[PB64] Amicalola Gets To Heaven with Tarkeel and Ljubljana

[Amicalola]

T107 - Amicalola Hates Early Wars
We're fucked. Gavagai got bailed out by some extremely lucky rolls. First we lost an immortal at 70% to take Lenin (no big deal). Then we saw this:


And there's no axeman here! We can attack Gavagai's stack with our 5 spears if he moves up! All we need to do is take out the axe...


Yep. We lost that one too.  

Now Gavagai's stack has an axeman defender (who only took one hit, by the way) against our spears, instead of being totally vulnerable. I guess we retreat and try to hold up. It's difficult to stress how important this roll was. Crazy to think that one 80% loss is the difference between holding Lenin easily, and losing probably even more than that, as Gavagai can now safely fork in three directions. 

[Amicalola]

Well, in the aftermath of Civ4's Most Heroic Axeman, we're currently in a stalemate. I offered Gavagai peace, but he probably shouldn't accept it. That stalemate gets brutally ended when Naufragar rejoins the war. 

To think that statistically, by far the most likely outcome was for us to take and hold Lenin with no issue (while whipping less units than this in the process), leaves a really bitter taste in my mouth. It's not the unluckiest thing to happen to me in Civ4 combat (80% isn't exactly a 99% loss), but it's certainly the most consequential unlikely roll I've experienced. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was the difference between winning and losing in 50-100 turns. To add insult to injury, I attacked his injured axe with a spear at 33% (hoping to afterwards kill it, or a few HAs) - we got a 3% flawless loss. I'm lost for words. 

Will I get over it? Yes - it's a video game. It might take a little while though.

[Mjmd]

Oh, my mistake. I'd forgotten about that too. I am fine with it being accepted (it was intended as a genuine offer), but I can live with it if the other players are not. Should we go with majority opinion? I can provide evidence in my thread that I am not trying to exploit or cheese, rather do what I think is best.

I think this is probably a player decision vs lurker. That being said, yes report please!

[Tarkeel]

I want a report on that :P Sounds like you swung it around again?

[Amicalola]

Short answer: I can't hold them long-term against Gav and they are bankrupting me, so it makes much more sense for both parties to simply exchange them without (more) blood. The peace is really important because I need to be able to hold against Naufragar if/when they attack, and fix my disastrous economy regardless. So in effect it considerably increases my own win % (from 0% -> low%). Whereas I would view cheese/exploitation as something like either 'I cannot win so I will give my cities away to a third party' or as 'I am spiteful at X and kingmaking for Y,' of which this is clearly neither. I'd imagine Nauf is still a strong favourite, but this makes future comebacks possible at least, which is a start.

Long answer will have to wait until I can login.

I had actually offered one city to Gavagai last turn which he'd refused, so I was essentially just trying to barter for peace by increasing the offer. I am, uh, pretty desperate.

[Charriu]

Which cities are we talking about?

[Amicalola]

Kemosabe (the one I just settled on him) and Software Man (the ex-barb city). He would have likely taken both within ~2 turns regardless of the treaty, although Kemosabe would have auto-razed.

[Amicalola]

T113
Ok, so looks like the peace has been accepted by the players. Here are the gifted cities in question:


I had no competitive stack in the area, and Gavagai had massed HA's protected by shock axes, so they were toast either way. 

Am I bitter that an 80% roll cost me three cities, stone, and untold economic damage? I don't want to talk about it anymore.   But it happened so I might as well just accept it and play on from here. The situation is very bad, but not hopeless.  


The big problem: Naufragar is running away with the game. His economy is ludicrously better than everyone else's, he just launched a GA, and he's got 10 cities (2nd most after me, who is too bankrupt to matter). Without this peace, my eastern flank was also wide open to him. The other players do not yet seem to realise this, having still not cancelled OB, which is quite frustrating, although we'll just have to work around it. I sent Gav a 'war with naufragar' peace before the actual one, so perhaps he is convinced (or perhaps he just wanted two cities). Hard to say.  

One thing that is sad to me: I am totally bankrupt, but it is not because of the no-cottage variant. In fact, there is only one city that I would have worked any cottages so far even in a normal game, which is the (non-river) capital. 


The bankruptcy came instead from overexpansion to the south, which was a huge mistake. The barb city in particular was a real poison pill, that did far more harm than good. I do hope this comes across in the reports, although I know the information is quite sparse for these games. It was, at least, a good lesson in overexpansion with regard to distance maintenance, which was the real killer.

Next turn I will talk about the state of the Empire in general, and what my plans are going forth. I think winning from here is extraordinarily unlikely, but still possible, so I should play for it.

[Magic Science]

Please include a culture overview picture of that wacky border region in your general report next turn .

[Hitru]

About bad combat luck: I just need to share this. In pb49 Fintourist, me and OH had the worst luck I have ever seen in any game. We calculated the combined odds for Elkad's 2 defenders ( spear and archer) to hold his cap and they were around 0,0001%. And this was early war, turn 77 to be precise, and we lost around 9 good and costly units at that point of the game, mostly HA. We went on to win that game in any case. If you want to read about our depression and some statistics it starts from page 5 or 6 in our thread .

So even though it feels bad just take a step back, look at the game as it is and do your best from there. You sre still in the running!