[PB60] Amicalola and Vanrober: Gone' Fishing!

[Amicalola]

T180
Mjmd accepted the peace treaty! So we have the rest of the GA in relative safety, we think. SD has a decent-sized stack of WE's and Catapults that mean we can't push on him, but he definitely can't push on us either. So that's a stalemate, which is perfect for us. I don't think SD is ever getting Astro+Paper, let alone Astro+Paper+Guilds+Gunpowder+Chemistry, which means we've basically knocked him out of the potential dogpile. Woohoo! Speaking of SD, we also razed another city this turn:



We decided to research Steel this turn, since with some specialists and wealth builds we could just finish it at breakeven.  


We went for this first so that we can whip Drydocks everywhere while still in Organised Religion, and also so we can show off a few flashy cannons at Mjmd. Even just seeing Steel pop up in the ktb interface is going to be a little morale damage, hopefully. We'll get Nationalism after this so we can get started on Taj, and convert to Nationhood before the GA ends.

[Amicalola]

T181-182
Jowy declared war on us!  Truly 'us vs. the world' at this point. Jowy sunk about 6 caravels, which sucks. Great first strike by him. He also has this knight stack near Lionfish:


We can defend against this pretty comfortably, but it's annoying that he can move them around to threaten Bass as well. We can threaten cities ourselves though, and the southern knights are racing up here as fast as they can, so we might try to strike out in a few turns. Thank goodness Mjmd took that peace. 

The other sad news of the turn is that instead of a prophet (or engineer), we got a 5% artist in Tuna. 


So we have a new plan for our upcoming Great People. Instead of a shrine at Snapper (Christianity), we're going to try and get the merchant at Economics, and a 3rd GP (Prophet/Engineer/Scientist) for another GA. We will delay Spiral for a turn, and Tuna might starve down a little, but we can't think of anything else to do with ol' Duke. In a way, an artist was better than the other minority rolls, since it's less likely we'll get another one. 

We've spread Christianity to the cities we kept from SD, and I've renamed them this turn with Vanrober's help.


SD's stack is almost entirely 1-movers, and for now the same is true for Mjmd, so once we pop the borders these cities actually feel safer than the coastal ones near Jowy. We're leaving the 1-movers here as a defense force, since these guys do pack a serious punch with sheer numbers, and our boys can't get north in time to matter. Getting the longer cultural reach at Beds feels pretty huge with that in mind - that front feels so much safer now. 

Fish (Sort of )

Squid



Turbot



Pomfret



Stingray

[Amicalola]

T183
SD whacked our frigates:


Or tried to. Thanks for the Great General.  Of course, my smug mood was instantly ruined when I realised that instead of settling the general, we could have waited 2 turns for a military academy. D'oh.  

We swapped civics on the final turn of the GA. 


The changes are Vassalage->Nationhood and Organized Religion->Theocracy. We want drafting to defend the hilariously long coastlines of each donut-side, and we need Theocracy to make up for no Vassalage. It's always sad to leave Organized Religion - it's my favourite civic. So many good times with it over my Pitboss games.

[Charriu]

Look at it from this point. Organized religion is the most expensive civic in the game

[Tarkeel]

The way I see it, one of the strengths of OrgRel is how it sets you up for the switch into Theocracy later, when you've used the missionary bonus to spread out and whipped necessary infrastructure.

[Amicalola]

T183-184
We noticed Blaze wasn't very defended last turn, and moved some knights to strike. 



Jowy didn't move any more units to defend, and so we attacked with knights this turn. We lost one, and we'll probably lose a few to a counter-strike, but that's a great deal for razing the city - we even sniped two frigates!



We realised we can blockade Lazteuq to try and make his units go on strike. I can't believe we didn't realise that sooner.  



Finally, we started pillaging the no-mans-land between us and SD. Might as well make some pennies. Burning more of the world is a nice bonus. 



Yeah, I know the benefits to switching out of Organised Religion. But this is a sentimental thing! I like it because it has carried several of my games, and it's such a powerful swiss-army-knife of benefits. We would have done much worse in 56 without it, and in this game it basically carried us. It was fun, Organised Religion.

Tech-wise we can finish Military Science next turn at 10%, so we do that. Next turn we'll probably get Alphabet while saving gold, and then we'll nab Printing Press at 100%.

[Amicalola]

T185-186
Jowy is killing all of our ships in the south; I didn't position them very well. We're trying to muster some reinforcements, but Anglerfish might not be long for this world.  


Mjmd also massed about 20 caravels here, with no signs of slowing down. So these seas might fall for the time being.

We also got Alphabet, so here's the tech screen. 


We're further ahead than I thought we were - even only considering the relevant techs, we're up Education, Steel, Philosophy, Nationalism, and Drama on Jowy. Not to mention Superdeath/Mjmd. It looks like Mjmd is saving up for another MoM GA, so maybe he can catch up somewhat during that. 

Speaking of techs, as you can see we switched our order up a bit. I'm not liking the sea situation, which is optimistically a 'stalemate' and pessimistically a 'looming disaster,' so I'm heading up the Mil Trad path for cuirs before we go for Rifles or Economics. I want to break the stalemate ASAP. Let's hit them first!


Hot Take Edit: Since WW was discussed in the other thread - I think it's a really important rubber-banding mechanic for these games. Even excluding what Miguelito mentioned about cutting content (also true!), without WW conquering is too easy, or rather too profitable. We were already very tight for happiness at the end of our war. With WW on, I think you get a really interesting duel between us and Jowy here, with us frantically trying to catch up before he kills us with frigates/grenadiers/cannons. Kind of like Old Harry vs. Mjmd in PB52, but without the skill/experience discrepancy. But without WW, we're a complete runaway (sorry opponents; this tech screen is way worse than I expected). This game is a really good showcase of why WW is an important mechanic for slowing down the winner.

[Miguelito]

We also got Alphabet, so here's the tech screen.

Why did you? Just for the screen?
Also, why the Drama?
And could you show a current F3?

[Tarkeel]

We also got Alphabet, so here's the tech screen.

Why did you? Just for the screen?
Also, why the Drama?
And could you show a current F3?

I'm not Amica, but I think I know the answeres. Alphabet for PrintingPress, leading into ReplaceableParts. Drama for Globe Theatre and draftopolis.

[Amicalola]

Hey Mig, appreciate the questions. In order:

Why did you? Just for the screen?

Partly - having to guesstimate what the opponents have is driving me a little crazy. But not really, we can usually figure it out. Alphabet was more because the plan had been to research Printing Press this turn, before I got antsy and decided for cuirs instead.

Also, why the Drama?

For Globe Theatre. I think that wonder is Insane combined with Nationhood - it might as well read +1 musket per turn. I guess it's at the cost of the city's normal development, but I would definitely rather have a musket every turn (or rifle every 2nd turn) than a normal city, when the draft city is still decent beforehand. Where the inclusion gets more dubious (or maybe I'm wrong about Globe anyway ) is that Drama is so cheap, it's probably like a turn of 20% for Jowy. But then he'd also have to build Globe Theatre, and research Nationalism for drafts, and I just think all of that merits the inclusion of Drama as well - if he doesn't have Drama now, he probably won't in time to matter. Would love to hear a counter-argument though.

And could you show a current F3?

 Here's an up-to-date pic from a few turns ago:




General thought: I hope my WW paragraph didn't come across as arrogant. I just was thinking on this:

Of course nobody loves to have their beautiful size 19 capital struck by 12 red faces of WW, and there surely is a case to be made to tone down the numbers*, but ultimately it is a resource that has to be managed, and I don't understand why this is the particular management challenge that players should have removed, in particular since our games already have a tendency to produce runaways after one or two decisive actions, and they rarely get caught up with.

I found this whole passage evocative and well-written (I also completely agreed with it). Opening the tech screen this turn, I realised that we've completely snowballed out of control from a tech standpoint - Next turn, you can add Military Tradition to the list, because we're 1-turning it now. I think the bolded portion of the quote is an extremely accurate depiction of what has happened this game [Us], and many of my games (e.g. PB55 [Civac], PB56 [Noble]). Maybe it's just an issue inherent to Civ 4, but having WW turned on makes it less likely, in my opinion.

This game seems like a particularly great example because our conquest was so taxing (most cities >5 whips), and yet we still never struggled with happiness. We aren't Charismatic, frequently left cities un-garrisoned, and we never even built a market or colosseum(!). Struggling with happiness feels like a consequence we should have encountered, considering the way our army was built, and the game would have been more interesting and more balanced for it. I also agree with the other things mentioned, like cut-content - in PB58 we built colosseums for WW, and they were actually really good! I've never really used them before, and it felt great!