for knights. I've got around 4 catapults, I think. I want a couple more, then we get horse archers. Harmony Valley (the city Mack can look into (I almost called it "the Mack city," but that sounds like bad luck   )) is producing a war elephant. I want a couple because they're the best defenders against horse archers collateral damaging my cats. It's not lost on me that seeing a unit defended by 2-3 units makes my heart thirst for war even when you can see Greenhouse Gate defended by a single axeman. But that's different. Also, you can tell how secure I'm feeling about Nessus Shining because I'm making a granary before walls or culture.

If you've made it this far, you are no doubt patient, knowledgeable about civ, and very attractive. So I have a mechanics question. When a unit that can inflict collateral damage attacks a stack with collateral-immune units in it, do the collateral damage hits ignore those immune units or do the immune units soak up those hits, rendering them wasted? I promise I did google first.

Edit: Logged back in to have Lincelt put a few hammers into a spear. Why did Adrien have to road that tile?

[naufragar]

Opened the turn up to TBS offering 10 gold for my furs, up from his original five.


Let's pretend this was my negotiation tactic instead of me bumbling.   I accepted. It's a lot of money. The happiness hit wasn't terrible. An extra happiness (2 if he uses markets) is a huge deal for an empire as big as TBS', but I gotta think about me and mine, and that's 10 gold in the hand right now. Probably could've pushed him for 12 gpt.

Mackoti popped a golden age. I think it's his first. Since he's philosophical, and just now used his 1-man golden age, expect to see many more late in the game.


I want to cry.

Cairo's city of Super Trouper expanded to third ring borders, claiming this peak. I'll need to build a map to see what tiles he has vision of.


After I founded Nessus Shining, Cairo offered open borders again. He has a chariot stuck in a little strip between Rusten, Mackoti, and me. I worry it's super obvious I'm being a bit hostile, but rather him have suspicions based on diplo than move a unit and see a stack of cats.

Rusten's warrior continues exploring in my territory. He still has graphs on me, so he hopefully realizes based on the power graph, I'm not as completely defenseless as our border makes me seem. I thought about moving troops east to give him a sort of military parade, but frankly, I'd rather have them prepare for an actual campaign.

I've been having self-confidence issues about the size of my military. First Rusten's stack of city raider 3 axes & cats, and now this.



I've been building forges and courthouses instead, I guess. My idea for what a respectable military is needs to be updated. I keep asking myself what I would do if a stack like that showed up at my borders, and the answer is probably "die." Mackoti switched into Vassalage, Hereditary Rule, and Caste for his golden age civics. So, he has Feudalism. I assume he has Guilds. (I would think he only hooked up iron when he needed to build knights, so as not to give the game away too early.) Caste system is to produce more Great People for later. Who needs slavery when you've got that monster of an MFG? I think Adrien and Rusten either didn't notice or don't care to compete with me in EP spending. I've made a note to check next turn. Mackoti is definitely resisting. I'll still have tech visibility on him in a couple turns. I doubt it'll tell me anything I haven't already guessed.

I realized a stopped doing opponent analysis once they stopped being my immediate neighbors. I forget who I haven't done, but I'll say a word about Dtay's combo. Genghis Khan (Agg/Imp) is one of my favorite RtR leaders. It's just such a good combo, beautifully synergistic as you pivot from producing lots of cities with Imp to reducing maintenance with Agg and building an army once you're out of room to expand. I don't like Mysticism starts, but the Celts' Gallic Warriors (and their super-buffed duns) are amazing. Seriously, sure you're building walls, which you don't often want in your troop factories, but an Agg leader with a 30h barracks and 50h walls can produce Combat 1, Shock, Guerilla 2 Swordsmen from scratch. Man. I don't see how you dislodge a stack of those from your lands without heavy catapult support.

[naufragar]

[naufragar]

We fell off the front page.    Just goes to show the game is getting interesting. Don't actually have much to say, so this is gonna be a spammier report.    We continue to slow build units. I'm pulling my hair out trying to decide if we hit Cairo before Mackoti starts his next campaign. The longer I wait, the weaker my hitters become. (I'm building horse archers because I don't have swords yet. Yeesh.) On the other hand, I'd rather my entire army isn't caught in some roadless foreign land when Mackoti decides I'd be nice to invade. I probably wait? Ugh. Frustrating.

Speaking of action:


When I saw this on civstats, I had hoped Mr. Cairo had declared war. Alas, the villain is Adrien, whom I can't really attack.



Four galleys with full complement and another eight units to reinforce could take the island permanently. Food for thought.

In the above pic, you can see Rusten teching Machinery, presumably on his way to knights although perhaps also for wind- and watermills. His warrior's still exploring. Every time, I just hope that he thinks he can make easier gains elsewhere. Superdeath is on his last city and doesn't look to be long for this world. We'll see what Rusten does with all those veterans. Mackoti got Guilds and is 1-turning Construction with the overflow.


I think that rival best is Mackoti with tech turned off, but that might just be my pessimism.   I get into this position in single player with high GNP achieved by skimping on soldiers. I wanted to avoid it in MP, yet here we are. My GNP is not actually that good. I'm getting like a 40%+ known tech bonus, which is just massive. Still, nice to see those numbers.

What do we do about Mackoti, folks? We need to expand into Cairo, but we need neither Mackoti nor Rusten to eat us.

[naufragar]

Iron Working completed. I wonder if we'll have any iron nearby.


Oh map makers, you crack me up. Note also the single copper in that shot. For next time, I should really grab iron working earlier just for the iron resources. That's a ton of hammers lying hidden. I have three sources pre-hooked and a fourth that needs a road, 2 because of city plants and 2 via mines, one of which is at Plex Anthill, which is now producing a cool base 24hpt and still has food to grow onto two more grassland mines. I love that city. Might keep feeding it over my bureau capitol.  

Poor 2metraninja is getting eaten from two directions by xenu and Adrien. Unfortunately for the both of us, Adrien grabbed two of 2metra's cities last turn. So much for a quagmire. Rick spotted Xenu's stack.


At first blush, I thought, "wow. Just build some spears, and you're set." But there are 22 horse archers. A lot for any number of spears. (Xenu is in Police State from Pyramids.)

Speaking of civics...


I've got to think that's a Banking bulb? I can't imagine he would've been able to hide teching it after Guilds. For any lurkers just now tuning in, uh... Mack's winning.

Mackoti also declared war on Rusten (for the 5th time?), but since I've never seen what they're fighting over, I have no idea how serious it is. I'm just hoping it keeps Rusten occupied. I realized my Moai city is defended by a single spear. There's bold, and then there's stupid. We're building units. We can spare some to reinforce. Up to 7 catapults with still more on the way. I realized my very mediocre power ranking is actually artificially inflated by all the forges I've built. Just keep building units, I guess.

[Mardoc]

If you've made it this far, you are no doubt patient, knowledgeable about civ, and very attractive.

Try "bored, lazy, and not treating work as seriously as I might".

So I have a mechanics question. When a unit that can inflict collateral damage attacks a stack with collateral-immune units in it, do the collateral damage hits ignore those immune units or do the immune units soak up those hits, rendering them wasted? I promise I did google first.

90% sure the immune units soak the hits and they're wasted. As in, I believe I've seen vets planning around sticking cats into their stacks specifically to soak collateral - also I'm pretty sure any unit already damaged to its cap can be hit by collateral, they will simply not take additional damage.

Defense against collateral is simple, really. You can either spread out enough that catapults can't be effective, or stack so many units in your SoD that the attacker runs out of catapults before they do anything substantial.

[naufragar]

Thanks, Mardoc. I had considered keeping defensive catapults a tile outside my threatened cities as a sort of surprise defense, but this is probably too cute. If they can take collateral hits for other defenders, they should stay inside.

Edit to be a tease: Often stuff that I screenshot gets changed, since I take pics before I assign builds and think about tech, so for example I switched to a bunch of swords builds once I realized my iron was already hooked. But there's still a few hints in the overview screenshot of my nefarious plan. Can anyone spot it? (Not actually that hidden. )

[naufragar]

Silly me. I had thought 4 stacked whip unhappy was a lot.


Factory Drift is much more than a fishing village. It's got mines and iron, but I'm still mad at it for screwing up my entire southern dotmap and stranding a fish.   Plus, we're on a schedule. Tick tock.

Turns out Mackoti war-peaced Rusten. I wonder if he does this every ten turns. Next turn, a sentry chariot of mine gets to my border with Mackoti to have a peek. I'm moving a horse archer through Rusten's lands, and he is not militarizing our border, unless I've missed his staging area. So that's nice.



Pretty standard. Superdeath is on his last city after three very strong players attacked him from all sides.

My own demos are ok, but I realize this is because I've built forges and courthouses ahead of people, whereas Rusten, for example, put those hammers into units which turned into more land and can now build infrastructure at his leisure. Every time I look at my demos, I feel ok (8th in MfG & Crop, 1st in GNP with tech on and known tech bonus), but I need to remember that, like all things, my infrastructure advantage too shall pass.

[naufragar]

Symptoms of collapse:


Look at that hideous flatlined crop yield. Adapt or die, I guess. Meaning I need more than some piddly island city. My preparations for Cairo conquest are taking too long, but they are advancing. Have a stack of cats with swords on the way, although it's looking like we're going to wait until knights now. Idk. I don't like how slow this has been, but Cairo's power is spiking up with mine, and he has reinforced our border ever so slightly. He is cottaging an iron source, so he's a ways away from anything that could stop knights. We'll see.



I said at the beginning that I hoped my civ was witness to interesting events. Well. I still feel a little responsible for the runaway. If you're wondering why my reports have been focused so much on what Mackoti might do, this is why.

It looks like the knight hammer isn't due immediately...


But who knows.  

[naufragar]

Ugh. This was a garbage turn. Opened up to find that Commodore stopped selling me silks, which stung in a couple cities. More importantly, Mr. Cairo declared war on 2metraninja. If he could only have waited a few turns. I'm two turns away from attacking Adrien. I really should have seen that coming, and perhaps I did, but I wanted to do too much. I'm still proceeding with the Adrien attack. Hopefully I have enough hitters in 3 turns. Unfortunately, I actually overbuilt cats. So I'm catching up. I forgot that all my sword builds would queue upgrade to macemen, so that's another 20 hammer delay. Bad turn. Position in crop yield dropping. Soldiers rising, so need to turn that into Cairo land.

Oh and there's this. Why can't I build a watermill here?


I forgot or never knew that water mills can't be build on river bends. If you look closely, there's three plains tiles I thought I could watermill that I in fact cannot. So I've got to figure out my cap's tile arrangement again. Ugh.

Edit: Uh oh. Did Adrien get Feudalism? I didn't think so, but compare this screenshot with the one from the last turn. Did Adrien halt research on feudalism to swap to construction or did he complete it? That could be important...