[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I just loaded up the save, it's T109, my last report was on T104 and I have no clue what is going on in this game. I was pretty irritated to find that we're behind in a lot of demographics right now, which was mildly offset by discovering that everyone except us is currently in a golden age. We're ahead of only Slowcheetah in GNP, he's golden-age pacifism-starving his cities for GPPs and drafting maces like crazy (Nationhood).

Also, Dazed is sitting on 870 gold, likely he was working on whipping some libraries in his many new cities, as well as waiting to spend his gold until he made it into Bureaucracy courtesy of his golden age. Sian is sitting on 223 gold even though he has been running 100% research for what looks like a long time now.

The MFG graph is stupid with GA boosted numbers. This is the one that irritated me so much when I first saw it, I was wondering why we were behind everyone. Our numbers look flat while everyone else is growing. That isn't good (especially since our GNP is also mostly flat so it isn't like we made a decision of one over the other).

We're doing OK in food but we could be better. We have a major failing in our development in the jungle area. We've lost control of two critical tiles, a fish against a size 1 city bordering Slowcheetah where I have no idea how he's pressing culture -- I don't see a cultural building in that city. If it turns out he's settled a great artist on me I'm going to be livid and spoil this game for him. We obviously have no chance at winning. I can take being beaten but I won't cope well with someone professing friendship and then shitting on me. He shouldn't be too pissed about me settling that site, he was slow to it. He lost a race. Pressing culture after the fact when you say you need me as a friend...that doesn't work for me. I don't see any city improvements here, did I miss something? Where is the culture coming from?

Anyway, the worse failing (yes Boldly, thanks for playing the turns but lay off the so much) is at Rudy where we've inexplicably lost control of our pig tile, at level 3 borders to Dazed's function. We are presently generating ZERO culture in a city we settled at minimum distance from someone else. WHY? We're building a forge, slow building by the looks of it, and there is a hill not mined next to the city and we are working a citizen specialist....WTF!!!! I understand that next turn we can 3 pop whip it when we grow to size 6, but that's terrible. We should have got a library, temple, monastery, anything to start putting up some culture in this city. If we had control of our own pigs we could regrow fast enough to make up the delay on the forge. Sorry Number One, you own this one.

Food graph, nothing exciting except Slowcheetah starving for GPPs.

Here's the power graph. Rant to follow.

Bonus chart, our army:

We're obviously behind in power, but we don't have Sian's amazing all IND forge, golden age MFG, or Slowcheetahs GA MFG/drafting. We're basically keeping apace of Dazed but that's all, and of little comfort since I don't think he's in this dogpile alliance anyway. Our NAP with him ends on T115, right? I'm not only suspecting Dazed's contribution to our dogpile at this point, I think he has been silently supporting Sian all along, hoping for a later game 1 on 1 with him after they partition the world (eliminating Slowcheetah and myself). Evidence: Dazed has known of Sian's preeminence in this game for a long time now, yet his EP allocation against him stands at 85/80. They've hardly spent EPs on each other ever. Why would you not spend EPs on the #1 threat in the game? Instead, Dazed has a ratio of 129/422 against Slowcheetah. Meanwhile Slowcheetah has been spending most of his EPs against Sian, only arriving at a total of 729/268 (yes, Sian has that much of an EP lead. Early zigs and ORG? Yes please). It isn't helping Slowcheetah that he hasn't built many courthouses, but he built so few cities for so long that he really didn't need them. Anyway, all that to say if Dazed was truly interested in allying against Dazed why would he spend points on anyone else?

More graphs:

All quiet, I mean I know Slowwalk has way more culture overall than us but where is he getting it in that size 1 front city? Artist specialists from Rep/Caste? Building research? I want to bulldoze that city.


Wheeeee, early zigs.


Sian's GNP number is ridiculous.

Yes he now has Sistine Chapel (Why? Because he can) and now has even more culture muddying the picture trying to figure out what his real economic output is, but it's certainly higher than everyone else's. This game is doomed, Slowcheetah's planned invasion is irrelevant. Sian has the wonders, the traits, and enough army to defend. He has Gunpowder for defense if he needs more. He'll tech Chemistry soon for more workshop power on the way to Steel. That beeline makes a lot of sense for him, as it would make Slowcheetah's stack of drafted maces completely irrelevant. This game is over, I don't really see a lot of point in writing long turn reports anymore. (This is just a state of the game post anyway, I'm not playing the turn tonight. Boldly can do it, I'm not motivated for it, I don't know what the hell we're supposed to be doing, and I'm tired).

As for our tech path, we finished Banking this turn. I guess so we can build banks instead of military. Or switch to mercantilism when we go to war with someone we're currently trading with? What is supposed to be next tech? We're 19 turns from Military Tradition and cuirrasiers, or 3 turns from Gunpowder and muskets, or 22 turns from cavalry. We can have Engineering in 3 turns to build the pikes Dazed was supposed to build, which won't matter in a few turns when Sian techs to Steel for his cannons. Or we can spend 6 turns ignoring military longer, build banks, and tech Alphabet + Paper + Printing Press to boost our economy. Alternatively we're 25 turns from Rifling via Gunpowder, Alphabet, Paper, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts, Rifling. At this point we've surely been invaded by a backstabbing Dazed or Sian has taken apart Slowcheetah since we didn't help and we lose that way.

I don't see a path to victory for us. We can't do a CV, we don't have the GP farms for it nor the tech/defenses to make it work. We're certainly not going to be Sian to space, and we won't win a domination or conquest victory when we're going to be an era behind in tech. AP/Diplo wins are banned, Time is less feasible than a space win. Did I miss anything? This game is spinning toward some inevitable conclusion, and the winner won't be hailing from the Republican Party.

So. We need some goals. Go war machine and punish someone, either out of spite (Dazed, his penalty for not participating when a dogpile would have worked) or a noble gesture (Sian, our sacrifice may give someone else a chance...but that's not very sporting when he really hasn't played a game any better or worse than anyone else. He's winning this by default, mostly). I need goals to keep me interested or I can spend the time I've been spending on this game doing something more productive.

Snip....

Deleted original response. This will suffice.

[Ceiliazul]

Boldly, you've brought a lot to this game, sorry to see you go.

If it matters at all, Xenu seems in a pretty shitty mood all around today.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Sorry, I should stay off the forum when I get like that. Maybe today will be better.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Boldly, you've brought a lot to this game, sorry to see you go.

If it matters at all, Xenu seems in a pretty shitty mood all around today.

I've noticed. Maybe today will be better. I hope so.

[spacetyrantxenu]

No turn update, we're building stuff. Stuff for a secret purpose. The purpose will surely not be revealed by the following diplomatic communiqués.

(this is the distilled essence, dramatized a bit because none of it is good news):

Dazed: Hmm.. looks like Sian is getting grenadiers on T112, unless he's a total liar. Maybe we should call this game. Or attack. Concede or attack.

Slowcheetah: I'll stay on if Xenu does, maybe we can win the miracle of miracles and chew up Sian's army. We'll send our boys to their death starting on T111.

Dazed: OK, if you're in, I'm in. We need consensus. (Absolution? No, consensus.)

My response. I should have included Sian:

[COLOR="Magenta"]

Fellow dictators,

This thing isn't over yet. I'm not holding the turn because I've given up or because of the fracas with Boldly. That's an internal matter and we'll deal with it. I didn't play the save last night because I had an awful day and wanted to drink rum instead of playing civ. Then I ended up having to play the turn in PB7 and that wasn't a good idea (nor was posting in the diplo thread. If you haven't read it, just don't). I didn't go home for lunch today, instead I had to visit one of my remote work sites so it will be several hours before I play. I will get the turn tonight, though. I'll be able to keep up with the turns going forward, but you'll probably find my pace slower without a teammate. Such is life.

With that said, I'm not conceding anything to Sian as he has not met any victory conditions that I am aware of. If he wants to win this game he has to earn it. I know I can't win at this point but I can build enough of an army to do significant damage to someone, so as long as both of you are being forthright in your diplomacy with me, it won't be either of you that I come after, guns (bows? ) blazing. So, if anyone would like to ride in my wake of destruction toward a victory condition of your own, feel free to attack whoever I attack (hint: it's the guy I'm not doing diplomacy with). I don't know about the time frame, our Republican candidates haven't built enough army as they were thinking about still trying to win this game, and focused on economy improving infrastructure (sissy capitalists!). Freed from that obligation, I can sublimate the goal of winning this game into something more achievable, such as not finishing in last place. If we kill Sian, I will have succeeded on that count.

Death machine, onward.

Hail Ronald Reagan and DEATH TO THE LIBERAL INFIDELS OF THE CIVILIZATIONIC STATE.

Xenu,
Tyrant
Republican Party[/COLOR]

[spacetyrantxenu]

So in actually this game is over, but we're going to force Sian to meet a victory condition. We'll see how long that lasts. Probably when it starts to be painful to play the turns we'll all take turns holding it forever, we'll get collectively bored by it, and we'll end up declaring Sian the winner anyway. At least in the brief moment when I wrote the email above and sent it to Dazed and Slowcheetah, I was at work and didn't have the game and all the depressing charts in front of me. Looking at it now, yeah, this is over. Anyway, I'm building a lot of nice toys for Sian to break. If Slowcheetah is attacking (or being attacked) on T111, and Dazed says (lol) that he's going to attack on T125, who knows when I'll plunge in. The date is to be determined.

Dazed's proposed invasion date of T125 is laughable, though. Sian is already way ahead now. By T125 he'll have rifles. How will he be easier to attack then? He's already an era ahead. Dazed is either simply not paying attention to the facts on hand and is ignorant to the fact that Sian will not be less powerful in 14 turns, or he doesn't care and wants to keep his sandbox tidy until the game is called, eeking out a second place score.

It seems in retrospect, thinking back, that I lost out in this game when Dazed took over. All this time he has been hanging around like the sword of Damocles, except for the brief period of time when we were both far behind and we helped each other tech Currency. Other than that brief period, he mostly went through the turns threatening me and making diplomacy a pain in the ass, but I don't see evidence that he did much of anything toward similarly harrying Sian. He managed to dump cities all over the map but wasn't able to seal off his border with Sian. And that somehow became my problem when I wanted to settle my border. What? We fought that unproductive war when he land grabbed on my front door, when I could have been farming away. The point is I feel like Dazed spent more of his effort in trying to get everything he could from me when he should have been more worried about restricting Sian's actions.

I guess things would have been no better if Kuro had stayed on. With the turn holding back then, I was running head long toward a war that made no strategic sense and would have likely ruined me anyway. Why couldn't I have had a neighbor that wanted to cooperate against the leaders? I got Machiavelli instead. And as intemperate as I am, if I had bordered Sian I likely would have had conflict with him myself. Remember the Tundra Expeditionary Force? Imagine if the trip hadn't been so long. I don't imagine I would have ultimately fared any better in this game, I think I screwed up somewhere along the way to end up in last place, but damn if my neighbor would be running up the score. It was really Dazed that squashed my effort to build the first dogpile, back when it could have worked. After that it was just wishful thinking imagining a dogpile could bring Sian back to the pack. We'll see how it goes this time (IF the game makes it to T125 and Dazed actually attacks, and IF Slowcheetah isn't gassed and whipped by then anyway. I mean...why the delay again? )

So, to summarize why I'm last:

1. I'm not good at civ
   
2. Diplomacy either wasn't kind to me or I did a bad job with it
   
3. This is more about why Sian is first than why I'm last, but IND/ORG is very good on a toroidal map with no other IND nations. (I still want to see someone else's write up on how Sian won this game...I see leader traits and wonder whoring, with no one attacking him as punishment for building all the shiny things)
   
4. Cottage economy takes longer to get to full speed than either a SE or FG/monk/wonder economy. I'm just beginning to see a lot of my cottages finish developing into towns (9 now, 6 more inside 10 turns, an PP not far away if not desperate for military tech). If this game wasn't over I could be competitive with Dazed or Slowcheetah in technology going forward. But that's irrelvant, isn't it?
   
5. Early courthouses are great on a toroidal map. Sian saved a lot of gold that everyone else paid in maintenance. While he was spending hammers on that, we should have pounded him and burned cities. We didn't.
   

Anyway...enough.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T111 - Slowcheetah declared war on Sian and immediately lost two cities on the island between them (NE of our gold city and the wheat city NE of it). My guess is more that the cities were poorly garrisoned and less that Sian had a huge naval invasion force over there.

Jungle front line city, I've gifted a CG2, D1 LB that Sian will surely notice.


I didn't gift the chariot here, it won't make a difference anyway. May as well keep him alive to scout, unless Sian declares on me to kill it. If he does I'll have a castle whipped in my front city before his knights can get to it, if he does want to take me on next. Not sure why he would, though, he'd be better off going after the pyramids/MoM city next.


Empire wide shot, probably the last one that will matter. The next one will likely be missing cities.

We're building toys for Sian to break. He's going to win this game, I'm horrible Protective, so we're going to build a lot of longbows and find out how long he wants to keep playing the turns. I should probably be building less barracks and more longbows, but whatever, I <3 promotions. Twinkletoes defense, engage! Of course once he brings cannons it won't matter....


This will need frequent updates. Just pencil in downward angles for everyone coming up, that should do it.


Another high water mark. When I have to start whipping off cottages to make a heroic defense and relive the Alamo over and over, GNP and everything else will decline sharply.


They set us up the bomb. For great justice!

[spacetyrantxenu]

T113 - There has been action in the Sian/Slowwalk war, Sian divided his stack of knights and Slowcheetah set upon one group of them and annihilated them. He regrets not being able to kill the others yet.

Current turn builds. Emphasis still on military. I'll be building fewer LBs starting next turn when I'm able to build muskets. I have Gunpowder set to finish at breakeven next turn because I generated a lot of overflow when finishing Engineering this turn. I have 4 pikes active in build queues as of this turn and will build several more going forward since Sian's stack composition has been knight heavy so far. Soon I'm going to have to start pumping out masses of attack units, the LBs were necessary because my garrisons have been pretty weak so far.


Here's Rick Santorum, nothing especially noteworthy except that I've pulled off working two PHMs to run a pair of science specialists.


I need a golden age to boost us a bit. I'd like to swap civics since we're building so many units now, to get into theocracy (need to research Theology first but that's cheap at this point). I'm building more workshops now and they're good tiles to work now that we have Guilds and Chemistry is around the corner. Add in another +1 hammer from running caste system and the workshop tiles will be very nice. But we may need emergency whips so I'm loathe to swap out of slavery with no prospects for popping another GA later to switch back. I'll probably stay in slavery because I don't have that many workshops.

Over the last few turns Dazed, Slowcheetah, and I have exchanged our maps around, so I took a screenshot of each of our lands for comparison.

Dazed:


Sian:


Slowcheetah:


Mine:

[spacetyrantxenu]

Forgot to mention, I gifted Slowcheetah two spare happy resources I had, gems and wine. He was having a bit of a happiness problem after losing his spice/silks cities.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I got an email from Dazed:

Xenu,

If you'd really like to hit [STRIKE]Xenu[/STRIKE] (Edit: Sian? ha! -xenu) while you can, here's a plan.



If you put units on the tile i marked next turn you won't be seen by Sian. Then, you can move next to Mehmed in 1 turn. currently it only has two units on garrison, the second of which is new (i.e. not fully fortified). Also, if he leaves his workers there, you could kill 3-6 of them!

Obviously, you'll have to empty out Rudy, but I promise I am not gonna attack you. Also, I'm willing to gift you units to make up for your loses. I'm willing to gift you 2 macemen if you lose 3 or more units and 1 macemen if RNG smiles and you lose 1-2 units. I'd do it myself if I could but I have a stupid NAP till T125. But you and I have OB so it's really stupid of Sian not to have a bigger garrison there.

If you're serious about hitting Sian this is about the best move you can make right now.

Let me know what you think.

It isn't a bad idea, but obviously if Dazed is proposing it, it must be good for him. Then again, it's obviously bad for Sian so I'm probably OK with doing this, depending on the unit composition I have in Rudy right now. If I have a pair of two movers who can get onto the workers this turn, that may be worth doing just to steal/kill six workers. I'll have to check their actions to determine if I can wait a turn and still get them -- stage units this turn and attack next turn. If not, it's probably worth losing a pair of knights to steal/kill six workers, if I have a pair of knights or a chariot down there.

Now here is where things get murky. I don't doubt I could capture that city, as poorly garrisoned as it is. So what's the play, keep or raze? I'm protective, which makes keeping cities viable just about anywhere when you can quickly shove in walls/castles (I haven't seen gunpowder units from Sian yet even though he has the tech). So in the short term I could hold the city and use it as a forward attack base to push deeper into Sian's land. However, I'm not sure how keen either Slowcheetah or Dazed will be to have me taking land from Sian, as I'm sure they both have designs on the area if the war goes well. Slowcheetah has been the only player suffering in the battles so far, so I'd be more inclined to keep him pacified and engaged in the conflict and would be willing to listen to his thoughts on the matter (ex post facto, of course).

However, Dazed's suggestion of "hey, go take care of this city, I can't go to war with Sian yet because I have a NAP" is silly in two ways. First, it's a violation of the spirit of the NAP even if not the letter of it to actively encourage an attack against the person you're supposed to be behaving non-aggressively toward. So if he's suggesting this plan to me, he may as well do it himself, especially since I'll be using his territory to launch the attack. Secondly, this is Dazed trying to use someone else to do his dirty work. I don't remember when he signed the long NAP with Sian but it was surely after he knew he'd need to fight him. I'm not very excited about the prospects of me and Slowcheetah being at war with Sian for another 12 turns while Dazed keeps playing Sim-Civ. In 12 turns this conflict will have already taken a big toll on Sian and Slowcheetah, to say nothing of my involvement if I start now. The longer Dazed waits to participate, two things happen: he grows relatively more powerful than everyone else who is fighting and burning hammers on military losses, and it delays the likelihood of success against a more advanced enemy but staggering our entry times. Slowcheetah (and me, if I go in now) may well be gassed by the time Dazed says he'll enter. And of course I don't really trust him...for all I know when T125 rolls around he'll renew his NAP with Sian and attack me, especially if my troops are in a forward position vs. Sian (previous email agreement that we're all in against Sian notwithstanding -- there's a lot of land to be had in a successful backstab).

Anyway, I'll decide what to do when I play the turn today. I've built up a pretty good defensive force so far, so I could survive a push by Sian if he were to counter me, I'd have to worry about some of my island holdings, though. I don't really have a good enough attack force prepared to do much against him yet, though, so attacking this one city may be all I could do for now, not to mention that Slowcheetah will surely be calling for someone (me!) to open a second front soon.