Soul of a Nameless Civ Player

[Ichabod]

Molach has 10 units in his Capital and ~20 units 1W of it (6 catapults total). I have 24 units (10 knights, 4 siege) on my main stack. I took 2 undefended workers with my chariot, making it impossible (I think) for Molach to attack my stack with his full force next turn. So, I can move to the hill and reinforce my stack with another 8 knights. Then, well, I don't know... Probably a long AI-like slog to take down the city defenses with my siege units... I'm lacking on siege, which is annoying... We'll see...

Ayway, I have more knights coming and the bulk of Molach forces is on his Capital. I'll probably take Early Warriors next turn and No scouting soon after. That leaves Molach with 9 cities, I think. Maybe I can take some more of his scattered cities around...

Adrien also declared on Molach and took a city. If he advances further, I'll probably attack him next. I just finished Engineering, so moving around is a lot easier. I think I have Adrien's raphs and I doubt he has that much left. The dream would be seeing Molach abandon his Capital to own Adrien... I doubt this happens, though.

[Ichabod]

Lost 1 knight to capture Early Warriors, killing 1 longbow and 2 spears.



Positioned my stack against Molach's. I was pretty depressed with the idea of losing a lot of stuff to take this city, while Adrien (who has more cities than me already) would just take cities without defenders.

That's last turn. Molach already played the latest turn and I saw the civstats yesterday. He took way more time with this turn than the previous ones. He had a midturn score increase, which annoyed me, because I thought it would be from Early Warriors being recaptured (after some time, I realized there was no drop on score for me to account for that, so he must have bulbed his GM). So, I figured that he took all this time to make a retreat plan for his units, while leaving me up to capture Settler Move.

Of course, after sleeping on it, I realized the more obvious thing to have happened is that Molach attacked my stack. So, I rushed to open the game and take a look (yay, late for work again). And then I saw it....

Molach attacked and I didn't lose a single unit! I still have to see how many units he used to atack, but I'm confident it was a lot of them. Catapults, HAs, maces, spears... At least 20, I'd say. He only got 3 retreats with HAs, I think. I got a GG and I'll easily capture Settler Move when I play my turn. And, well, the war is basically won now. I just need to use my sentry units to find all of Molach cities and decide how to take them quickly.

So, I'll build some courthouses instead of knights and I'll think a bit about infra and how to go from here.

[Ichabod]

Reminding myself that I need to spread Buddhism around.

[Ichabod]

The two big news from before my turn are showing here. Adrien made peace with Molach, which more or less freed me to take Molach's land at my own pace. And Molach attacked my stack.

Counting the bodies, Molach lost 7 cats, 6 HAs, 2 maces, 1 WE and 11 spears. I lost 1 knight and he got 2 withdraws. Interesting note, he got these favourable results within the first 4 hitters attacks. After that, it was all green.

I attacked with the CR3 Treb at +70% and retreated. Then, 3 knights and a chariot finished the last remaining defenders, the ones that needed XP for a promo.



City lost only one size when captured and came with an aqueduct and market. Unfortunately, all food is on the second ring and I don't think I'll have any of those tiles in my culture when the city stops revolting. So, I'll have to whip all the extra pop, to avoid starvation...



I renamed the city Majula, the hub in Dark Souls 2 (I like Firelink Shrine more, though).



Here's how I moved my knights. I'm pretty sure I'll capture three more cities next turn. Unfortunately, due to lack of roads, it wasn't possible for me position knights to take the 2 SE cities next turn. Oh, well.



My cities, already out of knight duty, into infra and missionaries. Not sure if I'll keep the military builds afterwards, but for now, I need to start growing my cities again and get some courthouses up (and forges where they are still lacking). Firelink will keep on knight duties, because I settled the GG and now I can get 14 XP knights out of it, which is 4 promos from the get go!

I'm thinking about the game some more, now that the dice rolled my way (yeah, that's really low, but what can you do). I divised some objectives:

1. I need to be friends with dtay. If we declare war on each other, we lose the game. It's probably as simple as that. SO, I offered a sheep for sheep deal and marble for nothing, as a sign of goodwill. Not sure if he needs it, but whatever. The idea is building trust and favor, making a war les likely.

2. I need to grow my cities! I tend to stagnate economically in this era, in all my games. I don't know exactly what I'm doing wrong, but stagnating my cities too early is probably part of it. Since I'm already using most of my land tiles, I think wharves are decent builds, so we can grow in water tiles. I also need Civil Service for farm spreading...

3. I need to decide how to improve Molach's land. There's quite a lot of it without improvements. I'm thinking watermills and workshops, but I'm really not sure. I think is too late to be growing cottages... Need to think about it.

4. I need to spread Buddhism around, especially in Molach cities, to give culture and get all the needed infra.

5. I need to defend my coast against Mack. My current army sucks at defense. My best defensive unit right now is longbows. Ideally, I'd get muskets before spamming them, but I think I'll get some right now. Actual defense on the water is probably not going to happen soon, not against the (most likely) tech leader that's playing Netherlands.

6. I need to think about how to win this game! Civstats currently shows:

* taotao 778
* Serdoa 623
* Gavagai 609
* boak 604
* Ichabod 603
* dtay 595
* ReallyEvilMuffin 566

Taotao and Mack are clearly in the lead. They have 23 cities, I think, and probably are leading in tech. I'm not sure about the wonder situation, but they probably have some good ones.

Anyway, I can't do much about Mack right now, because I can't even reach him. I'm giving him OB and I could cancel them, but that only matters if he has Astro and I'm not really sure he has... I don't think Liberalism has fallen yet and I don't think he'd go for Astro before Taj or Lib... Need to think about this.

But, since Mack/tao are clear leaders, everyone has their eyes on them. If they get attacked, we can profit from it as one of the runner ups. What about the runner ups?

I don't know about Serdoa and REM, because I haven't met them. I think REM must have a lot of cities, because he took Commodore's land and Serdoa/NH are very good players. Hopefully they border Mack.

Boak and Gavagai have way more cities than I have and for quite a while. But they are involved in a big war against each other, one which my scout (the initial one) managed to get a glimpse of, with big stacks of HAs and siege. That's a ton of resources being wasted and likely not helping their tech situation. If that keeps going, they are going to implode themselves... After saying that, I realize through civstats that it's likely they signed peace. Oh, well, I don't think the tensions will ever go down there.

Finally, there's dtay. I think we are on pretty equal grounds right now, but I have an easier way to expans further through Adrien, while he's kind of boxed in, as far as I can see.

I said all that to remind myself that, if we take off Mack/tao from the equation, I'm actually at a decent position. I still have some gains to make against Molach and perhaps my war machine can work against Adrien too. Adrien is probably way behind in tech and I doubt someone has more XP from the get go than I have. I need to try and figure out Adrien tech position (if he has knights and such) and try to plan an attack. Perhaps I should go for Military Tradition and Cuirassiers, a lot of lvl 3 and 4 cuirs could make a lot of damage... With all Adrien's land plus mine, I'd have something like 40 cities...

Alright, stop dreaming!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Never stop dreaming.

[Ichabod]

Never stop dreaming.

Of blood. For the lurkers.

By the way, Demon Ruins could be my new Capital. It's in the middle of my new empire (counting Adrien's land, ) and it's a crazy city. 4 food resources, all grassland, incense, horses, gold, mature cottages, 13 river tiles. That's a city to cottage everything in, I guess. Well, whatever I do with that city is crazy, anyway...

[Ichabod]

I misclicked and razed one of Molach's cities, that I intended to keep. After that, lost a knight at 95% odds. Tilted very, very hard. Got out of the game before I do anything stupid.

[Bobchillingworth]

Just chiming in to say that I'm following your thread with interest.


I also don't envy your position. Not from an in-game standpoint, since you appear to be doing quite well, but rather the pressure of being a leader in a highly competitive game with many turns still to go. I sometimes I feel like I have a better handle on my civ when I'm clearly losing a game and not burdened with the knowledge that all of my decisions matter.

[Ichabod]

Just chiming in to say that I'm following your thread with interest.


I also don't envy your position. Not from an in-game standpoint, since you appear to be doing quite well, but rather the pressure of being a leader in a highly competitive game with many turns still to go. I sometimes I feel like I have a better handle on my civ when I'm clearly losing a game and not burdened with the knowledge that all of my decisions matter.

Thanks for the simpathy, Bob!

It's not all that bad. I'm mostly looking for a sub from time to time because not playing would help my routine, not because the turns are a burden to play. And now that we are doing 48h turns, things get way easier and more enjoyable.

I'll try to have good defenses all around to avoid something like PB 13, where I easily gave land to one of the leading teams, something I could easily have avoided with a bit more care. Not that worried with game balance other than that, though.

Of course, there's no telling when something heartbreaking will happen and I'll end up not wanting to even open the game. I'm easily heartbroken, so there's that. Razing that one Molach city by mistake still makes me annoyed and disheartened, for instance, to the point of actually affecting my real life mood (for myself mostly, I try not to discount that on others).

Perhaps I should make an appointment with Krill, now that he's freed from this game and it wouldn't be spoilers.

[Ichabod]

So, dtay declared on Molach and took 2 cities. I know what 2 cities he took. And I don't accept it, especially one of them. I was thinking about offering a sum of gold to buy it and leave it at that, but I remembered the mod bans this.

I feel really bad that this attack on Molach by dtay could have been prompted by my mistake that razed Molach city. It was a frontier city with dtay, so perhaps he understood I didn't want to expand there.

Anyway, dtay has been opportunistic against me this whole game. He pink-dotted, stole my conquest after I did all the work and he even had the nerve to take my marble gift while knowing he would backstab me later. I know that a gift should be something you give without expecting any rewards back, but this is for real life, we are playing civ here.

I'm going to go in total war mode and declare on dtay. Good game!