Gavagai's thread

[Gavagai]

The beginning of Reneissance...



...and the beginning of the end. My golden age GNP is worse than Furungy's normal GNP.

[Gavagai]

While I'm stagnating and playing passive, prepareing defenses on the eastern shore, Furungy is settling new cities and growing his empire. I feel I really need to do something, so I decided to take this risk:



Turn after next I will drop 9 knights, 2 maces, 4 catapults and 1 cho-ko-nu on a tile 1 NE from Mikey's capital. I'm pretty sure that it will be enough to take the city but there is a possibility that I would run into a Zanth's stack tasked with the same mission. If so, we will have a rather awkward stalemate: neither of us will be able to take the city without putting himself to a risk of a devastating counter-attack from the other one. Zanth is, actually, catching up in tech rapidly: he doesn't have knights yet but already can build maces and pikes.



My another project is settling this island but it wouldn't be fast. I still need much more units than I now have: my eastern defenses are insufficient and I will need to reinforce western expeditionary force to scare Zanth away.



Furungy took Engineering. I think, Chemistry is his next tech target. I will have Astronomy in something like 6-7 turns and then should be able to slip in Military Tradition before going for Military Science. Or may be not. What would happen with my tech rate after Colossus will go down? I'm now desperately trying to grow my cities to make more specialists available but it won't be good enough.
Anyway, he already succeeded in forcing me to research almost exclusively military techs (though Chemistry is a huge boost to my numerous workshops, I was going to research it early from start). Also, he forefeited a chance to go for some economic advantage himself. This by itself gives other players a chance to come back.

And this is LOL:



Bacchus is clearly scared. No way I'm going to through my units into this meatgrinder with a looming Furungy's invasion on the horizont, so have a good sleep, buddy.

[Gavagai]

Ah, almost forgotten:



A pretty terrible use of Bureau capital but I have no other way to generate GS for Astronomy fast enough. I still wonder if it was a mistake to put NE here. I had a pretty good case (it gave a big short-term profit) but still...

[Gavagai]

Furungy, being in leading position and having absolutely no military threat researched naval techs up to Astronomy, Construction -> Engineeing, Feudalism but didn't research Printing Press. Really, he had a good start but his current perfomance is unimpressive: he does everything like in a slow motion, couldn't research Astronomy for ages, for example. Also, I feel that he whips way too hard for this stage of the game, something like 2 whips per turn on average, and this is his mature cities, not newfound ones.
Really, he has twice my land and Willem against my Qin but I'm still keeping up. This is just not right.

[Gavagai]

Well, this was truly a black day for my civilization games. As some of you may remember, I was going to land and capture this:



Well, I landed and...







EVERYTHING IS PILLAGED INTO THE GROUND!!! My first reaction was that Zanth went mad for some reason but after that I realized that this is most probably Bacchus' job. Some time ago he sent three galleys towards Myki and DOWed but no city captures followed. I wondered what it was about and now, I think, I know the answer. This is a really bizzare thing to do but very much in his style.

I don't even know what I'm supposed to do now. Several well-developed cottages were the reason I started this expedition in the first place. I don't know, may be I should go capture land in the north from Zanth. It has some improvenets, at least...

[Gavagai]

OK, here is what's happening.
Previous turn I took Mikey's capital with minimal losses (1 cat, 1 mace):



Then we had a pause for a few days because Bacchus was away. After he at last played, I logged in and found that I was somehow at peace with Myki. I was extremely confused and even considered asking for a reload but then looked at my treasury and remembered that I did make him a peace offer for all his gold (something like 300). I didn't think he would accept and completely forgot about it. I spent some of this gold to upgrade triremes into caravels at once. Why? Because this:



That's why I still can win this game: Furungy started to buy some really heavy weed. Keep in mind that this guy has Astronomy for a while and can easily attack me with, like, real fleet from here:



Also this:



I have 75% chance to get a scientist next turn and Astronomy in a turn after next. I'm pre-building several caravels to get frigates in water at once.

[Gavagai]

What is this problem I have with bulbpaths!? I can't bulb Astro, he wants to bulb PP...

EDIT. Yes, I know that such things are easy to check but I didn't...

[Commodore]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy...e_tech.php

I live it.

[Gavagai]

I think I will end up making an Academy from this GS. I have, like, 10 tiles which would benefit from PP and Academy in Kitezh will bring something like 50 bpt at 100% science even post-Astro. Also, I will have an option to boost my science temporarily to research something really quickly by running lots of scientist in Kitezh.

[Gavagai]

I think I will be able to land Astro in 4 turns...