GeneralKilCavalry is still around

[GeneralKilCavalry]

04/20/2020 12:21:24 197 AT score decreased to 1458 (-3)
04/20/2020 12:20:54 197 AT score decreased to 1461 (-2)
04/20/2020 12:20:43 197 AT score decreased to 1463 (-2)
04/20/2020 12:20:13 197 AT score decreased to 1465 (-1)
04/20/2020 12:20:03 197 AT score decreased to 1466 (-10)
04/20/2020 12:19:53 197 AT score decreased to 1476 (-4)
04/20/2020 12:19:43 197 AT score decreased to 1480 (-1)
04/20/2020 12:19:12 197 AT score decreased to 1481 (-2)
04/20/2020 12:18:42 197 AT score decreased to 1483 (-3)
04/20/2020 12:18:12 197 AT score decreased to 1486 (-5)
04/20/2020 12:18:02 197 AT score decreased to 1491 (-3)
04/20/2020 12:17:51 197 AT score decreased to 1494 (-4)
04/20/2020 12:09:43 197 Dark Savant score decreased to 607 (-5)
04/20/2020 12:09:43 197 AT score increased to 1498 (+2)

[GeneralKilCavalry]

should i compound the turn timer issues by issuing a pre-emptive strike against AT and taking one of his coastal cities, taking the 2nd half of the timer, and then having TBW attack me in his second half?

Stay tuned for complaints in the tech thread!

[GeneralKilCavalry]

DS accepted my war offer, and it looks like I took 1st half of timer and burned a huge AT city for some massive gold influx. Time to go out of this pitboss with a bang!!!

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Say no to invasion!

KRILL wOULd hAve kiLlEd Me AlrEaDy.

[superdeath]

Idk if Krill would have killed you already, but he probably would be an actual 3rd power in the game right now. So many butterfly effects.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

TBW isnt even prepping galleons for a sea invasion, he's just massing huge amounts of cav. I have so much collateral, and I've had steel for 2 turns already. Somehow, despite being near-bottom GNP, my tech rate remains pretty decent. Must be the combination of org+courthouses+small empire.

Don't think I'll be going past steel though, Railroad is just too expensive, it'll take 20 turns to research it and steam power, which is like 7 turns of gold saving, for a total of 27.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

WHEOOHRN activated
power graph spiking

oh yeah

it's alt+click time

[GeneralKilCavalry]

TBW can you make this fun for me? At least declare war

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Micro this game: 3/10 Early Game, 5.5/10 Later

Dotmapping this game: 1/10 initially, 3/10 later.

Opportunity taking: 3/10

Diplo (turtling): 7/10

I should've build my second city to grab the fish and gone religion first at the expense of some development. Krill started slow, but starting REXing massive at turn 60-70, when I was feeling very constrained.

My land was unequivocally bad, however, in comparison with other most other players. huge amounts of mountains, very, very few grassland tiles.

However, my land was bad because I did not seize any of the three targets of opportunity I had.

I did not push enough for islands near AT, when I could have - Krill was not much of a threat for a long long time.

I did not push Krill when I had chances to do so. I should have settled cities farther out first, taken control of those pigs, and settled that floodplains city very early on. I played too catiously with dotmapping, and did not exploit sacrificial altars to make far-out plants. This was the by far biggest mistake this game.

I did not push for the northern island early enough. It was, however, very close to pindicator.

And of course, I should've been more careful and not lost multiple island cities early game to that one fucking axeman. That was a huge misplay, careless on my part. If not for that, I would've developed more quickly and had fewer headaches. That loss of city just further killed my interest in this game.

However, I did manage my cities well later in the game. I think I made the most of the tiles I had, my dotmap ended up being good long-term, and I did seize a few southern islands for extra commerce. I managed to build a stack that prevented invasion and secured my survival, as well as sniping a city from AT. I think that "the place" I secured at the end of the game - middle of the pack - is how I performed, and that despite the map heavily disfavoring me, I did not make the best use of it.

Civ balance also seems to be not an issue - however is india/inca coming out on top contrary to that statement???

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Another pick evaluation:

I'm skipping over my pick because I'm going to do a more detailed post regarding what I consider the major decisions. So GCK is fourth from last of the remaining opponents.

GeneralKillCavalry: Darius [FIN/ORG](29th pick) of Aztecs (4th pick)

The fourth pick of Aztecs seems pretty reasonable, because the UB seems overloaded. The Sacrificial Altar, a courthouse available on Monotheism (1 bonus), that gives 1 happy (2nd bonus), 2 priest slots (3rd bonus, halves whip unhappy timer (4th bonus) and costs 90 hammers (5th bonus). Starting techs include Mysticism which can hurt tech intensive starts (ie multiple food techs before Mining>BW), and the UU gives fre W2 on a basic sword. In theory an IW rush could lead to fast swords (there is also a bug, the jaguar does not require iron in 4.1.1.5, but it should do), so there is a small speed advantage in a sword rush, but the Aztecs power is on the UB. The return pick of Darius was made from the remaining ORG leaders, but that wasn't entirely necessary. I kinda hoped he went for Joao, because it would be fun to watch (from a distance) but I can't see why Darius is bad. The Aztecs mean that with a bit more set up, GCK can just whip everything he needs to get the hammers he needs for expansion. The problem he will have is unless he has double the food resources of anyone else, the Sacrificial Alter whip happy is not going to help his happy problem: BW and Pottery take 30 turns for us with perfect start techs. A run to Judaism would likely take until T50 at the earliest, more likely T60 if he doesn't have seafood commerce from an early start (and that just adds Fishing to the tech path). So the whip happy buff is only really helpful later on for whipping units up until Medieval units with a bit of production in each city, and that still requires small cities. So Out of those 5 bonuses, I don't rate one.

The Priest slots raise an interesting conundrum for Pindicator: Both Pin and GCK could consider a Theocracy bulb (GCK if he misses Judaism at Monotheism, but I doubt he does). If GCK does land Judaism, then he has the means to make his shrine, but he also has the option to add in a spy spec to then catch up and trigger a golden age (23 turns from 0 to 200gpp), and as it is a courthouse, no problem is spamming them, especially at 45 hammers. Pin and GCK could race eachother for a Theology bulb, but at a push, I think Pin can start his GP sooner as Writing should be reachable by T40 for us, but then it is a question of wanting to research the intervening techs. There are some very difficult choices that could be forced in this game. I doubt thy happen though. But again, this is a "Power" versus "Interesting" point. Two priest slots on a courthouse at Monotheism don't really give significant power compared to a temple with a single priest slot at Meditation (ignore building costs affected by trait as that is trait power at play, not the civ). A bit, but not much, yes the shrine should potentially go down quicker with two slots, but not necessarily, and it is possible to power out the second GP with just library pair of scientists with decent timing. So I don't think this adds great power either.

So I reckon the real power is a courthouse available on Monotheism that saves 30 hammers (with ORG, 75 hammers from base courthouse) and gives +1 happy. Those are the real power parts of the civ. But GCK is going to have to rush to Monotheism to open up religion for border pops and extra happy, and then shrine that for the gold that, he must hope, keeps him as close to max science as possible.

This puts GCK in a rather rough position though. He has possibly the slowest starting combination that exists in this game. There is no way the Aztecs were picked because the start techs speed up his start as Myst counters that entire argument. ORG/FIN gives him nothing in the first 50 turns except seafood commerce and cheap lighthouses if he gets Sailing after Pottery and BW. He is going to have to play a perfect start, find some way to get granaries down and work a few cottages and then get to Monotheism. I have a plan, but we don't have tech constraints and good starting techs. GCK has the opposite. I don't think he can get there before someone else, starting faster, gets there off resource commerce.

Those 75 hammers saved on courthouses don't matter compared to the development of others, until they hit the horizontal expansion limit and wreck their tech rate. But they will still be able to get to IW and/or HBR and break things. GCK has to find a way to deal with those threats and I don't see it.

What I think GCK does is grab a food tech, then push to BW (finishes around T25), then return for Pottery (and if he needs the other start tech, grab that as well), around T40. Then he has to push for Monotheism, misses it around T60 because he is slow on commerce, and returns for Sailing, Archery, AH and Writing (probably only gets three of these around T80) whilst generating a GP, and then misses the Theology bulb to Pin, then gets eaten by HA or TBW using preats off boats around T90.

The problem I see here is just plain speed, and even if isolated on his own island I don't see how he keeps himself safe.

Second city timings: T28: Rusten (EXP/SPI with slavery).
T29: OH/Hitru (IMP), Borsche (EXP).
T30: GKC (Wut? FIN/ORG, what did he do to enable this, he has to have cut corners somewhere).
T31: BeardBeard (PRO/IMP, don't see how he can have a granary), Superdeath (AGG/CHM, same questions as with GKC).

Still no religion. Things are getting dicey, any number of players could have grabbed it so far and made it work well.

I think part of what's getting GeneralKilCavalry so down is his leader. He sees he's behind in the demos, and it feels like the game's slipping away.   But he's Darius. Darius is a late-bloomer, full of hope and promise.

He mentioned that he's settled three cities that didn't have any tile better than 3 food, but that's kind of on him. If he moved Teotihuacan 1NW, it picks up the fish and lets the brozne city be founded 1NW too and work the cow (although copper would be second ring). He also could have founded for pigs before sheep+crab. It's certainly not a luxurious start, but a different leader and maybe a slightly different dotmap would make it feel better.

Agreed. with nauf and Krill's assessment that I cut corners.

Krill seemed to not be too harsh on my development. I think he just didn't know how bad things were. But I did "keep myself safe" more or less.

I really didn't play the religion game at all.