[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[ljubljana]

I'm definitely on board with taking a break!

Actually, I'll go further than that - I'm really sorry about having forced you to keep playing out a game that even I will readily admit that you are at least 95% likely to win. I didn't realize you weren't having fun anymore, and I'd hate to ruin the excellent game you've played by forcing you to engage in the kind of lengthy mop-up phase that has always been the bane of the Civ franchise at this stage of the game. I'm hesitant to concede outright because I'm not yet certain that the game is decided...but ultimately it's more important that the players are actually having fun, and if I'm the only one who's still enjoying this and everyone else wants to call it and move on with their lives, I don't want to be the only one standing in the way of that. I do love uphill struggles and want to keep playing out my slim but nonzero chance to compete here...but I can do that just as easily in single player, if that's what the other players feel would be best .

Now to be fair Ljubljana. I think you are closer to a 99,9% chance that Thrawn will win. He did not need to peace out either CMF or me, he could have conquered us whole. His religion ensures a steady supply of units and I am pretty sure that with the Realms Beyond crew in love with Unique Units you think you can turn things around if you can hold on until Cossacks. You won´t.

Basically a "blanket" of archers is coming your way and even if Thrawn does not manage to kill you whole which I VERY MUCH doubt, there is no chance anyone else can catch up by this point. The time to go against thrawn was 20 turns ago when Ioan decided to make his interesting move of helping Thrawn.

It's more that even with cossacks it's impossible to push on this map against a semi-competent opponent. I can't stand even looking at rivers, hills, or forest anymore. Moving 60 units across various obstacles where you need to think where everything will be in a few turns so you don't get totally bogged by traffic requires a lot of calculation that I need to repeat every day because I can't possibly remember such a complicated plan. Engaging Hitch and Bromhead was a horror. Engaging Russia is no better. The terrain + DotF may help Ljubljana get to cossacks because he's been building holy sites and campuses and will get monasticism in 6 turns for 100+ science, but that won't help because he'll have to break through blanket crossbows on choke points, the second line being my experienced guys double hitting with 57 after general. So it will take a few hits but I can take them down while replacing my losses and time is only working in my favour. Monumentality feudalism builders, build mills and mines (I don't have any yet), chop campuses, get science Pingala in my pop 10 city and I can easily reach 100+ too plus double Russia's production and everything else. I have 8 cities with district capacity and forests ready to chop. But just opening the turn gives me a headache knowing the logistics that's coming.

In Ljubljana's defence, I can see his excitement because he's put a lot of care in his work and now is getting to the end it and deserves to see a conclusion. But knowing how much time and effort it will cost me to see this through over the next 2-3 months I feel it would be crazy to keep going. I liked the one unit per tile so far, but there is something to be said about the good old stack of doom.

Yeah, as a new player, I trust thrawn and Archduke's evaluation of how likely this is to work a lot more than I trust my own . Therefore I concede to thrawn, sorry for taking so long! This has been a wonderful game and experience, thanks to everyone for playing with me.

...I definitely am going to try playing against AI Nubia after DoWing them on the first turn though .

[ljubljana]

Turn 94

Here is why Ljubljana has no chance to win even if he gets not cossacks but GDRs.



This pitati collected a barb camp last turn, deep in Russian territory. Ljubljana had been farming it for archer experience, and probably avoiding the era score from clearing it. He had two archers, a crossbow and a horse around the pitati last turn. But did he kill it? No.

I've made peace with both Chevalier and Archduke and they have conceded cities. I have a DoF with Ioan and have been playing a pure military game from the start. I have a huge army and am continuing to build more.

There is only one conclusion one can make and it is beyond obvious. I am going to hit Ljubljana next with the full might of the Nubian Empire.

Here he has a chance to waste one of my archers. Nothing compared to the whole army but it's a start - a small advantage that he can get for free. You remember what happened to Chevalier's warrior next to Atlantis when we met? I didn't know what the situation was but didn't take any chances - I had an opportunity to make a kill and seized it.

Ljubljana will need EVERY advantage he can get in the coming turns. If he can't assess the situation and act accordingly he cannot make an attack plan that will succeed. Cossacks' main strength is their ability to dance forward and back, striking at the weak spots and retreating to safety. But this requires a keen eye for military tactics which, despite Ljubljana's great work at building, he completely lacks at this time.

Actually, the calculation here was pretty simple - I figured there was maybe a 10% chance you'd either go for Ioan or start building (especially the latter, which would be the surest route to victory from here, if a huge pain in the butt to actually execute), either of which would buy me time to tech Cossacks and hit either you or Ioan. DoWing would probably significantly reduce those odds, but killing your archer would barely change the odds of holding out against the full Nubian army, so I figured the best plan was to let it go and not spark the war prematurely. That logic definitely could have been wrong, though.

[ljubljana]

Haha, I don't think you were too harsh at all - honestly, I think you've been very gracious despite what I now realize has been a really unfun game for many turns now, and I greatly appreciate that

It's now clear that I definitely should have at least stabbed you at t89 at least rather than doing silly things like offering DoF extensions and hoping you were bogged down just long enough on the other side of the world to tech to cossacks. What I'm wondering is when and how you would have stabbed yourself in my position . It seems like this would have needed to happen around t70 to have a chance to swing the outcome, so maybe offering the t59 DoF was a mistake in the first place? I was too bankrupt to field an army at the time, and didn't expect to actually swipe Tithe away from Rome the way I did...but I suppose if I could replay those turns knowing what I know now, what I should have done is build up horses/swords while diving deep into the negatives on GPT, then hit you at The Second while using Tithe to not build a positive gold income but erase a huge negative one.

Of course, the actual best move would be to have razed The Second as soon as it was founded before Woden's Rule leaked across the border (which as far as I know is the only way it would have been mechanically possible for me to keep you from getting WE?). But, while I did eventually figure out what you did there, I don't think there was ever any chance of me realizing its significance quickly enough to deny it. Absolutely great, inspired move there .

The other obvious big mistake I made this game, in retrospect, was being too worried about missing the Dark Age, which led me to delay contact with Persia and Zulu to avoid taking 3 ES. In retrospect, the resulting diplomatic isolation certainly didn't prove to be worth it...but I probably could have figured that out at the time as well .

[ljubljana]

Yeah, I wasn't really a threat, which was more or less intentional - the whole gameplan was to eschew military action early, which I doubted would have any chance of success with all our opponents having early power spikes, and bet on the game remaining competitive until t100, which just didn't end up materializing. I do think it might have worked if you'd played a little (ok, substantially) less well, though .

It seems like offering the t59 DoF was the big mistake, then, locking us out of not just attacking The Second but also of helping the others hold out (and thus buy us time to tech) by launching distracting strikes in the t70s against the desert core. I underestimated both the speed of Zulu collapse and the degree to which that might have helped buy others time...and, I think, overestimated how likely it was that you would have come for us in force in that timeframe without a DoF in place. Okay, lesson learned - no more DoFs with the runaway in the future . I guess you weren't really the runaway at the time, per se, but I certainly did already consider you the favorite to win once the city states started falling in succession, and I could have probably pieced together that it would probably bite me in the rear end to DoF you eventually.

[ljubljana]

True enough! Thank you for being so gracious in victory and so willing to help noobs like me .

...I don't suppose you (or anyone else) knows how turn this hotseat save into a single player game against Deity AIs, do you? I'm curious as to how many Cossacks I really could have cobbled together, and how quickly, but doing that against Prince robots seems like a pretty meaningless exercise.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

When you load the game to the splash scene and it shows you all the players, just click on player name and change them to AI. It's that easy.

[ljubljana]

Right - I was wondering if there was also a way to change the difficulty away from Prince. It's totally fine if not, though, it'd still be worthwhile to learn how well my timings would have materialized.