[PB62] naufragar and Rusten earn their wage in rostygold

[naufragar]

My reporting skills are slipping!


Last turn, Mjmd declared war on Vanrober. I logged in this turn to see his army advancing on Vanrober's city of Boron. Then, like an idiot, I moved my units away before taking a picture!  I've put a sign that says "four skirmishers," although now that I think about it, there were probably five. Sloppy, sloppy reporting, naufragar.  5 skirms plus a chariot can probably take the city. I'm curious enough that I might run the odds. The city has cultural defense bonuses and at least the axe has full fortify. My gut says it's a bloodbath on average.

Since Vanrober is looking more likely to be my best friend forever  I'm feeling fewer compunctions about scouting his land with my warrior. Plus, I had worried about getting every able-bodied lad into Wolfstad for when the Mjmd treaty expired, but that's looking less necessary. Fingers crossed.

When I was ranting about Mjmd's attack on Wolfstad, I said that since I was Creative, I could basically guarantee myself the Corn between our two empires. This doesn't exactly hold with Boron and the Sheep 2W of it. It's still quite likely than Vanrober can grab this sheep long-term, but it's a more contestable tile than the Corn. Given that plus the fact that Mjmd had already built a large standing army to deal with our war, I see more sense in this conflict than the previous. On the other hand, in PB88 when I threw ancient era units at an enemy, got peace, and immediately had those units ricochet into an entirely new enemy, lurkers laughed at me. Said something about Montezuma vs. the World. Maybe they'll change their tune.

Edit: Vodka says the attacker wins handily every time. Oh well.

[naufragar]

Vanrober retreated from Boron and Mjmd burned it.


Mjmd undoubtedly offered peace after the raze. I suspect Vanrober will take it, which is a bummer. I wonder how Vanrober will react further down the line.

I had a horrific thought upon seeing Mjmd's worker stack. Surely, surely he's not insane enough to chop out Stonehenge in OakAshThorn, right?  Like, I understand that he is kamikaze crazy, but he's not that kamikaze crazy? Unfortunately, once I had this thought, it started gnawing at me. We cannot allow him to chop Stonehenge and steal Wolfstad's first ring. Doubly unfortunate, then, that I can't dislodge skirmishers on a hill, so I'd either have to kill Mjmd's chopping workers or just waddle axes through his land again, except this time until he or I die.

Again, I would hope that he realizes 1) Stonehenge in OakAshThorn commits the both of us to ancient era warfare until one or the other is dead 2) this warfare does not improve either of our chances of winning. After the chariot raze, my opinion of Mjmd's strategic sense is abyssal, so I'm not at all confident he recognizes that. Annoyingly, this sort of means I have to gear up for war now already...

I hope those workers are just going to chop OakAshThorn's granary, but this is doubtful: Barge Ballad is size three with unchopped forests and no granary and the workers are going straight to the front.

[naufragar]

Normally, I keep my plans very close to my chest even in my own thread, but as penance for getting increasingly steamed, I present to you my Pyramid plans:



I took this advice perhaps a bit too much to heart:

Pyramids is super important yes. Worth sacrificing things for.

And this Pyramids build has hurt. We chopped 6 forests and built a mine that is otherwise useless. That's 29 worker turns, which is 7 freaking cottages. I could have multiple hamlets by now instead of 2 brand new cottages. Ouch ouch ouch. I'm not super concerned about showing my 'mids completion date because even if I'm beaten to it, I'd get a ton of fail gold.

I've said I'm not so concerned about my literally non-existent tech rate. Perhaps I should explain that. Tech rate only matters relative to other players. It is my suspicion that everybody, except for maybe Vanrober, has an abysmal tech rate. Tarkeel/Civac have a huge food lead and that will more and more translate into a tech lead, but for now, they don't have it. They have not teched Writing, so I've been assuming they're going for a wonder play. If they go Oracle, they get some tech. If they get Pyramids, win or lose, they get tech in the form of happiness or fail gold. But for right now, tech lead doesn't matter. In fact, it won't matter for a while. Spears beat horse archers. It will matter once someone gets to Construction and fields elephants and catapults. That's the point at which tech rate becomes lethal. That's a gut check. (And knowing the Civforum meta, I guarantee Civac is planning an elephant/catapult offensive against his most underdeveloped neighbor.)

We have many, many workers. (By next turn, we'll have 10 workers for 5 cities.) This is normally way too many, but Pyramids and slow tech pace forced me into it.  But the plan is to rapidly cottage everywhere and work those cottages using the extra Representation happiness. Who knows? Maybe my economy is un-fixable. But as for now, I'm wary but not panicked.

On the subject of getting increasingly heated, I need to cool down on Mjmd. I edited my previous post to be nicer. (Yeah... those of you that have only read the edited and still think that's harsh should just imagine the original.  Not my finest hour.) But I must and still do insist on how crazy greedy OakAshThorn is:


I discovered Vanrober's capital, so I can give you a better overview. OakAshThorn is 6 tile from Bing's capital, 5 tiles from Vanrober's, 8 tiles from my original starting location, and 7 tiles from Mjmd's cap. And this is just the city square. It's BFC pushes two more tiles into rival land away from Mjmd's core. This city by itself was an encroachment on the majority of players. Madness. I have never seen a city this greedy in any game I've played.

Mjmd's a good guy, so I'm sure he's not and won't be complaining about any hostility towards his civ. His thought process was "I'm Mali. I can do whatever I want in the ancient era." And any hostile consequences of that city plant, I'm sure he expected. As I said last report, he might have decided that this game isn't worth playing and so he'll invite me into perma-war with Stonehenge at OakAshThorn. I'm sure he understands that putting Stonehenge in the greediest city of all time isn't a winning play, but he's well within his rights to tank his and my game for a joke.

Not that it matters because Tarkeel/Civac (I need an abbreviation for them. Tarkac?) are dominant.


Just got their graphs. They're basically normal in all things except for food, which will turn into an absurd GNP advantage.

Those of you that are exceptionally quick on the lurking might have caught that I ranted about the quality of Vanrober and Mjmd's river land compared to mine (and Bing's). I felt bad about this, so I deleted it. See? Naufragar is very even-keeled these days.


I'm pretty at peace with the map. In fact, I think this is a really interesting game. The proximity of the players, the disparity of regions, the difficulty setting all make this a very interesting setup. Plus I haven't seen Comm around in a while, so I'm trying to be on my best behavior.  If it weren't for the Tarkac juggernaut, this game would be wide open.

Vanrober had not accepted peace when I played and he's got a stack of ancient era units nearby. If he and Mjmd stay at war until my own peace treaty ends (doubtful), I'll throw in my support. Interesting game!

[naufragar]

Interesting game!

By which I mean, this game is a carnival of lunacy, a clown fiesta, a jester's jubilee:


Superdeath PM'ed me to let me know he declared war, claiming the second half. I opened the turn up to a peace offer in exchange for Shuttered Palace.

At this point, I have to ask which trickster spirits I've offended to get these geopolitics in every Civ4 game I play. Why me? Why do I have to deal with both avaricious arsonist Mjmd and distilled, industrial-grade chaos Superdeath while Tarkac saunters to victory. Why me? 

On the other hand, I've never been Superdeathed before, so this is a bit of a Realms Beyond milestone. I have fought Superdeath before, but I've never been on the receiving end of a failed ancient era attack that costs me resources on defense that I can't afford to spend while Superdeath receives no benefit. It's a rite of passage, and I'm proud to wear that badge now.    I believe Shuttered Palace will hold. If Superdeath attacks next turn with just the chariots, I likely lose a unit for two of his chariots. If he doesn't attack with the chariots next turn but waits for the axes to move up, I can stuff the city with a total of 3 axes and two spears (+1 axe whipped if necessary). The thing you have to remember about Superdeath's fighting style is that he rolls the dice on everything. He's gonna look at his C2 Shock Axes getting 22% odds on my axe defenders and think "YOLO." Fighting Superdeath is so scary because if he rolls enough 20% combats, he'll win a few. (Math says 1 in 5; experience says 3 in 5.    ) By the way, the worker on the axe pile suggests there are yet more units coming up. 

Superdeath's not crazy and generally not spiteful, so I don't see him making an end run with those chariots to look for vulnerabilities but I can't take that chance. I've moved Wolfstad's spear so it can cover Veilgarden if necessary. Hopefully it won't be necessary. To repeat, I don't foresee Superdeath just running around with chariots trying to wreck my empire while being completely unable to take land, but it's a possibility. Maybe he's really looking for capture gold. He has 3 cities, so presumably his maintenance isn't as painful.

I offered him a peace treaty in exchange for him declaring war on Civac. I assume the meaning of this message is not subtle. Superdeath had not officially met me until this turn, so he couldn't know my army in the weakest on the planet. He also hasn't met Mjmd, so he doesn't know that his timing is perfect for Mjmd to retake Wolfstad. (I.e. Superdeath only knows he's throwing the game for Civac, not that he's also helping out Mjmd.)

No man alive can predict what Superdeath will do. I can only hope that he'll see Shuttered Palace is too defended and take peace. I have extreme doubts.

I mentioned I was last in soldiers. Here's the demos:


Yeah... We've put literally hundreds of hammers and dozens of worker turns into Pyramids with no payoff so far. We've fought two ancient era wars and had a city razed. We have nothing besides Creative to help our early economy. But are demos are sufficient. And yet and yet! I've still got maniacs trying to drag me down. What a game.

[naufragar]

One time, I was walking by the local convention center, and I saw they were hosting the annual meeting of the Idiots Guild. And as I passed closer by, I saw the President of the Idiots Guild (whose official title is Idiot Supreme) trying to enter by pushing through a door clearly marked “Pull.” I stuck around to watch for a bit and saw his assistant come up. The assistant too kept pushing and pushing on the door. The Idiots began to gather at the door, eager to attend the convention, and one by one they tried their darndest to push the Pull door open. This went on for, I kid you not, several hours. Finally, in a state of incomprehension and dismay, the collected idiots led by the Idiot Supreme gave up and went home. I will return to this recollection later. But first the turn report.

Here are the Vodka odds for Superdeath’s 3 chariots attacking my fortified spear:


As you can see, we have a 55% chance to kill all three chariots. So we have slightly better than even odds to prevent Superdeath from ever stepping foot inside Shuttered Palace. How did the actual attack turn out?



Naturally, we not only lost the favorable battle, we did so without even scratching Superdeath’s final chariot. As I intimated previously, Superdeath is the luckiest player on the forums. Whenever you hear him kvetch about his odds, ignore it. He is misreading his odds. He is, I repeat, the luckiest player on the forums. This is doubly unfortunate, since I am, without competition, the unluckiest.

Even with this result, we could have held Shuttered Palace, but remember how I said the presence of his worker implied reinforcements?


Superdeath roaded the horse and moved up another chariot, so I had to retreat from the city. I think I know Superdeath pretty well, so I can predict what’s going to happen on his turn. He will promote his victorious chariot up the Combat line, taking Formation (anti-mounted) if he’s got enough XP for it, and use that chariot to attack mine. He’ll flawlessly win the coinflip or worse battle across the river, because, as stated, he blessed by Fortune. He’ll then capture Shuttered Palace with the trailing chariot.

Here my crystal ball gets murky. He’ll see that I have enough units to retake, so partly this will depend on how many further units he is shipping in from his 3 city empire. In response to my offer of a peace treaty in exchange for his war against Tarkac, he offered peace for Shuttered Palace and my own declaration of war against Tarkac. This makes me think that he does want the city and won’t insta-raze it even if he sees he can’t hold it. I have to hope.

Unless he gets very lucky I should be able to retake and hold the city. Again, much depends on how many more units he is bringing up. His mfg is one of the highest while his Crop is terrible, so I’m betting he’s just working mines and building units.

Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that Tarkac have built their 8th city. Superdeath is still on 3. They are neighbors (Tarkac had declared war on Superdeath). Now I’m just a simple old Civ4 player and never could do much ‘rithmetic, but I do believe that 4 chariots and 3 axes cost 225 hammers, and if my old noggin still works, that’s enough for two settlers and a pack of gum. So instead of planning a war against a neighbor that he had never even met (downright unneighborly, I say) when he had a paltry 3 cities to the game leader’s 8, in order to take one city from me, who has but 5, he could have instead…just built himself a couple more cities.

But that’s all you need to hear from me.

Oh wait, I almost forgot! My recollection of the Idiots Convention! I was most unkind and owe the Idiot Supreme an apology. As I was walking away, I muttered under my breath, “I’m never going to see something so stupid as long as I live.” But then I played PB62.

[naufragar]

Something about this game is getting under my skin, so we're gonna dial it back several notches and become the easy listening station.

Ain't no way to be perturbed while listening to Strait. 

And I'll try to be more considerate of my opponents.

Superdeath didn't take Shuttered Palace, since he knew it would be retaken.


He's brought up another axe and is spending more worker turns to build roads to my land. That's a barracks-promoted axe, so just on my screen I see 285 hammers of military investment to fail to capture one city while he's way behind on city count. (And let's just ignore the worker turns. 4 turns is a cottage, but who cares.) Shuttered Palace's hill and cultural defenses means that a vanilla axe of mine gets even odds on a C2 Shock axe of his, and it only gets better with fortification. Remember how I said Superdeath rolls the dice on everything and then he went and won a crucial battle at 43%? That's his M.O., so we still have to worry about him landing some lucky 22% rolls next turn. But Shuttered Palace looks pretty sturdy to me?

Superdeath's greatest vice is also his greatest virtue though: he has the jaws of a bulldog. If he's got a goal, he does not let go. Tarkac can be launching their spaceship and Superdeath will have no qualms about still churning out axes to take my city.

I said I was going to be more considerate, so I'm gonna try to see it from Superdeath's perspective. He clearly wanted to dedlurk Tarkack but forgot to ask, so he just picked up a civ and decided he might as well help that way. Tarkac, by the way, are now up to 9 cities. Good thing they were able to propitiate the correct arcane powers to have Superdeath suicide against me rather than them. Good job!

What chaps my ass is that Mjmd gets bailed out by Superdeath. (But my ass is only chapped a little. We're still going to, as the Eagles would say, take it easy.)

I'm sure Mjmd takes Wolfstad when our treaty expires. I've one-pop whipped a spear that will get there in time, but the city is otherwise defenseless. I was being mean before: it's not that Superdeath is on Tarkac's team. He's also going to help out Mjmd. 

Notice anything about Superdeath Jr Mjmd's empire?


If you said "a truly inspiring lack of granaries," good catch! Mjmd has a ways to go before he's at Superdeath's level. He's got the suicidal, game-ruining aggression down, but he still needs to develop the micro skills to make that murder-suicide as miserable as Superdeath can.

For what it's worth, Mjmd will not beat Tarkac but Superdeath's moves have given him the best chance. Superdeath is playing 6 minute turns and not reporting, so I know he doesn't care about this game and is more than happy to wreck mine. I would ask that lurker's poll for concession since spending 30+ minutes per turn for another 70 turns until Tarkac gets knights seems like a very stupid way to spend time, but what the heck. Give Tarkack their fun.

Amarillo's on my mind.

[naufragar]

[Will edit another country song in here later. Edit: This one seems to fit.]


Received this PM from Mjmd:

Just fyi I'll be taking 2nd next turn.

Don't think the war comes as a surprise, but just for your troop movements felt it was weird when I started double playing this turn. More thoughts in my thread for you post game.

Sent this in response:

Hi Mjmd,

You know that this isn't how turn splits work. You know that turn order is determined upon war declaration, and if memory serves, you’ve tried verbally reserving a split for yourself in the past and been chewed out for it.

I appreciate that you felt weird double moving on t69-70 but you know that would’ve been undone by me double-moving you t70-71, so there was no need for you to be concerned. However (and I shouldn’t even have to tell you this but you’re forcing my hand) I have no intention of double-moving you, but instead I’ll be declaring war on t71 and taking the second half. Now we’re in a bind because if I don’t want to double-move you illegally, I have to wait for you to play, but now we’ll both be waiting on each other. This is what our ruleset calls for, but I understand it’s going to be inconvenient for us both.

I’ll invite lurker feedback via the techthread.

-naufragar

This is why you don't get to "reserve" spots verbally.  I've not finished my turn to wait for lurker feedback.

I pretty much never agree with NobleHelium, but I do pay attention to him. 

Oh look, Mjmd involved in another turn split standoff!  What a surprise.

[naufragar]

Folks, I have to step away for a bit, then I plan to play turn 70. This should be pretty safe(?). But it would be nice to know if everything is resolved before Mjmd and I have to roll t71. In PMs it sounds like he's willing to cede the second half, but he isn't obliged to. Hopefully everything works out.

[naufragar]

This game is teaching me something about myself. I enjoy getting angry. This goes way beyond "needing to vent" straight into self-indulgence. I had planned on writing a little skit involving me, Mjmd, and Superdeath and had even gone so far as to find the right images for it and was drafting it in my head as I was going about my day. It was very, very funny, but mean-spirited and wasn't going to make anybody feel any better. So I'm going to take Waylon's advice and get back to the basics of love.

I notice that Mjmd and Superdeath are planning a new CtH pitboss and wearing their scars from this game openly, with Superdeath asking for, in all caps, NO BARBS and Mjmd asking for a minimum distance of 12 tiles between players. They're feeling the pressure of PB62 as well, and I should be nicer. And while I can't unsay my opinion of their games so far (and won't go back to sanitize my previous posts), they are trying to put together and enact their own game plans. They aren't throwing the game through malice.

On to the turn report.

As expected, Superdeath offered peace this turn. He offered it in exchange for declaring on Tarkac, but what the heck. Accepted. I sent a peace offer to Tarkac. That should be that. I had thought that Superdeath had seen that Shuttered Palace was way too defended, but that would be too boring.


Of course he threw his C2 Shock axe at me at 33% odds and won. So naturally he thought it would be a good idea to follow up with his second Shock axe at 28%. There was literally no way for him to capture Shuttered Palace, but it fits his M.O. to burn hammers in these sorts of fights.

So that's our second war in this game done in which we are sneak-attacked and our opponent burns copious hammers in a bad position to do nothing but hurt us and help a third party.

Mjmd moved his chariots up to take Wolfstad.


Superdeath has guaranteed that he can take it. The barracks in OakAshThorn gives him a local military advantage. The plan is the same as in our first war. March through defensive terrain and try to cause as much pain as possible. We're all in on this plan.

Some people, not naming names, have wondered if I am "spiteful" or "kind of a dick"     and it's important to address that because the rest of my game is going to look incredibly spiteful. The plan is to pillage every tile of Mjmd's empire and not stop producing ancient era military units until one of us is dead. OakAshThorn would be/will be an amazing city that is impossible to live with. It or Mjmd must die. Vanrober and Mjmd signed peace on (I think) t67, and if I can stay at war with Mjmd until their treaty expires, I might have a war buddy. (These things are always doubtful because, almost without fail, people see a war and go "thank heavens I don't have to do any heavy lifting. I'm sure I can tech up in peace." This never works, but people are risk-averse. ) As I said a while ago, fighting Imp Mali isn't my idea of a good time, but Mjmd and Superdeath are the two neighbors that you can't ever afford to be at peace with. They're two sides of the same mutually assured destruction coin. So this upcoming grinding ancient era war that probably ends with Superdeath backstabbing me and certainly ends with Tarkac winning has been forced upon me. I promise I'm not doing it out of spite.

[naufragar]

Don't know how much longer I'll keep up the country song gimmick, but if I stop the soothing tunes, I might just strip off my clothes, howl at the moon, and kill a deer with my bare hands. So let's learn about the dangers of impulsivity.

(Only genius artists can rhyme "good one" with "could run.")

Remember how my two suicide bomber neighbors inadvertently bailed each other out? Remember how Superdeath's attack instead of costing me 0 hammers as projected cost me 70 because he rolled consecutively a 45% and a 32%?


I'll save you the trouble of doing the math. Mjmd's chariot performing this well is less than a 2% chance. F me. This is the stupidest game I've ever played.

I realize I've been focusing on the micro picture, so here are some demo screens. They haven't updated to reflect that Mjmd destroyed Wolfstad this turn.



The GNP is abysmal. I've got cottages built but I either don't have the happy to work them or have to work hammer tiles because of these perpetual wars. Again, our GNP is worse than it looks because of Creative. It surprises me that Mjmd, who is Financial, doesn't want to work river cottages.

Mfg also bad:


In a normal game this would be terrible, but I shouldn't be so hard on myself here. The mfg is competitive with Vanrober and Mjmd. Vanrober had a city burned, and Mjmd is Mjmd.

Crop has been artificially deflated, since I'm working low food/high hammer tiles or even coast to stave off bankruptcy.


Although as with Mfg, we're competitive with the non-Tarkac neighbors. See a theme? Notice how Imperialistic Mali can't seem to do better than Phi/Cre or Org/Cre despite burning a city off both? Don't be too hard on Mjmd's micro. Yeah, he seems to have an aversion to granaries and an affinity for big ancient era armies, but the real problem is the insane, wasteful, provocative dotmap that said that OakAshThorn was a good idea.

And here's power.


It looks like we're low, but it shouldn't really matter. Our cities on hills with cultural defenses can trade out for hundreds of hammers more than they cost. Or they should. Sometimes you lose 70 hammers when you should have lost 0, so what do I know about the appropriate size of a standing army? You can see Mjmd and Tarkac competitive in army count. This makes a lot of sense: obviously Mjmd is going to gain an advantage with his ancient era army by

If I seem sour, it's only because one neighbor planted the greediest city I've ever seen on my borders, made worse by the fact that this greedy city wasn't actually good (no first ring food, no tiles to activate Financial) and is warring to the death to keep its entire BFC and falling hilariously behind the demos despite being the fastest combo on the map. (Imp/Fin Mali, folks.) Oh and then when I had won my war against this guy and resettled my city (meaning that Mjmd had gained exactly nothing from this war), Superdeath out of nowhere, having never met me, just prayed that a city he had never seen would be under-defended and, when he saw that it wasn't, decided to roll low-odds dice, which in a just world would have ended with him burning units for nothing, but in PB62 ended with him burning units for nothing, some of which were mine. And now Mjmd razes my city again. This time, however, he is likely to gain something out of it. (A 6 food tile. That's right folks. He's knocked me, Vanrober, and himself out of contention so that one city far from his core could get one tile.)

Let's be honest. I don't ever want to play a game with terrorists again. In Superdeath's case, that's difficult because he's in everything. Are my choices really between never playing RB Civ4 and hoping that the freaking suicide bombers blow up someone else's game? Christ.