Pitboss 11: Post-game thread

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I'm not sure on interception. Maybe we should run a modern start PBEM or something. But the modern era is much less interesting to me from a play perspective than the earlier eras. As for a base, I'm not sure how close our island fortress city was to your cities, but that would have been one way to handle it, knowing our navy wasn't up to doing anything to retep except feed him exp.

I would have given anything to have a one tile choke to hit retep with. Anything. Maybe next time.

[SevenSpirits]

IMO the purpose of the modern era is to close out the game. But even though it provides some nice tools for this, it turns out it's still a lot of work to actually close it out, because combat is very micro-intensive. People don't feel the need to play through all that - unlike the earlier combat which is NOT closing out the game. They are OK just recognizing that given the modern era tools available, a certain person will win. I'm not sure how accurate these conclusions are before the "winner" can beat everyone else put together, but people decide that way nevertheless.

[NobleHelium]

He'd also need a place to bomb from in the effective range though, within 8 tiles, right? I don't think he had a base close enough to my core to do that. Or he'd need to invest in carriers but I didn't see any. I wonder how effective a defense are fighters on intercept missions? They hit all bombing missions in their 6 tile range I presume? (I read that a full health fighter has a 100% chance of intercepting.)

Battleships do collateral damage. If planes are in range that would be worse, yes. A healthy fighter will always intercept, but the attacker is supposed to run air sweeps to neutralize them first. Air sweeps simulate fighter escort for bombers.

[WilliamLP]

Battleships do collateral damage. If planes are in range that would be worse, yes. A healthy fighter will always intercept, but the attacker is supposed to run air sweeps to neutralize them first. Air sweeps simulate fighter escort for bombers.

That was my safe spot, the lake 1SW of Cannelloni, with enough bridge workers there to make a couple of canals on any given turn to maneuver if necessary. (E.g. canal NW-NW of the ships to create a path to Spaghetti.)

Retep did have 2 cities in bomber range, which I didn't recognize the significance of. (I didn't know the range was 8 tiles.) My idea was I was going to swarm fighters in this area like crazy using carriers if necessary, and use superior production to eventually mass more boats than Retep could deal with. Also most or all those frigates could have been destroyers at a couple of turns' notice.

I had 14 battleships in the queue, 10 within the next 2 turns. I wonder if there was or is a way to effectively attack this?

He could boat me in the northeast coast, but all those cities are simply junk. There are the western islands too, but I thought I could detect and react to movements of his major fleets.

[retep]

Ok I read this thread at least. Yeah I was going to attack williamLP navy but he retread inside his land (literally, he put it in a lake where I couldn't touched him). I don't know to be honest after the fail second attempt to attack Boldy I stop caring that much for the game. It takes a bunch of time for the logistic of moving a bucnh of units every turn , especailly considering all the cities islands.

About aisrhip I understand that fighters have a intercept percentage equal to his heal, or at least that is why I remember, it's been so long since I use then. Also land units with a chance of intercept only do it once.
The idea was to distract william where his navy was, while attack from Kuro former cities and the western islands at the same time and hope that Wetbandit will join the war. Taking xenu's island was an option yes but I really didn't want to start a war with xenu Pretty difficult considering the scouting with airships. I have already save like 4k gold to upgrades and everything.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, that lake is a very good spot, I didn't realize you were keeping the boats there.

I'm building a lot of battleships. I think I need to try and not lose the seas above all else, and I also feel like I need to keep my navy in one big stack now.

I was just going by this post which sounded like you'd keep all your ships in one stack in the middle, which would be vulnerable.

And yeah, fighters have percent chance to intercept equal to their current health. Carriers aren't very useful for actual bombing because you can only carry fighters on them, not bombers. (They would still be good if they can attack with impunity though.) Bombers in Civ4 simulate the larger USAAF land-based bombers, while fighters represent both fighters and carrier-based bombers.

[wetbandit]

Post game thoughts:

I've read nearly all of the threads. I'll start with the most disappointing part of the game, I've since learned, is what happened with Halvgud and his affect on that part of the world. I never figured out why Suttree fell from his spot as a major player after his initial start. Sorry that the game didn't work out for you.

Turning towards my play, I failed to capitalize on my position from T140 forward, resulting in an aimless shamble for the last 100 turns of the game. This was primarily accomplished by misreading the global state. Up until concession, I had thought that retep's chances were equal to or even greater than WilliamLP's, despite a mild disparity in demographics.

I still don't see how WilliamLP could meaningfully affect retep's chances at space, if he tried to go for that, because of his protective terrain. That would require a humongous overland attack or Doom Fleet, which retep was also capable of matching, to overcome his terrain. Ever since I met retep around t145, I acted under the assumption that WilliamLP was the only player who could meaningfully attack retep. Therefore, I did not think an attack on WilliamLP was in my interest, as no one would be left to counter-balance against retep. Especially so because my undersized military, all the way up until I built up for my Molach war, would prevent me from really holding onto any territory. At best, I could hope for the two northern islands above my capital and use my navy to deny him access, but that didn't seem a worthwhile reason to fight a war.

Even now, retep has quite the power just from eyeballing the demos. I don't know how a war would have shook out or if I would have responded by trying to take cities from WilliamLP. I would probably have used the time to get to Computers and try and land the Internet to catch up in tech, which I figured would be at least 20 turns away.

My problems, as I see it now, for competing with the two major players was slow expansion to exploit the islands available to me and a lack of land, even with the islands, to compete without another war. WilliamLP masterfully secured a huge swath of land with little fighting. He certainly had the military to back up his claims, too, or so it seemed. And aside from Kuro's capital, that acquisition land up there was not worth much. retep was so insulated from everyone else that he was able to peacefully expand at his will for the most part.

That's not to say I didn't mismanage my land. I definitely waffled around economics, communism, and physics. I definitely could have won the GM from economics had I not thought it was already gone.

At the end, I probably could have managed the Molach war better, I've posted on that in my thread. I don't think it would have mattered too much unless the looming retep/WilliamLP actually happened and there was not a decisive victor.

Thanks again to everyone for the game, enjoyed myself and may have, but don't count on it, learned some things.

Other Small things:

Archery:

Krill mentioned in the lurker thread that our decision to tech archery at T33 was poor as it delayed our development. My reasoning at the time was we would not be able to field anything better than a warrior for a long time, at least 15 turns given need to settle, hook up horse, and build an Immortal, especially with hostile warriors scouting our borders. As we had beelined BW and found no copper, we were faced with this problem. The issue then lies with the opening, which prioritized BW in order to have workers chop forests for tiles to improve. The risk was we would not have copper. We would have faced a similar risk had we prioritized AH. The sims I did then led me to conclude that the BW route also put us ahead economically.

Archer rush was never the plan until we discovered we had no strategic resource feasibly within our range.

Adopting Hinduism:

We got a free spread of Hinduism in our capital on T71. With the early vertical potential of that site, it was too much to resist adopting it. Perhaps I should have attempted to switch at some point, but we didn't find other religion on our side of the world until much later. At which point, I was too busy messing things up to consider it.

Praets:

Starting next to AGG-CRE Rome is no sweat, you don't even fight until the modern era.

Marble to WLP:

I'm glad to read that I didn't help you with most of MoM, it looks like you would have been able to build it anyway. I thought I had handed it to you completely, but it looks like I would have lost a race if I tried with my marble.

Circumnavigation:

Right place, right time, dumb luck; sounds like my game in a nutshell.


tl;dr: Wetbandit drones on about not winning, picks argument with Krill about teching archery, judiciously uses emoticons

[WilliamLP]

Interesting stuff. I haven't read your thread yet, but will get to it on the weekend, hopefully with thoughts. I'm especially interested in how you managed to complete an early conquest and not stagnate and fall far behind in tech.

I still don't see how WilliamLP could meaningfully affect retep's chances at space, if he tried to go for that, because of his protective terrain.

I think I was in a position to win space, but I was only really comfortable about that at the very end, which is why I was just being passive. Retep was up most or all of Rocketry at the end, I was up Bio and Artillery (though Artillery isn't a bottleneck). After everything had matured in final civics I ended up with quite a bit more land and production, and turning all that into commerce through wealth and research builds, my GNP was higher and I'm pretty sure I could have gotten to the key space techs first, and had more production for the ship parts. My IW city was getting quite good - I think it could 1-turn tanks or very close. And my HE / Moai site was really strong too. (Lots of strong Moai sites in this game... Retep's was pretty godly too.) The onus was on you guys to attack me, or so I felt at the end of the game.

I also saw Retep spending 5 minutes on turns and I was prepared to give the space race a serious study and try to plan it well. E.g. looking at old T-Hawk reports where he calculates everything, contests at CFC for earliest launch. The space race in PB is mostly unexplored other than PB1, and I liked my chances a lot just by being the one willing to get dirty and do the work.

But there was absolutely a huge chunk of the game where you could have attacked me and Retep would have won. (Though I was less sure of this after you were weakened by Molach.) Or Retep could have attacked me and you would have won.

I'm still interested in how the final war would have looked if Retep had put everything into it, but interested academically, not as much to actually spend a couple hours per day thinking about the turns and running sims!

Right place, right time, dumb luck; sounds like my game in a nutshell.

Me too. I did some things quite well, but others worked out by geographical fluke or predestination or just luck. If Oxy weren't distracted to the south in the land grab phase I wouldn't have ended up with a lot of the land I got. It was just a couple of key turns that were the difference between which of us owned that whole area. I can say fortune favors the bold but it was more fortune than boldness, honestly.

My move I was most proud of was deliberately farming to create a barb city inside my empire (the jungle doughnut hole) in order to get a 10xp axe, which would have been very hard otherwise because I did so little early fighting.

[wetbandit]

My capital really helped power through the medieval period. It was during this time where I made some significant mistakes, though,notably not getting the snowball rolling. I was very close to finishing The Great Library, 2 turns away before you did. That marble trade was really stupid. My capital ended up with Oxford and NE, so those extra GPP and beakers would have been wonderful.

I hadn't considered the length of time retep spent on his turns when I concluded his good chance at a space victory. I'm inclined to agree with you now that the outcome would probably lean your way.

Retep and I had a collective action problem; it would be far too easy for the person who didn't declare war to sit out and tech. I had the additional problem in that it was almost impossible for me to actually attack retep for most of the game, any attack by me would basically gift him the game.

You played well, although, it would have been interesting to see how the world may have spiraled out of its stability if I did attempt to raze your capital, academically speaking of course.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I can confirm that even really late in the game, Wetbandit's nine move transport would have made a mockery of William's capital defense, no matter how stout that longbow was.