Cheater Hater, Ruler of the Modbreakers

[Cheater Hater]

T82 Update:
Now that I lost the stone city, I've lost my will to update a bit--my GNP's also starting to tank a bit again :/
Still, you guys deserve some kind of an update, so here it is--and it's kinda weird; it's in the update "list" format, but I still need domestic pictures since there's a lot happening:

• I founded Rath (the silver city) this turn, even though I'm not sure I should have--the maintenance is large, and my break-even tech rate is down to 30%--in addition, even though I have four workers headed south to improve the deer and silver, that still will take a couple turns (mainly since I'm losing a lot of worker turns due to all the forests--I think I only lose 4 more worker turns if I'm smart with roading, but combined with the 4 I lost this turn, that's still a lot)--and don't forget I also have to start chopping a lot of forests at the same time for Hanging Gardens!
  As such (combined with a couple more cities likely bankrupting me), I'm planning on some workers as we wait for the happy cap to increase--Zendikar starts one as soon as it grows for sure, I'm not sure where else, since I'm not sure the exact timescale I'll get my silver connected. Let's see if I can figure it out--in spoiler tags of course for those who don't care:
  
  T83: ABC chop, D moves to deer
  T84: D roads deer, AB road current, C moves 1S and roads
  T85: D/C road, A moves to silver, B moves to deer and starts camp
  T86: A roads silver, B/D/C camp deer (don't think it finishes due to tundra)
  T87: A roads, B/D/C finish camp/start mine
  T88: Mine finishes, rest move SW towards fur
  
  It looks like the mine completes T88, which means my cities can't grow into unhappiness before that turn. I think I might end up building another worker in Tarkir along with Zendikar, but I'm not sure. Is there such a thing as too many workers at this stage of the game?
  
• I'm starting the path to the Hanging Gardens--the Aquaduct should complete next turn with the chop, but without the stone, Hanging Gardens is going to take 20 turns of base production! Of course, that will improve with the chops, as well as with the city growing, but that's surprisingly long. I mean, it's certainly worth building, but that's slower than I would have liked, and I'm risking losing it. In addition, as I mentioned, I still need to find the workers for those chops. If I can land it in the T95-100 range I'll be happy.
  
• Whosit's starting to build up again--you can see all the units in Prairie Garden. My power ranking's starting to recover (I'm in the top 20 now), but I still need to finish these builds, finish Archery, and get some Archers out so I can get my cities defended while consolidating my axes into an attack force once I get catapults (I think I need Currency before I head for Construction, but it's coming soon at least).
  
• My GNP's not very good--as I mentioned, I'm break-even at 30%--but it's not horrible, since I'm getting around the same surplus at 0% as I did when I was starting Math at 0%, and I've added two cities since then.
  
• I'm starting to run out of good builds, unless I want a lot more military (and when you consider I want a round of archers in a couple turns, I'm not sure how many more axes and impis I need)--that's the main reason I started a library in Zendikar. I wasn't sure whether I wanted an Ikhanda or a Library there, but I figured I'd have more commerce there than production.
  
• I got FinHarry's graphs this turn--the full pictures are in the dropbox, but the summary is that I'm better in production, they're better in everything else
  
• Lots of cities this turn--Krill/novice and FinHarry are both up to 9, and dtay's up to 11th--seriously, how is he not on strike at this point? I mean, I assume he got at least one hut tech, and his land's much better than mine, but how did he get to Currency by this point? And if he hasn't, he has to be going on strike considering his city count and power ranking (unit count).
  

[Ceiliazul]

you lost stone city... temporarily. dont give up.

[Cheater Hater]

you lost stone city... temporarily. dont give up.

I know--honestly, it probably would have just put me further into bankruptcy than I already am--by the time I get Currency and Construction and get a bunch of catapults I should be able to afford it (partially because I'll need to spend a lot of units to actually take cities, getting those units off the books )

Still, how do I balance building enough units so I stand a chance against Whosit and not going into strike in the process? If we assume I'm going to go Currency->Construction->build a bunch of cats->attack, how many "other" units do I need? Right now, once the current builds complete, I have 4 Axes, 3/4 Impis, and 1 Chariot--if I build ~4 Catapults, is that good enough to make any inroads to Whosit's cities? Part of this is determining how far Whosit will get on the tech tree--he has archers, copper and horses, but if he gets cats himself, things will certainly get more difficult.

[Ceiliazul]

Still, how do I balance building enough units so I stand a chance against Whosit and not going into strike in the process? If we assume I'm going to go Currency->Construction->build a bunch of cats->attack, how many "other" units do I need? Right now, once the current builds complete, I have 4 Axes, 3/4 Impis, and 1 Chariot--if I build ~4 Catapults, is that good enough to make any inroads to Whosit's cities? Part of this is determining how far Whosit will get on the tech tree--he has archers, copper and horses, but if he gets cats himself, things will certainly get more difficult.

In general, the best deterrent is a standing army bigger than the other guy. The best alternative to that is slavery civic and a high population.

Whether any given army is 'enough' depends completely on what whosit does... if he starts slaving into the ground, your listed forces is probably not enough. If he leaves slavery, or perhaps gets attacked by someone else, the force you listed is enough for a couple cities. If you go to the trouble to tech construction though, why wouldn't you build way more catapults?

[Cheater Hater]

Still, how do I balance building enough units so I stand a chance against Whosit and not going into strike in the process? If we assume I'm going to go Currency->Construction->build a bunch of cats->attack, how many "other" units do I need? Right now, once the current builds complete, I have 4 Axes, 3/4 Impis, and 1 Chariot--if I build ~4 Catapults, is that good enough to make any inroads to Whosit's cities? Part of this is determining how far Whosit will get on the tech tree--he has archers, copper and horses, but if he gets cats himself, things will certainly get more difficult.

In general, the best deterrent is a standing army bigger than the other guy. The best alternative to that is slavery civic and a high population.

Whether any given army is 'enough' depends completely on what whosit does... if he starts slaving into the ground, your listed forces is probably not enough. If he leaves slavery, or perhaps gets attacked by someone else, the force you listed is enough for a couple cities. If you go to the trouble to tech construction though, why wouldn't you build way more catapults?

I'll be honest, I don't know what "a lot" is--if it's not 4, is it 14? 40? 104?
I just mentioned 4 as like "this is one round of cats, then I'll start attacking", not "I'm only going to build 4 cats for the whole invasion". Then again, I haven't really fought a war with siege as a primary component--I know you have to expect to lose some to get some collateral, and that's more useful generally then bombarding city defenses, but I'm afraid of having to sacrifice so many and then losing to a counter-attack somewhere else--or someone else realizing my power just tanked and attacking me as a result.

On a related note, I know I'm going to have to slave a bunch of my cities in order to produce my army in a reasonable timeframe--is there any way to balance getting that fresh production and not leaving my cities in a population hole and/or swamped in unhappiness? I know that Hanging Gardens is certainly going to help somewhat with the former, and presumably I'll have more happiness to work with since I won't be whipping that much until Construction comes in and I'll have three more happiness resources (and then I'll have 2-3 extra happiness from my Markets--can't forget that ), but if I plan on keeping any of my winnings, I have to have some economy to give in the short term.

[Cheater Hater]

T84 Report/Update/Thingy:
Apparently someone doesn't want this to happen--I've been busy all week (blame SGDQ, among other things ), and when I wanted to report this game, PBEM 58 took over, first by running two turns a day after B4ndit died, then I had to go into full war reporter and start updating over there again




First of all, you may notice something that's missing--look at the right-hand side
That's right, my score's finally off the screen
At least I'll be getting a new computer soon--the computer's actually here, I just need a monitor solution (which won't come for a couple weeks at least). Until then I have to keep giving updates using the portal: I'm 7th place now, right above German Joey (so I'm just off the top right now). Of course, the annoying part is that my portion of the world seems to have two of the best people (including the overall leader) along with no real bottom-feeders (even Whosit, who I'm assuming I'm just going to bulldoze over in the near-future, is just bad for the high standards of this grouping--compare him to a Barry Lyndon (note: he doesn't own the Hindu holy city anymore ) or someone in the Caledorn/HAK range that's been stuck there for a while).

Anyway, the reason I went into that sidebar is that there still isn't much to talk about domestically--I'm getting a bunch of growths at EOT, some builds are completing, I'm doing more tile shuffling (notably the pigs went to Tarkir for exactly one turn, then they'll boost Zendikar's worker) and I completely screwed up my worker micro by Rath (I forgot the tundra affects both the chop and all my roads, but I brought another worker along to compensate--still, that led to more wasted turns ), but still, nothing that's that important.

Now to some demo analysis, since I skipped it last turn:


Things are okay here--I'm actually right in the middle of the soldier rankings if you discount the lurker civ for instance, and my GNP's a higher rank than it was when I last turned off science.


And yet that middle rank still puts me at the bottom of our little grouping




Surprisingly, things are better here, even in the GNP graph--dtay's still scarily high, but I've gone over that way too many times to count.

[Cheater Hater]

T86 Report:
*sigh* I feel like I'm in a "down" period of my civ playing, likely because of a combination of the beginning of the end in PBEM 58 and my GNP tanking here--and of course, considering I'm in a war in 58 and trying to not lose worker turns here, this is when I should be at my most attentive--oh well
Also, the turn split mess is sapping my will as well--I mean, I handled my first unofficial turn split well, and Whosit seems like he has a wide period he can play just like me, but I'm still worried--what's going to happen if, for instance, the hypothesized me+Krill/novice vs dtay war happens? And of course, the ripple effect it, as well as other reloads (I'm assuming GermanJojo is in either a war himself, or more likely in a wonder race for the still-conspicuously unclaimed Pyramids) have on the turn pace also is a problem--I mean, I'm trying to be as agreeable as possible (remember back when the phantom citizen delayed everything of mine for a turn?), but I also don't want to the game to end due to either turn pace concerns or people getting hindered (fairly or unfairly) due to a ruling in one direction or another.

That was a long diatribe--now to domestic overview!




I did end up founding the furs city this turn (still unnamed since I'm out of "easy" MTG plane names, and I think I was blocking someone so I didn't want to spend more time than necessary in the game)--I thought about waiting a turn to found it (since I couldn't start improving it until next turn), but after seeing Rath cost less than 3 GPT in maintenance and furs would be both cheaper and get two GPT back from working the lake/the clams, I decided to take the risk and found it--it ended up only costing 1 GPT overall, so it ended up being a good investment. Of course, the new question is how many more cities I'm going to found before Hanging Gardens completes--the whales city will be a very cheap city, but where is that city coming from? The Zendikar settler will complete before Hanging Gardens (even considering I'm putting one more chop into it), but I don't think it'll get down to the whales in time--I think that settler's actually headed for the NW rice city! That's a city I need to make sure I can afford first though, though it will be able to grow quickly by borrowing Tarkir's corn (probably for the long term, until the borders pop and I hook up one of the seafood at the very least), and it has a lot of water to become self-sustaining quickly. I think the plan for whales is to start building the settler in Ravnica next turn and 2-pop whip it as normal. Actually, what I could do with that settler is have it settle the wheat filler city instead--that city will be really cheap, and it also can sustain itself from all the lake tiles.

Not much else is happening at least--unfortunately I think the silver will be hooked up on T89, a turn later than I thought--I'm only 1 worker turn short too
I also have more military completing, and my power's getting better--the question is when I should attack, not if at this point. The problem is that Whosit is matching me lockstep--you can see Prairie Garden has five units in it--but that power isn't evenly distributed:


Yeah, Plano doesn't have much in/around it--there's only a single axe guarding the workers on the quarry, and other than that, I can't see any other units. My plan is to sneak that Impi in that little gap to do some more scouting--both in Whosit's other cities I can see, as well as possibly getting some more info on how Krill/novice and/or anyone else to the west is doing--the problem with that is that I don't want to lose a valuable Impi on the other side of Whosit's borders--I might be able to save it with a Galley, but I'm not sure I can if Plano expands borders.

I'll post the demos, but I don't know how much analysis I'll do--I'm tired and in the "down" period as mentioned above:






Not much new here--my GNP stinks, my production is awesome, my score is still off the screen (though tied with people on the screen before I founded the furs), and someone has a size 9 city. Also, Krill/novice and FinHarry are both up to 10 cities (FinHarry for a couple turns I think), and dtay is up to 12--for comparison, I just founded city 9 and am almost bankrupt

[Cheater Hater]

T87 Report:
Of course, as soon as I write that, my mood on this game turns around, mainly due to one piece of diplo (my first all game in fact ):


Yes, this means FinHarry already has Alphabet. Yes, accepting this means I'm likely helping one of the leaders skyrocket even farther ahead. No, I really don't care about that, for reasons you'll see as we move to the domestic overview:




Yes, that did more than double my net commerce--I suppose that's what happens when you replace the 1 commerce trade route in each of my cities with a 3 commerce trade route
Seriously, this has changed my outlook on new cities substantially. Not only am I sure I can stretch and settle the rice city, I don't think I'm going to choose between the whales and the filler city--I think I can have them both! The plan for this is to slow down Hanging Gardens slightly by not chopping the last forest (so it'll take 9-10 turns, since it'll grow onto a plains forest/mine), and then I'll get the last settler out of Lorwyn with a combination of the standard 2-pop whip and chopping the grassland forest.

On a related note, now that we're starting diplo, I just realized that none of my neighbors could have Currency yet, since I can't trade gold with anyone

Anyway, other than my net commerce doubling, not that much happened this turn. I finished both an axe and an archer, and am moving those around (notably getting another unit in Tarkir just in case the axe guarding those workers gets any ideas). Ravnica grew, so I started the settler there, and will 2-pop whip in 4 turns. I also started a Ikhanda in Mirrodin, which I'll whip in three turns when it grows (same time I'll whip Zendikar's settler--maybe this will push me back in view of my scoreboard? ). Finally, the worker in Tarkir will finally finish at EOT--next there is a Lighthouse, but I do need more workers soon to keep up with my sudden expansion. No clue where I'm going to get them though--Lorwyn, Ravnica, Mirrodin, and Zendikar all need to recover from upcoming whips, Tarkir is still crippled from the last round of whips, Kamigawa wants an Ikhanda soon since it's at the far-reaches of my empire, and Theros should be focused on using its Ikhanda to build military. I think the plan is to get the workers out of Theros and Kamigawa when they approach their happy caps, but I think they both have one more size to grow (silver+furs is +2 happy, but the Hanging Gardens growth takes one of those immediately--and before you ask, the whales won't be hooked up for a while, since I need a border pop first.

While I'm thinking of it, I need to figure out my long-term tech plans. Now that I finally realize that I'm not that behind with regard to Currency, I feel like I'm on a reasonable tech pace. Obviously the plan is to finish Currency (14 turns away at 50%, which is currently sustainable at -5 GPT), and at that point I need to decide if warring with Whosit is a reasonable proposition. If it is, I obviously continue with my Construction plans, and then I might decide to go on to Iron Working, Horseback Riding, or maybe Metal Casting. If I don't, I need to decide whether I continue bolstering my GNP (by moving to Code of Laws) or giving myself more sources of happiness (which could take many forms--Construction and Metal Casting are more generally useful, Calendar and Mediation->Priesthood->(Polytheism)->Monarchy are focused primarily on happiness. Of course, the "fun" path involves going wonder-hunting with Aesthetics, but I don't think that's realistic--the wonder I probably want most (other than the "due to fall any second" Pyramids) is probably either Mausoleum or Colossus, and both of those I'll get naturally without going out of my way.

Now that I'm off-topic, I might as well stay there--I was looking at the mod changelog to check if Colossus was nerfed in this mod (it wasn't; I think that was TOW), and came up with a lot of things to think about:

• I think I've only seen one event this whole time, and none have happened to me--was the event rate reduced overall, is it appearing reduced since the same number of events are spread over so many more civs, or am I just unlucky?
  
• The slavery nerf hasn't really changed how I play that much--I thought I'd be doing more hammer-efficient 1-pop whips, but I haven't, and have still been mainly using 2-pop whips.
  
• Obviously I haven't been using Ikhandas to expand my borders much--technically Theros is, but Theros didn't really need to expand its borders. Of course, a lot of that was related to the problems that resulted from using libraries to expand my borders in PBEM 58, and the lessons learned from that.
  

Back on topic, let's do demo analysis!


Hooray for international intercontinental trade routes! My GNP isn't horrible anymore--and if I go up to 50% research, I'm even up to 20th (19th discounting the lurker civ, just below average). My soldiers are also recovering--though I'm still not doing the best there:


Maybe my best hope here is to keep up my standing army, eventually pass dtay (and heck, I might have already passed him unit-wise considering he likely has more population, and maybe a power tech more than me), and then Whosit decides to attack him since he's clearly dominating us:




As so. Don't forget that from Whosit's perspective, FinHarry isn't on this graph, so dtay's even more in front of all of us.

[Cheater Hater]

Why are there Chariots here, Whosit?


Why is there a road and two workers here?



Seriously, WTF Whosit? I'm not the threat here--you do realize dtay's on the top of the scoreboard, has infinitely more cities than I do, and is beating all of us in everything but soldiers, right? RIGHT???

Yes, Tarkir's going to ****ing burn this turn, and the only reason I even realize that is that is because I somehow have visibility on the chariot's square. I'm so glad I spent 3+ months playing this game, only to get taking out by someone crazy enough to attack someone with an early UU, just because that person was only building an average military (while there's people on other continents likely content with only a single warrior with defense in each city, and barely any (*cough*BarryLyndon*cough*) of those are getting called).

This, combined with the mess in PBEM 58, really, really wants me to get out of actually playing any games what so ever. I'm not ever going to be competitive since I don't want to spend hours doing micro, I actively hate the war aspect of the game on any scale larger than fighting a couple barbs, and even if I was good, I'd have to get lucky in the first 150 turns of prisoner's dilemma to even have a chance. Don't get me wrong, I like having some challenge, and I don't have to win every time, but it's the way I'm playing those games is what gets me angry--losing months down the line because of stupid mistakes early (PBEM 58, almost assuredly PB20), losing because of the ****ing prisoner's dilemma (here), getting so tired because of the grind (PBEM 58, and I'm watching it happen a lot in PB13), or losing because your opponents are making stupid decisions (PBEM 58, here) is something I can't deal with emotionally--especially when it's just to words/actions on the internet, and my emotional side doesn't see the people behind them.

(P.S: Yes, I know I haven't ended turn--we'll see tomorrow if I'm around to end it, or if you've replaced me--I think I've made all my military moves for what it's worth, only thing I think I'd do is move my isolated scout away from Whosit's borders.)

Edit: I've ended turn

[Cheater Hater]

*sigh* What a difference nearly a full day makes--I snapped last night, and the post above clearly showed it. Unfortunately, this was a lot more violent of a post than my "I hate this game, I'm going to lose, I quit" posts in PBEM 58. A lot of the above post is still true, though:

• I think Whosit isn't trying to win by going with a military-heavy opening
  
• Whosit has enough of a power advantage that he should be attacking the top of the heap instead of someone who would still be bankrupt if not for FinHarry's trade routes
  
• The early game being 90% prisoner's dilemma once you understand the basics of city placement and tile micro is a horrible game design decision that should be fixed somehow
  
• I really don't like the military aspects of CivIV at anything other than the smallest of scales
  
• My emotional state can't take the constant up and downs of this game--it will occasionally (or even often) lead to posts (or other reactions) like what was above
  

I don't know what comes next for this game--I lost Tarkir and will lose Mirrodin if Whosit wants it, and considering that's the tip of the iceberg and leaves me with either the choice of sabotaging my potential in this game by whipping my cities down, or losing even more cities to Whosit's massive army, I've already lost any potential hope I've had in this game. I really don't know if I can continue in this game, especially considering my emotions--this game will last another year (unlike PBEM 58 where I'll be lucky if I last two more weeks), and I don't know if my emotional state will handle the ups and downs this game has remaining. At the very least, I know I'm not logging into the game again in the near future--as such, I don't know if I'll end up playing my next turn. On one hand I know my emotional state really can't handle it (especially if I need to play at a competitive level, which all the other competitors deserve), but on the other, we already have a long backlog of people who want replacements, and I certainly don't want to burden Parkin even more than he already has been. We'll see how this post goes, and how I'm feeling tomorrow--if you'd have asked me 4 hours ago, I wouldn't have even thought about writing this post.

P.S: I really, really, hope all the discussion in the lurker thread is focused on how Whosit's doing in the war, and not my reaction to it (my last post)--I still have no idea how my last round of emotions was reacted to in the lurker thread for PBEM 58, but at least there I had some sort of response in my own thread.