May 31st, 2020, 10:52
(This post was last modified: May 31st, 2020, 10:53 by Fintourist.)
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
Turn 77
Elkad did not attack the city and zulan's combat calculator gives us actually 95.9 % odds to take the city vs. the lonely archer and eliminate Elkad. So here we go.. 
- HA vs Archer 28 %... LOSS (2 hits) - average result would have been 4 hits..
- C1 HA vs Wounded Archer 89.4 %... LOSS
Combined odds for that mega spear and this archer to survive our attack updated: - 1 out of 908795 attempts
- 99.99989 % from our perspective
We are truly losing this game here and now.
Posts: 2,936
Threads: 12
Joined: Apr 2015
This timeline has truly jumped the shark. Hey simulators, can you please reload the save from 2013?
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
This is all pretty traumatizing and thinking about this game makes me feel ill, but let's close some circles. This is our bet from turn 44:
And this happened last turn:
Not 100 % sure, but this should be "the pink dot". Our bet was not about being the closest, but hitting the exact turn, so nobody won. But I guess we were on to something. 
Macro overview:- Significant setback for Migu's builder plans. He is downgraded to middling civs
- Commodore's start was slow, so I don't think this is yet enough, but he still has an army so he has an ability to keep climbing. Maybe contender
- Cornflakes: As said, this is his game to lose now. Should have developed faster, but is still doing good enough that he can enjoy his excellent macro position. Should look very strong in 20 turns and is thus the favorite
- Ruff: Very nice macro position, but somehow still waiting for his snowball to launch. Contender
- Cairo: No accidents to my knowledge, but proceeding slowly. If he can make something happen with Commo-Migu conflict, he can become a contender
- Ras, SD & Elkad: Essentially out of the running
- Us: This was a won game until it wasn't. Let's see how grim the situation gets and whether we can be contenders or fall into the same category with Miguelito.
June 7th, 2020, 15:03
(This post was last modified: June 7th, 2020, 15:05 by Fintourist.)
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
Turns 78-84
In the east we razed a barb city, which was blocking our expansion and settled our 9th city:
This is basically the last city that we settle. We have 6 cities that can be considered our natural territory and 3 cities that are more Elkad's. We might still go for one filler-quality city, but in the big picture this is it.
***
Looking at the north is still painful for various reasons:
1. Elkad's remaining city currently has 5 defenders and he should be adding a new unit every 2-3 turns. After our disappointment we considered a whipping spree to get big enough force to take the city, but throwing 15 units at 7 defenders and hoping that it's enough is simply not a tempting play. Things will get still uglier after Syphilis pops it's 3rd ring borders. Let's see if Elkad makes some kind of a move when he has built more units or whether he stands his ground until we someday can take the city with catapults.
2. Cornflakes has claimed the jungle area as was to be expected. In the other better reality where we have Syphilis and our army, we would have not allowed that or at least had taken our part of those juicy resources. Unless we would have decided that attacking Miguelito or superdeath would have been more attractive. Sigh. Cornflakes does not have Calendar yet so at least he needs some turns before those cities really get going.
3. As a result, our border is really uncomfortable with 3 cities in the straight line, Elkad forcing us to keep a bunch of units in Gremlin and overall being vulnerable to all kinds of forking moves. In essence there is no other way to defend the area apart from having the biggest army and preferably a mobile one..
***
Macrowise we have a pretty even population with Cornflakes. At the moment we are still ahead in demos, but in the longer-term we will not be able to match his land quality. Having the Great Lighthouse and an island big enough for two cities does help him as well. We have slowly built our power back so that we are essentially tied with Cornflakes and Ruff at 3rd place. Probably good enough to hold our grounds, but still pretty far away from being able to make actual moves due to having our hands tight in the north. We do not have demos, but it seems that Cairo has built a big army in the dark so I'm expecting Commo-Migu-Cairo area to provide further lurker entertainment. Actually with all the war declarations going on everywhere in the world this should be a pretty entertaining one to watch. But don't get me wrong, I would have loved to ruin the excitement with a successful Elkad conquest and focus on the upcoming summer instead of a game that is just painful to launch.. (I think I still need a while before I manage to stop whining in these reports)
Anyways, domestically we will get Currency next turn and we will go for quite a snowbally play where we build as much wealth as possible in order to get Monarchy and HR happiness ASAP. Add couple of whipped EXP markets for Furs bonus and we can make the most out of our food/land/resources. After that we have couple of different directions where to go, but let's come back to that later. In essence, we do not know, what will be the timing when we can be aggressive again, but at some point we are forced to make some moves again. Cornflakes profited too much from a war where we paid all the costs that we are unfortunately not in a position where we can just sit tight and expect it to be enough to win.
June 13th, 2020, 09:01
(This post was last modified: June 13th, 2020, 09:03 by Fintourist.)
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
Turns 85-91
World is in flames. Commodore declaring on Ras is potentially bad news. I'm fearing that's another war where someone else is doing heavy-lifting and Cornflakes gets a decent share of benefits.
We spent 6 wealth-powered turns to grab Polytheism, Monotheism, Priesthood and Monarchy. Quite nice for us as we have timed 4 cities to grow into unhappiness this turn and I think 3 more next turn.
Gremlin and Familiar actually do not only suffer from "We yearn to join our Motherland" unhappiness, but actual WW as well. As Old Harry says, that's kind of an achievement in BC times.
***
Monarchy-Wealth inflated demos:
At the moment we are pretty even in terms of population with Cornflakes and have a bit of a tech lead. Our Monarchy-push will buy us a bit more time, but it's not long anymore until Cornflakes gets to work Dyes, Sugar, Spices and Gems from his jungle area. Hanging Gardens should also be great for him with all those luxury resources and CHA. He should have time to slow-build MoM as well. As said, we can still keep up for a while, but in maybe 10, latest 20 turns we should be behind. Of course macro stuff can make things better or a lot worse meanwhile.
I'm trying to maintain a decent playing quality and put ourselves in position to make some plays in the future, but it's still hard not to feel depressed about this game.
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
Turns 92-96
The game is very dynamic! Commodore's attack on Ras seems to be going quite well. Two cities captured and he seems to be doing it with very limited casualties. We don't have graphs on Ras so the picture is unclear, but that kind of success surprises me a little bit. After the early war with Cornflakes I had assumed that Ras would have been building units to make himself quite spiky 
Maybe the units are somewhere positioned against Cornflakes? Somebody out there already has Construction, so maybe Com is making good exchanges with catapults? Commodore's economy has been struggling the whole game so it would surprise me a bit if he had been able to get HBR + Constru + enough time to build cats by now, though.
Speaking of building units and Construction:
The 99.99989 % spear now has multiplied itself into 9 units and counting. 6 of those are potentially in the attacking range of Gremlin. 
There are opportunities everywhere in the world, but after losing our whole army 20 turns ago, our hands are tied with us being forced to keep a decent number of units at our western border city.
Post-Monarchy, we dropped some of our wealth builds and started producing units in the cities with barracks, but still finished Construction in 5 turns. So now is the time for the next wave of military production and hopefully we can release Elkad from his PB49 duty within 10 turns. That is of course assuming that this pretty entertaining game does not throw us curve-balls.. At the very moment Cornflakes has tensions with Commodore, Ruff is slowly building an army, which should keep SD busy, and Miguelito is fighting with Cairo, so we might have enough time to try to finish what we started ages ago..
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
Turns 97-102
We grabbed ourselves a religion.
Initially CoL was supposed to be quite useful for our happy cap, but we currently have a bunch of trades going on with both Cornflakes and Commodore. Of course we can’t count on that lasting.. Anyways, the more happiness the better, and SPI trait will of course allows us to reap benefits from periods of OR, Theocracy and Pacifism later in the game.
After a round of whipping and military logistics, we have now entered Elkad’s territory again: 
Elkad is currently at 11 units (one axe missing?) and we expect to face 14 at the time we are attacking. We will have 6 catapults and 19 hitters. That’s enough and a little bit more, but I’m still absolutely dreading the moment when I have to start sending units into the battle..
***
Macro update:
Commodore’s attack on Ras was mystically successful. I was not expecting that combination of speed and limited losses, but good for Japan.  Now 13-city Commodore has put himself into the position where he wins if we turn this into an always-peace-score-victory game. Commodore is still quite backwards in tech, but capture gold is a real thing so he should get his empire up and running soon enough.
The inevitable happened and Cornflakes catapulted himself into population lead with the Hanging Gardens. Very nice, but if he does not win this game I think Corn has to look back at the last 20ish turns and wonder whether he should have built more units. You know, at least an opportunistic force. Not sure what happened in the darkness, but it really feels like Corn should have taken his share of Carthage.
I don’t dare to comment on our long-term plans and chances before we execute our hopefully last attack on Elkad.. It’s still very very easy to imagine red lines after one another. 0 hits.. 0 hits.. 0 hits..
Miguelito is pretty much knocked out and Cairo only managed to get himself to 5 cities – I think his comeback train has left the station unless he has a some kind of a surprise play in him (backstab Commodore?).
Ruff has now 7 cities and should have a weakened trio of SD, Migu and Cairo as his neighbors, when is he going to make a play? I think the correct time was 20+ turns ago, today could still work, but I’m pretty convinced that T130 knights/maces/whatever is really not the right timing on this map..
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
Turns 103-104
Progress!  Elkad’s cultural defenses are no more. Next turn it will be about 12 defenders vs. 6 catapults and 19 hitters. Yeah.. 5 cats and 14-15 hitters should be enough, but I’m beyond traumatized with this cursed city.
While waiting for the actual attack we launched a golden age and swapped some civics:
No, we did not forget that we are SPI, we just want to generate a couple of great persons..
It’s a bit of an unorthodox play, but we are going to produce a great merchant here and bulb Civil Service in 6 turns. It’s unorthodox, because I would hardly ever recommend bulbing Civil Service due to it being a wasteful way to spend a great person (CS has double pre-reqs and merchant provides less beakers than a scientist)..
The quality of our capital is the first excuse:
This is probably the best Buro-capital we have had and the small map size (ie low city counts) emphasizes the importance of your capital output. Therefore, the performance of our future Buro capital has been taken into account already with our dotmap and early micro. Cities B, D and I have all been growing a number of cottages for the capital. As of today, we already have 5 villages and 3 hamlets inside the capital BFC.
However, the main excuse for the play (early golden age and early Buro-Academy-Capital) is the small map macro. We went for an early HBR conquest because this game was supposed to be decided before it hits turn 100. Well, I would do it all again every single time, but as you know, that attempt failed miserably. So here we are and try to go for the next best thing:
This game should be decided within the next 30, max 50 turns, and we are trying to put ourselves into the best possible position for that. This early GA play will give us additional hammers during the time where we really need those and improves our timings with the next set of important military techs. We try to get as much as possible done with HAs and Catapults, but there will still be a lot of work left for maces and knights… So let’s try to get there ASAP..
Yup. All this is semi-interesting, but more interesting question might be: Where did the defending spear of Buy Low (1st screenshot) go? And why are Com and Corn whipping so much..
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
Turn 105
40 turns of war against Elkad finally came to an end:
We started the attack with a 0-hit LOSS  , but got a lucky 22 % withdraw with the second catapult. The continuation was bad though and we ended up losing 4 catapults, which is unlucky. However, we salvaged by surviving two 75 % fights, a bunch of 90 % fights and did not lose any HAs or Axes.
As a highlight: We had a 58 % withdraw odds against the mega spear, but the guy still managed to murder a catapult. This time the 98 % follow-up was however too much for the hero. 
I think losing 4 units is slightly below an average result, but anything resembling average luck is just awesome these days. Every 90+% fight felt like a 50/50 when sending units into battle..
***
Commodore and Cornflakes are stealing the spotlight though. Commodore burnt two cities with some significant fighting, which put us back on top of the scoreboard and soldier points.
This brought a big macro decision upon us. We had still some unmoved HAs left that we could position to hit Cornflakes' lightly defended cities. And overall our stack was pretty healthy with the supermedic on the way.. So should we knock Cornflakes down to 4-5 cities and essentially out of the game?
Unfortunately for the lurkers, the answer was no.  The available cities would have been pretty culture-crushed and more importantly, stronger Cornflakes next to Commodore might well be the correct macro play here. (10 turns ago I would have never imagined that "strong Cornflakes" might be something positive here) Let's see if we end up regretting the decision..
Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2012
Turns 106-113
Recap of the last week:
- We enjoyed our Golden Age and bulbed Civil Service.
- Our economy is still only at 40 % breakeven due to all the unit costs. But I guess still best tech position in the game at the moment.
- Our capital has to wait for an academy for some extra turns as we switched back to slavery mostly due to safety reasons
- We added a few catapults and our stack is now in the south. 7 catapults and 20 hitters should be enough to make a play for SD's Mids. We wanted to be here already 30 turns ago, but it is what it is. SD building Mids in the meanwhile would be a pretty great consolation prize though.
However, things are never straightforward in this game:
Commodore declared on Migu and he has 18 units close to our border. The attack direction might make sense as he is coming directly from the Cornflakes front, but with Commodore you should always expect an aggressive play. In essence, if we move everything inside SD borders and leave our north empty, will he come after us?
We have equal power and with catapults, vision, mobility, etc that force can be managed. With every unit inside SD territory it would be much more uncomfortable.. Losing the forever-at-size-1 Minotaur would not be of importance, but we definitely do not want to give up any core cities..
Let's see what Com will do. Will he renew our fish-for-fish and focus on India while we go after Rome and declare on SD next turn? Or do we have to postpone and fight with Com for the area..
|
