[PB66] Amicalola is Feeling Nostalgic

[Jowy]

GG, not WP 

I think it's important to realize that Civilization 4 is inherently an unfair game, and it will always be that, no matter what features we strip away or what rules we come up with.

That's not a knock at the game btw. It wouldn't be a very fun game without the randomness.

[Qgqqqqq]

Congrats on Asc 20! That's pretty amazing. I love the game though I can't get that deep in. Do you watch any streams?

I completely understand the sentiment - it's where I generally end up after I play a game for a while and get burnt out. Btw, I'm in the market for a dedlurker if you want a jumping off point into EITB

[Amicalola]

Congrats on Asc 20! That's pretty amazing. I love the game though I can't get that deep in. Do you watch any streams?

I completely understand the sentiment - it's where I generally end up after I play a game for a while and get burnt out. Btw, I'm in the market for a dedlurker if you want a jumping off point into EITB

Thanks! I don't watched any streams because I've never really followed twitch, but I did find this tier list that I found quite helpful once I got to the higher levels. It's a little outdated (there was a balance patch around 2020 that made some cards slightly better, such as the ironclad's self-damage strategy), but for the most part it's still quite helpful. I've only gotten there on the ironclad, who I find the most fun - the others I'm somewhere between 5-10 with. I might have a go with the Defect next though, after a break. 

I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable/helpful dedlurking EITB, given that I know literally zero about the game. But I'll be general lurking that game!

[Qgqqqqq]

No worries.

I've never had the patience for climbing very high (I think the furthest I've got is Ascension 10) but I've watched quite a bit of twitch. It's actually how I discovered the game in the first place,, though I don't watch it much these days. Defect is probably my main though, just with a play style I jive best with.

[RefSteel]

And I don't just mean that you get invested because it's so long, although that is true. I mean literally having to log in and spend time on this game every day.

100% agreed. For me at least, the possibility of some player doing something that appears to me to "throw the game" would be a non-issue if I'm doing what I think of as "playing correctly" - meaning, for a game as long as this, enjoying the gameplay and goofy multiplayer interplay as it comes without worrying about the ultimate outcome. But even if I can maintain that in the face of the huge time investment and pressures involved, the need to log in and play a turn every day, without fail, whether I feel like it that day or not, whatever else is going on, would just make it too much like uncompensated work instead of something to enjoy playing. Given that you seem to feel largely the same way, I'm glad you're well out of this one!

[Amicalola]

And I don't just mean that you get invested because it's so long, although that is true. I mean literally having to log in and spend time on this game every day.

100% agreed.  For me at least, the possibility of some player doing something that appears to me to "throw the game" would be a non-issue if I'm doing what I think of as "playing correctly" - meaning, for a game as long as this, enjoying the gameplay and goofy multiplayer interplay as it comes without worrying about the ultimate outcome.  But even if I can maintain that in the face of the huge time investment and pressures involved, the need to log in and play a turn every day, without fail, whether I feel like it that day or not, whatever else is going on, would just make it too much like uncompensated work instead of something to enjoy playing.  Given that you seem to feel largely the same way, I'm glad you're well out of this one!

Apologies Ref, I totally missed this post at the time! I think you're bang-on about playing correctly, and that's another thing I struggle with. Really, you have just very succinctly identified my two issues when playing PitBoss games! While your later words are also relevant to me (particularly with 59/66), I also need to take the time to learn how to 'play correctly' to enjoy another game here.

Edit: My third issue is proofreading my posts for spelling errors.

[Miguelito]

Hello neighbour!

Long time no see. We had a GA, teched to Organised Religion and Catapults/Ballista Elephants/Horse Archers, and got ready to attack Gavagai. We even got Miguelito to sign clam/clam, so seeing our power rising and our military techs, surely he opened borders to secure that friendship, right? Right? 


When one neighbour signs OB, and the other is a scaling monsters who won't create a safe border after repeated threats, I ask you this: is there really any other option?

I tried and tried to convey to you that we could be friends without visiting rights, but apparently that was just not acceptable... The issue was the horrible geography. Expeditus was our only copper, and strategically essential, but that lake went far into the east, and essentially we were defending on two borders against you - and I really wanted to prevent you from finding out for as long as possible (I was reasonably sure that you had never scouted beyond the Expeditus hill, and I'm happy that the screenshot confirms it).

Of course due to no OB I also wasn't aware that you had nowhere else to go for a long time (I think by the time of the attack I had it sort of figured out). I think either way you made the correct call. We were behind in military tech (you somehow snuck construction around our research visibility, well done), you had a vastly better production base, and as I said our land was basically undefensible. My criticism from what I remember would be not going all in, and then halting the stack while we were amassing more axes from all directions. 1-2 rounds of WE/cat whips from every city would surely have broken us.


I'm also amused that we were both complaining about the respective other's better land, although I'd claim to have put in more effort into the whining :

So basically I'm on the same page with Ginger here - we are ever behind Amica / Plemo / Gavagai, both in terms of GNP and MfG. The former might be resolvable with our UB and Representation, for the latter we don't really have a solution. We have the emergency measure of PS, but overall it seems that either others just have developed their empires better or found more and better food sources on top of luxuries*. Amica is helped by Barays of course, which often have been dismissed, but with Exp actually have a quite decent payback time.

* of course I wanted to prove it, because I like suffering. Here is our diplo screen with Amica:


We have some trades going with them: corn for fish and clam for clam. I have counted all the connected and unconnected food ressources in our empire and arrive at:

wet plains wheat
dry corn
3 dry rice
pig
3 clam
wet corn
1 crab
1 deer
2 sheep
1 plains cow

On these tiles we generate 52 food, accounting for lighthouses. We also have some lighthouse lakes and settled on a sugar.

Just from what we know of Amica's food through the diplo window and tradesthey have:

4 clam
3 fish
4 crab
2 pig
1 wheat
1 corn (visible, dry)
1 cow

With a very conservative estimate: pigs = 5f, wheat = 4f, 0.5 lighthouse food per seafood ressource, that's 75.,5 food, not accounting for the unconnected ressources. So a difference of 23.5

This is not due to underexpansion, we have the same city count as them. There is one dry corn in Patrick's as yet unpopped second ring that will however go to Gavagai before it comes back to us. It's just the map. It's a lush map, just not for us.
I really enjoy this game, it's a lovely civilization, but looking at stuff like this it feels like I should stop caring. Basically our path to winning requires our neighbours being completely inept, and we know that's not the case. Anyway, carry on.

Anyway, here's hoping to play with you again in one capaity or another

[Tarkeel]

It was good reading a report from you again, but since we barely had any contact in-game (I think ours was the last contact made) I don't have much to directly reply to.

T77
Here is the situation. 

I do agree that you probably had one of the worst starting areas land-wise. Of the "dead-end" (one-neighbour players), Alhazard, Superdeath and P&P (which are the ones I know of) all had significantly more land available to them (And you technically had a land border with Gavagai). But, at least your strategic resources were reasonably place; copper even popped at what was your already decided first city, and then it got horses as well! We had to literally fight to claim our horses with a city that had food, and even then they were not in our culture by T119!

I would still argue that our start was worse though, but then Minguelito was a stronger competitor than Alhazard, and you actually had more peaceful cities available too. Without having read Mig's thread just yet, I think we had the two worst positions here. I do agree that it was right for you to attack into them, and not just because that saved our game: They were about to grow into the monk economy as well as all the other goodies they had.

Tarkeel + civac - Mehmed (Exp/Org) of Spain (Conquistador, Citadel, Fishing/Mysticism)
This is exactly the type of pick I'd expect from Tarkeel/Civac; no frills, brute-force leader with a slightly unusual civ. Mehmed is a top-tier CtH leader, I think many people would agree. Spain is also good - I don't like Conquistadors much, which come too late to matter, but Citadels are nice as a permanent trade route per city (though I think they're much better with Protective), and the techs are fine as long as you have seafood. I would expect these guys to competently expand out and found a religion, build courthouses everywhere, then try to kill someone at knights, and someone else at Conquistadors. Bland, but effective.

Let's just say that part of the reason for not picking PRO was that we expected stone to be available, which lessens the production boost of PRO. We did conclude that Spain is probably best played with PRO/CHA to take full advantage of the Citadel, conqs are a sideshow bonus. Mehmed is a great leader, and we thought we'd stolen your first pick actually.

I really like Tarkeel and Civac in general, they're both nice people. However, in Civ terms, I'd be very cautious to rate them based on history. Notably, I'm not really sure it's accurate to say "Tarkeel and Civac won PB62 easily!". Instead, I would say that after T40, the other players collectively lost it, while Tarkeel/Civac did the bare minimum of staying out of the way. Individually, I'd be cautious too. Tarkeel and I did some nifty stuff in PB58 (one of my proudest games!), but in reality that game was won when Superdeath randomly attacked Jowy, not for anything specific that we did. Meanwhile, Civac had one of the 'winning' start positions in PB56 (and little should be taken from that game in general), while getting the dream position next to wide-eyed newcomer Amicalola in PB55. Anyway, none of this is to trash talk. I think this team is strong, one of the strongest in the game. But I'd place Miguelito/Ginger and Plemo/Piccadilly at a distinctly higher tier, and I'd predict Tarkeel/Civac win the prize for most overrated team based on past performance (possibly competing with me, actually ).

FWIW, I very much agree with you on this. Superdeath was the only one even trying to do something about us in PB62.

Well, it would appear I'm dying faster than I even imagined. I'm looking forward to the freedom.

Dying to Plemo is a bit disappointing, I'd rather it have been Gavagai or Mjmd or Tarkeel to kill me. I do hope one of those three can pull out a win - Plemo's start makes even Gavagai's look weak.

The only way we'd have killed you was on the way to a conquest victory, our locations were pretty much antepodean.