TBS finds Superdeath's title Ominous

[Donovan Zoi]

Hey TBS, my civ just got eliminated and I was wondering if you were interested in having a dedlurker/sub to help during times you cannot make the turn. If so, please let me know the terms of any partnership or feel free to decline. I am refraining from reading other threads until I hear back from you -- thanks!

[The Black Sword]

Hey Donovan, thanks for the offer.

Between too much time playing civ and knowing there's a turn waiting for me in the back of my mind the rest of the time, the situation is not great for me. And it's obviously not very fair on everyone else too. 

Are you interested in taking over as permanent turnplayer and I'll be the secondary? I think I'd prefer that if you're up for it. But I'll take what help I can get either way.

I can put up a more comprehensive report before any potential changeover, but the situation is still fairly volatile(when has it not been!). I thought I had the superdeath border stabilised, but then he moved into my catapult range and got like a 12-unit rng swing over the course of the engagement, so we had to retreat from the front city there. There are trireme pushes from both opponents in the inner and southern seas. Inner sea looks ok for the moment but we'll need caravels to clear the southern sea. Comm might be going for caravels too though.

[Donovan Zoi]

Sure, glad to help. I would be fine with taking over the turns -- just PM me with the password once you are ready to make the transition and I'll jump in and take a look. And yes, having you stay on as secondary player would be helpful, especially in the early stages. Looking forward to checking out the save.

[The Black Sword]

Alright, the password is 'cat'.

The turn order is superdeath -> us -> Comm. I just finished the current turn, so after superdeath plays next you're up. I'll write up a turn report now.

[The Black Sword]

So this is our northern border with Comm:





We have 17 triremes to his 13, and he has 6 galleys. Neither of us have enough to attack the other, I'm sitting on the chokepoint and the ocean stops him getting around. He is on 8 or 9 culture in Tianjin I think though. I was waiting for him to pop borders when he revolted to Buddhism and lost the source of culture from his religion. Once he does get a new culture source he will pop borders almost immediately, gaining access to the ocean tile to bypass the chokepoint. We might have enough triremes to block two tiles, if he attacks one stack the second stack could then counterattack. That's why I overbuilt triremes here in expectation of his border pop, but I haven't simmed to be sure.

In any case, now that we're getting optics we should start building caravels to deal with the stack. Comm just finished teching something, so it is possible that is Optics too though.

He has a GG on the boats(a Praet), so it is possible for that unit to disembark, promote to morale, move over 1 land tile and burn Loyang. I don't think the GG has the spare xp, but I have 2 cats in there just in case. Ideally we'd rotate some less useful warriors or archers for that duty instead at some stage.

He can send a stack of 2-movers from the fog and drop them on our pigs tile, forking our two cities. He needs a significant stack though, because we can hit it with our catapult stack in Shanghai. So the stack would probably show up on his power graph and I haven't seen any sign of that yet. If he gets Guilds and Knights though it is something to watch out for.

[The Black Sword]

The inner sea:






We have 9 triremes here, with decent promotions from previous victories. Superdeath and Comm have 5 and 6 triremes respectively. If they join forces we couldn't attack them but separately we can keep them away from our nets. Again we'll want to spam caravels now that we access to them.

We have 2 galleys in the south, currently ferrying units around to speed up travel time to the superdeath front. Once they're free you can consider loading up some units to threaten enemy cities. Comm presumably wants to settle the wines island as a place for his boats to sit in and be annoying, that'd be the first target.

There was an invasion on Macau recently, which is why the extra units are there. Can consider evacuating the HA and WE when the boats are free. 

Rice city has an axe/spear garrison and I usually try to keep 1 or 2 HAs on the main front in range to help the city out, since superdeath could have another boat in the fog. Dairen will need a garrison too when Comm puts his galley on the wine island(there are units close enough).

[The Black Sword]

The superdeath front:


So as I mentioned we had a fairly big engagement here recently. In terms of hammers it still went in our favor, but we didn't have the health to hold Incense City. It turns out superdeath didn't have enough healthy units to hold it from my reinforcements either and we recaptured it for the cost of 2 catapults this turn.

I have various small stacks in the area healing up. You can see superdeath is using the GG he got from that fight to heal also. Probably if he moves back in we want to give up Incense city again and finish healing up before retaking it. 

In terms of tiles the city is pretty crap, but holding the land as a buffer from the good cities is fairly important. There used to be a city on the northern coast by the corn, but the awkward terrain meant I had to choose between holding it or Incense city. I think that logic still holds so I haven't bothered resettling it.

[The Black Sword]

The southern sea is where things are most dire:




I was blocking superdeath by the eastern chokepoint but then Comm showed up with more units and I didn't have enough to deal with both. Again we're going to need caravels. Not much can be done while we wait for them, going to lose some nets.

I am pretty sure that superdeath's galley down here is empty. If it wasn't he surely would have killed my injured triple promo WE defending Horse island earlier. There was also a turn where all I could defend crab island with was a catapult and an injured chariot and he didn't bite either. Still I organised some defenses for Crab city just in case.

[The Black Sword]

Big picture stuff:

We're in the middle of a golden age. Current civics are HR/Serfdom/OR. I greedily revolted to Serfdom, despite the hot wars since it was worth about 50gpt. You need to decide whether to keep it or go back into slavery at the end of the golden age. Long term it is for sure better than slavery, in addition to the 50gpt from farms we should be building windmills and watermills I think, which it also buffs. (Replaceable parts no longer buffs mines, so windmills just seems like the better improvement even before we talk about Serfdom). But obviously, the question is whether you think you have the hammers to deal with the fighting without slavery.

 After Optics the plan is to go for either Feudalism and revolt into Vassalage, or for Civil Service and Theology and revolt into Bureau/Theocracy. I hadn't decided which yet, so I'll let you do so . Bureau/Theo is better, but it requires spreading the religion everywhere to get the xp and costs a lot more beakers to set up, so might not be worth it.

Our current golden age ends on turn 152, I'm generating 4 great people, of which 3 will hopefully be different. The 4th should be ready about turn 167 for another 12t golden age. I wouldn't bet on a 4th golden age after that so I'd be thinking of getting into final civics there. I haven't thought about it too much, except that Free market at Economics looks good since we're not currently using that column and foreign trade is worth so much money.

Apart from techs for civics, Astro and Guilds seem like the two best tech targets for me. We have to expect some enemy caravels soon, so we need to hit Galleons to avoid a similar fiasco as the triremes. I wouldn't push too hard vs SD or Comm on land for a bit anyway. If they look like they're in trouble then Tarkeel might try get involved too. Better to wait until we're more consolidated. We can try to control the seas though, hurt them there and take there islands. 

There is also some Astro land to compete for, though I don't know how hard we want to go for it yet with the wars going on. It looks like Lazteuq(our neighbour on the western continent is doing some bulb shenanigans, which usually means either Astro or Lib into Astro). Charriu is also a threat for the Astro land.

In the wider game, civac looks like he's the leader, but not outrageously far in front. You could consider closing borders with him though(and see if Mr Cairo will do so too). I didn't think about it until now in case we needed good relations to complete circumnavigation for the trade routes. Up to you again.

[The Black Sword]

City by city thoughts:


Next turn, the capital should work full specialists to get the GP out in time. Finishing the barracks then the catapult then can build a harbour for health and gold. Could consider swapping the grass cottage for the plains cottage with the southern city to speed that up.



Building an OR Forge, so it is going to take all the power tiles in the area and leave the western city as a bit of a stump. Then probably caravels.



Another mature city finally getting its forge in. Then it can hopefully go Barracks -> units. 

I've left signs over the map for what the workers are currently doing btw, that's what the mill is there for.



Heroic epic city. It has too many hammers to 1turn 60h units during the golden age, so it gives away some of it's hammer tiles. I'm thinking it can 1t a Library and work some specialists too, finish a GP during the next GA, get some value out of the wonder gpp. Haven't done it yet though, due to all the fighting. Once you revolt into an xp civic it will be outputting 17xp War Elephants. I'd probably continue settling GGs for a future 26xp commando pump with West Point. It will need some watermills and workshops to 1 turn Knights outside of a GA.



National epic city. Unfortunate to leave hamlets unworked but it needs to keep working maximum gpp for the next golden age. The city to the south is building it a Confucian missionary for another temple and Priest slot, which it can give up the village for.

I'm building a decent amount of wealth this turn, just to get Optics one turn early. I'd put all the cities back to their normal builds next turn(keep building that cat here).



Moai city, where some more nice tiles are a casualty of the GP push. Again it needs to work max specialists at least until the end of the GA, when it might have to give one up for food reasons. Speeding up a 12t GA on a big empire, and revolts into something like Free Market seems worth it to me.

The workboat is for the whales, it could also use a harbour for the health and money and the spam Caravels/units until we're safe. Maybe some caravels should come before the harbour if necessary.



Crap island in the southern sea. Almost not worth the garrison tbh, but they're stuck there with no boats. Slow building a spearman in case superdeath comes back with more war elephants. They're both ignoring the city for a while now though, could consider trying to rebuild its nets. Otherwise it needs a farm on the plains tile when it grows.



Originally hoping to build an OR forge here, but had to whip away all my pop first to deal with the latest invasion. Could continue it, or write it off as a sunk cost and build some caravels. Workers are windmilling that hill.



Cat -> caravel I think. Again could think about giving the plains cottage to the capital for a grass one to grow faster. I want to farm the grassland since it is shared with the NE city, but the plains tile could potentially be cottaged. In general it is a little late to be building more cottages if we have another option for an improvement.



Missionary -> Caravel.



Caravel.



Have two workers ready to get going on this island, then the boat can go pick up the missionary. The archer can upgrade in queue to a CKN when we research Feudalism, or just finish it for military police.