[PB72] Bing Thread

[aetryn]

Actually this exposes him strategically. I don't think he had a border with Aetryn before, now he very much does and Aetryn doesn't have a border with me. So Greenline is the only person Aetryn can attack in future. Greenline is also the only person I can attack in future.

This turned out to be a prescient quote indeed...

I didn't realize you had spent over 10000 gold on unit upgrades. That explains how you were able to get such a doomstack in such a short amount of time.

But from a strategic point of view it was very frustrating to play against. You were playing the game against me like a duel. A duel you would have won due to tactical outplays and better unit composition, but from my point of view it was obvious that you were giving Aetryn free reign to get several key techs ahead, finish industrializing, grab Xist's land, and dominate the game. My lead on Aetryn before your buildup was slim at best, and he was going to be the player I would most likely attack.

Do you think you would have had a better shot at victory teching while letting me and Aetryn fight it out?

I have a background playing strategy games that don't have anything like as much emphasis on internal development (dom5, AoW1), so i have so far consistently underrated internal development and the cost of attacking in my civ4 games. i was really surprised that Aetryn got like 4x the gdp than me before attacking, had totally underrated, or rather not even thought about, "I need a corp HQ with Wall street in it". Sorry!

(If I had razed Creation, would the HQ have migrated to one of my established towns?)

Honestly, the vast majority of that GDP was Creative Construction pushing 140 culture a turn in a bunch of cities, but I did keep trying to build up my economy throughout the endgame. I think my tech rate was better but not vastly better until something happened after Physics and it felt like you didn't advance in tech for a LONG time. Was this the unit upgrade costs? (I know what happened to Greenline around that time!)

[aetryn]

I don't think Corp HQs migrate, no. It would just be a corp with no HQ, like there can be religions with no holy city.

This is the reason I called it the "Decaptitation" strategy in my thread, even though I didn't realize that Greenline being in Mercantilism did actually make him immune to having to pay for corps in that scenario and wouldn't have crippled his economy. I was assuming both of you would have a bottomless pit of corp maintenance holding you back.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I keep forgetting that culture is in GNP. Yeah, partly unit upgrades, partly corp spam cost, partly never making Oxford and Wall Street. And never building wealth - interesting to read greenline say my alternative to panick-whipping pikes would've been gold build towards liberalism. Underrating tech advancement is part of my general underrating of internal development.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I also forgot to switch back into Slavery in my last GA turn, but I kinda liked Serfdom too. I had forgotten about the UB effect !

[greenline]

Mass wealth building is a great way to brute force tech in a pinch. It was especially effective for me because I had a lot of hammer heavy cities that could build markets and only a few cottage cities, but any empire can do it once enough cities have built forges. It's very common to do in RtR where early workshops are good and you only tend to have 4-5 cities with pure cottages.

(In the original version of civ 4 building wealth / research / culture was much weaker because modifiers didn't apply, which was changed in BtS for unclear reasons.)

[BING_XI_LAO]

Mass wealth building is a great way to brute force tech in a pinch. It was especially effective for me because I had a lot of hammer heavy cities that could build markets and only a few cottage cities, but any empire can do it once enough cities have built forges. It's very common to do in RtR where early workshops are good and you only tend to have 4-5 cities with pure cottages.

(In the original version of civ 4 building wealth / research / culture was much weaker because modifiers didn't apply, which was changed in BtS for unclear reasons.)

oh... That would explain it. I was remembering the no-bonus for wealth build mechanic from playing vanilla or uh... civ3. A long time ago.

[Qgqqqqq]

Random aside, why is culture still in GDP? Does it serve any purpose being there, besides confusing people? If not, shouldn't we mod it out?

[Mjmd]

That was a well played game. And WOW on the gold upgrades. I was extremely impressed with your power graph and that helps explain some of it, but still great build up. 2 questions

1) did you consider taking your early lead and doing a elephant catapult invasion of Greenline? I figured you would before he got his UU. You had such a dominant early lead but then you stopped expanding. I thought that meant you were going to start warring, but then you did neither.

2) Aetryn and I were getting worried after you took Creation that you would just take most of Greenline. I know you were worried about Aetryn, but for a lot of that time he was stuck in Xist land. Did you think about pushing another layer or two in at least?

[civac2]

Mass wealth building is a great way to brute force tech in a pinch. It was especially effective for me because I had a lot of hammer heavy cities that could build markets and only a few cottage cities, but any empire can do it once enough cities have built forges. It's very common to do in RtR where early workshops are good and you only tend to have 4-5 cities with pure cottages.

(In the original version of civ 4 building wealth / research / culture was much weaker because modifiers didn't apply, which was changed in BtS for unclear reasons.)

Markets do not multiply Wealth builds. Only forge/factory/plants do.

[BING_XI_LAO]

That was a well played game. And WOW on the gold upgrades. I was extremely impressed with your power graph and that helps explain some of it, but still great build up. 2 questions

1) did you consider taking your early lead and doing a elephant catapult invasion of Greenline? I figured you would before he got his UU. You had such a dominant early lead but then you stopped expanding. I thought that meant you were going to start warring, but then you did neither.

2) Aetryn and I were getting worried after you took Creation that you would just take most of Greenline. I know you were worried about Aetryn, but for a lot of that time he was stuck in Xist land. Did you think about pushing another layer or two in at least?

Don't remember why not warele-cata invasion. Probably because I felt like I had expanded well enough I could aim later... but cataphracts meant I had to aim for rifles or later.
Main problem with going further after Creation was the potential for +5 WW capping many of my cities at like 9 effective pop or something hideous.