Gavagai's revenge

[Gavagai]

For those wondering what is happening - my civ was a walking corpse for almost 100 turns. I played the start on auto-pilot and that really was not the kind of start which could be played on autopilot. Made a couple of very stupid choices. I had a very weak second city which put my snowball forever behind and financial was a mandatory pick in my position because coasts are the only real source of commerce available. Needed to go with Capac instead of Stalin. Would be OK with a weaker player at Commodore's place but with Commodore as a neighbor, this is hopeless.

[Gavagai]

What the fucking fuck, Prague is a double Holy city (Buddhism and Hinduism). To put it in context - my opening heavily relied on landing Hindu in my second as it had no food in the first ring. I aimed to get it earlier than normal and yet Beard beat me by a few turns. I thought that it is not catastrophic with a double gold mine and just went for mono which usually falls pretty late - and got beaten to it as well. And now I learn that he went for the second one as well. What a fucking bullshit. No wonder I could not get mono - with this dude stealing two early religions, there got to be quite a competition for it.

[Gavagai]

[Gavagai]

I don't know how I am still alive. Commodore had every opportunity to crush me but just decided not to. Oh, well. It makes sense to start reporting, I guess. Pictures above illustrate the current state of my empire: demos, main segments, key cities, techs. A little bit later I will make a larger post depicting my history and current plans. Now I want to talk about a thing which is on my mind.



Xbows now cause collateral damage which makes them compete with Catapults. So - which unit is better for stack combat? The picture kind of spoils my conclusion to you but I am not confident in it. Hear me out.
The key thing is that Catapults can trivially take Barrage 1 and a bit later Barrage II which puts them at higher pure collateral output than Xbows. And they are cheaper. Also, their collateral damage goes deeper, 50% vs 40% but this is rarely relevant, unless you are trying to collateral away something like Rifles. Of course, Xbows have higher base strength but this is mostly irrelevant. And Xbows are good against melee-based stacks but you do not expect to see those at this point of the game. So... Catapults are better?
Yes, they are, if you assume that you are on defense and attacking enemy stack first. That was my assumption as I was primarily concerned with the defense against Commodore. However, if you are on the offensive, then you need to survive the enemy attacking you first. For that purpose, Catapults provide you with the benefit of soaking up collateral damage while also providing you with the disadvantage of being vulnerable to flanking and having no defensive bonuses. The relative importance of those factors depends on the era but in the Knights era the vulnerability to flanking, of course, is much more important. So, if you picture yourself attacking, Xbows are better. Commodore builds exclusively Xbows, by the way, but I am not sure that he came to the same conclusions as me.
Why is it on my mind now, even though the decision was made long ago? I am thinking that there is quite a lot of value in the flexibility of Xbows: they can be decent city defenders, thanks to the garrison promotions AND cause collateral depending on your needs. So, may be I should have built some. The overall conclusion is that change to crossbows is actually very good, makes you consider some rather interesting choices.

[Gavagai]

1) The start

That was my starting position. I saw gold, so lots of sea tiles and, of course, immediately thought about Oracle/Forge/Colossus and related synergies. Germany was taken for the strongest Forge UB. In respect to traits, Ind was a given but I was less certain about the second trait. I decided to take something which speeds up an early building I would want to build everywhere. There is no Ind/Pro leader, so I decided to take Stalin for Barracks. Stalin would also give me a further synergy with respect to cheap city maintenance (discount from Forge UB, discount from Ind and further discount from Agg). On top of that, the irony of Stalin leading the Germans did not escape me. I initially wanted to make Polish cities my naming theme because Poland is what those two have most in common. But as the game very quickly went downhill, I decided not to bother. Still, can do mass renaming if my prospects in the game would keep brightening.
Stalin was the wrong choice. What I needed here was Ind/Fin because otherwise, this start lacks commerce: observe that my capital has only one cottage which has not matured into town as of T163. I have only two proper cottage cities and they are both outside of my first ring, one of them at the border with Commodore. With Fin, I would be able to utilize all those sea tiles and between them and Pyramids be kind of OK commercewise. Without Fin, I am pretty screwed.
So, the start was difficult though not hopeless - all I needed was to make the right pick. Unfortunately, I was able to turn a difficult start into abysmal by a terrible opening. I realized very early that Dark Savant is better positioned to take the Oracle than me and become paranoid. I rushed Hamburg as my second city to get gold early to boost my research. Hamburg, of course, is a pretty bad second city, even assuming that Clams are immediately available. I assumed that much because I planned to pop its borders with Hinduism. But Hinduism fall ridiculously early before I could get it even with my gold. Not the end of the world, I thought, I have gold and Mono is not that far away. Surely, no one would go for it around T50! Little I knew that Beard founded both Hindu and Buddhism, thus greatly increasing the competition for early religions. I ended up missing Mono and by that point, Hamburg was a thorough failure of a city and my start, pretty weak already, was in ruins.
I got my Oracle - fortunately, Dark Savant opted for Stonehenge - but at that point, I was in a tight settling race with Commodore who had a protective civ and played a normal start. I was very lucky with a coinflip Engineer which got me Pyramids but missed Colossus: my capital had to produce settlers non-stop. And Pyramids by themselves were insufficient to justify my opening.

...to be continued.

[Gavagai]

2) Commodore

This picture demonstrates clearly how dominating Commodore was during our early race to settle the continent. Not only he had a much better starting hand due to the way I botched my opening, but he was also very smart about it. He rushed forward with settlers to claim a very ambitious border and was able to keep very high military to support his claim. Like, during the entire early game we were two top powers in the entire world (which, of course, was very bad news for me, given my disadvantages).
Here is a closer picture of what our border looks like:

Every time I look at it, I feel Gis Borne produces more coins than my entire economy. This is not literally so, of course, but a pretty powerful city, yeah. And it could have been mine - if only I settled a normal second city instead of Hamburg and had an earlier snowball.
To sum up, Commodore won the opening, acquired more resources and I had to look for compensation elsewhere. Luckily, I had a weak neighbor nearby...
To be continued...

[Gavagai]

3) Holy Rome
Holy Rome was right across the channel from my capital. I knew almost nothing about it, partly because we both lacked Alphabet and partly because I was feigning disinterestedness. I knew that Beard had a Hindu Shrine and built no units (from powegraph). I assumed that his land is at least somewhat decent. Little I knew...

I conquered a grand total of four cottages. The one NE of Prague, however, eventually become the first town in my empire - how pathetic is that, given that it was unworked during the post-capture revolt. The war itself was straightforward and does not require detailed reporting. One complication was that even though Beard did not build any land units, he built a shitton of triremes - more than enough to stop my invasion cold... If only they were in place, blocking me from crossing the channel. Fortunately, he had only a couple facing me and other triremes were somewhere deep in the south. Not sure what was up with that.
Anyway, it was never a question, whether I am able to kill Holy Rome. It was a question of whether I can avoid dying to Commodore in the process: Commodore got Guilds about the time I invaded and I was nowhere near. I took some measures: a lucky second GE bulbed Machinery and the third one started a GA. I teched Engineering using capture gold, so I was able to switch to Police State and cough out some Pikes. But Commodore had his own GA lined up, he had Gers and if he went GA right after Guilds and switched his entire empire to military production, he would have crushed me, despite all. He did not do it, no idea why. Instead, he attacked Superdeath. A mistake - which makes me cautiously pessimistic about my chances.
To be continued...

[Gavagai]

Observe, by the way, that Beard further complicated his already difficult position not just by founding two early religions but by an abysmal dotmap. In a really low food environment, he managed to orphane not one but two food resources. Southern Clams can be picked up by an island city, though that city would be pretty shitty. There is no way to save northern Fish.

[Gavagai]

I'll put my history lecture on pause because now I just wanna rant.



I declared on BaII to take a city on an island right next to my borders. I landed 4 Swords and it had an archer and an axe. Easy, I thought. Well, I log in and discover that these units got upgraded into a Mace and a Longbow respectively. The guy is in the middle of elimination war and he just throws away 230 gold to save a city in the middle of fucking nowhere with zero strategic importance for his civ. Really, it pisses me off to no end when people do that kind of bullshit just to screw me over. The funny thing - it would only work if he spawns a Privateer in the city right next turn (which would be bullshit in itself as he did not slave and the city only produces 7 hammers). Otherwise, I will have 8 swords ready to attack next turn, the city will fall, Mace or not. Strictly speaking, the city will fall whatever he does, if not now, then ten turns later, when I come back with a new army.



OK, then, I am officially out for this guy's blood. This workboat? I did not want to kill, now I will. Hope, it was going for circumnav. Also, this island?



Was not sure whether I actually want it but now fuck, I am going in.

[Gavagai]

I just checked - the guy has 4 (four) gold in the bank. His income is +16. So it was not like "well, I have tons of money to spare anyway", it was literally everything he had. All to defend a city that is indefensible anyway. Just can someone explain to me fucking why anyone would do such a stupid thing?