[Spoiler] Fintourist loses his multiplayer virginity

[Fintourist]

Azza has a tradition of getting attacked too....

I'm.. on.. my.. way..

Azza's total military forces consisted approximately of a single warrior until T60 (slightly exaggerated). However at that that point distances were so large that attacking did not make much sense to me. From about T90 onwards Azza has then been the no 1. military power of my opponents. I should be able to grind a win out of Azza simply through economical improvement, but I guess I have no patience to play this game still in 2015 and thus have to attack him sooner rather than later. As a compromise, I just need to damage him before he gets to redcoats. With this turn pace it won't happen either before 2014 so there is no need to panic yet

[Fintourist]

[Old Harry]

Is it too late to claim Jihad?

[Fintourist]

Turn 149

The save finally came and I guess I followed Harry's advice..

T150 will probably be pretty uneventful when it comes to fighting so I leave domestic stuff, techs path etc. for that report. So let's concentrate on this little war against Sareln:

As you might remember, I unloaded 4 Janissaries next to Sareln's city of "Allspice":



Sareln still had only a musket and an axe inside the city so the attack decision was not difficult. First I sacrifized a Janissary with 10 % odds, but then won the next two battles with 80 & 90 % odds.



And this time I actually decided to keep the city. Maybe somebody wondered earlier, but I razed the four core cities of Sareln because:

• They would have been culturally pressured by Sareln's capital
  
• Sareln would surely have focused all his efforts on getting them back
  
• They would have tied quite significant amount of defensive units
  

Keeping the cities would have therefore ment in practise that I need to capture all of Sareln's core area. This would have required quite a lot of units/hammers that are still very expensive since I'm still a step away from workshops+drafting phase of my game.

Anyways , I decided to keep Allspice (now Hawk-Eye) since its:

• On a hill (defendable)
  
• Quite close to my southern cities and thus fairly easy to reinforce (defendable)
  
• It's relatively far from Sareln's core cities making it a less attractive target (If Sareln decides to launch a revenge attack on me then I'm very happy if he chooses "Hawk-Eye" as a target and leaves my own core cities untouched)
  

Enough of Allspice/Hawk-Eye since that was not the only -action of the turn..

You might remember that I wrote in the last report that I'm going to check the defences of Sareln's Colossus city "Coriander"...



Well guess what, it was only defended by a single musketman who had not taken his promotion yet. I spent a long time wondering whether I should attack. I could also capture that worker and unload units forcing Sareln to whip a longbow or something. However, if I want to take that city with my 3 Janissaries, it had to happen immediately. I felt that I don't need to cripple Sareln more, but raze gold would be nice and Janissaries will become quite expendable in only couple of turns.

The biggest irony of the decision process was though the fact that I used Sareln's own combat calculator to determine whether my combat probabilities are good enough.. Yeah, I'm actually a bit ashamed of that

So I went in, first Janissary had only a bit over 1 % odds, but still got 3 hits in. Afterwards already my 2nd Janissary used his 60+ % odds and colossus joined the list of destroyed wonders (I think losing 2 Janissaries and taking the city with 3rd was the base case):



PS. Somehow my computer sucks and only some screenshots show the information that I wanted to show with my mouse.

PPS. In this killing deliurium, I'm starting to think that I should have just kept all the captured cities (especially GLH+Shrine) and then try to win the game through controlling 2 out 5 starting areas. If I end up losing the game this was a major passed opportunity that I will be thinking about. However, I think this conservative(wussy) approach is still fairly solid and currently my position looks good

[Fintourist]

Ok, lets update this one also

Summary of gains and losses so far:

Fintourist gains

• ~800 gold
  
• 4 workers
  
• 1 city
  

Fintourist losses

• 3 Janissaries
  

Sareln losses

• 6 cities with 40 pop points and lot of infra
  
• The Great Lighthouse
  
• The Pyramids
  
• Buddhist Shrine (+17 gpt)
  
• The Colossus
  
• 1 Great Artist
  
• 4 Workers
  
• 2 Musketmen
  
• 1 Praetorian
  
• 1 Axe
  
• 3 Warriors
  
• 2 Galleys
  

[Old Harry]

PPS. In this killing deliurium, I'm starting to think that I should have just kept all the captured cities (especially GLH+Shrine) and then try to win the game through controlling 2 out 5 starting areas. If I end up losing the game this was a major passed opportunity that I will be thinking about. However, I think this conservative(wussy) approach is still fairly solid and currently my position looks good

Agreed - although he's only got a few mainland cities left to counter attack from, the ones you razed would have been isolated and hard to defend.

It'll take something special from Azza to wrest this game from your grasp...

[Fintourist]

Well, as the game progresses, my lack of experience becomes more and more visible! (I just had to check what tech enabled oil..) Therefore, I'm sure I'll still find a way to make things complicated!

[Old Harry]

Tell me about it (46 ). Is the tech dowsing?

[DaveV]

PS. Somehow my computer sucks and only some screenshots show the information that I wanted to show with my mouse.

I had that problem for a long time, and it's apparently due to using Alt-PrtScrn instead of just PrtScrn by itself. The latter method just stores the screenshot files with a number (e.g. Civ4ScreenShot0033), but always includes the mouse text. You also don't have to deal with the title box obscuring part of the screen.

[Fintourist]

Tell me about it (46 ). Is the tech dowsing?

I had to google "dowsing" since it was a completely new word to me.. Which however does not guarantee that it isnt a modern tech in civ! so maybe it is..