[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[ljubljana]

Turn 28

Another scout appears in the north - I decide it's worth delaying our push east by a turn to try to cut off its path to activation. That, in turn, means the wounded slinger needs to settle in Fleuron this turn instead of promoting, which means it'll probably delay promoting again to upgrade next turn. I've actually never upgraded a unit eligible for a promotion before - there isn't some reason that doing so would remove promotion eligibility, right? When we do promote, the +10 district defense one seems like a no-brainer for this situation, even though I think I've literally never done that in SP either . Anyways, here's what this turn's defensive deployment looks like:



Archers and a Lavra next turn, pantheon in 4, monument and craftsmanship in 5. This game's heating up .

[ljubljana]

Turn 29

Well, uh...



So thrawn attacked and did a surprising amount of damage with the scout against our slinger. The reason for this: it has the promotion from moving next to the Matterhorn! I guess I should scout to the north for our third city location with some urgency, huh. I respond with a double archer upgrade, to (belatedly) signal strength, to delay their pillaging of our Lavra and, hopefully, to impose the cost of a dead scout should they attempt to do so after we run away next turn.

In the broader strategic picture, though, I'm really not sure what to make of this or how to interpret it. Is this the opening salvo of a larger invasion? We know there's no force right behind the scout to back it up from military score tracking, and if thrawn was going to build one and send it over here, the last thing they would want to do is give away the element of surprise like this. But if this is just a war of harassment, what did they expect to get out of it? If we didn't just discover Archery tech, our slinger would need to flee to Pilcrow now, and they'd have a clean shot at pillaging our Lavra - is that worth potentially making an enemy this early on? I don't know much about international relations in multiplayer, but I guess it probably is. If that's the case, maybe I should be reading this declaration as a positive sign with respect to our odds of getting hit with a dedicated Pítati rush, for which the last thing they'd want to do is tip their hand before they have their forces in place and risk prodding us into more military builds.

Anyways, yeah, I hadn't had my coffee yet when this happened, and I panicked a little bit and changed Fleuron's build to the builder next instead of the planned monument, in the hopes of freeing up Pilcrow to make more archers next. In retrospect, though, I think this was an overreaction, and might change it back next turn, despite the painful loss of six hammers, since our culture situation is just so dire right now. If thrawn's really serious about this, we do have a little time - they should have only one Pítati currently, and it still needs to walk all the way over here from the capital to cause us any real pain. Okay, the real answer is that I should actually do the culture math and decide based on whether we'll get PoliPhil in time without it assuming no more eurekas. I'm pretty busy today, unfortunately, but I'll try to do that and update the build order before the next turnset (and lurkers should feel free to shame me viciously should I show up here tomorrow without having done so )

Okay, after the four turns of Craftsmanship, we will still need

42 for State Workforce (boosted)
40 for Foreign Trade (unboosted)
42 for Early Empire (boosted as of this turn)
110 for Political Philosophy (unboosted)

for a total of 234 clefs in the following 25-ish turns until the era change. We will make 4.7 * 25 = 118 just by sitting around with a monument in that span, and the Pingala culture promotion coming in (say) 15 turns will be worth another 50-ish by t55. The second monument would be worth 45-ish in the same timespan, and we'd sacrifice 20 by delaying it 10 more turns...yep, this is going to be really close, and a monument next in Fleuron seems pretty critical. Sorry about that, lurkers! Step one in learning how to fight wars in MP is learning how to not freak out and derail your whole growth curve when someone tries to pillage one of your districts, I guess .

[marcopolothefraud]

Huh, this is pretty worrisome. Looking it thrawn's statistics, it seems like he has less science and culture than you do, but probably has a higher gold income. (81 gold on t28 --> 90 gold on t29). But his overall score is 5 points higher than yours. Therefore, a lot of his empire score has to be from era score, right? Part of that would be from his unique unit (+4), discovering the Matterhorn and the natural wonder west of you, and probably a few points from tribal villages. But that alone wouldn't be enough to make his score higher than yours. I wonder if he's killed any barbarian camps, or made a Nubian Pyramid (though that's kind of a tech detour), or settled next to a volcano/floodable river or something.

If only we knew how far his capital was, we could pinpoint how fast it would take for his archers to get here. Or it could be even faster, if he forward settled us. Could the loyalty map help?

[ljubljana]

Huh, this is pretty worrisome. Looking it thrawn's statistics, it seems like he has less science and culture than you do, but probably has a higher gold income. (81 gold on t28 --> 90 gold on t29). But his overall score is 5 points higher than yours. Therefore, a lot of his empire score has to be from era score, right? Part of that would be from his unique unit (+4), discovering the Matterhorn and the natural wonder west of you, and probably a few points from tribal villages. But that alone wouldn't be enough to make his score higher than yours. I wonder if he's killed any barbarian camps, or made a Nubian Pyramid (though that's kind of a tech detour), or settled next to a volcano/floodable river or something.

If only we knew how far his capital was, we could pinpoint how fast it would take for his archers to get here. Or it could be even faster, if he forward settled us. Could the loyalty map help?

I saw this after playing the turn, so I can't check the loyalty map quite yet, but that's a good suggestion. Thrawn's score breakdown is as follows:

41 = 10 empire + 6 civics + 6 tech + 19 era score

They're really reaping the dividends from their scout-first opening in terms of ES, but they're also the last civ still on one city. I haven't seen an empire score fluctuation that would indicate a settler out on the map, but I think it's more likely that they have one out and their city grew the same turn it was built than it is that they still don't have one. That would make their starting build order scout - slinger - builder - settler - Pítati from what we can see so far (another Pítati was produced this turn, as you will see from their military score).

Turn 30

Thrawn's scout ran away, which is a small victory. Unfortunately, the barb scout to the north activated, and, to be honest, I was kind of rushed and off my game today and made a serious unforced tactical error:



I should have moved the archer up, then fired, instead of just firing from within the city like I did in my overconfidence that the archer and warrior attack would be enough to kill it . Then we would have at least a chance of catching it next turn based on where it moves - now that would take several turns and require some serious lucky breaks in the terrain to the north. Should we then fail and have barb waves hit us from the north at the same time as thrawn's rush, this could well prove to be game-ending. Ugh.

Just to do my due diligence here: when players make an error like this in a PBEM, the accepted practice is to eat it and move on, right, not to reload and correct it before submitting the turn? I'm planning to do the former, but I figured I'd check with the lurkers just in case there's some unspoken norm whereby players reload to correct micro or movement errors all the time or something.

[ljubljana]

Okay, I finally submitted the turn - at least now whatever we achieve during the rest of this game will be free from the stain of having reloaded, though not from the stain of having thought about how nice it would be to give into my frustration with myself like I would do during an SP game . To be honest, I'm pretty ashamed and embarrassed of even having asked about that - I've been having a really bad day for unrelated IRL reasons, but that's no excuse. I will try hard to be more of a class act in the future, starting with by doing whatever I can to fend this off, or to at least make thrawn and the barbs pay for every inch of ground they take from us .

I was wondering how long I'd be able to keep of the facade of being someone who doesn't take video games way too seriously . But I guess if I were someone like that, I wouldn't have lurked RB for the last 10 years

[ljubljana]

Turn 31

Well, okay, I think I've probably pretty well alienated all the lurkers with my surprise over-the-top meltdown/heel turn yesterday (which, believe me, y'all saw but a small fraction of its IRL extent), but, anyways, on with the game! I decide to do something really desperate and move up both the archer and the critically-injured warrior (!) in the hopes that the sometimes-unpredictable barb movement AI will give us an extremely lucky break, or that our ZoC will keep it from taking the fastest path back to its vile compatriots, and other such rationalizations. Here's what that decision looks like:



Oops, wrong screenshot:



Honestly, if folks are really mad at me, and want to drop (non-spoilery, ofc) criticisms of either my in-game or out-of-game decisions here, I'm all for it - the more unstinting the flaming, the better! I genuinely think it might be really fun to drop the mask, do an abrupt volte-face, and embrace a role as ridiculous PBEM villain  .

If we do that, though, this naming scheme will have to go - it's way too clean-cut and clerical for a swaggering new hair-metal persona. I could rename them to 'Cocytus' and 'Phlegethon', I guess? That still feels pretty stultified and academic, though, hmm...what's the most evil thing I can think of? I wonder if any of these rejected naming schemes I have in this here Notes app could provide any inspiration .

[suboptimal]

Turn 31

Well, okay, I think I've probably pretty well alienated all the lurkers with my surprise over-the-top meltdown/heel turn yesterday (which, believe me, y'all saw but a small fraction of its IRL extent), but, anyways, on with the game!

Turn 30 didn't seem like much of a rant, never mind anywhere close to a meltdown.  Dunno if that's how I read reports or not.   We're (well, I'm) still here and reading as they come in.  FWIW it's normal to go long stretches without hearing anything from the genlurkers in these things.

[Kaiser]

We have to avoid spoilers in the end

[ljubljana]

Turn 31

Well, okay, I think I've probably pretty well alienated all the lurkers with my surprise over-the-top meltdown/heel turn yesterday (which, believe me, y'all saw but a small fraction of its IRL extent), but, anyways, on with the game!

Turn 30 didn't seem like much of a rant, never mind anywhere close to a meltdown.  Dunno if that's how I read reports or not.   We're (well, I'm) still here and reading as they come in.  FWIW it's normal to go long stretches without hearing anything from the genlurkers in these things.

But...but my beautiful new supervillanous naming scheme .

Turn 32

Anyways, we open the save to...



...an honest-to-god miracle, way too good to be true. This could just mean that the camp's right there and we're already too late, and of course the specter of thrawn's super-scout lurking in the shadows waiting to devour our warrior looms large in the imagination. But...it is unlikely but possible that the scout is actually blocked by hills/woods, and the payoff if that's the case is so huge that I think I have to take it, even if that means the end of our poor warrior. Here we go...



bahahah what no way I do not deserve this . That's a beautiful third city site, totally sheltered from thrawn while still picking up the +3 era score (+4 if founding near a floodable river can trigger more than once) and with at least decent starting tiles just looking at what's already visible. I'm totally dumbstruck, what a ride these first 32 turns have been, more than any SP game I've played for sure. Wow.

...what's that you say, "pantheon"? Oh yeah .



I actually did think there was a small chance that this would be taken, with this woods-heavy map, the seeming lack of resources to support some of the otherwise-stronger options, and the strong denial value of not letting Russia get the big-ticket faith pantheon. But not this time . Our faith income jumps to 8/turn, which would be 10 if I weren't too scared of missing Monumentality to swap off the copper tile like I probably should. Unfortunately, in my elation, I forget to check which ones are missing - oh well (we are indeed not first, behind presumably Ioan and possibly others too).

Our northern archer finally finds a spare moment to promote this turn; Garrison seems like a no-brainer for this situation despite my literally never having taken it before. The southern archer is finally healed up as well. I think the plan now is to try to finally clear the eastern camp with the one while garrisoning Pilcrow with the other just in case (though I doubt thrawn's on the way yet with just two Pítatis). The warrior, if he isn't swooped down upon and eaten alive by the super-scout, might just stick around up here and try to find the barb camp, which would be worth an extremely significant 2-3 ES if cleared. The barb scout's positioning this turn seems like a pretty big hint as to its general location - it really could only have been trying to move onto the woods...

[marcopolothefraud]

Hahaha, I love the new naming scheme. Are you going to name the cities after banned pantheons/wonders/exploits as well?

That lake next to the Matterhorn says "Loch Awe", which is a Scottish lake. Looking at our opponents (Zulu, Nubia, Persia, Rome), only Rome marginally makes sense, because the Roman Empire conquered part of Scotland for a while. Is Rome next to us, or did the map run out of appropriate geographic names? We'll have to investigate.