Soul of a Nameless Civ Player

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Vikings is buried on my Netflix to-do list. Current drug of choice is Breaking Bad. I'm finally catching up on what the rest of the world already knows, that being Walter White is a bad, bad man. Who knew fulminating mercury creates instant street cred? Chemistry (apparently) is cool!

[Ichabod]

I took loads of pictures, but I'll post them is small reports.

First of all, my army composition. Lots of knights, most of them highly promoted. Almost no siege. I'm building some more, though I think speed might be my best bet in an attack against Adrien (who am I kidding, my best bet against Adrien is boak wiping his stack - fortunately, bpak whipped 15 times this turn).

[Old Harry]

Can you show individual units for your knights? I love a good highly-promoted army...

[Ichabod]

Can you show individual units for your knights? I love a good highly-promoted army...

Will do, but I need to get home for that.

You get my two best cities, though.

The accordingly named Blighttown, my best commerce city, with an Academy:




And my best hammer city, with the HE. Unfortunately, I can't watermill/farm over those towns, due to crazy mod. I actually made a test to see if a previously issued command would override the "can't improve over town" rule. But your worker stops working the turn you get the village...




Not to mod bash, but I don't like the every labor civic gives a +1 hammer to something theme (part of it because I think I lost a billion hammers already due to it... not sure how it compares to the few whips I make). You know what could be an interesting buff to serfdom civic? +1 food to farms, like the agrarianism civic in FFH. You'd have more food, but you couldn't whip it, nor easily turn it into specialists. SPI buff too, I guess, for the micromanagers out there.

[Ichabod]

Dtay's land. I feel better knowing that his Capital isn't that far from the contested city, as I imagined previosuly. I think dtay played the expansion phase really, really well. He expanded fast and to the important areas. Right now, he's expanding to islands, but I don't have maps of those areas yet.







Here you can see the city of No Scouting, that I lost during the war. It's a pretty strategic position, as you can see.




This is new dtaystan, I can perhaps use my OB with him to attack Adrien from behind. Might be a decent plan, since I'd strike at land with less hills and less culture. OB with Barteq would be even better... He hasn't teched alphabet, neither have I, but I can one turn it, if needed.

[Ichabod]

For Harry:




I think I have ~40 knights, but that's the best pic of a stack with a lot of promos.

I decided to attack Adrien, starting next turn. Here's the reasons:

1. He's in caste system, so no whips.

2. His cities near me, including his Capital, are defended by 1 single ancient/classical era unit (except the hill frontier city, which I'll let stand and capture with siege later).

3. His stack is deep within boak's land. I still haven't found the main stack, but I've seen a bunch of scattered units. He has knights, but I only saw one. Saw some HAs and one movers. No pikes.

4. I strongly suspect he doesn't have engineering, so his units will take a long time to get to our front.

He won't be able to mount a quick defense without slavery. I can attack his Capital in 4/5 turns after the attack. The units that can come to defend quickly are two movers, and even his knights will probably fall easily to make C3, formation knights.

We'll see what happens. Hopefully boak launches a counter attack against Adrien too.

[Ichabod]

I'm sorry, Adrien. It was a very backstabby move of mine to declare on you, but it was done considering the spirit that this is a game I should be playing to win.

Anyway, some pictures:







Bad pictures... I captured 4 cities in the war so far (and razed one Adrien captured from boak, while boak recaptured another one), the ones closer to me. The big deal was Kearney, Adrien's Capital. Luckily, as you can see from the screenshot, Adrien doesn't have that much culture left in the area (notice the culture bug on the tiles N of Kearney), so even if things stay as they are now, we got some useful cities.

Bad news of the war:

-Adrien has Engineering, so pikes and roads.
-I still lack good defensive units in the front, so my knights are defending, which means risk of losing hammers.

Good news of the war:

-Barteq just declared on Adrien. That's awesome for me! He'll help with the heavy lifting (I think Adrien is not a tilting player, so I think he won't give everything to Barteq while owning me) and I don't mind that he takes Adrien's West and much of the south. There's some crazy cities there, but I can't take Adrien by myself, so overall it'll be a very good deal (without Barteq, I woukdn'yt make any more gains, I think).

Thing is, considering I have Kearney, there's no way I won't be the one capturing boak's former cities, if we end up finishing Adrien (considering Barteq's power graph, my power graph, and Adrien's, there's actually a chance this happens). There's a lot of cities there + the only player that borders that area is HAK, which has very few cities, even after conquering a lot from Boak. I will then have a new good target for war in HAK, which I don't think can match me in the long run.

I am in a better position than Barteq. So, if he makes more gains than me, he'd be closer to me, but I'd be closer to the leaders too. That's a deal i'm willing to take.

Finally, I don't really want a border with Gavagai. So, I don't mind if Barteq conquers the south.

----

Found more pics. This is the cities I captured, together with Kearney:




Here's what I won't mind Barteq geting from Adrien:



I don't want to border Barteq in old cities of his, so let him get this eastern ones.



Pink square is a city. Green circles are cities I think would be in too contested territory to give to Barteq, but that he'd probably feel the same way. I think the solution is to raze Mitchell (he can plant 1SW if he likes) and capture Picamole for myself. I think we'd have a decent border that way.



Barteq can take all of these.



This is my big prize. The land passage to boak's former lands, a very secure part of the map, considering how it connects to my lands (and the lands I want to capture).

[Ichabod]

Man, this map must have some insanely big islands out there. Dtay is on an enormous settling spree. He's up to +35 cities, probably the last 10 or so from islands.

I'm completely off the naval game. Adrien is going for optics, which could force me to go that way, but not really. He only has 2/3 cities on the ocean we border, and by the time he techs Astro, I don't think he'll have the production to threaten me.

Anyway, I need Astro soon, I think. Problem is: the tech cost in this map are HUUUGEEEE. My economy probably sucks, I guess, but even so, it can't be the only one, considering the score.

Looking back, I should have planned things better to get Astro after guilds/engi. I don't think Gunpowder/Nationalism was that goof of an idea... Oh, well...

By the way, I'm finally getting the National Epic built and I'll try to fix my GPP deficit. I really need a second golden age (probably time it to revolt to an economic civic), but it's still a far amount away.

Overall, here's what I have to say about the map/game: I have been playing in a mediocre level, but I caught all the breaks possible to put me in a decent position (I prefer to think that I read the geopolitical situation perfectly and conducted keen diplomatic manouevres, but I know that's a stretch). Overall, I'm just like Napoleon, as described by Tolstoy.

[Old Harry]

So where is your Russia?

[Ichabod]

So where is your Russia?

Great question.

If it wasn't for Barteq, I'd say Adrien had a good chance of being my Russia (he wouldn't get my land, but he had a chance of wearing me down and reclaim what he lost). Not sure what country he equates to now. Hopefully I'm not being overly optimistic about my chances, now that Barteq is "helping".

Dtay is probably England. He's always at the other side of the "channel" getting into my head and teasing me. He also has a lot of Naval power. And I'd bet he will end up being my final demise.

Russia is probably Gavagai (seems fitting enough, right?). That's why I'll avoid getting a border with him and I'll never cross the Niemen river (as described in the famous War and Peace scene). I don't want anything to do with them!

Boak and HAK are perhaps Spain and Portugal. I need to conquer them, otherwise Dom João VI will never come to Brazil and we'll never have our independence!