Josh's Civ 4 memoir

[joshybravo963]

Day 91

Ive just got my great scientist in the Capitol, ive been growing the city and the cottages around it, im making 52.5 beackers in the city and 124 beackers combined, ive saved up 600 gold so now i should be able to storm through some of the research and get currency.
Im at 12 cities and 2 settlers are on boats about to settle the islands. This means im about the same city ount as tbs but his pop is wayyy higher so we are behind him. But ahead of superdeath who has 11, and commodore and tarkeel who have 9. I suspect they are concentrating more on military. Since i have setttled all the spots on my main island, I have built granaries in  most of the older cities, and monuments where they are essential. So now I will focus on building some military units as i am behinid on demographs and dont want my neighbours to see me as an easy target. 
I lost the fur island by 2 turns and also lost the fish island by 2 turns,  i am very disappointed and regret to prioritizing these locations over some of my island settlement. 

On terms of diplomacy, TBS and Commodore are still at war with each other. No cities have been exchanged but they are both racing in power from all the millitary troops. Commodore sent me a request to join the war but I declined, im in no position to fight any wars. While TBS also sent me a rice for rice deal so I dont attack, I accepted and removed some units from the border. However i fear that the only posibility of me winning the game would be to eventually backstab TBS. I accepted the rice for rice deal and also fish for fish with commodore. I fear that I am Superdeaths first target, since he has a trade deal with his other direct neighbour tarkeel. He also canceled my trade deal, and killed a spearman that was scouting his border, offering peace straight after... So its a matter of time. This means I need to take care of Superdeath before i have any chance with TBS. From one giant of an opponent to a bigger giant. I must train in giant slayer magic. I dont have much hope this game, but at least for the moment we are keeping up. 

Not sure what screenshots youd like to see, so heres an overview of my current land.  
   

Josh out.

[vanrober]

I bring some more pics and information.

Demos and graphs: I think food prod and gnp seems we are in the best half of the players, being your first game and having a really bad dedlurker... my expectations were worse heheheheh. I really like our possition, i dont think we can ever win if makoti and TBS are playing their best, but the objective is having fun and learn this game!. We are pretty bad on military though.

       

And now i wanted to give you my advices. I wouldnt do mids on the capitol, right now you have several islands spots (3 at least) i would try to rush as fast as possible (look at next pic). I agree you need more military, i think we have been a bit slow on expansion not having any military. I think we should have had some more cities. But its fine. I think you could try to snipe the TBS city to damage him a bit and slow him down, being on war with commodore it would be usefull, just take the city and leave. I know you woudlnt win that much, but slowing the leader always is nice.
Also having the third city with just 2 pop having that huge river to work cottages on, hurts my mind, its true it has not much real food, but with a  granary (that doesnt even have) it would be important to start growing some more cottages.

   

I hope it makes sense. Any doubt just tell me!

[joshybravo963]

Day 96

On terms of progress not much has changed, except making yet another mistake. I figured I should keep a log of my mistakes so I can hopefully read them every future game and remember what not to do. Could also benefit future readers.

Mistakes:
1. Not building enough warriors early on, they really do start attacks very early. 
2. Look around the map first, make a plan for the turn and only then move, this will avoid wasting turns on working moving around aimlessly.
3. Prioritise the island, theyre good, everyone knows it, instead of settling more easy nearby land settle islands.
4. Wars start early so dont fall behind on units.
5. Before moving the settler to your settle spot, double check its a valid settling spot.
6. You need to get ahead so chop chop chop.
7. If theres any chance you might lose the resource, dont be afraid to settle on it.

I made myself look like a complete noob infront of superdeath. He got to the island a couple turns ahead of me, I then started heading for another island. Half way to the island I had the stupid idea of settling the fur to steal it from him, so I came back to the island, landed my settler and axe on the fur and only then realised I couldnt settle on it. I feel like such a moron, I can still hear superdeath laughing at me 2 days after. Anyway so after wasting 6+ settler and galley tuns im heading back to the crab island. 
   
Also as you can see from the survalance images, TBS being a cheeky fucker has come to my land to steal my forrest and some hills. I will not stand for this. I have discussed military tactics with vanrober and this is the current plan of action. Opperation ForrestRevenge.
Trade with commodore or tarkeel to get horses for like 6 health resources and stone. And pray they give me it for 10 turns. 
1. Next turn move axe in position to steal worker, move galley to WineIsland to take the axe, whip axe in rice city.
2. Turn 2, move gallley back into rice city with the axe, board the axe that has just been whipped. Whip a chariot to take out TBS axe that is in my land.
3. Turn 3, wait for TBS to finish his turn, attack the worker, move galley with 2 axe to chengdu and attack his worrior with axe from the galley. Burn the city. If worker is still in range of my outpost worrior, take the worker. 
4. Next turn watch TBS shocked and cry for mercy, then move axe back on the boat, move galley towards yangzhou, take the city with the axe that hasnt moved. Take out the tbs axe thats on island with the chariot. Serve justice, offer peace.
At the same time moving my galley with 2 axes which are situated on the islands below, move the galley towards his fur city. If  he hasnt accepted peace by that time then he will be forced to accept peace or watch me take his fur. If he still doesnt accept peace then im probably fucked. But then hopefully commodore can gain some ground since i expect he is losing some battles judging from the demos. 
   
If we dont stand up to TBS then who will?

Josh out.

[joshybravo963]

Day 100.

Commodore wanted war with tbs for horses, I cannot accept and lose our suprise attack so I obviously declined, how can he not see that this will help me fight him sooner!. 

   

I saw superdeath was heading to settle my horses so I had to settle and block him expanding into my lands. Also this means I can finally get chariots and possibly steal some cities. Superdeath also offered me to go to war with tbs in echange for him going to war with tarkeel, which id love to accept but just a couple turns too soon.
So due to the horses i had to delay my D-Day opperationg ForrestRevenge on TBS a couple turns, but it is drawing nearer and nearer, my palms are sweaty, knees weak arms are heavy, and theres vomit on my sweater every time I make a move. As seen below my units are in position...

   

However I scouted the fur island and its empty!, it would take my galley another 6 turns to reach the fur island with a chariot and axe, but I dont know if i can afford this time. 

   

I have also finally researched curency so my GNP is storming through to currently being first place on the island and 6th in world. I also managed to get iron working, archery. Next I will aim for monarchy and feudalism. Just to make sure noone tries surprising me, and that TBS will not be able to get his revenge.

Im about to build my 15th city and that will even me with TBS. Overall my demos are pretty average id say, slightly low on power.

   

Josh out.

[vanrober]

Day 100.

Commodore wanted war with tbs for horses, I cannot accept and lose our suprise attack so I obviously declined, how can he not see that this will help me fight him sooner!. 



I saw superdeath was heading to settle my horses so I had to settle and block him expanding into my lands. Also this means I can finally get chariots and possibly steal some cities. Superdeath also offered me to go to war with tbs in echange for him going to war with tarkeel, which id love to accept but just a couple turns too soon.
So due to the horses i had to delay my D-Day opperationg ForrestRevenge on TBS a couple turns, but it is drawing nearer and nearer, my palms are sweaty, knees weak arms are heavy, and theres vomit on my sweater every time I make a move. As seen below my units are in position...



However I scouted the fur island and its empty!, it would take my galley another 6 turns to reach the fur island with a chariot and axe, but I dont know if i can afford this time. 



I have also finally researched curency so my GNP is storming through to currently being first place on the island and 6th in world. I also managed to get iron working, archery. Next I will aim for monarchy and feudalism. Just to make sure noone tries surprising me, and that TBS will not be able to get his revenge.

Im about to build my 15th city and that will even me with TBS. Overall my demos are pretty average id say, slightly low on power.



Josh out.

I recomend you to click on "turns" "score" into the graphs so that you can see it much better. There is an option to let those unactive, but i dont remember how. If you want you can see Charriu's tutorial of BUG MOD so you get better settings.

[Lewwyn]

Some  players haven't moved yet so I'm unable to make my turn either, and won't be able to make it until tomorrow evening

Can the lurkers get some clarification on this so we can avoid a problem. The only people who haven't played besides you are superdeath and commodore. Superdeath is your neighbor so I assume you have planned military action against him? Are you declaring war this turn? Because Superdeath played after you last turn, I think you should play before him.

[joshybravo963]

Some  players haven't moved yet so I'm unable to make my turn either, and won't be able to make it until tomorrow evening

Can the lurkers get some clarification on this so we can avoid a problem. The only people who haven't played besides you are superdeath and commodore. Superdeath is your neighbor so I assume you have planned military action against him? Are you declaring war this turn? Because Superdeath played after you last turn, I think you should play before him.

I'm at war with TBS, not much progress has been made so I haven't posted about it yet. There hasn't been any double turns. I waited for TBS to make a move until 11pm and just couldn't wait anymore. It is still early days of war so I'd prefer to take my turns but If superdeath makes a move before I get home at 4:30 gmt then I'm happy for vanrober to take the turn to not hold everyone up any longer. 

Josh out.

[joshybravo963]

Day 120 

Ive just come back from war and i am afraid it is a grey day for the american people..
Everything was in shape, my economy and growth was on point, I foolishly started to believe that i could somewhat keep up with the civ4 greats but it all crashed down in a blink of an eye. 

I followed through with my plan to get revenge for my trees and attack TBS, as i moved my galley into position to attack next turn, the borders of tbs expanded and had to position my galley on a different tile, when i attacked instead of the galley teleporting to the closest free tile in the city like i expected, the galley teleported to the closest free sea tile which meant i couldnt attack the island city in the same turn, (i realise i should sim these situations next time to avoid such crucial mistakes). So i declared war but couldnt attack the city until next turn, and miraculously by next turn TBS had 2 units in the city to defend, I wouldnt be able to win so i landed my troops and waited loaded 2 more units but yet again out of nowhere TBS had another 2 units to defend from nowhere and i wasnt able to take the city. An embarassing defeat. 
By the time i got to the fur city at the bottom of the map, the empty city was filled with units and quickly dealt with my landed force. Didnt even stand a chance. 

Before these attacks superdeath sent me a deal to say i should attack tbs and he would attack tarkeel, i was relieved that my back was covered. When the fighting with tbs began, superdeath even accepted open borders and copper for copper whatever that meant. So i started to believe that he would allow me to hinder the strongest player on the island while he took care of tarkeel. I moved some of my units from the border between us to help fight tbs. And then im sure you guys know what happened next. Backstabbed by superdeath, all i see is a horde of ~10 horse archers+ 5 axes come through the jungle and 2 galleys landed at sheep city, and another at corn city. I should have known not to trust him, i should have suspected something was wrong when lewwyn wrote in the thread asking about turn orders or when it was obvious that superdeath was taking his turns after me.
Within a matter of 5 or so turns, all eastern cities were taken, peaced out with tbs, whipped for my life but to no use, my capitol was soon taken and the mainland also, i have never seen my civilization crumble so quickly. I saved any worker i could and moved them to commodore land, tried to save some units and move to the island cities but those cities were also quickly taken before my troops could even arrive to reinforce. I realised i cannot gift units, so i declared war on commodore so he can take my workers and also gifted all the gold i had saved up. I hope that he will be able to stand against TBS and really hope he can become victorious on this island. 
The last few turns ive mainly been trying to live as long as i can, and luckily AT resigned first so at least i can say i wasnt the first to die haha. The worst thing about this i knew id get attacked first since im new and wanted to get longbows as soon as i could, and at the moment where i started to get hope that everything will be ok and i wouldnt be abused first, thats exactly what happened haha. I don't think it would have been possible to reach longbows by this date nomatter what I did.

Some extra mistakes that i spotted towards the last 20 turns. 
8. Military! growth isnt as important, even when not in war military is needed to be safe.
9. Prepare for the opportunities. Instead of seeing the opportunity to steal tbs city and then preparing to take it, It would be far better to have a small army that is there in case such opportunities arise. And cannot to delay attacks with people like tbs.
10. Road your important resources. I foolishly forgot to road the crab city copper so when the easter cities where taken in the first couple turns i coulnt whip anymore spears. Dont make this stupid mistake please haha.
I guess the rest comes with experience. In single player games I delay sailing until at least libraries since usually theres no need but the islands get grabbed so quickly that you cant afford to do this, so that was a mistake. Multiplayer in general is a totally new ball game, usually i dont start wars until at least knights or cavaliers but here people are having full out wars with axes and swords, pretty crazy so was totally unprepared. Also to remember that I'm going first in turn order and whipping is useless, have to take extra care and think in advance. I don't know how TBS does it, truly impressive. Hopefully in the new upcoming greens game my performance will be less embarassing and will be able to make less of these mistakes. 

Overall I completely loved the short game that i had and the experience, I have never really been involved with multiplayer for any strategy games so just really loved the people here the community is very friendly and supportive, can immediately tell everyone is a great guy here. Id like to thank the people that helped me get started here, charriu for the the great mod, tarkeel for the great map idea, loved it and also all the mods who keep everything running. Id also like to thank my great general vanrober for just being so nice and helpful, and for putting up with me during some heated debates where i was clearly wrong, hate to imagine how my game would have looked like without him. I would definitely like to recommend any lurkers to get involved in a game, and just have this experience, its something that i will remember in the future. I wish I found this community and got involved so much sooner. 

I see the enemy has once again landed outside of my city walls, I have nowhere else to go and im afraid this will be my last entry.

   

For the last time... Josh out.

[El Grillo]

Thank you for all of the reports, sounds like this was good practice and a learning experience. It’s good to hear that you enjoyed multiplayer nonetheless, best of luck in your next game!

[Lewwyn]

i have never seen my civilization crumble so quickly.

Yeah if you've never played multiplayer before it can be shocking how different and how much more difficult the game can be! Don't worry, learn more and try to do it to someone else in the future. You had some bad luck with RNG placing you between TBS and Superdeath. TBS is one of the best on here and SD is just very aggressive. Thank you for the updates and I encourage you to go back and read some other peoples games to improve. We have over 150 games recorded on the site you know! I've been on here 10 years and haven't read all of them and I would say I'm still trying new things.

Seriously congrats on making it through your first PB experience. Many people underestimate the time commitment and get overwhelmed. Hope you continue to enjoy playing here.