TBS finds Superdeath's title Ominous

[The Black Sword]

Thanks for posting that question for me OH. 

Looks like I should have some free time again, and we won't make a turn tonight, so let's update things. The last picture was almost 20t turns ago, and my plans changed quite a bit since then. 



This was scene of Commodore's city raze. I had units positioned to cover the city on the tile 1S of the lake but of course the river stopped them from reaching the city. I whipped out a bunch of triremes and he lost a couple of offending units as he retreated.

Meanwhile his 1-movers on the jungle turned south towards Guangzhou and were joined by a HA. 

None of this was ideal obviously but it wouldn't have caused me to change course. It was superdeath who did that:


Joshy was distracted attacking me, but I still thought he'd have had some sort of defenses in place with these jungle regions. I always thought an attack would stall around the capital and I would have time to react. But in just a few turns America turned completely orange. It must have been a nicely co-ordinated attack by SD, even if he was rather fortunate with a green target.

I decided I couldn't just let superdeath sit on this land and develop, even if it allowed me to get to knights and galleons. He also got a bunch of capture gold from this conquest. I had to attack before the cities had culture to slow me and pop to whip defenses. Of course this risks that most terrible of outcomes: losing a 2-front war and giving some satisfaction to those hated Romans. But I was pretty sure that SD would interfere in a future Commodore conquest anyway, and besides, I'd still prefer to try win the game than the pissing contest.

So I turned every advantage I had toward taking this land. I had already built the biggest army in the world to deal with the legions and I spent my golden age whipping off riverside hamlets, sometimes even villages to add to it. Instead of wasting time on Barracks' we used our GG:


And so we marched south. Superdeath decided to attack my advance force by Gold City:


Pretty sure luck was on my side here, but it was also a pretty questionable decision. I sacked a pair of catapults to wipe out these survivors, losing 1 more axe in the process. With his forces in the area dead my two movers could quickly blitz forward, which brings us to the current turn:


SD still has more power than Comm, so he should still have a decent stack somewhere. I'm a little bit paranoid about a horde of HA coming out of the fog but so far we've been safe. Maybe Tarkeel is tying down more troops to the north than I give him credit for. (Btw Tarkeel, it's almost turn 120, try chopping some forests).

On the inner sea I was maybe a bit impatient though I did have odds here:


I also didn't want to land the WE and then he just retreats the HA to help with the main fight in the south. But now Rice City still flies Incan colours and my next attack has been delayed by Roman skirmishing around my Moai.

Of course Commodore never stopped his harassment. It annoys me less now that I think it's legitimately the best thing for his civ to do in this situation. A 4-player continent simplifies to a 2v2 of me and Tarkeel vs Comm and SD(at least until someone gets a big advantage), so he can't let SD fight alone right now.  

Before I marched south I wiped Comm's 1-mover incursion by Guangzhou with my first catapult. It still cost me a similar number of units though. I could have waited for him to retreat/another cat or two, but I wanted to get moving south immediately and I wanted to show the catapult to Comm to discourage him building up a similar stack. So I could risk a bit going light on the defenses up there. That seemed to work and he's mostly focused on fighting at sea. Of course these Trireme logjams are always a sign of a well-played game:


But what can you do? I was originally planning to get to Caravels fairly quickly and then Galleons after that so we wouldn't be in this situation. However my tech rate was obviously much worse than I hoped for with all the whipping. Comm might be able to take Tianjin with catapults in a couple of turns if he pushes for it, but it's not too important anymore. There's a similar standoff in the inner sea, but with my Moai over there I can probably outproduce him in that arena.

Tech wise the only ambition I tried for was the Music artist. It would allow me to chain a 2nd MoM GA fairly quickly. I set it up so I could one turn it with no risk but I was too late to Miguelito/Rusten's France. I don't have their graphs but they are way ahead in tech. At least they don't seem to have conquered any extra land though. Still, not sure we can beat them with now presumably two monkeys on our back. In the end my tech path was Construction (cats) -> HBR (WE, HA) -> Aes  -> Myst -> Poly -> Lit (HE, NE) -> Mono(OR) -> Monarchy(HR). Our next GA will probably be 20t away as we wait for the National Epic(now relocated away from the Comm border) to set up. Our tech will probably crawl until then, so we need to decide what's more important Cho-ko-nu's or Caravels?

New and unimproved demos, and slightly out of date kill screen:

[vanrober]

Its really impresive how you make everything. Every game you play and i read i get even more amazed of your skill on this game. I hope i learn something throw reading your games.

Im still amazed of that stoneheinch 1 turn with mongols you did some time ago. Really im reading you all xD

[The Black Sword]

Thanks vanrober. I guess I better try live up to that praise.



My city's culture hit 40% but the borders didn't seem to pop. Anyone know what's up? Vision from that jungle tile would actually be fairly nice.

Also pictured:

A fairly collapsed economy(probably has something to do with half my cities being size 1).
Another assault on Tianjin. As mentioned, I think this one has a decent chance at succeeding if Comm organised it properly.

[RefSteel]

My city's culture hit 40% but the borders didn't seem to pop. Anyone know what's up? Vision from that jungle tile would actually be fairly nice.

Borders from a given city do not [EDIT: produce culture] beyond "BFC range" of land tiles on its landmass.  So if neither you nor Commodore had culture on those tiles otherwise, Tianjin's borders would now include the tiles 1S of your pictured galley and trireme, the three land tiles directly south of Orang-Pendek, and the tile 1E of Orang-Pendek, but not the jungle you were hoping for (nor the coast tiles E and W of it) and not the seafood SW of your pictured Galley.

[EDIT: I originally had this backward: Curiously, if you already have culture on the relevant tiles from former (captured or destroyed) cities that were "in range", an "out-of-range" city's culture can expand and "re-take" those tiles, but can't add any more culture to them for culture-war purposes.]

[vanrober]

Thanks vanrober. I guess I better try live up to that praise.

You say like you didnt already :P

[Thoth]

Cultural borders will only extend over water to tiles that can be worked from the landmass the city is on.

If you're talking about the jungle tile on the horse island, Tianjin will never be able to put culture on that tile. Orang-Pendek will once it pops borders at 40%.

[GermanJoey]

all I can say is that damn. DAMN! this seems like a tough game. you still hanging in there?

[The Black Sword]

Hey, a GJ sighting!

Superdeath is Protective and I ran into a bunch of CG archers in a walled hill city at the edge of his jungle region. That remined me of you in PB18 and I thought you'd get a kick out of my situation here.

I'm still not really enjoying the game at the moment and have to make myself play the turns. So I don't really feel like reporting on things right now. I have another MoM golden age coming in 5t and that might make me feel better.

[GermanJoey]

oh geez, that sounds like a frustrating situation. I had to look up what Protective was in CtH mod, and I've gotta say, it's a pretty weird design. all the painful parts of the original trait, that most players think of as very weak, along with a passive commerce bonus in the early game? I can't imagine that it's very popular, is it?

[vanrober]

If i dont remember bad, all the games that have been played on CTH had at least one person with that trait.

On PB52 it was op because the 75% bonnus was all time, not just for domestic traderoutes. Then it got nerfed to 75% to domestic trade routes, and then was buffed a bit more to 100% domestic traderouts.

On PB60 Amicalola and I are using PRO and we are really enjoying the game, since that map with several islands and we got TGLH and have 3-4 traderoutes per city with 3 coins each, so a nice economy that has no problem with whiping out civilians. If that makes sense.

I think TBS tried PRO on PB53 if you want to read it.