[PB64] Amicalola Gets To Heaven with Tarkeel and Ljubljana

[pindicator]

I hope this does not come across as patronizing, but try to remember these are long games and often have several highs and lows. I find keeping a steady temperament is a large part of keeping yourself in these games: many times I've only spotted winning plays by keeping my cool (and alternatively, only when a sub has taken over have they spotted a winning line because they were not as emotionally clouded as I).

[Amicalola]

I hope this does not come across as patronizing, but try to remember these are long games and often have several highs and lows. I find keeping a steady temperament is a large part of keeping yourself in these games: many times I've only spotted winning plays by keeping my cool (and alternatively, only when a sub has taken over have they spotted a winning line because they were not as emotionally clouded as I).

That doesn't sound patronising, no. I appreciate most advice that comes my way. And I always enjoy comments in my thread, it's my main motivation for reporting (uh, when I do report, that is). Although I wonder if I explained myself poorly. It's not so much that I'm burnt out of Civ, or sulking about the city, and so on. It's more that I've just had a super busy couple of months, and I'm so tired that even though I'm not as busy now, I haven't been paying as much attention to civ as I normally do. Maybe that's just what being an adult is, though.  

T213
In terms of the game, I'm pretty sure we're chilling for now. I'm saving for Steel (we should be researching already, but I busted 2 turns' savings on Frigates ). Steel should arrive in about 5 turns. There was a game-wide dogpile on Ginger, literally, with us being the only player not to attack him. It damaged him beyond repair, but did not kill him. We re-invaded Naufragar ASAP after the last peace, as is tradition. Meanwhile, Superdeath turned his attention to Gavagai, who he now invades:


You can see Gavagai's main stack in the unit cards. I don't see any way for Gav to stop this barring foreign intervention, so perhaps his end finally arrives. Perhaps that is merciful. 

In our war, we harass Naufragar, and burn the bullshit disputed city between us.   I might resettle here next turn, once Get To Heaven pops 4th ring borders to take the hill. However, I might not do that, because we found his knight stack:


Although Naufragar briefly held Ginger's iron city (leaving us ironless for ~6 turns as we leant Ginger ours  ), I think their war is mostly phony now, so we need to prepare for the brunt of Sumerian forces. To that end, I whacked Naufragar's local navy, and burnt his clams:


This was a great trade for us overall. I'm not sure why Naufragar didn't retreat once he saw I'd done the upgrades. Maybe he missed it, or maybe he underestimated the weight of numbers.   I've definitely made both mistakes before. 

In cities, I am converting farms into watermills until food-neutrality is reached. I'm doing this because I think we need the extra hammers to reach dominance now, and I don't think the game will go long enough to justify lighthouses and leaving the hammer tiles unworked for so many turns. By contrast, in PB59 I'd have worked the coast for the long-term commerce advantage. 


In general, I think Serfdom was indeed the way to play this map. Even I, with so much coast (16/17 cities) am benefitting from it massively now, mainly because of the extra food. As I've said before, it's low-food maps like this where I think Serfdom shines. Ginger also identified this, but was just unlucky enough to get dogpiled by the entire map - we could have been knocked out of the game by the same thing.  

Our demographics are pretty dominant:


It would take a pretty big mistake, or a very committed dogpile, to stop us at this point. Famous last words.  

We make the big bucks:


We also spend the big bucks, with breakeven at ~45%. Whenever this game ends, I have a lot of thoughts on the no cottages variant. It has played out better than I'd hoped in some ways, and worse than I'd hoped in others, but I hope this game proves its viability (or at least that cottages are not the One Right Choice™ that I worry others see). I greatly enjoy that even with Serfdom, our trade routes create more commerce than our tiles. 

Here are our statistics so far. This game has further convinced me that Protective Castles are hidden-OP. 


I'm so tempted to pick Saladin of Spain, if I play another game. 

And here's the domestic advisor. We're mostly building units because this feels like the critical time for the other players to stop us.


One of the biggest problems with Serfdom (the other being 'no whipping') is that your cities are so unspecialised. Like, which of these cities want a bank? All of them? Sort of. They all get decent commerce and enough hammers to knock out a bank in ~10 turns or less. None of them? Sort of. The bank is never that great individually, with even the best cities getting something like +25 gold at 0% science. Compared to a cottage economy, where I could just whip 5 amazing banks and forget the rest, this is pretty grim. It's something I noticed in PB56 and PB58 too, and this game further confirms the problem.

[Mjmd]

I have to admit I was wondering what you were going to do about infrastructure, but I suppose when you have that much production it doesn't' matter as much. Or just build more units instead of silly things like grocers and banks.

[Amicalola]

I have to admit I was wondering what you were going to do about infrastructure, but I suppose when you have that much production it doesn't' matter as much. Or just build more units instead of silly things like grocers and banks.

That would probably be the smart thing, but I never seem to bring myself to do it. Right now all the musket builds hurt already I discovered in PB60 that Protective musketmen are actually pretty legit.

T214
I founded Cherry in No Man's Land. This is not an Everything Everything album, but rather something I've been listening to recently after a friend recommended it. I'd describe it as pretty fun dance music for working out, if anyone here is into that. It uses a lot of loops, but alters them enough to stay interesting. 


I chopped the lumbermill into Walls, and will work the stone until a Castle is finished as well. Then we'll swap to bananas for growth. I'd really like to keep the city this time, because we can only chop that forest once. I hope that the city might be defensible with Walls and the number of pikemen I have inside, although Naufragar might be luring me by leaving some of his knights outside of my sentry vision. We'll find out.

[Amicalola]

T217
Gavagai probably has about 3 turns to live. 


I am deeply uncomfortable with Superdeath gaining this much territory on our border, to the point that I'd really like to intervene. I even offered Naufragar a white peace a few turns ago, with that hope. However, he declined, so there is not much I can do about this for now. 

The Naufragar war has seen zero action on land since we razed his city. However, the fleet is hanging out in Fever Dreams, which is basically a bluff. Ideally, Naufragar will commit troops and ships to his inner sea that I (for now) have no intentions of attacking, without me needing to commit the troops myself. 


However, next turn I am planning to attack Commodore. He is about to finish Astronomy, but doesn't have Paper yet, so he's probably about 5-10 turns away from ocean-going ships. 


I'd love to talk about how this is part of a grand strategic vision, but to be honest I think I mostly just want that 1-tile double-clam island, and this is the last time it's going to be easy to take. I do wish I'd taken the time to plan this properly; if I was playing really well, I'd have a strike force ready to hit Commodore's Big Island now. But I don't, and I'd still rather get the island and fix the border while it's easy. Oops.

In general, my strategy here is just stalling for time. I am definitely outscaling the pack, I just need time to get to the next gen. of military tech before they do.

[Amicalola]

T218
It seems that Commodore realised what I was doing. He sent these two offers:




I interpret this to mean "we can be friends, but if you take Sean, I will attack your island." Now part of me worries that Commodore is going to do that anyway, once he gets Galleons, but another part of me is a coward that wants to avoid it. So we retreated.  


I do wish I was braver about these things. At least this way we (hopefully) continue stalling for time. We have started a couple of drydocks, although not many as we also need to keep building actual ships.


Edit: It's crazy how slooooow this game is progressing. By T218 in PB59, I had whipped factories/coal plants everywhere and was launching my invasion of Superdeath. Tanks were 5 turns away! FWIW, I am finding this speed of tech much more dynamic and interesting, because the players who are behind still have much more opportunity to be relevant. I wonder if we could have some sort of game option for slower tech pace?

[Charriu]

The game progesses so slowly, because this is a normal map and not a super lush RB map

[Amicalola]

The game progesses so slowly, because this is a normal map and not a super lush RB map

Yeah, for sure. There's also been a lot of unproductive warring all over the map, without any major gains for the involved parties. And one contender also managed to bankrupt themself for 50 turns.   But what I mean is that I wonder if there is a way for us to change tech costs in a way that creates a similar tech pace to the one we've seen here in a normal RB game. The tech pace here has been pretty much ideal for the fun aspect of the game, imo (would be curious to see what other players say. You could even ask them? Or I can after the game). Particularly I think the Medieval Era and onwards goes way too fast in our games, having now played in this one.

[Mjmd]

The game progesses so slowly, because this is a normal map and not a super lush RB map

Yeah, for sure. There's also been a lot of unproductive warring all over the map, without any major gains for the involved parties. And one contender also managed to bankrupt themself for 50 turns.

These things.

It has been fun for the lurkers if that matters.

[Amicalola]

These things.

It has been fun for the lurkers if that matters.

It does! 

T219
I build a fort underneath Fever Dreams with 7 workers. Although I was planning to anyway, I think Ginger actually told me to do this in diplo this turn. I guess we can give him the credit.  


We go scouting with a Privateer. Then we forget to take a screenshot, so we go scouting with a second privateer.  


Cistercia is pretty well defended, out of our budget for this attack. 


Dancing Men is not; we storm the beaches and...


 

Late in the turn, I have the issue that despite having 3 more galleons ready to send this turn, we have no relevant units to fill them with. So we upgrade 8 horse archers -> knights for ~1000 gold, and stuff them in too. Here's the complete stack we have in Nauf's territory. 


This was obviously an expensive investment, but I am hoping it proves similar to PB60. In that game, we spent a large sum upgrading troops before a final push, which turned out to be decisive enough to win the game. We will see this game proves similar.

Edit: Oop, I think I forgot to promote one of my frigates.