Gaspar & Noble make their triumphant? return; mostly just get asked about "The List"

[Gaspar]

More to say later, but let's get to t92, probably the most interesting turn in the game for us so far, in ways both fair and foul...

So we were expecting this to mostly be a good news turn, but we opened the save to this...



Hmmm? We were not at war with Superdeath. Astute observers will note the missing city in the trade window...



Not great.

Certainly not the way I wanted to start a turn that was intended to be a bit more celebratory. We've definitely had some pratfalls this game. We do like to keep it interesting. Obviously we should have reinforced the city with more than an axeman. He won a 25% battle to take the city as well, though we assume he had a second unit on his galley to clean up. Noble was surprised at how sanguine I was about the city loss but I mean really, what's to be upset about? We underdefended a border city and our neighbor took advantage, as he should.

Anyway, we took the peace and are diverting the settler we originally had moving towards Beachhead, the planned city between Oriath and Lewwyn towards resettling Putrid Cloister. The loss of trade route income at Putrid Cloister meant we had to take some suboptimal tiles to get research finished this turn as planned, but we managed that.

So that's about the turn.

Oh!

I forgot to mention, Noble learned this neat new trick from mackoti. Thanks, mack!



Will you look at that? Who knew you could chop a whole wonder in one turn?!

This is why we hadn't all-in'ed on Colossus, the forests at The Ascent were always earmarked for MoM. We sort of worked it out and the only way we could have lost it was if Lewwyn one-turned Calendar on t91 and popped a GEngy. Once that didn't happen, we knew it was ours.

This made for a much more fun end of turn event log than the beginning of turn one...



We finished teching Code of Laws this turn and founded Confucianism. Amusingly, it landed in Solaris Temple, the city that just seems to catch everything. We were hoping to land it on one of the border cities, preferably Lioneye's Watch, but Solaris Temple was always the most likely, as its the largest city in the empire.

I'll do a post after with a little bit of future gazing for Tarkheel's question. In the meantime, here's demos:

[Gaspar]

So to answer a couple of the questions posed earlier...

Cornflakes asked:

Based on your current knowledge, which civ in this game has the best fun factor and/or winning chances?

I would break down chances to win as something roughly like this:

1. Lewwyn, 50% chance
   
2. Us, 35% chance
   
3. Rusten & Serdoa, 7.5% chance each
   
4. Superdeath & Bob, no chance
   

If you had asked me this before Lewwyn landed Colossus, I had it more like 45-40. But basically, the game is Lewwyn's to lose. If he makes a mistake or we play exceptionally well, we can catch and beat him. Rusten and Serdoa can win, but they need something dramatic to happen in their favor. I don't even think something dramatic could tip the game towards SD or Bob at this point.

In terms of whose Civ would be the most fun to play from here... I think probably us? We're IND, so there's more potential for wonder shenanigans. We're Byzantium, so we've got some bad ass units that come online relatively soon and a pair of neighbors in various states of ripeness for conquest. We've got MoM, so long golden ages are always fun. So yeah, I'm biased but I'd rather be us than any of them right now in terms of pure entertainment factor.

Tarkheel asked:

With Currency done, what's the next tech priority?

Well, the answer to that was Calendar, which was already in. Once that came in, originally we were intending to head for Theology and Christianity but we sort of determined we could tech CoL pretty quickly with the fail gold from Colossus, so we decided to go for the Polytheism > Priesthood > Code of Laws line. Not least because we almost certainly were going to want Caste System for the GA That also opened up various potential next steps from there. I suspect the gameplan from here will be to catch the rest of the civics before our first GA - Monarchy and OR for the GA proper and maybe Vassalage for the end of the GA. We will need slight diversions for HBR and IW whose timing will largely come from when we think we need slightly more serious units. Construction surely is in the near term plan as well, both for the usefulness of bridges and to get some cats online before we start churning the Cataphracts. When we were feeling better about our chances, a top of the tree diversion for Lit and Music was possibly on the agenda but that's most likely on the backburner now.

[mackoti]

Man  I didnt wanted to be rude when i said about 1 turns colosus but i knew you had MC for a while and that you are IND and have cooper so for me was a big surprize you lost it. I dont know why i am rooting fr you.

[Tarkeel]

Solaris Temple is turning into quite the prize. At least it can't be boated without warning for a while.

So you're risking take all the support techs for medieval warfare before whipping out steel?

[NobleHelium]

So you're risking take all the support techs for medieval warfare before whipping out steel?

What does this mean? We are building units.

[Tarkeel]

You're obviously not whipping your empire to the ground to churn out an unstopable storm of cataphract-steel though (Besides the only unit build visible to me is an archar in The Beacon)

[NobleHelium]

All those techs are prereqs for cataphracts...?

[NobleHelium]

Okay.  It has actually been quite a few turns since we've reported.  I have been distracted by some other incidents on the forum which I am sure you all know about.  Also my last response was a bit harsh because CoL and Construction are definitely not prerequisites for Cataphracts.  But I do think Gaspar adequately explained what we were doing with those techs - first comes the GA then follows the tech to Guilds.  I've also actually never seen anyone successfully attack with knights without Construction, nor would I consider such an attack.  And also my general style in this thread is such that I am making a lot of assumptions as to what is obvious about what to do in Civ4 because I thought extensively about many of these parts of the game in my prior games.

So we played turns 93-96.  On turn 95 Rusten built the Pyramids.  That explains why he was so quick to turn down our stone offer a while ago.  Still, I would say this is generally good because it means Lewwyn does not have the Pyramids.  He of course immediately adopted Representation since he is SPI.  This turn we teched Construction.



Recently we discovered a problem near LW, where SD shrewdly built a monument a while ago and I didn't think to check since nobody has really done this before (building a monument much later after a library).  This is a problem because Guangzhou just popped third ring which means he will take the overlapped tiles with LW next turn and he will be able to chop the forest and get a refund on the monument.  That is extremely annoying but we'll just have to live with it for now.



We founded the new island city of Mao Kun which restores our trade routes lost from Putrid Cloister.  These names aren't really meaningful to most of you guys but anyone who has played the endgame in PoE should understand why both city names are related to their city locations.  We actually used the free missionary from Confucianism in this city so that we don't have to build yet another monument.  I am also hoping to get some free spreads to at least the cities near ST but this has not happened. (The fact that the map is small reduces the chances for free spreads, although RB's idea of what a small map is is so thoroughly screwed up at this point that the newer players probably think this map is extremely roomy. )

Rusten building the Pyramids means we are basically committed to firing the GA shortly after the GP pops, be it a Merchant or Engineer.  In the last couple of turns we have been focused on how to best position our empire for such a GA.  This includes building an almost ridiculous number of archers, because they are the best way to defend coastal border cities right now.  But soon we will stop and be building other things.  We are also looking to (finally) finish the Moai Statues in Oriath right before the GA starts.  Don't worry about the apparent unhappiness in TS and Oriath - we'll hook up the spice next turn to fix that problem.  We also offered Bob our ivory for his second fur, hopefully he takes that.

3) I should have noticed the EP bit earlier but I've been a bit deflated by the game recently, mainly because a variety of factors have caused this game to be nothing like I envisioned it.  When I discovered Civ4 and specifically CtH was active on RB I had high hopes and probably an unrealistic vision of how a game might look like.  And the game has really turned out nothing to be like that, starting with the map.

I would like to know more about what you envisioned it to be.

I have not forgotten this post.  To start, I have to say that I have finally gone off-sim for this game after the Mausoleum build, although things are still recent enough that I could still catch the sim up if I really wanted.  Not sure if I will do that or not - depends on my level of desire in the next week or so along with how much energy I am expending on some other activities.  This is by far the longest I have ever simmed for any individual game and please do not think that simming to t92 is a normal state of affairs.  One of my goals in my decision to play more games on RB was to get closer to playing the perfect game and to try harder than I have ever done before - while the former has not really happened given the recent downturn in our game position, I can conclusively say that the latter holds true.  You saw how much effort I expended in order to get just one extra free beaker when teching Bronze Working / Hunting much earlier in the game.  I have not done that before nor since in another game, nor do I think anyone else has done that kind of thing before.

Just a bit more on my prior history - I consider PBEM38 to be the best game I ever played, even though PB12 was a runaway victory for example and in PBEM45 I helped pindicator bulb a frankly ludicrous 10k+ beakers to catapult to double the tech of everyone else (in one of the most balanced games of all time).  But in 38 we took a perhaps disadvantaged leader/civ combination and played to our strengths and took advantage of opportunities and eventually rolled out to a very well optimized monk / workshop economy that could build lategame wonders in 4-5t (on Quick speed).  That is also the game where I learned a lot of things about how the game works in late Renaissance / Industrial Era.  So I had been hoping to achieve a game that I could say was better than that, and everything was done to that effect.  That may yet happen - there are a number of similarities between this game and that - but like that game, we are currently in a position where we are competitive but many things are uncertain and there are a lot of decisions we are making in the near future that we don't really know if they will pay off until much later.

This is all leading to me pointing out that LEWWYN HAS SIXTEEN CITIES AND WILL SOMEONE CLOSER TO THE BULK OF HIS CITIES PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?  Thanks.

Our city count is definitely cause for concern, even though my civs tend to have lower city counts mitigated by generally better and more optimized cities.  We are looking to plant 2-3 more in the near future and hopefully that will keep us in a competitive position.  Our tech rate lead on Lewwyn is also perhaps slipping away, but we will get a short term boost from the GA and we still have a meaningful actual tech lead.

[pindicator]

PBEM45 was a masterpiece and we put so much effort into every turn. I remember spending hours trying to figure out the worker micro each turn, and we freaking made it work with something like 1:1 worker-city ratio. Among all the other correct decisions, like picking Victoria or settling that Gold with our first settler. I just hate that I burned out towards at the end and couldn't see it to the finish line (noticing a pattern here in my games that go to victory...)

I'm going to go re-read that game thread now.

EDIT: I forgot I wrote a poem about our leader/civ pair

[Gaspar]

Ok, so its t100.  I am not necessarily going to a big t100 extravaganza, but I will do a normal report followed by a state of the game type report.

So first, in global news...



Parsing that... We discovered Construction and Iron Working, got a fortuitous Confucianism spread to the capital (the only free spread we've gotten so far,) Lewwyn birthed a GEngy and popped a GA, adopting OR and Buddhism and Serdoa war/peace'd Rusten.  Not really all that much news, tbh.  I'll tell the story of our game right now in terms of borders.

Chinese-Exile border



Not much has changed here since Noble's last update.  SD has a couple of workers stacked on one of our contested forests.  We assume this is just to get the chop done quickly but it could of course be a prelude where he gets a road there and has some units boiling out of the fog.  He could have built a road this turn of course, so that seems unlikely.  He also hasn't teched HBR yet, so those units would have to be chariots and as of right now we have an axe, spear and 2 archers in the city, which is on a hill, so that's gonna have to be a lot of chariots.  Still, we're most concerned about this border because 1. He's already managed an opportunistic strike on us and 2. He's been the most openly hostile of our neighbors.  We are continuing to churn out ancient trash to stuff into our border cities before we pop our GA.  Once the GA starts we'll want to focus on either better units or necessary infra.  So basically, its status quo over here, though SD has both the better land split and some level of initiative on us.


Russian-Exile border



Here you can see our more favorable border with Serdoa.  Solaris Temple's overwhelming culture between GLH, a doubled monument, a library and now the Confucian Holy City has taken its 3rd ring tiles for good.  If we were willing to escalate tensions a city either 3 or 4E of Novgorod would be quite solid.  But Serdoa has three things going for him - 1. He's a capable general, so I'd rather not have a war with him where I didn't have overwhelming force 2. He's quite capable of carrying a grudge, so I don't want to annoy him unnecessarily and 3. He's been relatively friendly to us most of the game.  Still, both Harbour Bridge and Solaris Temple have a good chunk of units stuffed into them, supplied both by good production in Harbour Bridge and Beacon building Archers non-stop when it hasn't been whipping foodhammer units because that's all it is good for.

Overwatcher-Exile border



So this one isn't a border so much as a cold war, but tensions are rising. As the sign in the middle of the screen indicates, Lewwyn recently built a trireme and has it moving towards our coastal holdings. We built one ourselves in response and have enough boats in the area to respond if necessary. As you can see, we're finally working on finishing up Moai in Oriath, the in progress chops will get us there. The iron reveal there actually worked out by giving us an extra hpt on that forest which meant we didn't have to work an engy to finish in time.

I suppose the most noteworthy other statistic is this...



That is like 17 more archers than I've ever built in a game before. I told Noble we should spend our GA saving gold and upgrade them all to longbows.

Demos



More overview-y post coming either later tonight or tomorrow.