[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[naufragar]

at that time I was preparing to hand the civ off to someone new when my son was born in a few weeks

Congrats, by the way!

Since your relevance in this game is more or less at postmortem phase (sorry!), here are my thoughts. Your decision to attack mack was correct, IMO. The only way to ensure that he wouldn't just pick off all the civs surrounding him one by one, including yours, at his leisure was to try to induce a dogpile.

Agreed.  Plus, him attempting to lock you into peace was a pretty strong indication that he was at least temporarily weak.

I think you guys are right. If I had gone to war with Cairo while Mack was fighting Rusten, all I would've done, even if successful, was lengthen my border with Mack and give him even more places to attack. On the other hand, I look at Cairo now, happily not being snacked on, and wonder, "Would Mack have found a different target after Rusten if I got all big and scary?" But one doubts I could've gotten big enough to scare Mackoti.

Your tactical waging of the campaign, however, appears to have been quite a learning experience.  

Only if I learn from it.  

Two screamingly obvious mistakes were 1) not registering that Mack had a worker pair that could road a particular tile, so he could obliterate my knights, and 2) throwing away a bunch of cats and knights on his seiging army when it was obviously doing nothing. Both of those, looking back, I have no clue what I was thinking, how I didn't read a part of the game UI or something.  

The more complicated mistake was splitting my stack and sending my 1-movers and cats into Rusten land. I had the romantic notion that with that little extra push, we'd administer a beating to Mack's army trapped in foreign culture. The tactical blunder was not knowing where exactly Mack's army was. (Still don't. Am very interested in reading Rusten's thread. Somebody finish me off, please.) I underestimated how far knights and musketeers could travel on Engineering roads. I suspect that rather than being trapped in foreign culture, he was on a highway and could turn around and invade me. The strategic part of the blunder was misreading the power graph:



This is the power graph from turn 140, when Mack declared. (I rejected Mack's peace offer on 141.) I looked at this and thought, "Ok. Mack's power is clearly greater than Rusten's or mine, but his power isn't greater than the combination of our's. So, together, we can beat him." The trouble, as civ vets probably spotted instantly, is that we don't fight by throwing cumulative power at cumulative power, and Mack had local superiority. Plus, 2 half powers don't equal 1 whole. E.g.: Imagine two people with 50k power and one with 100k. Let's say, for argument, that the two lower powers have 20k in tech and 30k in troops. Let's give the stronger player 50% more soldier points from tech: 30k. (Obviously fanciful, but for the argument.) This means that the stronger player has 70k soliders of units to the combined 60k of his opponents. This is exacerbated when the players are closer in tech. We're disregarding pop points, but it's not a huge factor.

So, I woefully misjudged how strong Mack was relative to Rusten and me. This doesn't change my strategic decision to invade, but it sure makes the tactical idea of splitting up some troops to lend to Rusten laughable. (But I will say with pride that the stack Mack had poised to take Rusten's south turned around to take his north when I moved to reinforce. )

Thanks BGN and Mardoc for the perspectives. This stuff's been interesting, if not easy.

[naufragar]

Ninja'd!

I may have contributed to rustens situation some :D

I am super interested in reading up on what was going on in Rusten land. Heck, I don't even know what the land was like when BGN and Mack met. The most recent image I have is me leaving a note when BGN captured the barb city, Ligurian. I truly had (have) no clue what the geopolitics of that area was like, and only got eyes on your situation, superdeath, very late. I'm also curious to learn what was going on when Mack was taking some cities off Rusten before the big war. (Somebody conquer me, already!    )

[naufragar]

It looks like the tech thread is figuring out the symptoms (turn pace, silent players, few reports) don't bode well for the patient. I'm willing to call the game, giving the win to Mackoti, or saying its a draw between TBS and Mack if TBS objects. I'll keep playing until the tech thread starts to bubble over, but I figured I'd post here in case everyone starts doing the same. That said, I know the bigger players might have more invested.

The turn report.

The trouble with city visibility is it leaves you complacent:



Either I missed the extra two units, or they were in a fogged tile. Mackoti sent a peace offer at the start of the turn. After seeing this, I sent one back. Maybe our 33 turn war is over.

Sneaky Adrien:


I don't have good vision from that direction, and won't be able to get units to defend Liberty Rock. I assume Adrien razes it, since he wouldn't be able to hold it. If I had know about Mack's two extra units, I wouldn't have landed and would be able to defend the city. Annoying. Turned research on for compass.   Let's see how close we can get to Astro before game end.

[naufragar]

The Postmortem

First, thanks to all the players and map makers. This was a blast. I learned two things. One, I really, really love civ4. Multiplayer is a hoot and even better than single player. Two, holy smokes these things are time commitments. Before my civ was eviscerated, I was spending 30-40mins per day on the turn and then another 10-20 writing a report. Maybe I better not add all the time up.

The Pick Phase

Most of this I talked about at the time. Germany had the appropriate techs for my food and a quick bronze working. Sure, the unique stuff is irrelevant, but with random rolls, one takes what one gets. Julius Caesar is good. But there’s a bit more to it than that. He’s good without you needing to do anything. He’s good by being good at all the things a newbie does. He’s good by being good at default civ. If we think of “default civ” as expanding widely and quickly to the edge of economic disaster and just barely turning the corner with some way to make money, Julius Caesar facilitates that. You were already building settlers; Imp builds them faster. You were already paying civic maintenance. Org has your back. Julius Caesar is incredibly newb friendly. Cre and Pro are probably the only other traits that don’t make you deviate at all. With Exp, you think differently about buildings, same with Agg. Fin screws up your tile improvements. So Julius Caesar was a fantastic draw. I said somewhere but I say again that this map was great for Imp. I had just massive amounts of land to settle into.

The Early Game

We discovered Rusten first, and it’s kind of funny to look back on the foreign policy of the early game from turn 175. Rusten had a beast of an early game, and I’m looking forward to reading his thread. He expanded well and landed two wonders and a religion. My early game thinking was preoccupied with what to do with the score leader.

And then I met Mack. The scariest thing about Mackoti is that I could have told you his game plan, and I still lost to it. He was going to use Imp to boom to horse archers and then eat a neighbor. He was going to digest a neighbor until knights and then hit another neighbor with knights. He would supplement with musketeers if they became available. And folks, he did exactly that. Vanilla, straightforward, effective. The question for my early game was, “Could I have interfered in the Aretas conflict?” Once one civ eats another civ early, it’s looking grim for everyone else. I don’t know. The distances between civs were so great, and my army wasn’t present or particularly strong. After Mack ate Aretas, he took a couple Rusten cities. I don’t know how; I’ll find out. This gave me some hope that Mack and Rusten were going to have some sort of blood feud in my north. I think this is where I started meaningfully exaggerating Rusten’s score in my head. Religion and wonders count for a lot, and I wasn’t subtracting appropriately.




I don’t know how I’d judge my own dot map. (Pic unrelated. Just to break up text wall.) I had size one cities for a long time, and it seems like a micro rule of thumb is to grow cap at least a pop point or two first. Oh well. I think I did ok, but that’s for the mid game section. I’d happily accept pointers on dotmapping. Pretty much all I ever think to do is “Add new food!” (Added after I started reading Rusten’s thread: He was shocked I went settler at size one. I didn’t even know this was unorthodox. I think it was still right with the chopping and all, but hmm. Maybe I need to rethink openings.)


Midgame

We did ok with expansion. On turn 43, (chosen because I’m going through only the screenshots I posted in my thread. The ones I actually took for this game number 1,515. Not an exaggeration.) I was 13th in GNP, 18th in MfG, and 19th in Crop Yield. On turn 60, we were 20th GNP, 10th MfG, 3rd Crop. By turn 75, we were 11th, 1st, and 3rd. Julius Caesar’s midgame is nothing to sneeze at. I built tons of courthouses. Courthouses everywhere. This was probably a mistake, but I have trouble seeing what else I should’ve built. That juicy Org bonus, however. In fact, my midgame was filled up with forge and courthouse construction, and I wonder if I fell into that particular newb trap.



(Holy farmer's gambit, Batman! Were we really that spare on military?     Edit: No, I remember. New Jerusalem's garrison got eaten by a bear...)

After Mackoti took out Aretas, he parked some scary units on my border, but I should have known from that very show of force that he was worried I might expand into him while he was working up in the North. He quieted down as he filled in his new land.

Rusten hit superdeath. I can’t remember the details, and I can’t be bothered to check. I just remember seeing Rusten’s stack in superdeath’s land and feeling like he could very easily have done serious damage to me with it. Probably not an existential threat, but still. I should probably talk about the geography between Rusten and me. The way the settling finished, we had a very narrow pass connecting our two empires. Rusten had a peak looking into the city at my end. So long as this pass was relatively visible and empty, Rusten and I could have peace. I’ll repeat that I really thought Rusten and I were going to be natural enemies. I was wrong.




( I forgot about this screen. Remember how we lost the Great Lighthouse to Plako by one turn? I remember.   But the fail gold probably saved our civ by catapulting us to currency.   )

So, Mack hit someone besides me. Rusten hit someone besides me. My other neighbor, Mr. Cairo, was a million miles away. I never had to deal with the pressure of a neighbor wanting me dead. This, more than any micro, explains how I did ok in the midgame.

Somewhere during all this, I grabbed the island Adrien had settled on. I got some lucky rolls, but I still think I would’ve had the sheer numbers otherwise. Where I did get effectively lucky was on the sea, where Rusten lost galleys that stopped him from ferrying over enough troops to take the island. But that was in the…

Late Game

I swear I was going to be proactive. I was going to attack Cairo and do all the things you’re supposed to do. Then Mack declared on me. This has been covered enough in my thread. I didn’t accept peace because I felt I could never guarantee my safety with a Mackoti empire on both sides of me.

I’ve started reading Mack’s thread, and he was upset that I jumped in the war. You’re absolutely right, Mack. I did have some romantic notion of being the good guy, but that was in the back of my mind. My main concern was the security of my civ, and true, you had signaled friendly intentions (didn’t kill my horse archer on the turn you declared war), but it was resist then or resist never. I couldn’t have attacked into Adrien without encountering your much bigger army. I didn’t feel comfortable attacking Cairo because I would’ve extended my border with you and made all my problems worse. (P.S. I am truly sorry for the galleon loss. You would’ve taken Commander’s Keep so much sooner if I hadn’t rolled the 3.3%.)

The rest of the late game was a comedy of errors for me. In like 3-4 turns I made continuous blunders, any one of which, in a chess game, would be an instant resignation. The lessons learned boil down to: don’t split your stack; pay attention to combat workers. Despite this war going on for 30+ turns, there isn’t much to tell. I played defense, whipping and garrisoning. Eventually, I gave out and got overrun. Where we left the game, Mack offered peace to focus on winning, and Adrien had broken my blockade and was poised to start pouring troops on my island refuge. But then the game was called, and I’ll take the “survivor” status.

Thanks to all the lurkers, especially you who commented. It’s why we report.

And one final thank you to the map makers. Reading the lurker thread, I finally get the scale of this project. You guys are crazy.

One last pic, because I didn't report the last couple turns. I think calling the game was the right decision, but now I'll never get to find out what was going on here:

[mackoti]

I had such a bad luck against you in combat, i dont know were to start i event lost a 94% and 99,4 in batling for same city man, i supose you didnt observed that instead again rusten 90% of what was over 50% i won even some under. I still belive you hacked somehow the server I f wasnt for those you was in Aretas league....

[naufragar]

I f wasnt for those you  was in Aretas league....

I can't disagree with you! If it's any consolation, I also got very lucky against Adrien and the barbs, but certainly not as lucky as I got against you.

If you want to see if our luck changes, there's a new game being planned in the main forum...  

[superdeath]

I still wish you would have rammed into Rusten when he first declared on me. I had a nice stack of like 15+ chariots that i was planning on burning some of his cities with but i kept wondering "why isnt Naufragar attacking? "

[naufragar]

I still wish you would have rammed into Rusten when he first declared on me. I had a nice stack of like 15+ chariots that i was planning on burning some of his cities with but i kept wondering "why isnt Naufragar attacking? "

I keep writing different drafts of this, but I can't find one I like. In lieu of that, have a picture that didn't make it into the thread! This was my vision on turn 100 (when you sent the first alliance offer):




But setting aside possibility and profitability on my end, I'm not sure how me attacking Rusten helps you use the chariot stack.

Edit: I read slow, but I am reading your thread, superdeath. On turn 91, you mention you're "hoping mack/someone on another side of rusten smells the war and goes for his blood." This is the first or second turn of the war. No one was going to hop in that early, especially not having your vision. For comparison, it wasn't until turn 107 that I saw power dips/war weariness and actually believed there was a real war going on. In that report you can see me realizing I inflated Rusten's power, but there was no way I could've smelled blood 16 turns before any significant amount had been spilled.

[Rusten]

I don't think you missed an opportunity there. I had good vision on you (peak and general borders) and as the aggressor I oould just pull back and defend if I had to. Unlikely that you'd make any gains.

Great thread btw, you've clearly put a lot of work into it. Amusing to read about the early game from your PoV.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Thanks for the good reporting. It can be rough your first time out, and many players have fared worse against worse opponents than mackoti. You seem to have learned some lessons. I look forward to watching you put these lessons into practice in future games.