[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[luddite]

We're getting close. I offered Luddite OB this turn. I think he'll reject because he won't benefit from them. If so, next turn I'll offer it with Copper attached and see if that persuades him. We've been very fortunate where I've thought I was at a dead end 3 times, and then careful fog-gazing has always made it clear that there's a bit more to follow. There's a million islands here which is phenomenal news for us long-term.

Man, you really did a good job with early scouting and demos! That's amazing. I think you knew my land and situation better than I did. And it's funny that this OB deal ended up such a big deal, giving you the circumnav bonus that lead to a critical tactical advantage for you. IIRC, I barely thought about this at all, I just clicked yes by reflex and then thought briefly "Oh yeah, this might be a bad deal to give OB for nothing" but I was too preoccupied with my war situation with Mr Cairo to really think about it much.

Also, you're copper gift absolutely saved my ass in this game. Plus the luxury deals (Oxy helped me there too).

[luddite]

Yeahhhhh... There's a reason the Civil Service Slingshot was about the biggest Civ4 controversy around pre-BtS, and moving it up to T0 really breaks things. Keeping pace with Joao of Inca with Mansa with a worse capital while also building enough units to raze two cities... It's sort of funny looking back that I called CS a "sleeper pick" in my first post. It just took me one test-run with it to rocket it to the top of my list. I really wonder if anyone else tried it. I literally just rolled a random start and played 40-50T super casually 3 times - once with CS, once with Steam Power, and once with nothing. It took me like an hour. The gap was enormous.

Yeah, you had some sick demos there! and that's despite having the #3 capital. I feel like I didn't really put much thought into CS because I had a vague memory of it being something of a noob trap in early Civ4. The Civil Service Slingshot was good but it wasn't *that* good, you know? But of course that's playing normally, not having it from turn 0. And your awesome capital, plus spi/fin made it even better.

Only question I have is, I wonder what your demos would have looked like with musketeers showing up on your doorstep around turn 50  ?

[GT]

While I'd have loved to watch this game getting another 30+ turns, I think the eventual inability from Oxy to hurt your economy enough AND you killing his capital decided the game, even if luddite would have realized that you should have been the player to attack, not oxy, to prolong the war. I assume you had some basic scouting against Luddite, and a few ships would have been enough to stop anything he could send at you. Artillery and still-superior SAM troops wouldn't even make a landing with you holding total naval supremacy. So, overall, I think the time where they conceded was correct, and you're absolutely the earned winner here. Congratulations

[Cyneheard]

Yeahhhhh... There's a reason the Civil Service Slingshot was about the biggest Civ4 controversy around pre-BtS, and moving it up to T0 really breaks things. Keeping pace with Joao of Inca with Mansa with a worse capital while also building enough units to raze two cities... It's sort of funny looking back that I called CS a "sleeper pick" in my first post. It just took me one test-run with it to rocket it to the top of my list. I really wonder if anyone else tried it. I literally just rolled a random start and played 40-50T super casually 3 times - once with CS, once with Steam Power, and once with nothing. It took me like an hour. The gap was enormous.

Yeah, you had some sick demos there! and that's despite having the #3 capital. I feel like I didn't really put much thought into CS because I had a vague memory of it being something of a noob trap in early Civ4. The Civil Service Slingshot was good but it wasn't *that* good, you know? But of course that's playing normally, not having it from turn 0. And your awesome capital, plus spi/fin made it even better.

Only question I have is, I wonder what your demos would have looked like with musketeers showing up on your doorstep around turn 50  ?

Start 3 was arguably better than Start 2 for the CS opener - because the 4H stone tile is in the inner ring. T50 Musketeers would've been a problem; GLH would've become axes instead and we'd hope that like 5 axes could take out 2 Musketeers.

[luddite]

I'm still curious about the state of the war with you. Do you think you had enough ground units to hold Shiv? And was that your only source of copper if you did lose it?

[T-hawk]

The game is still up, right? You could play it out at Shiv anyway to see how it goes.

[scooter]

Ah, I didn't realize you had Military Science! That is a big deal. Funnily enough, I did a thread once at civ fanatics (my account name there is pi-r8: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/a...sh.506511/) where I showed a military science rush vs the AI. But that didn't occur to me you were that far ahead in tech.

Out of curiousity, how long would it have taken you to get ironclads from here? The numbers in this game really throw off my game sense. Friggin 100 AD chemistry...

Oh yeah, surviving long enough to complete MilSci was my goal - I felt if I could hold off that long, I would start to turn the tides. Oxy was basically tech-off, and while my economy was massively damaged, it was still moving with FIN/GLH and a whole continent to myself + islands. Basically I was upgrading Zerks -> Grenadiers and my first Ship of the Lines were getting whipped right now, which was my plan to start whittling down his Frigates. If you read back a page or two you’ll see my gold for GPT offer was used to upgrade to two Grenadiers.


I’m not sure about Ironclads, but that wasn’t really something I was super worried about overall. My issue was Oxy just spammed so many Frigates that I could never build enough to fight Frigates-on-Frigates, but if I could get SOTL out, I could start taking fights. In general my tech rate was gonna depend heavily on how long the Oxy war took.

I see. In that case, I have to say I would have liked to see your war with Oxy go on a bit longer. I still think you would have *probably* won, but in my experience frigates vs SOTL is surprisingly closer than you'd expect. Especially when he still had a production advantage. But of course that depends on him being able to actually afford his units and not go on strike.

Did you have any plans to sneak attack me, or were you just fully focused on Oxy?

It definitely could have gone on longer, but keep in mind I didn't have to conquer Oxy. My advantages over him were more permanent. FIN/SPI are late-game traits, while Exp/Imp were mostly not useful anymore. GLH was still alive, while Colossus was obsolete. The only "permanent" edges he had (Pyramids/Kremlin) were deleted. And now I had better tech on both land and sea, and he was losing enormous amounts of gold at 0% science, while I was still comfortably in the green. In addition, this is Vanilla Civ4 war weariness, and Oxy had captured 3 cities and burned like 3 more and done enormous fighting in my borders, so he was likely crippled by WW. Also I had a core of green cottage spam FIN cities while his cities that I could see mostly went Workshops. He went all-in on defeating me and just didn't quite get over the hump. It was close though - I think it was a good bet from him.


So, it would have been totally valid for me to expel his army and settle the rest of my continent, get Steel, and then dare him to try to rebuild and come at me again, except next time without Kremlin + Police State to out-produce me. If you noticed, he had more or less stopped whipping, and I'm guessing that's because he could no longer afford to do so between WW and being on the brink of strike.


Finally, nah, I saw no need to ever attack you. In my mind, you would have to attack me, but you were very unlikely to ever get the tech to do so.

We're getting close. I offered Luddite OB this turn. I think he'll reject because he won't benefit from them. If so, next turn I'll offer it with Copper attached and see if that persuades him. We've been very fortunate where I've thought I was at a dead end 3 times, and then careful fog-gazing has always made it clear that there's a bit more to follow. There's a million islands here which is phenomenal news for us long-term.

Man, you really did a good job with early scouting and demos! That's amazing. I think you knew my land and situation better than I did. And it's funny that this OB deal ended up such a big deal, giving you the circumnav bonus that lead to a critical tactical advantage for you. IIRC, I barely thought about this at all, I just clicked yes by reflex and then thought briefly "Oh yeah, this might be a bad deal to give OB for nothing" but I was too preoccupied with my war situation with Mr Cairo to really think about it much.

Also, you're copper gift absolutely saved my ass in this game. Plus the luxury deals (Oxy helped me there too).

I wondered about the Copper! I definitely tried to help you initially to keep Cairo from running away, and then later because I wanted your trade routes, so I basically tried to always give you what you wanted unless it was just not doable. Also the OB was valuable because I ran two Great Merchant missions to your cities - not sure if you noticed or not!

I'm still curious about the state of the war with you. Do you think you had enough ground units to hold Shiv? And was that your only source of copper if you did lose it?

If Oxy didn't have another wave on his boats, then yes I was going to hold. If he had a bunch more, maybe it would have been close? But I'm guessing he did not because 1) I just didn't think his soldier count was high enough for that, and 2) well he conceded so I figure that's my answer.

Technically was my only source, at least until re-settling Yuris' Copper, but also didn't really have a use for Copper at that stage of the game. I'm building Knights/Grens/Frigs/SOTL. That said, Shiv was my Heroic Epic city and a canal into my core underbelly, so yeah it was my second most important city. Losing it was probably GG. My Galleon mobility + fort spam saved it.

[scooter]

The game is still up, right? You could play it out at Shiv anyway to see how it goes.

Yeah I'd love to look around in-game from Oxy's POV. Let me take a bunch of screenshots of the final gamestate, and once that's done I'll post my password in-thread if either of you wanna look around.

[Erasmas]

Congrats! Yes it seems your starting tech / civ was the best (well Communism also turned out pretty good) but you played a masterful game, first in capitalizing on it and then in the wars. Great game!

[scooter]

Alright, let's do a little empire tour.





First off, a refresher on the battlefield. Worth noting there's only like 7ish healthy units in this stack, and he lacks a Medic3 to heal, so this was going to be an issue without reinforcements. He was not going to be able to get odds either, as my full health Knights alone were going to get defensive odds for the most part, not to mention the few full health Guerilla Muskets I had that could take a few wins themselves quite easily, plus the full health Pikes were going to clear some Knights out on defense. This stack was going to get several more Grens on my turn too. Let's look at some cities, starting with Shiv itself.





Whipping away like 6-8 pop for Grens the last couple turns was brutal but had to be done. I had enough overflow for another though, plus the highlighted GG Warrior I screwed up the previous turn. The fact that this city was on a hill saved my game.





The crown jewel. Missing some important infrastucture, but it's been on either Wealth to fuel my tech to Chem/MilSci or units non-stop for like 3 months, so is what it is. This Gren was going to be ferried into Shiv.





Kendall was whipped pretty hard despite having an only OK food surplus. It was definitely one of the cities feeling it the hardest by the end. However, notice it's not happy constrained at all. My really strong luxury access after conquering Yuris gave me a ton of juice, and it's part of why I had more left in the tank for this war in a way it sounds like Oxy did not.





Connor was whipped slightly less hard because it had strong natural production which I leaned on initially, but it was suffering near the end. Forting over the Horse Pasture hurt, but it was a necessary evil. (I was planning to re-fort the plains soon - just needed to protect my workers from Oxy.) In general the forting/Galleon ferrying between Connor and Shiv was incredibly intense every turn and very satisfying. I was constantly having to guess how many units he had on boats and therefore determine how much to leave in Connor. By the end I was starting to live more dangerously, but that was easier to do when his whole army was on land.





Gerri did work in this game for me. That food surplus meant I could just whip whip whip. I never did finish the Forge because every unit felt so desperate. The missing Barracks is less crazy as I used Gerri as a naval pump up until the last few turns. Basically I designated a few cities as navy and skipped the Barracks as a result.





Another one that was really important - remember this area was pure jungle when I conquered Yuris and agreed to the 25T NAP. That means during this time I chopped this jungle, built all those improvements/roads, got a Granary/Barracks, and then whipped like 7ish Knight out of it. Super critical city plant.





One that had not paid off yet, but was just coming online end of game. The seafood here is hilarious. 15F surplus after Lighthouse and netted Fish, so my plan here was to get those up and then just whip navy here forever. I was just a few turns away from mass SOTL whips.





Speaking of, first one had just rolled off the line. I had kept a few units in my Yurisland cities just to deter any cheap kills from Oxy. I really wasn't sure how much to keep up there honestly.

Oxy, did you ever consider wheeling north and conquering up here?





Demo screen. Worth noting these demos are pretty good relative to Oxy while down 6 cities to him. I was hoping at some point to do a settling spree to sort of close things out if I ever got the breathing room. Some shots to show what I mean.





Re-settle the two spots he razed and this red dot I never got around to.





This other spot he razed that was a useful but non-essential filler.





Ehh Green is a little marginal, but maybe.





Re-settle Tom, settle yellow, plus some south pole islands appealed, not to mention Australia next to it that Oxy was able to control thanks to his Frigates. More importantly my east island was all emptied out, and I was hoping to recapture that.





Here's my core, really Gren-focused right now as the land battle was what I was desperately trying to win. You can see my Galleons all spaced out to ferry from all directions. That Musket up by the Horse/Gold for example came from Karl the previous turn, and would likely be ferried into Shiv this turn. The important thing here is on any given turn, any land unit can move from one of these cities to another with Galleons. That made it way easier to defend - I knew any whipped unit within here was going to be in the most critical city the next turn.





My Jungle/Yuris core that really powered me during the war. You'll notice the Knight builds. That's because a two mover could make it from any of these cities into any core city in 1T too. So if Kerry or even Lukas whip a Knight on Turn X, it's in Shiv on Turn X + 1.

Meanwhile even Hugo was able to help. What I was doing was whipping 1-mover defenders up there - stuff like Muskets. I would shuffle them all down 3 tiles at a time. So a whipped unit in Hugo would move into Karolina, which freed up a unit in Karolina to shuffle SW-SW-W, which freed up a unit to move south, and so on. I had to defend those Jungle cities because Oxy had that annoying 3-move Knight out there somewhere. I finally got sick of it and built that Explorer up there whose job was to monitor the coastline.





Finally, an example of what I've been working on for defense. I had 9 workers in this area up until this past turn, and a Fort costs 10 turns, so I was pre-forting everywhere possible. I finally got workers 10-11 into here this past turn. But this was my main defense strategy. Oxy could pillage Forts pretty easily, so I needed to constantly be able to open up extra paths. If my Forts ever went down, my huge empire-wide reinforcement routes discussed above would all collapse instantly. One of the scariest turns was when Oxy removed the Forts on the plains tiles which is what caused me to really commit to the mass pre-forting.

The other issue is it was important not to actually lose my workers. I could not afford to build more, so if I ever lost a bunch of them, my ability to rebuild Forts was gone. So that also motivated prebuilds as it meant I could risk fewer workers to complete a Fort.





Not pictured: 10 Longbows.


Anything else you'd like to see?