[SPOILERS] GeneralKilCavalry and Irismono - Harmony Spawned from Discord

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Too tired to type big/many words - general relativity problems sets are too much too handle. 


Fun fact. Alhazard has whipped 50 times this game, I've whipped 58, Gavagai has whipped 76, Donovan whipped 56 times, superdeath 45 times (If he's not the MFG leader - he needs to reconsider his choices this game really heavily), chumchu 42 times, RegentMan ~14, Commodore 58 or so.

Alhazard is not whipping. he has pyramids. No excuses - whip  please  .

I was not whipping enough in certain cities, but I was already barely managing to stay above strike. Had more whips/city than gav. I could've done a better job with overflow planning .

Gavagai good job.

How is donovan not out of this game yet. Or regentman. Or chumchu. I don't want my first PB to be oone where I die first damn it! Get a move I say to everyone.

Probably not going to report much of these final moves except for the battles themselves, but after I'm out I'll make a write up of my mistakes and things I justify as having done correctly.

[williams482]

Reporting has been great for the past few months, thank you for that.

Fight the good fight.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Go superdeath!  

Hopefully that was chumchu's capital.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I really appreciate it when people continue to report in detail even on a losing game.

Make him bleed for every acre of Malian soil!

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Reporting has been great for the past few months, thank you for that.

Fight the good fight.

I really appreciate it when people continue to report in detail even on a losing game.

Make him bleed for every acre of Malian soil!

Thanks for the words of encouragement, it's been quite the ride.

Approximate hammer trades so far (civ4's version of blood loss):
14 catapults + 3 axes + 8 skirmishers +1 galley = 1105 hammers

Gav's losses: 12 praets, 2 axes, 3 catapults, 2 galleys = 540+70+150 +100= 860

There were also skirmishes on the hill to the SW of the conquered city. I think he lost 6 or so praets there to our 8 or so axes/skirms, so that is a slight plus.

Perhaps I should've retreated further back with the stack intact and kept whipping, but I could've only run so far. At least these axes are promoted with shock and can get good base odds on praets.
The problem will of course be the catapult stack.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Post Of Mistakes and Not - will be updated.

Our Pick:
Most assuredly it should have been Elizabeth. To be fair, we did not see the start in advance, but this is the base game damn it! Mali was an even more foolish pick, though skirmishers probably warded off gav at a certain critical point when we invaded his lands and he marched a 10 praet stack to our ivory city.
I will say, however, the organized savings helped keep us out of strike and gave us critically-needed lighthouses in 1 turn after whipped granaries. 

Economic/Dev Mistakes:
Poor post-Oracle micro. I get lax when I don't plan in advance and our workers (of which we had too few) were not making efficient moves. Worker micro was actually pretty terrible.

Going HBR would've helped in the past 40 turns. What was left after our golden age should've been pumped into HBR and getting a horcher stack to snipe cities. However, not sure how effective this would've been, so this is more along the lines of another viable strat rather than a key mistake. Trying to go for currency with only internal trade routes and occasional chumchu ones was stupid as hell. I feel like I was just a bit lost after oracle without a solid plan of what to do. 

Meta-Gavagai mistakes:
We believe that gav got iron working at around turn 60. Don't know whether this is exactly the case, but we met him at turn 43. Should've delayed oracle and immediately gone for an all-out skirmisher rush and gotten some aggressive plants on him. Once game is done for us officially, it will be curious to see how close others were on Oracle/whether they were pursuing it at all. Not watching the power graph and not doing proper demo tracking killed us.

Military gavagai mistakes:
I was not bold enough. Should've taken two more turns and every single catapult and all but maybe two axes and marched north. A failure to notice a convenient attack route to white rabbit was an issue as well. If we had sent but 5-6 axes and 2-3 catapults up there, it would've been another city for us. A combination of rushing to attack and being simultaneously too cautious about it was a huge error.

Not bothering to produce chariots early on. A lot of places where it could've been a major help.

Not training an extra galley - would've saved some food at a certain point. Probably not a big one, and this is more likely an instance of hindsight 20/20.

Signing peace with him at numerous points. Should've just kept the war effort up non-stop.

Dubious things - reconsideration:
Capturing the Barb City:

Adler:
The captured barb city seems to me just a liability right now. We have so many places to defend.

The gold we got out of taking it was somewhat worth it. It's not like gav would've suffered taking it out? The issue was not pre-roading to it and being better with workers.

Burning gav's city that we took:
I should've run more sims on defending it and brought more skirms to support. There is a case to be made that whipping it into the ground after it got out of rebellion could've made life much worse for gav. I'm increasingly considering this a mistake, but perhaps I too poorly remember the exact military conditions at that moment. 

Things we did right:
Probably most controversial would be choosing monarchy over metal casting. However, the colossus would just provoke a much harsher reaction from Gavagai, cost us in dev further (although not too much), and not have enabled us to whip as extensively as we did. Hereditary rule is absolutely crucial in our position. An argument could be made that MC would have allowed us to secure the calendar resources, but we would stand an even slimmer chance of connecting them if more hammers were wasted on colossus. Nor did we have gold/silver to buffer the effects of Mali mints.

Great Prophet golden age - we needed math/construction and we needed them NOW. No qualms.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Not a fun situation. Don't even have time for my stack to fully heal, and not enough catapults got whipped back out. Don't know what strategy to pursue at this point. Planting the stack in a city and waiting for it to get bombarded will probably lose me more units.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

The race of who will die first: me or Donovan.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Disbanded some workers that were aimlessly building fortresses - what else could they do at this point? I think with 10 catapults and the 20 or so axes I have I'll be able to take about 12-15 praets out. Taking out walled cities will probably cost gav a couple of catapults and a praet here or there.

Question for the lurkers:

What are the ethical ramifications of burning down one's own cottages? There are competing priorities of not being an asshole and doing everything possible to harm an invader, regardless of how the harm is inflicted or whether I am alive.

The argument could be made that burning one's own cottages is in the same spirit as gifting cities to an opponent - it is spiteful behavior that doesn't foster respect. On the other, it serves to prevent snowballing and keep up a good game for all other players.

Advice? Because if I start burning next turn, I can empty the lands.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Also, chumchu lost another city? Go go superdeath! With a score of 178, I presume Chumchu is down to one city and will be knocked out in a turn or two. I doubt even 40 superdeath chariots will make gavagai's stack stop and turn north, though.