[Mjmd #52 no players] Working on the Homestead

[Mjmd]

Did Jowy just declare to try to distract me, to appease OH's assumed badgering, just to grab 2nd half of turn split? He has a galley loaded with 2 rifles in the SE, but anyways I reached out with a peace treaty, because it is clear that mega stack isn't headed at me. At least not for another what 3 turns? Maybe he is waiting on Charriu to attack me when that peace treaty expires.



Cairo took two more cities. Really wish I had literally 3 cav over hear to take / raze ATs western city. If Jowy takes peace I'll probably raze Mutal. I changed some stuff up after this screenshot. Stack actually went SW. I farmed over cottage 1 SE to get irrigation back. Speaking of Cairo I reached out to him with both a fish for fish trade and also a happiness resource trade. While city Jowy is going for is far from the rest of ATs cities, Cairo may consider that his considering  he has done all the work. Whitekey's he may not have been, but another city? Why I would consider razing the western one, just remove the conflict issue. I may stlll try if I get peace with Jowy with rifles.

So I know I haven't been showing OH action. But he's been starving Mixed Drinks. I was going to take pictures of SW, but it got stuck uploading on Imgur, which is a first. Anyways, he retreated 1W with his main fleet. I finally feel good enough to park some ships in front of Evaporator letting me slightly bump garrisons elsewhere. This area has been giving me such headaches and trepidation's. I did decide to do the plan of put some research into communism and then go physics. Should be 5 turns for physics.

BTW have oil underneath Buckets, which is very nice.

[superdeath]

images will occasionally get stuck uploading to Imgur, i just refresh the page and upload again. Typically fixes the issue.

[Mjmd]

Picture of where is Jowy going now? I was actually really worried when I saw on PBSPY that he took a city because it meant he could have swung down while my army was out of position. Instead he appears to be going somewhere? Cairo sent back the fish for fish. I don't know if I call him an ally, but I suspect he wants a counterweight to OH while he is taking care of his business and Jowy is in the area. I mean Cairo is going to take Weeks and Tellerium (which lost walls and castle somehow at least graphically, i think it actually still does). Jowy COULD take Mutal, but its not a city he can hold....... sooo where is he going? You'll note I'm going to let him raze the Jewish holy city. I just don't want Charriu to retake and reinstate the culture and I just don't have the 3-4 rifles it would take to hold it vs Charriu.



Here is the SW I keep not showing. He had a sentry night poking up north I sniped with a cav (he could snipe back I assume, but it is at 12.8 strength so he would need a curassair with formation). Maybe he will try to invade with some land army, but I get reaction turns and have some land units finishing finally in the area.

[Mjmd]

1st QUESTION!!!! What happens if two people tech a tech with a free great person? How is it determined who gets?

2nd. Oh boy. When I saw OH had taken a city and was going to gift it back I thought it was down here with a 6 move galleon. Nope. However, Jowy got open borders with Charriu and I vacated Imperial which sucks as that is a good city. Remembered to give the town to ExploringFauns. I decided to let Merchant go too. I maybe should have retreated that rifle SE as I would have had descent odds of keeping MerchantTrolls, but I have so few rifles down there...... No clue if that is correct or not. Probably not.


So remember I had left BerserkHalfing for Jowy to take / raze. OH being before Jowy actually sniped it and gave it back to Charriu!!!!

This forced me to abandon GoldenSkags as Jowy army can attack it directly without me being able to hit first. It means Exploring Fauns will fall in another turn (he should raze). Now to throw a wrench into this for Jowy I actually abandoned abandoned skags and hope OH does the same thing again!!! He would still have open borders, but there wouldn't be much point in taking Fauns then. More cities for Charriu and him taking some off of me incentivizes Jowy to give peace along with Cairo finishing up AT. Jowy can't really keep any of these cities unless he eventually goes after Charriu, so I'm hoping he peaces out with me to invade.


Also, obviously the race for the great people is on!!! Now OH burned through half of a great merchant trip in 1 turn of teching last turn and he is out of the golden age. I expect him to force me to detour to communism, which I can tech in 3 turns. I thought about switching my tech this turn back to it, but I want to force the race on the tech that isn't as valuable for him / me. I think I can win it, but at the very least it will be a tie, which brings me back to my first question. 

In the west I made a mistake with a Frigate stupidly. Left it in a Cairo city he could just take. You can tell I'm not used to fighting humans. That's relevant as I have to worry about a naval invasion of sugar cookies now. I have a cav reinforcing it next turn. The cav that snipped the sentry knight killed a pike, but then was killed by 1 of the GG of OH, which confirms his army is hanging out ready to invade. I've been slowly siphoning cav from Splitting woody to Evaporator and trading them for rifles (slowly as to give the rifles some time to fortify). I can throw more frigates in front of evaporator and ride off if OH invades and at least do some hit and run. Mind OH's probably has 3 times what I do over there, because again MIDDLE!!!!! Seriously I know I've tons of mistakes, but between naval bull and being in the middle, this isn't a lot of fun. Which is relevant as I'm dedicating my gaming time each night to this......

[Amicalola]

The middle thing is really rough.

I'm sorry I can't contribute more to this thread, but a) I'm already spoiled, and b) significantly greener than you.

[Mjmd]

Take note. I knew naval junk was important, but man is it important lol. Jowy is getting to play how I would in single player, because OH is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Note all my mistakes I noted early. I've learned a lot in this one game overall. I have a descent handle on expanding and empire building as that is pretty similar to single player, but other junk eh.

I mean I tried to minimize the middle thing by letting Charriu and Jowy butt heads for a long time. I contrived multiple times to destroy Jowy's stack. It just kept slipping from my grasp!!!

Edit: BTW Amica this is only my second pitboss, which is what PB55 is for you, so I hope you at the very least get to be in a leader position to be torn down later lol.

[superdeath]

1st QUESTION!!!! What happens if two people tech a tech with a free great person? How is it determined who gets?


In non-PBEM/pb50 style pitboss's the game supposedly randomizes who is "first" in turn order each turn for things such as First to bonus's.

im 95% sure on that.

[Mjmd]

OH is deciding to use his gold to just go for airships, meaning I think I just win that GP race (I mean its OH, so I expect him to somehow steal). Mind he can whip airships and I can't. On the other hand am I really dying to whip off villages and towns. Well a little right now lol. I may switch into slavery for 5 turns after communism kicks off my golden age (yes I wrote the sentence that way on purpose).

Anyways Jowy razed one city and my rifle actually held against his two in the other. In the north he occupied Skags instead of pushing forward. Giving him hope he will want peace after he razes the Merchant Trolls. Not enough hope to switch the wealth build back to forge in ExploringFauns, but hope non the less. There is also a cairo impi just innocently sitting near his stack which will give him pause. Cairo sent back fish for fish; however, he did not close borders with OH sadly.

[Mjmd]

I'm willing to concede to literally anyone including AT with 1 city to get out of playing this miserable 2 front war.

OH used a GS to bulb physics which was a huge blow. I decided to switch to communism even though it will prolong this bloody naval action as I'm pretty sure OH is 1 GP short of a golden age. I'm pretty positive he used his most recent merchant on a trade mission.

I think I could have won this game if I had teched smarter OR gotten rid of Jowy's stack at some point. OH flipping the Jewish holy city back to Charriu and Charriu deciding he hates me more than Jowy and giving Jowy open borders was huge too. In general if I had more multiplayer experience. I think part of the problem with civ multiplayer is that to get experience you have to spend months playing 1 game. While I've gotten 300% better in this 1 game, I have very little desire at the moment to repeat the experience.

I'm not even technically out of it. I'm still out teching everyone (the GNP graph isn't even close). Jowy can take 1 more city that will be culturally crushed, but I just won't have the raw city count needed for production queues long term. Double curse Charriu deciding he wanted to help Jowy. If Jowy doesn't continue advancing (in which case his stack dies as it will finally be in open ground somewhere I can hit) and Cairo decides to attack Jowy, that is also a route back into this. To be clear, I'm willing to concede. I won't chuck the game to anyone (it's tempting to just give it to OH as he has definitely earned), but spending an hour plus on this 1 game a night is just not fun right now. I like building empires. Naval warfare and getting dog piled I will leave thank you.

No offense to El Grillo, but I just didn't have anyone helping guide me through this later part of the game (I know he's had a lot of stuff and no real experience this late either). I really think Realms needs to do a better job helping its newer players. It's why I made sure all the greens in PB51 had a ded lurker. For PB54 I made sure Vanrober and Giroflorens had ded lurkers. It is why I'm helping Amica in PB55, even though it should be someone far better.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

No offense to El Grillo, but I just didn't have anyone helping guide me through this later part of the game (I know he's had a lot of stuff and no real experience this late either). I really think Realms needs to do a better job helping its newer players. It's why I made sure all the greens in PB51 had a ded lurker. For PB54 I made sure Vanrober and Giroflorens had ded lurkers. It is why I'm helping Amica in PB55, even though it should be someone far better.

I think the playerbase here is, at this point, not large enough to sustain a bunch of dedlurkers.

That being said, having better post-game discussions and analyzing these games, with proper takeaway posts made by the community as a whole would be good to see. With this being the first CtH game, I really think that this process would be nice to have, as it would give both an insight into some of the balance choices of the mod and how the late game plays out for the edification of the newer players.