[Mjmd #52 no players] Working on the Homestead

[Sullla]

You played a fantastic game and have every reason to be proud of this effort. Yes, it's true that geopolitical events broke heavily in your favor for the first 100-150 turns (endless warring in the east and west allowing you to expand uncontested) and I think there were times where you could have grabbed additional territory with limited warfare against Charriu/AT with some calculated aggression. However, these Civ4 MP games are very difficult to play and you're always working with limited information on the wider game. You correctly hit pindicator and slowed him down to stop his snowball and this might have been enough to win the game if it hadn't been for the player swap. Old Harry is insanely good at Civ4 MP and there's no shame in losing over the course of a drawn-out struggle.

I'd say the biggest thing to work on would be the lategame tech path and build choices. You've already identified this and I'm sure that it's clear how different Civ4 MP is from Single Player. Rifling isn't nearly as important as newer players might think while the bottom part of the tree (Steel for cannons along with Astronomy to unlock frigates) are vastly increased in priority. Even on a mostly pangaea map like this one, the player who controls the seas generally controls the game. And human players can pull off insane commando stuff like you saw in this game; the very first Pitboss game at Realms Beyond was decided by a commando unit razing the capital city where a spaceship was launching. You've improved a ton over the course of this game and there's every reason to expect more success going forward.

[Fintourist]

To complement what others said, well played Mjmd!  It's exhausting to play later parts of these big pitbosses with care.. And especially so, when you get the full naval warfare and commando experience. 

Hopefully you can soon appreciate the epicness of your play and everything that took place. Thank you for the show!

[Charriu]

Native America Tech: Hunting/Agriculture instead of Fishing/Agriculture - cut just for change log length, plus with beaker amount changes I don't think its needed.

The main reason for that change was not the changed cost of the starting techs. Rather it's because of their UB being available on Archery. With Hunting as a starting tech they can research Archery immediately. Therefore they can take a cheaper beaker path to monuments in Archery which gets the prerequiste bonus.

Sorry I wasn't paying more attention to the details of where you'd be settling and with what, but in general I'm personally really against settling provocatively without sufficient defenders. More concretely, a city halfway between your capitals like that wants to be on a hill and have 2 real defenders present from founding. That way your opponent sees it, considers they'd likely need 4-5 real units to take it, and decides that they'd rather not pay that cost. When instead they think that they can raze the city with just 1-3 real units, on the other hand... Maybe it all works out, but you run the risk where Charriu diverges from a previously peaceful gameplan to build just a bit of military because he "has to", and then you end up with a likely-razed city anyway, and he ends up with more military than he would've liked to build, and one thing leads to another and you find yourself at each other's throats all game long.

I may be overly paranoid about this, and it may not be as broadly applicable as I might make it sound, but in AI diplo games I see security in giving your opponent fewer reasons to want to fight you than reasons to stay at peace or fight elsewhere.

Are you a fortune teller, El Grillo?

Charriu sent me another peace offer. I declined. Checked the pig and yep 1 worker guarded by an axe and a chariot. Is it an elaborate trap? I'll find out!

1st axe loss, 2nd and 3rd axe won!!!!! So I have 2 axes and a spear on the pig with the worker. He has an archer and spear in the city. I have another axe over the river. If he has literally all 3 remaining chariots I know of within range it could be bad. I'm hoping 1 or 2 are off dealing with barbs.

I did extend a peace offer back. I really just wanted some kind of victory I think. Captured worker is something; shrug.

I figured you wanted some kind of victory.

That's a good hammer exchange if you can keep the FW, and hopefully Charriu is willing to take peace now. That border is going to be a long-term source of tension, but hopefully 10t of peace is enough to clear out the barbs and start doing some fogbusting to the south and west.

Seriously, El Grillo, do you have the ability of farsight.

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!!!!
I think I border Gira. See a scout and don't any culture west, so seems likely. This could easily make up for every mistake I've made the ENTIRE game.
Hopefully the Barb cities are 2 pop! Both seem decently placed. I was going to maybe 2 pop whip a settler from Maple Syrup in two turns, but I think I'll anticipate getting these and 2 pop whip a worker. Not like workers ever go to waste. Settler in production at Pork Chops I think will go south to the "soon" spot and solidify that border. I don't think there is any point antagonizing Charriu by trying to steal the sheep, not when it seems likely there is tons of land to the west.

After our initial fallout I think this was one of the most important factors that enabled you to run for victory.

Turn 100!

Awkward screenshot of eastern part of my empire taken sideways. I either had to go sideways or zoom WAY WAY out. Note Chairu keeps on not improving the 6! floodplains inbetween us. You fought a war for them, why not work them. Maybe lack of workers? Likely he doesn't know I will be expanding for next 30 turns and have no interest in a war. He landed Hanging Gardens last turn which certainly boosted him. I had pegged him as most likely. What is really weird is he switched to Judaism, but NOT organized after. I would have thought if there were chops involved (likely) he should have before. I may love organized too much....... Tech path is archery > horseback riding > masonry > monotheism > construction (for safety).

It wasn't lack of workers, it was lack of trust towards you.

Huh, the BUG F1 interface has some details I'm not familiar with, and unless I'm blind does it not show religion? Getting the shrine up will be nice indeed, but it can also paint you as an attractive target. Given the state of the world where it sounds like multiple players are running around with big armies, I'd probably play it safe and go for Construction first before Metal Casting.

That screen is highly customizable via the bottom left buttons.

Feel like an idiot; put another worker where his woodsman II axe could take and delete. Phah. He sent me a 7gpt offer at start of turn which I took. Demanded another 35g after I realized. Definitely on my hit list once I get rolling. 1st I need to build a small stack to take care of this blatant WTF?? I saw Charriu placed a city and I was wondering if it was down in the region to claim the beaver. I did not expect that spot..... I assumed it would be 1E. I don't know how I'm supposed to take this other than to build a stack to go kill it.

I knew this city was annoying for you, but it was the only way to hook up the whales.

My 6th in the world military continues to dick around, but in my own territory. ATs stack disappeared into Charriu land and is now heading back. Wondering if it is going to ExploringFauns now. I was actually tempted to make a play for this city. Cairo did except fish for fish, but I'm not positive Pin isn't headed my way even though I would have some warning with distance between our borders. He doesn't have any active stacks at SDs border. He also settled border city on old Gira land bridge as well as an island putting him in city lead again. My main problem is the length of my empire. Engineering will be a priority once I get knights.

Stack dicking around and stuff. 

Chairru sent a lot of units out of Fauns when AT went SE. Where will AT move now?? Will Mr Cairo finally stab him in the back? What will noob Mjmd do and when? All good questions. I don't have easy decisions like Jowy. Jowy goes West, easy. SD knew he had to attack East, easy. Mr Cairo SHOULD conquer the top and go attack AT (not that I would say no to him attacking Pin) I'm #1 in land area by a ridiculous amount but tied for 2nd in cities...... and have 4 neighbors. If I go anywhere it has risks. Taking 3-4 cities off of Charriu as he is collapsing should be pretty simple, but then what? Go attack game leader so Jowy can backstab me. Attack Jowy once Charriu is gone and hope SD keeps holding vs Pin and Pin feels threatened enough to not stab me? Hope Mr Cairo doesn't dominate after taking down AT (if he ever gets moving). If he does by the way I'm definitely taking the city above Pork Chops for a buffer city, plus has some nice resources I'm lacking. I don't know if I can do what AT did and send my entire army one direction and hope my strong neighbor doesn't hit me.

Honestly not attacking me and keeping me as a buffer state, was the best decision there. That way I was able to delay AT and Jowy until the bitter end. Thank you for having my back there.

Including both the link and putting it in thread because its a long song, but good. Builds up. Strong brass. I'm sure most people know, but Mars was the god of war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmk5frp6-3Q

Love Gustav Holst - The Planets. My favorite there is the planet Jupiter - Bringer of jolliness

Ya idea would be I get to destroy his stack in friendly culture and slow him down before I have to worry about him. Make him rebuild and then refight his way through Charriu all the while worrying about me again. Hopefully in that rebuilding time frame I could wheel back west and go after Pin. Really depends on when he decides to move and with how much.

This game just became so much wilder when you entered my territory with the intend to fight Jowy there. Awesome.

Grrr I HATE BEING IN THE MIDDLE!!!!!!!
Because Charriu decided to make a stand in one of the stupidest places possible Jowy has been able to get rifles into his stack faster than I had wanted. Charriu can't retreat and just let him take it. Meaning I'm expecting about 10 rifles to my 5 (Jowy has actually been whipping pretty heavy).

So decision time and it has to be this bloody turn if I want my cats back to help out against Pin / just invade fast and hope.
Do I leave this dagger at my back or try to do something about it and hope he doesn't stab me once he is done with Charriu......... My stack would consist of 5 rifles, 20 knights, 10 cats, and 2 random elephants. About 7 turns from now somewhere around Charrius capital. I just don't see Jowy not invading me while I'm busy with Pin is the issue........ Jowy does have alphabet, so its not even a guarantee it would work as i would think he has spies? Maybe he forgot about them; ya never know. Jowy did send me a happy for happy trade.


Just to make things worse, who wants to bet Pin will get a great engineer soon for Taj?

I didn't choose to make my last stand there. It just happened and I was cut off, but it bought valuable time to support my capitol with units.

Won't large amounts of siege just get flanked away by his knights? (If I remember how flanking works).

Flanking damage only applies if the units wins its fight.

As for army deployment I'll leave you all with a Commodore quote that has stuck with me from PB49.

Newbies are always dangerous in a "rabid puppy" potential way

Sorry bro, after this game you're not going to qualify as a newbie anymore. This is one hell of a sophomore performance.

I have to join in here. I totally underestimated you at the beginning. You played a hell of a game there.

To be fair I've been supplying Charriu Iron for a long time. Something about settling Cornbread stealing his only source way way back when without realizing it. I had sent him an iron for iron / stone for stone deal trying to tell him to build cats when I was still deciding which way to go first. He accepted it...... That deal I had not meant him to accept. I honestly didn't know if he somehow had lost my iron in all the trades that hit so I gave into one of the iron deals figuring just for the 1% chance he actually needed for some reason.

I knew we already had an iron deal, but that one was something like iron for spice or something. I was about to lose that spice and with that the iron deal.

For some reason he didn't wait for Cairo to come to him where his stack couldn't heal / to get more junk together like Charriu did. He really wants out of this game I think. Anyways picture of Charriu's handiwork. He has been super impressive in his defensive wars.

I see I earned myself a reputation in this game.

This game would be over if I was in literally any other position on the map (and literally everything else was the same, but that's history for you).

Somehow survive a pile on by 3 players via the power of factories and infantry? Cairo will take a while to be a threat just moving through AT, so have a little time there.

Short term, hope Jowy messes up.

Keep using my GNP advantage to out tech everyone in general. Nice thing about Charriu's cities is that most of them are good / will be (I think he farmed over some of his developed cottages sadly). I've seen some of the Carthage filler cities OH threw down. They are fine little production cities for what they are, but especially with his short term focus on military techs, I can hopefully just build an insurmountable tech advantage.

Thanks for the compliment about my cities. I actually never farmed over cottages.

Oh yeah, the CtH blockade implementation does have that nasty effect on island cities pre-Airports.

That nasty effect is still present in RtR and in BtS. But it only effects resources provided via sea trade routes.

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

Have I mentioned what a wild ride this game was.

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.

It wasn't hate or any kind of revenge. It never really was. Back then my only goal was to ensure my survival until the end of the game.

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.

I appreciate that feedback a lot.

I also want to say that we had a really strange relationship in this game, from being enemies in the beginning to me becoming some sort of vassal state for you. Loved that game and would play again against you.

[Mjmd]

Its still one of my biggest mistakes placing Salmon with 1st ring pig instead of placing 1W. It set up an early war that hurt us both. I just got luckier with geopolitics.

Honestly not attacking me and keeping me as a buffer state, was the best decision there. That way I was able to delay AT and Jowy until the bitter end. Thank you for having my back there.

I think people are too eager to hold grudges and too eager to war without thinking about the long term consequences. I think a lot of players would have joined in the dog pile there. Reading the lurker thread people thought I should have. It wasn't about having your back, it was about the ability to leave my back with ancient era junk in it.


I should have razed the Jewish Holy city. I overestimated my ability to finish your capital. I still don't like you opening borders with Jowy even if your goal was to live. Him taking / razing all of the contested cities gave me no reason for either of us to stay at war. It was very obvious when Jowy got peace that  he would go for the capital.

[Charriu]

I think people are too eager to hold grudges and too eager to war without thinking about the long term consequences. I think a lot of players would have joined in the dog pile there. Reading the lurker thread people thought I should have. It wasn't about having your back, it was about the ability to leave my back with ancient era junk in it.

I agree, to bad I couldn't trade to be your vasall, that would have been an interesting game. :D

I should have razed the Jewish Holy city. I overestimated my ability to finish your capital. I still don't like you opening borders with Jowy even if your goal was to live. Him taking / razing all of the contested cities gave me no reason for either of us to stay at war. It was very obvious when Jowy got peace that  he would go for the capital.

I'm sorry to say this, but my goal with the OB was even more sinister. I hoped that Jowy would knock you down enough, so that you may concede to OH/pinidactor therefore ending the game and guaranteeing my survival. I'm very sorry for spoiling your game for those selfish reasons.

[Old Harry]

Hey Mjmd, great game! There's a lot of stuff to go through in your thread, so this might take a while... I'm only really going to concentrate on the bit of the game that I played - we'll have to get Pindi to comment on the rest. Also apologies if I jump around a lot.

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.

This was the one weakness I felt in your warring - you obviously haven't fought a human at this point in the game. And when the turns get this complex its hard to figure out all the tricks that humans are likely to play.

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.

Case in point with fighting a human instead of an AI. Invasion was never really on the cards - against your cavalry any of our land units would get torn to shreds. Once everyone has stacks of catapults invasions don't really become viable unless you're a tech level ahead and have a whole lot of siege in your stack..

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......

The middle position can be problematic, but it gives you a lot of options too. I think this is where Pindi played the game beautifully and set up the win.

Pindi, you, AT and Charriu all had tough positions with three or four neighbours. Jowy, Cairo and Gira only had two and Superdeath only had one. The thing Pindicator did brilliantly was to create himself a backline out of one neighbour, then another. He knew he was falling behind technologically, compared to you and Jowy, but he knew that he'd never win while trapped between you and SD, so he kept up the pressure in that direction without allowing you to distract him too much.

This is where the benefit of having a lot of neighbours is apparent - Gira was a nice easy snack, then he had a choice of three directions to go. Poor Superdeath had only one choice and couldn't quite put enough power together to break through and take the Carthaginian capital (though it sounds like he was close).

This backlines thing was also the focus of my game as soon as I took over. You had galleons out that would stop the west coast being backlines, so getting frigates out asap was a must. I was delighted you delayed chemistry for as long as you did - you could have made a lot more of our coastal weakness if you'd tried to get naval dominance (although your arctic strike was very impressive all the same ).

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.

Yeah, I didn't have much vet help at the later stage of the game in my first few games either. I don't think it's a lack of care though, just that at this point empires are huge, diplomacy is complex, reporting is sparse and the options for unit movements are baffling.

It's hard for a turn player to get their head around what's going on at this point in a game, let alone a dedlurker, unless the turnplayer puts a huge amount of effort in (my long turns were mostly chatting through things with Noble - thanks and no thanks Noble!) or the lurker logs in enough to understand what's going on, which is a lot to ask of someone (does anyone other than Hitru, Noble and Celiazul do this?)

As for how this affects learning - I think in my second pitboss (PB13) dtay commandoed our capital, which was about as good a lesson about the dangers of railroad as I could ask for - I'm sure all the vets learned something the hard way.

So what suggestions have I got for improving your next game?

A few little tactical nuggets:

I'm pretty sure Foam is screwed, but forgot to scout with airships, so blargh. One of those things I'm pretty sure, but I don't know if I should pull out or stay because I didn't scout........ My best guess. He probably has 5 cannon at least, airships, and even if he didn't upgrade them 20 knights, plus whatever is in the 7 galleons that have been sitting off coast. I'm not sure exactly when that gold flipped back because why in the world does culture go away so slowly........ I've held that tile for the last 75 turns, 700 in game years......

I'm sure you know the tile flipped because Guimarães just popped it's borders. The way culture works is one of the things that's really useful to know (see also: liberating Charriu's holy city to give Jowy an attack vector at two more of your cities). The tiles next to a city get so much culture in them when borders pop to 40 and 60% that you're not going to flip them back for the rest of the game. You may have held the tile for 70 years, but you were only ever putting 25-30 culture a turn, even at 40% borders. This is a reason why culture bombs never work in someone's core (see my PB13 for a very frustrating example vs 2metraninja).

As for the fight against Foam I'd actually decided we weren't going to be able to take it. I'm sure you suspected that I didn't have amazing units on the galleons, but you couldn't take any risks. Between the hill and the cavalry I don't think any of my units would have got odds, even with airships doing their thing first. I only went through with putting everything in place to take the city because I had plans up north and wanted to keep your attention down here a little longer. I was delighted when you left some nice soft rifles there for me to kill.

But the strategic is where things went wrong for you:

It looks like the foundation of your game is solid though and once you become more ruthless and slighly less builderish your game should improve a lot. Morale is indeed really important, especially in the late game.

This is great advice from Hitru - your tech path and builds were a little too builderish - not horrifyingly so, but you could have neutralised Carthage with a bit more killer instinct.

This picture is late on, but great to help explain what I mean. You're building five frigates at a point where I'm streaming SOTL into the fight - unpromoted frigates aren't going to hurt me here, SOTL or drydocks to get promos would have been much better (given different tech choices - in fact the amount of water on the map meant beelining destroyers wouldn't have been unreasonable). You're also building five rifles against an enemy who's main attackers are grenadiers - you should have been building Cavalry, which the grens didn't get odds on (even when they were bombarded) and which are much more flexible for attack and defence. Then you've got two wonder builds going when you're in an existential war. Now Wall St in the shrine city is probably acceptable, but putting 1400 hammers in the statue of liberty when hammers were your weakness and your economy was already awesome (and totally non-specialist-focussed) seems like getting distracted by the shiny.



But IMO all this was a little after your real downfall:

Your tech path looked focussed on Assembly Line, which isn't necessarily a mistake, but it's a long run to get there and one that neglects air and naval power, which is a mistake if you have a ravening wolf next door.

I'd bet that given the same position again you'd get Chemistry before Democracy (to threaten Carthage's biggest weakness and keep me from picking a fight with you) as well as making sure you took the Physics scientist. (I'm amazed that SD wasn't telling you how OP airships are as well ).

The other first-to bonus that you missed was probably the most important though - without the Taj Mahal I'm sure Carthage would never have come close to competing with you. It was the thing that allowed the rest of our golden ages to happen and it dug us out of a huge economic hole. Did you have an opportunity to whip it that you decided against? IIRC we 6-whipped for 120 hammers. How much earlier would you have had it if Pindi hadn't burnt your border city?


Anyway, I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff, but what I really want to say is you played a great game and I'm looking forward to seeing you back stronger next time...

[Mjmd]

I was mainly complaining about culture to complain lol. I knew why and I maybe should have been building culture there (I did this for 1 turn in Sugar Cookies later in the game to prevent this). I also was going to use the same thing against Skags on the other side of the world if I could.

Ya Taj is a whole story and a half. I fell into some classical human failings. I thought I could do it all. I saw Jowy going for rifling and was worried Charriu would collapse too fast. I wanted to do damage vs Carthage and then turn east while having military superiority so I couldn't be stabbed at that point. I then got greedy and moved some of my army east to snipe some AT cities. I also under-defended Sugar Cookies, which due to these two issues got burned without me being able to crush Pins knight stack. Sugar Cookies was supposed to be where I would build Taj. I'm pretty sure even with delaying nationalism I could have beat Carthage to Taj if I hadn't had Sugar Cookies burned. I then fell into another human idiocy and then didn't change my plans based on new info. Pancakes was about 3-4 turns away when Carthage got it, which was exactly the number of turns behind getting Nationalism I was. I should have switched techs when I realized where Pins tech was going.

Ya tech path after that was even more of a mess.

Ya I think Pin and I had the toughest positions on this map. We both got lucky in different ways. Pin got an easy meal early. I got free room to expand into. I think my early war with Charriu was more damaging than Pins war with Gira seems to have been. Also very possible Pin just managed it much better.

My only other military fighting vs humans was vs SD in PB51 and the Charriu war in this game. Both early game warfare (and far from perfect), so ya late game warfare was all new to me and I was having to figure it out on the fly. Note to self commando + railroads (you remember things better if you write it down).