[SPOILER] Dark Savant's thread: Competition for limited resources remains a constant

[superdeath]

I think much of our conflict was me "pre determining" that i was going to settle where i ended up settling and then got heated at the cities you planted. I probably could have lived with the one, but the other one that orphaned a fish? nah, that was pure lunacy imo. Good luck vs Rusten!

[Dark Savant]

Stupidly busy these days, have really not had the time to post, sorry all!

I think much of our conflict was me "pre determining" that i was going to settle where i ended up settling and then got heated at the cities you planted. I probably could have lived with the one, but the other one that orphaned a fish? nah, that was pure lunacy imo. Good luck vs Rusten!

Well, at the front, getting optimal tiles isn't very important, having a defendable front is.

And with exactly one other player to share the landmass with (which I know now is the case; Commodore must have invaded with an impressive fleet of knights on galleys), you either stay at peace all along, or go to war and stay that way. Not much point in half measures ... so once you declared war, war it was.

No regrets about that, even now -- most likely, either of us was in a hopeless starting position from turn 0 unless the other could be dominated quickly, and that's very difficult at this distance.

I certainly had no easy way to expand into another player.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 190 (AD 1300)

At this point, I'm the weakest surviving player; everyone else lower on the totem pole has been outright eliminated.

No one really has much of a chance to win at this point other than OH and Rusten, who are neck and neck.

Rusten's invasion has yet to take more than a few coastal cities, but he finally made a move farther in last turn, with a stack of 43 units.



He has infantry (which have just started to appear), cannons, and ironclads, and he'll soon have machine guns if he wants them.  It'll soon be an exercise in futility to try to resist much; it's doubtful I can reach rifles barring a miracle.

So I attack this stack, right now.  It's a bloody mess (those 8-strength UU pikemen are annoying to deal with even now) ...



... but I manage to kill or severely wound most of the stack.

I do have one last gasp left (I still have a few dozen catapults; yeah, not enough muskets and knights to go on the attack), but that's about all there is.

At this point, I've pulled all the defenders from the borders with both Commodore and AT to try to throw everything I can at Rusten, while I still have the capacity to slow him down.

Neither of them has declared war yet; in this situation, I wouldn't hold any invasion against them at all.  I've had empty small border cities with Commodore for a few turns now; I'm surprised he hasn't declared war yet.

[JR4]

It`s good to see that you were able to cause Rusten some trouble. Knights and a ton of collateral are capable of taking down big stacks.

As Rusten already fields Infantry there probably isn`t much chance of holding him off forever but I guess that a very painful conquest could lead Finharry to win instead. Just out of curiosity, how many cities do Rusten and Finharry currently have?

[superdeath]

Due to the mod used, unless you have been keeping track via PBSPY... ( or have total EP vision.. ) its impossible to know how many cities.

[JR4]

Okay, that`s the way it works. A guesstimate would be fine as I don`t really know if the leaders have 35 cities or 70.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 191 (AD 1310)

OH doesn't even have Rifles yet, actually!  He's instead gone all the way up to Physics.  So yeah, Rusten is the only one with Infantry when half the world doesn't even have rifles.

Also, it's a good thing I hit the stack last turn, because this just showed up:



and I have no way of dealing with this, other than pulling back and holing up, which has some vague chance of slowing this down near my oldest cities.

I was able to take out a few injured units and stray knights, but that's it.

AT did actually declare war and just took the outmost island city.  I'm continuing to pull out all troops just to try to slow Rusten down.

Commodore hasn't had a chance to play yet, but he needs to declare war imminently just so Rusten doesn't take all my northern cities.

[Elkad]

Okay, that`s the way it works. A guesstimate would be fine as I don`t really know if the leaders have 35 cities or 70.

Without counting cities in PBSpy for you...
When the PBSpy bug happened (end of january, posted in the tech thread the 27th), OH had 27 cities.  I had 14.  I don't think Rome was quite dead yet either.

And he's never stopped settling.  He dropped a new city about 4 turns ago.

[JR4]

I`m so used to being able to count cities from the diplo screen. Why has that ability been omitted from this mod?

Anyway, I haven`t followed the tech thread closely (or PBspy for that matter) but I guess Finharry have gained a significant amount of cities since late January. The late game in civ 4 really favours the players that are willing to spend the time and effort to win. This game must still be exciting for the global lurkers with two monsters that are just snowballing ahead.

[Dark Savant]

Yeah, I have no idea what OH is up to, other than wondering why he has Physics long before Rifling.  I do have circumnavigation now, far too late to actually make any difference though.

Anyway, my push to kill as many units of Rusten's as I can meant there's now nothing stopping his knights, so he's now captured all cities north of Porto-Novo.  I pretty much knew a fast breakthrough would happen no matter what, so I was focusing on killing units.

Commodore's been negligent on declaring war; it's now too late for that.  Maybe he doesn't like OH?  I don't know how that's shaping out.  He'd also be stretched very thin, yeah.  Nothing more I can do to invite him in -- I mean, I had border cities obviously undefended for several turns.

I mean, AT did move in to take the undefended island city quickly as soon as I evacuated the last troops, though he was starting to mass rifles on galleons, which I wouldn't have been able to resist long anyway.  (Rusten only just now researched Astronomy; he's still moving troops around with a pile of galleys.)  AT is already landing rifles at my capital and it may not be long before I have to abandon that, too, for a final stand.

I also just settled the two Great People I had on hand.  I actually could have launched a Golden Age in a few turns, but it won't do me much good.