[PB62] naufragar and Rusten earn their wage in rostygold

[naufragar]

The moves are getting more complicated and Mjmd is now top global power.


He declared war on Vanrober this turn almost certainly to try and get guaranteed peace. If Vanrober accepts, I'll try to get out of the war as soon as possible, but really I should be planning an exit strategy.

Would you look what the neighbors are teching? 


I'm a turn late to this. Don't worry. I take pics of the tech screen every turn, so I was able to go back and check. On t77, somebody got Iron Working and the lowest power jumped from 84k to 94k. And would you look at that, I've got graphs on 3 players above my power and the one still below me who got Iron Working is... Superdeath. Of course. Three cities and an allergy to building settlers, so Praetorians it is. Maybe I took my turn as punching bag and he'll unleash these on Tarkac? Well, looks like I've got praetorians coming for me. So tiresome. Need to extricate myself from the Mjmd war.

[naufragar]

Ouch! I missed a devastating trick:


Because of the roads connecting Shuttered Palace to my trade network, Mjmd was able to deliver a force of 7(!) chariots right outside the gates of my copper city! I underestimated Mjmd's wiliness. Well done. It's especially devastating because our copper is 6 tiles away from our capital or, put another way, Mjmd's OakAshThorn is closer to two opponent's capitals than our copper is to our own capital.

A ton will depend on how well our spear does on defense. It should take out 3 chariots. If a chariot is unpromoted, even our warrior has odds. No matter how well we do, the city is dead. I assume burned, because the maintenance costs would cripple the already backwards Malinese. The more pressing question is what happens after that. It's very likely that without metal, we die to Mjmd waddling a stack of skirmishers through our territory. Have I mentioned that skirmishers are just nasty?

I can't help but metagame. I noticed this in the PB63 subforum:


What do we think folks? Is Superdeath acknowledging his insane, self-destructive, utterly unprofitable, completely unprovoked invasion that bailed Mjmd out of the consequences of an insane, self-destructive, utterly unprofitable, completely unprovoked pink dot? Yeah, I don't think so either. Here come the preatorians from Boudica's 3 city empire, baby!

[Charriu]

I wouldn't put so much into metagame. Superdeath is just a force of nature.

[naufragar]

I wouldn't put so much into metagame. Superdeath is just a force of nature.

Why couldn't he have been a force of nature at Tarkac?

[naufragar]

Happy Thanksgiving to those that celebrate. I'm thankful that I don't just have to deal with insane neighbors but also with abysmal RNG. You see, if I only had to deal with 1, I might have to put forth an underdog effort.


Remember how I said the Veilgarden garrison was projected to kill 3-4 chariots on the defense? We killed one. I'm starting to understand the arcane machinery of the universe: Sid loves his holy fools, and the crazier your geopolitics, the better combat RNG you get. Superdeath is the best example, but Mjmd appears to be right on his heels.

Mjmd's first chariot knocked our spear down to 35hp, which is a touch over a 6% result. It is 3 times likelier that the chariot does 0 damage. I'll say that again, the odds of a C1 chariot not even scratching my spear is 22%. I am not nor have I ever asked for good combat luck. I would just like my opponents to not be the luckiest assholes on the planet. What an insane game.

[Rusten]

This looks to have spiraled out of control. I feel bad for leaving you all by yourself, I've just been so busy I haven't read a single thread for weeks.

[naufragar]

This looks to have spiraled out of control. I feel bad for leaving you all by yourself, I've just been so busy I haven't read a single thread for weeks.

No worries. They didn't exactly "spiral." They "Superdeathed."

I opened this turn up to heartbreak and I have no one to blame but myself.


I was away for Thanksgiving and finally got home. While I was traveling, I was using my sad, frail little laptop. (Compare the screen resolution in the previous post to this.) And that laptop struggles to play civ4. So I'm going to blame that computer for the fact that... I forgot to defend The Flit! The spear you see on the road between the two cities should've moved out of the capital and in to The Flit this turn! Even though Mjmd had 2-3 more chariots than expected after his lucky 6% roll, I still should've held the city! I just didn't freaking move a spear I needed to! Oh that's so crushing. I just opened the turn and groaned aloud. No excuse. Here's a point in the game you can point to and say I just played like an absolute idiot. Gah!

The gist is that we lose our horses as well. Man, that's freaking heartbreaking. Lesson learned. Never ever travel while you've got civ turns to play.

[naufragar]

I take back every mean thing I said about Mjmd:


Sure, I still think he's lunatic suicide bomber, but anybody who has the stone cold nuts to look me in the eye and say "Fuck your Pyramids" has my deep respect. I mean this guy really is way behind the other contenders, has pretty much used up his Imp trait, had a possible way of getting back in the game with Pyramids, and he had the steely determination to say no. I'm not being ironic or sarcastic; I mean this. I opened the turn up and said out loud "Holy shit!" Mjmd couldn't have known (and I was deliberately leaving out of my screenshots) the fact that Vanrober was preparing an attack on The Flit as well and likely could've poached the 'mids. The maintenance might've been bad, but Mjmd is Financial and the Pyramids gets you the happiness to work more Financial riverside tiles. (And remember that Mjmd has more green river land than my and Bing's areas combined.) But damn. Nerves of freaking steel. I respect the hell out of it.

[naufragar]

Well, we're now at peace with Mjmd, so nothing interesting to report there. Instead, I have a request for future mapmakers:


Please be very careful with 1 tile islands, and only put them down when there's a reason. A couple people now have Sailing and it's making me think about why. There's probably a similarly sized lake near Superdeath, too.

If Mjmd settles that island, he will increase his net gold gain by 50% at least. This is massive. On this map, only one person gets this increase, which isn't exactly unbalanced. After all, you've got to choose to go for Sailing. But, in keeping with the theme of the map, it is brutal. This is compounded by the fact that one tile islands are virtually impossible to conquer. So, if future map makers want there to be huge, swing-y variance to player's income based on a single tile, fine, but it's a little bit like putting a map's sole gold tile right between two players. Not unbalanced at all, but brutal.

[naufragar]

I have a confession to make. Nothing makes me happier than a little light trolling.


This turn I was about to resettle my copper very sensibly. I was going to just keep on playing a normal game, but then the thought occurred to me: what if I didn't? So I figured I might as well try to give Mjmd a third opportunity to raze Wolfstad.  It's totally possible that this backfires hilariously. Mjmd could found on the tile where his skirmisher is, but I figured, why not?  Oh I so hope I can resettle Wolfstad. It would just tickle me pink. 

Edit: I can't stop laughing at this screenshot. Please oh please let me meme it up.