[PB72 SPOILERS] Aetryn learns humility

[Mjmd]

One of the hardest parts of civ4 multiplayer is the timing for an offensive war. Most games are won or lost on this and people mess this up constantly. The timing on the first attack was triggered by me seeing Xist having 1 axe defending and going to Aetryn "heh finish that skirm in queue and push and see what happens". 1 axe in an exposed intrusive city position is too good to pass up as long as forces are available.

The timing here is basically either you succeed in taking / razing & replacing or you are stuck with it there until cats / crossbows. At that point it will be a much more involved effort. It was almost certainly settled to seal you off from that valley which shows some negative intent toward you. It allows attacks from another vector and threatens an additional city with attack and it controls vision of the entire area. It also is of course a very good city and will either be producing for you or Xist. This will not be a 20 turn offensive war. This will be a 3 turn offensive war. Xist will come after you eventually. Even if he wants to be peaceful eventually you will start looking too strong to ignore. The other nice thing about this offensive war would be you haven't expended much resources on it. Basically 1 whip, 1 chop, and not having a lighthouse done in Humility. I'm not saying it works and I'm aware sunk cost fallacy is a thing, but all you would be expending by at least seeing what the defenses are is 2-5 turns out of borders maintenance cost. There is high upside for just taking a peak and if its too heavily defended you will pay less.

I'm going to address your points real fast some in relation to this situation and some in a more general thoughts.

1) One of the reasons I like expanding like a banshee is that it is much easier to defend than attack at this stage of game, so getting key city sites. Not really applicable here other than that maybe we both should have wanted to stay at war until we got the first time around.
2) I agree, but again you won't be spending much on this attempt and long term it means 1 good city less of praet production, which will massively help your economy going forward. Also, you will probably free up some unit upkeep! (again if it looks too risky just turn around)
3) That city sucks for your defense as stated previously. The location threatens multiple attack vectors and the vision is very good.
4) One can hope!

[aetryn]

Well, one thing I'm pretty clear on at this point is that I shouldn't play another one of these. Not wanting to declare war and thinking about it has just overtaken far too much of my thought the last few days. Give me a sim or a calculation or analysis any time, those are fun and I can put them out of my mind whenever I want. This has interfered with my prayer life and there's really no call for something that's supposed to be for fun and idle entertainment to do that. I'm not going to bail or anything, but it's pretty clear this is crossing a line it shouldn't cross.

I ended up just consolidating the stack and switching the cities to non unit builds. But they don't actually have anything productive to build, because my science has been so terrible that I don't have any of the normal things unlocked to build. So I really don't know what to do with them. I put some of them on workers but I don't actually have enough for my current workers to do. At this point this game has gone totally off the rails and pretty confused as to what to do next. Eh, I'll try to get it more organized in the next couple days.

[Mjmd]

Ya, as I had told you before I've lost sleep before over these games. It can definitely suck you in. I don't anymore, but I don't know how to teach that. Play how you are comfortable.

With low happy cap currently plains river cottages and grassland hill tiles aren't bad to start working on. If you want to focus on more math related things figure out combinations of tiles at cities for increments of 4 production. Since going for MC and Mints don't be shy about growing into unhappy. That unhappiness will be whipped away soon enough. Faith specifically wants lots of pop because will want to start working an engineer after finish mint. With Colossus mint and then eventually a library will probably GA to currency.

[shallow_thought]

Some of us find MP very mentally tough. Every time I'm tempted to play again, I ask my wife what she thinks: she reminds me how miserable I was for large parts of PB40 - and I was on the winning team. It's probably possible to acclimatise, but starting next to Aggressive Rome lead by a player who's so keen on violence he starts pressing before Iron is not an ideal start. All I can say is that it's not just you.

[El Grillo]

Agreed, I do wish there was a way to get the best parts of MP Civ without the steep costs in time and mental attachment, because Pitboss MP is just not for me either. I think the closest I've gotten is playing board games like Power Grid and Through the Ages that let me think in something close to the Civ mindset, but only take a few hours.

[Commodore]

I'll be sad if this is your last, enjoying your thread here.

[aetryn]

T85-89: Give peace a chance?

So I sent Xist Fish-for-Fish on T84 instead of moving out, and he sent back an Open Borders offer. After some initial fumbling with the interface (seriously, everyone needs to copy Old World and allow undoing of misclicks, especially inconsequential ones) caused me to accidentally reject this, I sent it back and he accepted. But despite having a connection that lets us see and trade resources, neither of us is getting trade routes. I think this is because the route isn't fully unfogged, or maybe it hasn't updated or something. Anyway, Xist has a worker building a road so we'll soon have a connection. This suggestions that he's interested in peaceful relations for now, at least. No guarantees for later, obviously. My reading is that his economy isn't very strong either, and he maybe thinks we should be helping each other out before Bing runs away with the game instead of locking horns and killing each other. Obviously this can change in a hurry if the board state changes.

Also, I had read in the demographics increases that he had 4 Praetorians built (and attacking into that was probably not going to work). My dedlurker thought he had one or maybe two at the most, but look at this:




Maybe he can only bring 3 of these on defense if I had attacked, since the 4th is still moving into position. Still, I'm glad I did not attack into this. And who knows, maybe the 5% chance of peace will work and we can somehow organize a dogpile on Bing.

Demos:


Did I mention that Bing is running away with the game? :P

Meanwhile, my secret weapon is close to evolving to its next form:



5 or 6 more turns to grow and then will work triple silver. And maybe finish Moai statues in 25 turns or so. At this point, I want Colossus just for the amusement of making this ridiculous iceball that happens to have a ton of coastal lakes even better.

[Mjmd]

 My dedlurker thought he had one or maybe two at the most, but look at this:

Heh that pic is from 4 turns after you would have attacked! It will be interesting to see after the game what forces would have been there. 

I find it funny that the trade route will run through his razed city.

[aetryn]

 My dedlurker thought he had one or maybe two at the most, but look at this:

Heh that pic is from 4 turns after you would have attacked! It will be interesting to see after the game what forces would have been there. 

I find it funny that the trade route will run through his razed city.

Well, I can't tell where they were, but those were all built by like Turn 80-1. Also, none of them have promotions beyond his free Combat I, so he has not built Barracks, or at least not very many.

[Mjmd]

It looks like 1 no the move and at least 1 in stack are glowing blue? Indicating they do have a promotion available; good thing to keep note of.