Josh's Civ 4 memoir. Chapter 2

[Miguelito]

It's very rarely worth it to run a spy specialist, at times you're better off running a regular citizen.

Objection.  Outside Merc/Rep/Statue, you run specialists for the GPP (If you're out of tiles and can only assign a specialist,  there are ways to get rid off that guy). And for GPP spies are excellent - very useful for a GA, and their scouting ability is great while you're waiting for that.  And you normally should find a use for the 4EP.

[Tarkeel]

I said I could use some help.

Vanrober said he had questions regarding mechanics, which are usually fine for the lukers to answer in great detail. You then piled on that you also could use some help, implying your situation was the same.

All I commented in was the actual text and then fixed spelling mistakes.

You have a tendency to first post the pictures and a bare minimum of text, editing the main content in an hour or more later. I know this because I'm one of the active lurkers that read new posts as they come in. Not many will go back to re-read a post to see if something has been edited in, especially not hours later. I tend to write my reports in notepad while playing the turn, noting where pictures should go and adding those in at the end.

I worked the spy specialist to get more % chance that I don't get a scientist (even though I'm running scientists) it was only for a couple turns, do you think it's still not worth it?

Working a spy for a few to adjust the odds can be fine, but if you had any other specialist available those would have been better. The time to do so is before you have 70% odds on the one you don't want though.

Ok well when you see vanrober start a golden age and his graph shoot past mine, it's likely to be the extra gold and him putting 100% on science , so I think it's a good Indicator on how many more beakers he can produce. Am I wrong?

As Charriu said, you can use the foreign advisor (F4) to see if he's running deficit research. Most players will save gold before a golden age to run some deficit. Other reasons for the spikes can be swapping techs; known-tech and pre-req bonuses can make very large swings. As I said, don't forget that culture and espionage points are included in the base GNP, and you've already commented on how much EP vanrober is generating.

Can you not pretend you don't know anything and as an experienced player give some advice on what I should do in these situations? When you're between two bigger players? I'm not asking you to read other people's thread, noone knows how things will turn out in 20 turns, I'm just asking as experienced players what would be a wise move for me, is it usually better to go all in, wait or what you'd do in my shoes. This is all new to me and I have no idea what is usually done in my situation

I can pretend to not know anything for smaller decisions, where you present all the facts as you know them. This is usually limited to "A vs B" questions, like which of these city sites look better. For grand strategy like which player to attack it's much harder, especially as you haven't presented much facts about either your or their forces. One of the factors I consider in these situations is my prior relationship with them in this game. Ie, if I've had a tense border with one player all game long and friendly with the other, I'd be more likely to attack the tense and trust the friendly.

[Amicalola]

Hey Joshy, I missed your post yesterday, I'm sorry. In general, it can be quite difficult to give you helpful advice even as a dedlurker, because when you ask me questions it is frequently on discord with very little context, like pictures or world events. Alternatively it is on RB, which is much better (although I've also missed posts due to editing before), but that is so infrequent it's difficult to know what to say. I can't read the other players' reports, and I don't really have the time to login. So some additional context would be really helpful, in general. Preferably more reports in this thread. That has the additional bonus of global lurkers being able to answer mechanics questions I miss, or just general chatter.

We spoke on discord the other day, but I'll give my thoughts here as well. In general, I agree with nearly everything Charriu and Tarkeel said. Spy specialists are probably the worst of the bunch (with contextual exceptions), but running one in a GA to get a 'not scientist' is perfectly valid. Good play as far as I'm concerned. Also, Miguelito commented while I was typing this, and makes an excellent point! So double-good play.

Literature would be a great tech for us for both Epics. National Epic would be great in Rome (or maybe another high food city), as well as Heroic Epic in whatever our biggest hammer city is.

As far as macro play and diplomacy, I agree that we are in a pretty tough spot. It seems to me that as you've said, we are a bit of a 'piggy in the middle' between Vanrober and Bellarch - those situations are really tough, even for very experienced players. It reminds me a little of my first 'real' game, where I was stuck between Civac and Jowy as the top competitors. I ended up attacking Jowy (in a small dogpile), which predictably led to civac winning the game. That wasn't very much fun for anyone, probably not even civac. So I don't recommend just slamming into 'x player' and leaving 'y player' alone, because I think you are correct that it will just lead to 'y player' winning the game, either through teching past us, or hitting our backside.

To me, that leaves you with another option, which would be: teching up as fast as you can, and trying to get vanrober and bellarch to fight each other while you catch up. I don't know if that's plausible, but I would say it's by far our best chance of getting a win. There's no great way to orchestrate it though - sending each of them diplo with 'war with the other' would come across as pretty scummy when you don't join in, and I wouldn't recommend it. Even excluding any moral doubt, they'd also likely just turn on you when the reality became clear. Instead, I think you'd have to either hope for it to happen without your interference, or try and influence things indirectly (no idea how you do that).

One more thing: I'm going to be honest, and I hope this isn't harsh - it looks to me as though our chance to win is extremely slim, no matter what course we take from here. We are not far enough ahead of Vanrober/Bellarch to attack them 1v1, we lack the expansion opportunities they still have (Jack/Bing), we can't dogpile them effectively, and we probably can't beat them in a peaceful tech-race. If you hit Bellarch while he fights Jack, vanrober just hits us. Why am I saying all this?

Because I think you should try to reframe your goals for the game, at least from here. We probably aren't winning, and I think focusing only on that will lead to considerably more stress. I would instead try to focus on one, or both, of two questions as your goal from here:

1. What would be fun? A knight-rush on someone? Trying to eek out as much gas as possible from our economy?  Going for a hard beeline into some advanced unit (cuirs?)? etc.
2. What would be a good learning experience? *see above options*

I would consider these two questions, and decide on your ultimate direction in the rest of this game from there.

[joshybravo963]

I appreciate all the help that is given.
I post pictures, leave my computer for work and then edit in the text later during breaks and such, but I can see youre very active so I will try post them both to make it more convenient.
Tarkeel you mentioned that i should only work other specialists before 70% , which is very good information, thankyou for this, is there a reason why 70%?
Looking at the foreign advisor on the info section it says that everyone is running deficit research, everyone is making 0 gold per turn except me. But it still means that their 100% research is able to make a lot more beackers than my 100% research right? He has 6 more cities and religeon so obviously he does more research. 
Ok attack the guy with the tense border, Ive had a relitively peaceful border with both players. With bellarch we seem to have the unspoken rule of not roading to each other, and with vanrober, he stole my cities so i guess its more tense with him?

Ah amicalola that sounds like some good strats right there, I prefer harsh and ruthless all the way, and what you say makes sense, if I say i will attack but then dont then thats very scummy. And if i attack one the player not fighting will definitely win. I know my odds are very low but that might give me the best chance. 
My war goal is to take the decision that gives me the best odds of winning, if not winning then second place, if not second then third ;D. 

So if I would sit back and tech, how far should I sit back? do i still build wealth? do I still whip units? Should I somewhat keep up with the power rating/ troops or fall back and act even more like the weak player that I am? Do I convert my farms into cottages? How far do i go with this sitting back?

You guys also asked for more context so ...
Vanrober is teching and building a lot of units at the same time, he just got toism ( forgot the tech that comes before nationalism on the way to military tradition) maybe he plans to upgrade them to curassiers? He also asked me to join in the war with bellarch. 
Bing asked me to fight vanrober with him I assume, which i dont think he has any capabilities of doing himself and i dont think us two would even be able to take on vanrober, dont see much of an army from him either. 
Bellarch might be sensing a threat from vanrober so he sent me fish for fish, I dont want to be scummy so i havent responded to either request yet , how should I respond? 

   

Jack is quickly dying.

   

Bit of a stack from vanrober.

   
   

What kind of other context do you guys need?

Josh out.

[Charriu]

You can also save your post as a draft and edit it later. Then you can post it with text and images at the same time

[joshybravo963]

You can also save your post as a draft and edit it later. Then you can post it with text and images at the same time

Thats a great idea, i will do that, also i havent figured out how to quote people, when i click on multiquote nothing seems to happen?

[Charriu]

Unfortunately muliqoute is broken for quite some time. I usually open multiple tabs and in there all the different replies. I then copy paste them together

[joshybravo963]

Unfortunately muliqoute is broken for quite some time. I usually open multiple tabs and in there all the different replies. I then copy paste them together

So press reply, delete the unwanted part of the conversation and copy and paste all sections from different tabs?

[Tarkeel]

Tarkeel you mentioned that i should only work other specialists before 70% , which is very good information, thankyou for this, is there a reason why 70%?

That's not what I meant, the 70% was based on your screenshot of Rome, showing a 70% for a scientist. If you want to limit change the odds away from a given type, you should run other specialists as early and hard as you can, in general.

As for quoting, I tend to compose most of my replies in a text editor then copy back when I'm done.

[Amicalola]

To be honest, it looks to me as though vanrober is very much still the favourite.. Maybe bellarch comes out ahead if he takes all of Jack easily, but I doubt that is likely. He is also going for cuirs, if he teched Philosophy, or at least Taj. So I don't think we're ever catching up to Vanrober peacefully, I suppose is what I'm getting at, and he has a bigger production base besides. If he is going for cuirs, there's a decent chance we're his target, to boot. At this point, a good goal might be just to survive. That would involve teching up the defensive military techs (Nationalism, Steel), and building enough military to keep looking prickly. Problem with that is it's a 0% chance to win strategy, so maybe quite boring.

Diplomatically, I think you probably want to ally with Bellarch. If Vanrober does indeed go for Taj, and combines it with even 1 GA from great people, even a dogpile might not work. Taj is seriously insane. It's not a great solution, because you'd be the junior partner, but it looks to me as though the alternative is dying to Vanrober's cuirs/cavs. Does he have gunpowder?