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We reached our stretch goal! Frabjous day! Calloo callay! It took a HECK of a lot of luck (that clutch WC resolution coming at the absolute perfect time, the only real lucky break we ever got in the game) but also a hell of a lot of work and planning to keep this rickey ship of state from wrecking on any of the very, very many rocks we've come perilously near. We've managed to outlast that vast Egyptian empire up north, didn't get half our empire pared away like Brazil, and now soldier on while England's cultural attempts on us come to an end for all time in nuclear fire.
Basically: Peoples' fortunes in this game were inversely proportionate to the amount of pain they inflicted on Canada. Kaiser's repeated invasions reap his absolute destruction, suboptimal's constant (albeit clumsy) cultural pressure results in half his empire getting nuked, Woden and Ichabod mostly left us alone and are now in the top two spots.
Do we officially trigger our concession conditions now, or wait to see what Ichabod does?
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On to practical matters:
I've no idea how to deploy for a nuclear war. Generally, scattering units is bad because then you can't concentrate to kill stuff and you get picked off one by one. However, without AA, we can't concentrate, because that blob is just begging for a nuke to me.
I think with AA we can try to cluster our guys under the umbrella. If we have 3 taht should be enough to ward off bombers (in which case the new race will be Woden to missiles vs. us to SAMs), then we can have a small army able to fight Punic ground forces. Until then, though, maybe dispersion IS the best choice? Scatter to the various cities, and use rails to concentrate for a counterattack? I don't like it, but I also don't like painting a big "NUKE ME" sign on our army, either.
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(April 7th, 2021, 11:26)thrawn Wrote: Most of all it was Will's exceptional performance which deserves nothing short of the Victoria Cross.
Agreed. This thread is probably the most magnificent failure in Civ VI history on RB.
April 7th, 2021, 12:56
(This post was last modified: April 7th, 2021, 14:01 by williams482.)
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(April 7th, 2021, 11:22)Chevalier Mal Fet Wrote: We reached our stretch goal! Frabjous day! Calloo callay! It took a HECK of a lot of luck (that clutch WC resolution coming at the absolute perfect time, the only real lucky break we ever got in the game) but also a hell of a lot of work and planning to keep this rickey ship of state from wrecking on any of the very, very many rocks we've come perilously near. We've managed to outlast that vast Egyptian empire up north, didn't get half our empire pared away like Brazil, and now soldier on while England's cultural attempts on us come to an end for all time in nuclear fire.
Basically: Peoples' fortunes in this game were inversely proportionate to the amount of pain they inflicted on Canada. Kaiser's repeated invasions reap his absolute destruction, suboptimal's constant (albeit clumsy) cultural pressure results in half his empire getting nuked, Woden and Ichabod mostly left us alone and are now in the top two spots.
Do we officially trigger our concession conditions now, or wait to see what Ichabod does?
What more could a loser possibly ask for than this?
As for concessions, oh we're definitely conceding. We conceded 150 turns ago, as I recall, and only pulled that back conditionally for a bit of recent cheekiness which the Punic hellfire has now fulfilled. We'll see what Ichabod decides to do for sure, but if it's "surrender" we sure as hell won't be blocking him, because that seems like a great way to convince Woden he should just kill us.
All your flattery is duly noted and much appreciated. This last year-and-a-bit has been a tough one for me, and I know I'm far from alone in that. Being dropped into a hopeless situation in this game and then managing to fight and claw to stay afloat through it has been a cathartic experience when contrasted against some real life stuff that didn't go quite so well, and despite some of my griping in here, I am grateful for it. All in all, it's nice to succeed at things, and nice to be recognized for it. Thank you!
Chevalier, you've been a marvelous dedlurker for, uhh, your game that I took over, and I'm glad you stuck around. I believe I mentioned in one of my early posts that I expected big picture strategic stuff would be an area of weakness, and I think that was probably true. You are clearly excellent at that aspect of this game, and it's been extremely educational to get your thoughts on wartime deployments and the the wisdom or lack thereof of the choices various rivals are making in a grand strategic sense. We won't know if I actually internalized those little lessons until I take a shot at a fresh game where I have to balance actually trying to win against simply trying not to die, but I'm definitely better prepared than I would otherwise have been. So thanks for that too.
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you have most assuredly done an excellent job here given the hand you were dealt.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
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I think we make a good team because your knowledge of Civ's inner mechanics and your ability to micromanage to squeeze every last drop of efficiency out of the cities astounds me. I'm rotten at that stuff - most my joy in the game comes from responding to the map and to the other players, so I mostly read them rather than my own cities.
Uh, you probably realize at this point (including PBEM20) that I mostly use my threads to be cranky and critique everyone else's play while ignoring my own flaws, because of course I have none. Hopefully Woden nukes Ichabod this week and the game that started like last JUNE is over.
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Wow, just wow! 
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Generally, I can't plan in as much detail nor operate my cities as nimbly as williams does, nor as you are capable of. Sometimes I can plot out a single city for ten turns or so, but past that point I get frustrated and bored with all the numbers. I rarely coordinate builds among multiple different cities timed to end at the same time, or timed with policy swaps, instead I'll consider cities in a loose plan how each can contribute to my goal at the moment and operate from there. As a result I'm one of the slowest starters in any game, pretty much always finding myself at the bottom of the scoreboard for the first fifty turns or so.
If I can survive past that point in a competitive position, then my strengths in long-term planning and overall strategic direction can shine, but I am at my worst with a small empire of a few cities that need to be micromanaged for maximum efficiency.
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Automation appeals to me, because just setting up the graphs on my own spreadsheet taxed my Sheets knowledge greatly. I've tinkered a bit on the Calculator tab, but, for example, I still can't get the district discounts to display properly (hence my infrequent use of that tab or of the Production Micro tabs in general).
For my part, the data entry is very easy - it takes about 3 minutes at the end of a turn. Each line is copied into the line below, then I quickly jot down the scores, then new research rates and any completed techs or civics, then finally the military tab, almost entirely from the score page and the diplo ribbon. Some information I don't bother to record, like total Favor, or Great Person points, stuff that you don't learn as much from by monitoring long-term trends.
April 8th, 2021, 11:37
(This post was last modified: April 8th, 2021, 11:37 by williams482.)
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The VLOOKUPs for tile values are pretty nifty, and definitely make things much easier than the more single-use oriented stuff I set up for Operation Corsi earlier in this game. Also a big fan of interface-based groupings, although there's only so much that can be done to make the data collection step in each turn less painful. Which is why I bailed on it once Kaiser attacked us again and I decided our win probability was well and truly zero.
A setup like that is also probably the only semi-reliable way to know how much overflow anything you have turn-of-completion, or how far along a tech/civic is, unless you're using UI mods. Which as we've repeated over and over again in this thread is a damning statement on the UX design of this game, but oh well.
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