I am once again asking for the quote of the month to be changed as it is now a new month - Mjmd

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Japper and Cornflakes' team thread

Turn 39:

Wondering what today[ actually yesterday]'s turn will bring, I open the save.
I am greeted with this:


so ten seconds later:



So, after breathing in and out a few times, I continue playing the turn.
Jasper's initial reaction is very accurate. We were taking rather by surprise... but not because of their action. Merely by the fact that a war was declared a mere two turns after meeting them. 
After all, I had already predicted 4 turns ago that with an army that large, and especially one that will be outdated soon, Nubia would go after a player. 
Which they did btw: despite only having met Chevalier's England last turn, it was Woden that declared war on us. 
If it had been Chevalier, it might have been a move to simply take out my scouting unit. Not with Nubia though. so I am going in full counter-war mode. 

Now, first things first:




Their military power is astonishing. However, as you will see on one of my later screenshots, at least Chevaliers one is a fluke. I now have sight on an English galley, which won't be able to do anything against us. 
Aside from that he has slings. 
Now, the real problem is Woden. Seeing that he was the one that took out my scouting barb, and most likely came from the north (eastern terrain is rough enough not to be able to cross in a mere one turn, even with Nubia's archer movement bonus), I think that I was right in predicting their caps are near that desert. Moreover, it might very well be Woden bordering us, not Chevalier. 

Leaving military aside however, the scores clearly show we have the advantage here. 
England is improving its science rate, probably working a tea plantage or a late scientific city state envoy. However, both in raw science and techs, they are still far behind us. Let alone Nubia. 
I am pretty sure they got swords nor horses. This means that if we can stop their archer-warrior [-slinger?] rush, we should be good. 
With Jasper soon finishing his scientific district, he should be able to get Iron working done in 15 to 20 turns. After that, he can spawn his ultimate anti-archer unique unit. 
Meanwhile, I will keep on my own science-scheme, dropping Horseback Riding in 14 turns from now. As soon as that happens, I will slot in Maneuver. 
Although I might slot it in earlier depending on my government type. After all, Political Philosophy will drop in 10 turns. 


I doubt I will go for autocracy however. War or not, we are still going for a cultural victory, so I prefer not to give up that diplomatic cardslot. 
Further on the tree, we will get the choice Drama and Poetry or Games and Recreation.
We will not get the Drama & Poetry boost anytime soon [=build a wonder], so we prob need to full-research that one. 
Since I will be the one going for the Construction technology, it would be the most efficient if I would civilise Games and Recreation and Jasper does Drama and Poetry, so that we can give each other the boost. 

Back to the opening screenshot:


As you can see, my warrior north it gone. It got destroyed by Nubia, likely by an archer from the north. 
Meanwhile a barbarian warrior hits my sling, dealing some more damage than I had anticipated. 
England decides to show us where all its military strength comes from. Though they will be meeting Geneva if they continue along that route, that ship won't form any danger for us. 
A close-up of the galley:


That same screenshot will reveal that my deal with Jasper finally succeeded. A very nice trader has been bought in Ãranyaka, and will be moving towards Upãsanã starting next turn. 
Thanks to the extra money Jasper send with the deal to make up for the lost turn, as wel as the money from my two new plantages, I got just enough gold to upgrade my three slings to archers. 
Luckly I had already started to move them towards my cities to upgrade a few turns ago, though back then the plan was to use them against barbarians. 
Although I will still be clearing the camp in the east, the camps north and south now have a slightly lower priority. 
Two of the archers are already in Ãranyaka, so they can start clearing out the barbcamp and then switch to defence. 
The third archers is currently in the capital. Not sure whether I should send it directly to Ãranyaka, or let it go slightly north to take out that barbcamp first. Will decide that next turn. 

Also regarding the capital:
with just two turns left, I decided to finish the builder before switching to military units. I will need it anyways to improve the tundra city, so best to get it out as fast as possible to get that tundra city set up. 
Since Agoge is already slotted in, I can just start pushing out archers directly afterwards. 
Thanks to Jasper's generous gold per turn donation, I will be able to support quite a few  of them. I am not going to cripple myself with huge upkeeps however, like Nubia is doing. I will make sure I have enough to defend my border, but not going for a pushing army. 

Now, War wasn't the only significant thing. I also made quite an interesting scouting discovery. 


Quite nice terrain. Better than my planned tundra city, though I won't reroute my settler. It already is on its position, and moving east now would only delay that needed third city even more. 
However, as a fifth settling spot (or fourth if those barbs north are not cleared by then) it would be quite nice. 
Settling on the coastal tile just east of the warrior would give the best yields (so far), but yeh, England... 
I guess I won't decide on the spot till I actually got a settler out. Who knows what the situation will be by then. Perhaps we have thrown England out of the game by then.... or visa versa. 



To the west the terrain is also getting more and more interesting. 
We also found a second canal spot, proving that our proposed idea is possible!
However, calling that spot 'mediocre' would be a compliment. It does have hills, two rice and jungle though. And it might have some sea resources. 


Now, to close this interesting turn, some irony:


"As predicted, you know only how to take. Come then - choose the manner of your defeat"
to me, it seems it is team Atheïst that only knows how to 'take', since they produce nothing, tourism nor great persons, for themselves. They only take the raw resources the land gives them, but do not return any districts to the land. 
And with me on the defence, that last line should be mine. i will let them come to me, and leave the way they want to be defeated up to them.
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Like the whatsapp copy-pasta, that was a nice touch lol

-Nubia probably pays zero in upkeep actually, as he hasn't been inflating his military score fast enough to still be in Agoge, I assume he already has State Workforce to slot in the -1 upkeep policy card, thus having zero upkeep for Classical Era units

-Autocracy is NOT the government you want to be in for war, the tiny yield bonus and the production bonus to Wonders is useless outside of OCC games, and contrary to how it may seem the 2 military policies is more a detriment to your unit production than a benefit; at this point either manoevre OR agoge+Urban planning is better than running both unit production cards, as you only really have one building queue in your capital. Rather Oligarchy, with its +4 boost to melee units and 20% XP bonus is far superior, and also has a better policy lay-out than either Classical Republic (which is really only good in SP or a very isolated MP start) or Autocracy. I advise you to adopt Oligarchy as soon as you finish PolyPhi, I know I will. If anything consider it boosts your city defenses since your strongest defensive unit ATM (your Warriors) get a boost, and city defenses scale of those.

- I am definetely claiming both the canal cities, if only for coolness factor alone cool .
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(January 10th, 2018, 09:27)Japper007 Wrote: Like the whatsapp copy-pasta, that was a nice touch lol

-Nubia probably pays zero in upkeep actually, as he hasn't been inflating his military score fast enough to still be in Agoge, I assume he already has State Workforce to slot in the -1 upkeep policy card, thus having zero upkeep for Classical Era units

Ikr  cool
Wel, they are loosing gold somewhere, or they are playing really stupid. As my screenshot of turn 38 shows, they have an income of a meagre 3 gold a turn. 


(January 10th, 2018, 09:27)Japper007 Wrote: - I am definetely claiming both the canal cities, if only for coolness factor alone cool .

true, it would deff be worth it for that alone, and it also has great strategic value. 

(January 10th, 2018, 09:27)Japper007 Wrote: -Autocracy is NOT the government you want to be in for war, the tiny yield bonus and the production bonus to Wonders is useless outside of OCC games, and contrary to how it may seem the 2 military policies is more a detriment to your unit production than a benefit; at this point either manoevre OR agoge+Urban planning is better than running both unit production cards, as you only really have one building queue in your capital. Rather Oligarchy, with its +4 boost to melee units and 20% XP bonus is far superior, and also has a better policy lay-out than either Classical Republic (which is really only good in SP or a very isolated MP start) or Autocracy. I advise you to adopt Oligarchy as soon as you finish PolyPhi, I know I will. If anything consider it boosts your city defenses since your strongest defensive unit ATM (your Warriors) get a boost, and city defenses scale of those.

I agree and disagree. 
As I stated before, I WILL NOT go for autocracy. I completely agree that in our current setup, it is trash for us. 
However, I disagree with Classical Republic not being an option.
True, Oligarchy seems to be the great middle man here, but it is quite good for the long term planning.
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Turnrapport will be uploaded tonight, but a quick forshadow:

- England's military power jumped to 120! surpassing even Nubia, who is at 119 now. 
It doesn't seem to be another galley, unless some other unit took damage, so I suspect a two slingers got upgraded to archers. 

-Scouting further east gave a very surprising new settling location, quite a neat one at that. I might just trow my fourth city there anyways, even when the barbs in the north are cleared. 

-Jasper hit an English scout, which has passed us north.
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Turn 42:

[Image: 20180111141049_1.jpg]

Wait... Slingers? Waaat! You plan an early rush and your frontguard consists of two slingers? What is Chevalier thinking? crazyeye

Also I got a boost for State Workforce so I'm now 10 turns away from Oligarchy boosted Warriors, 2 turns until Currency is done and I can switch to IW for Ngao Mbeba

In the fog, someone (but it is definetely Singaboy, as he has 10 Wonderscore now) finished the Pyramids, the rest is Stonehenge right Mike? I must've missed him finishing it. Not an unexpected opening for the Chinese, it is about the only way to exploit their strenghts. I'm guessing this means Sullla and Singaboy are looking at more of a builder focused game.
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I will be quite busy till monday, so I will keep my turnreports short till then. 
I might add in screenshots later on, but for now:

Turn 41 wasn't very special. I started healing up my two archers east, both of which had low health due to being injured whilst still be slinger. 
I also found a near-dead barb unit near Geneva with my scouting warrior. It might be the unit that I lost track of when barbs came for my capital? Anyhow, a genevios warrior is next to it, so that unit will (hopefully?) be gone next turn. 
Looking at the military score, I noticed two things:
1. Woden and Chevalier both had an increase again, which makes me even more confident this is going to become a warzone. They sure pump out units quickly, even though I suspect Chevaliers grow of last turn to be an archerupgrade. 
2. My score didn't update when the archers healed. Did they get full military score presentation when upgraded? 
I will probably test this latter statement with the UI-mod in a private game after Monday. Because if so, it makes army prediction via military score even more unpredictable. 

Edit: forgot to mention, but builder in cap finished. Next up is an archer.
Builder will go south to improve soon-founded tundra city.
I might buy the horsetile in its second ring, since it would 'only' be 70 gold, which thanks to Jasper I can generate in three turns.
Though I might also want to save up my money for more military in case things in the east get out of hand.


Jasper, yes Stonehenge was build quite a few turns ago. Even made a screenshot of it. It was the same turn our religion was founded. 

Also, regarding your screenshot and slinger note:
I agree that those slingers do not pose a great threat. It seems more like they are there just to prevent ús to advance. Ofcourse, it could also be that Woden will come marching in next turn, but it might that they actually are still preparing against us. 
Either way, it makes me wonder something: with the rush to push out that builder and settler, even though you gave me the gold to buy and upgrade the rest, I had to put the capital on full production for over half of the game now. 
Do you think now might be a good idea to temporarily switch to growth (after finishing another archer ofcourse) to make it regain some strength and work another tile?
Because on full production, it won't grow very fast. 
Yesyes, I know it might not be a clever idea when OP Nubia has just declared war on you, but I just feel that I could get more out of it when it is 4 pop again, with those great production tiles. 

Also, with my banana plantation (and a few turns earlier the silk) done, I am generating close to 30 gold a turn with your gpt donation, so do you want to have some back? after all, you only make 4gpt according to that screenshot now.
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As people probably have already read in the general thread (if not, here's the link: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...00&page=24) I will no longer be able to participate in this game.
This due to be being an idiot, abusing a bug/error/whatever that occurred in a way that can easily be called cheating. 

I hope you will keep enjoying the updates of Jasper, and the person that might be taking over my place. 

I understand you all must be pissed with me, and feel free to get all-out on me. 
However, please keep Jasper out of this. He did not know of my mischief, and was just playing this game for his own fun, like his previous pbem's.
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I'll be interested to hear why Mike's astonishing production didn't make you suspicious Japper.
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Mike,
I'm posting this here rather than in the signup thread to minimize the spoilers to the other players. Since this is out in the open now it would be extremely helpful for the community at large if you could document the circumstances of the gold trading bug so that it can be avoided in the future. It sounds like it is not only repeatable and exploitable, but at a magnitude that it can massively impact the outcome of games. In this case it is suspected that the bug allowed you to beat China/Rome to the 2nd religion and thereby get priority in selecting the beliefs, as well as get a free trader + 2 archers. The more information that you can provide about the bug the better we can avoid in the future accidentally creating it in future games, and more easily identifying it when it does occur.

I don't know what details you've heard from whoever messaged you, but I'll post some of the information that I gathered from reviewing a few of the game saves, where I noticed the following anomalies ... starting with the most recent

Mike\s T39 report Wrote:That same screenshot will reveal that my deal with Jasper finally succeeded. A very nice trader has been bought in Ãranyaka, and will be moving towards Upãsanã starting next turn. Thanks to the extra money Jasper send with the deal to make up for the lost turn, as wel as the money from my two new plantages, I got just enough gold to upgrade my three slings to archers. Luckly I had already started to move them towards my cities to upgrade a few turns ago, though back then the plan was to use them against barbarians.

The following was noted in the game saves of T39-40:
  • When I loaded up the T39 save there was indeed a notification that Japper had accepted a deal. However the total amount of gold that Mike had on T39 was only 65Icon_Gold
  • More importantly though, I did not see the slingers present that Mike mentioned luckly moving back towards his cities. I only saw one damaged slinger and one damaged warrior. Mil-power indicated just 25 and I deleted all the signs to make sure they weren't hiding
  • When I loaded up the T40 save Mike had 131:gold, along with an archer in both cities and a trader at Aranyaka.
  • Thus Mike spent either about 200 [not sure the exact cost of the trader] + 45 x 2 [upgrade cost of 2 slingers] ... OR 200 [trader] + 240 x 2 [outright purchase of two archers] ... That's a minimum of 300 gold spent, maximum of 700, AND ending up with more gold after he made the purchases than he had before ... While commenting that he had barely enough to upgrade the slingers.
  • I confirmed that Japper's gold remained constant at about 60 on the interturns between 38>39>40. So the extra gold in Mike's coffers doesn't seem to have come from Japper as far as I could tell.

Now the incident with the Shrine 20 turns earlier:
  • T20: Mike's GProphet project has 1 turn remaining, 66 gold in Mike's coffers (+5/turn) , roll the turn to see that Japper has 101 gold (+6/turn)
  • T21: GProphet project is completed, shrine shows 7 turns to completion and has no cogs invested yet, Mike has 71 gold, roll the turn to see that Japper has 107 gold
  • T22: Mike now has a shrine in the Holy Site and 114 gold in the bank, roll the turn to see that Japper has 113 gold
  • Somehow it looks like Mike rushed the shrine and ended up with an extra 40 gold??

I don't know how much the shrine costs, but it looks like something in the range of 500 gold minimum maybe as much as 1000 gold was obtained through the bug, which is truly massive for this stage of the game (equivalent to up to 25 gpt from T1). And it looks like it came in two distinct instances where your gold was normal for a few turns, and then spiked up all at once and was spent on the same turn. In the 2nd instance in particular 500-700 gold was spent on a single turn. Any additional information you can provide on how this occurred and how you were able to repeat it from earlier would help greatly. It will also help the lurkers determine appropriate measures to compensate the other players and hopefully save the game.
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(January 12th, 2018, 07:02)Cornflakes Wrote: Mike,
I'm posting this here rather than in the signup thread to minimize the spoilers to the other players. Since this is out in the open now it would be extremely helpful for the community at large if you could document the circumstances of the gold trading bug so that it can be avoided in the future. It sounds like it is not only repeatable and exploitable, but at a magnitude that it can massively impact the outcome of games. In this case it is suspected that the bug allowed you to beat China/Rome to the 2nd religion and thereby get priority in selecting the beliefs, as well as get a free trader + 2 archers. The more information that you can provide about the bug the better we can avoid in the future accidentally creating it in future games, and more easily identifying it when it does occur.

I don't know what details you've heard from whoever messaged you, but I'll post some of the information that I gathered from reviewing a few of the game saves, where I noticed the following anomalies ... starting with the most recent

Mike\s T39 report Wrote:That same screenshot will reveal that my deal with Jasper finally succeeded. A very nice trader has been bought in Ãranyaka, and will be moving towards Upãsanã starting next turn. Thanks to the extra money Jasper send with the deal to make up for the lost turn, as wel as the money from my two new plantages, I got just enough gold to upgrade my three slings to archers. Luckly I had already started to move them towards my cities to upgrade a few turns ago, though back then the plan was to use them against barbarians.

The following was noted in the game saves of T39-40:
  • When I loaded up the T39 save there was indeed a notification that Japper had accepted a deal. However the total amount of gold that Mike had on T39 was only 65Icon_Gold
  • More importantly though, I did not see the slingers present that Mike mentioned luckly moving back towards his cities. I only saw one damaged slinger and one damaged warrior. Mil-power indicated just 25 and I deleted all the signs to make sure they weren't hiding
  • When I loaded up the T40 save Mike had 131:gold, along with an archer in both cities and a trader at Aranyaka.
  • Thus Mike spent either about 200 [not sure the exact cost of the trader] + 45 x 2 [upgrade cost of 2 slingers] ... OR 200 [trader] + 240 x 2 [outright purchase of two archers] ... That's a minimum of 300 gold spent, maximum of 700, AND ending up with more gold after he made the purchases than he had before ... While commenting that he had barely enough to upgrade the slingers.
  • I confirmed that Japper's gold remained constant at about 60 on the interturns between 38>39>40. So the extra gold in Mike's coffers doesn't seem to have come from Japper as far as I could tell.

Now the incident with the Shrine 20 turns earlier:
  • T20: Mike's GProphet project has 1 turn remaining, 66 gold in Mike's coffers (+5/turn) , roll the turn to see that Japper has 101 gold (+6/turn)
  • T21: GProphet project is completed, shrine shows 7 turns to completion and has no cogs invested yet, Mike has 71 gold, roll the turn to see that Japper has 107 gold
  • T22: Mike now has a shrine in the Holy Site and 114 gold in the bank, roll the turn to see that Japper has 113 gold
  • Somehow it looks like Mike rushed the shrine and ended up with an extra 40 gold??

I don't know how much the shrine costs, but it looks like something in the range of 500 gold minimum maybe as much as 1000 gold was obtained through the bug, which is truly massive for this stage of the game (equivalent to up to 25 gpt from T1). And it looks like it came in two distinct instances where your gold was normal for a few turns, and then spiked up all at once and was spent on the same turn. In the 2nd instance in particular 500-700 gold was spent on a single turn. Any additional information you can provide on how this occurred and how you were able to repeat it from earlier would help greatly. It will also help the lurkers determine appropriate measures to compensate the other players and hopefully save the game.

You are completely right in this aspect. I have clarified it more in the PM I sent you, and if you tell me to make that information public I shall post it both here and in the general thread.
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