[Spoiler] Fintourist loses his multiplayer virginity

[Fintourist]

Zzzzz...

I'm not sure if Viqsi even knows that she is being attacked yet, but

The turn pace of this game has been a f***ing joke. People just keep disappearing without any notice over and over again. This game started in October!! I joined this because I knew I have well time until May and I speculated that this game should be roughly done by then.. *sigh*

[Old Harry]

You've just got to kill them all quickly then...

[Fintourist]

Just for the record:
Viqsi had a very good reason for the delay, so let's remove that part of my rant.. My overall disappointment towards the turn pace remains..

[Molach]

I think Viqsi knows about the attack now:

Hey, guys? Remember early on when I was winning and had an obviously insurmountable lead?

I liked those times. Can we go back to them?

Funny guy.

Good reporting, as always. That's 3 down, 1 to go....

I think Azza is in a impossible spot now (for a good while too) - but hopefully he will go for the major (but ultimately doomed) attack, and not wait 15 turns for the doomness to become plain, and then concede.

If think if this were full diplo and tech trading was on they might have been able to stop you...now - not so much.

Now that the game has gone on for so long, might as well drag it out to October...then you can brag to friends/family/coworkers/boss/kids "Hey, check out what I've been doing the last year..."

[TheHumanHydra]

All my friends think I'm the nuttiest person on earth when I tell them what I do in my free time. "Lol, you let emails decide what you do with your evenings?!" "You play in these games for a year?!" "No wonder you don't have a girlfriend ..."

[Fintourist]

Ha!
I downplay this "thing" significantly when I talk about civ with my friends/gf/etc..

[Old Harry]

My girlfriend watched me do some sandboxing this evening. I couldn't quite explain the fun of it...

[Fintourist]

I think Azza is in a impossible spot now (for a good while too) - but hopefully he will go for the major (but ultimately doomed) attack, and not wait 15 turns for the doomness to become plain, and then concede.

My troops are pretty widely distributed because of my large empire and skirmishing with Viqsi + Sareln. Consequently dealing with Azza will provide a challenge for the time being. The major problem is that I have by far the largest navy in the game, but since I can devote only 20-30 % of it currently for my border areas with Azza, I'm a bit vulnerable. Well, not really vulnerable, but I can not open a third front with same kind of an effective strike that I have previously done. Yet.

@all: Regarding real-life aspects: Civ is a bad thing! I'm using way too much time here on forums.. It's a pity that I just like it.. I have no idea how e.g. Harry manages to be in so many games at the same time!

[Old Harry]

Carelessness mostly...

[Fintourist]

Turn 181

The start of the turn kind of knocked me off the table. Civ is a game full of surprises..



Azza took advantage of the fact that I killed the top defender of “K’veer” and captured the city (stole my gold!!). That is bold! I never imagined that he would do that! Well, this created a completely new situation and now I’m left thinking how to react to this action.. Well, the fact that Azza also declared war on Viqsi might reduce the revenge mentality that Viqsi has towards me.. Maybe…

Meanwhile my eastern attack against Viqsi continued almost as planned:



Viqsi switched to Nationhood, but remained in Emancipation. This unfortunately complicates my happiness situation (which is tight!) , but on the other hand, without Slavery Viqsi should not be able to build a military/navy that could create me any real problems…

The battle of Nidur Gemat consisted of bombarding the defenses and three high-odds fights:



I like my chances of holding that city. I can’t wait to get Ivory into my trade network!

But then, what to do with Azza? That kind of steal should of course be punished. But on the other hand, Azza has not shown real aggression during the game. I’m already fighting two wars and a couple of peaceful turns would improve my position further and possibly provide me enough time to do some kind of an effective war declaration strike. Conclusion: I should definitely suck it and play conservatively, run away further and later wipe Azza’s redcoats and SoLs with tanks and destroyers, or go to space, or just consume Sareln’s and/or Viqsi’s lands and force concession..

On the other hand…



… this will be much more fun… I think it’s now clear that I’m economically way ahead of my opponents and this game only makes sense if Sareln, Viqsi & Azza dogpile me. And at this point when turns are already taking a freaking long time I have no interest to just grind this game through and secure a slow win. So… Let’s invite my opponents to fight! Always War it is!

Apart from starting a new war just because that will make the rest of the game more interesting and entertaining, I reviewed the position of my and Azza’s scouting units and navy and concluded that with immediate declaration I won’t be able to do same kind of damage as with my previous attacks, but I will benefit a bit from taking the initiative and achieve smaller goals that improve my strategic position.

After removing the ancient defenders from “2 Hearts” I decided boldly to keep the city. If I lose it: No big deal. If I can keep it for 10 turns: I will draft a couple of rifles and strengthen my control of the map center.
Next part of the turn consisted of naval skirmishing:



One extremely important goal to immediately achieve was to destroy Azza’s scouting units. Having no knowledge on my defensive forces will make it significantly more uncomfortable for Azza to plan an attack.

I also had couple of spots where I was able to attack his Frigates with positive expected results. The end result of this exchange was that I lost 2 Frigates, but killed 3, which is ok. The reasoning to weaken his Frigate forces is that Azza has couple of Ship of the Lines near my borders. I don’t want to see a strong combined stack of SotLs and Frigates approaching my waters. Currently I have not yet an effective stack in place that can clean up a ministack of SotLs, but Azza don’t know it and I wonder if he advances aggressively with his ships.. I think attacking e.g. 3 SotLs with 7 promoted Frigates should work fine if it later comes to it..

The negative aspect of this fight was that Azza received a great general, so now I have to take into account the possibility of all kind of annoying 7-move Galleon, Commando-strikes.

And finally.. War declaration without a couple of burned cities simply is not my style..



Originally, my war declaration on Azza was always going to include a capture of “Muscle Museum” and “Snakeskin”. Now with this ad hoc attack I have to satisfy myself with burning of the small city of Snakeskin.

Some of my troops that were suppose to participate in the attack on Viqsi were also in the range of fresh English cities:



So yeah, 3 axes were killed and 2 small cities of Azza were razed. That does not really compare with my invasion on Sareln, but I guess this strike has some kind of demoralization effect and if this game continues, Azza will have two cities less to draft redcoats (Azza has neither Replaceable Parts or Philosophy yet though).

Unfortunately I had not other boating opportunities, but I left my units in position to pressure couple of Azza’s cities near the map center:



“Once a Glimpse” and (very likely) “Young Blood” are both in danger to fall if Azza does not reinforce them properly. I have no idea whether he has some kind of an effective response in his pocket!

In other news, new war weariness and unexpected emancipation unhappiness probably force me to use culture slider (10 or 20 %) next turn. I will hook up a new luxury resource on T183, which will help the situation, but next turn will be otherwise problematic.

I'll comment on demos when I get to home, because I forgot to put the screenshot into my dropbox folder. The big picture is that I have 36 cities and my opponents have 43 currently (Azza 25, Viqsi 10, Sareln 8). My MFG is bigger than the combined MFG of my opponents, but my power is still a bit smaller than Sareln's+Viqsi's+Azza´s. I think I can still screw this up, but I should also have a chance to win a straight 3 vs 1 war. Maybe I'm delusional..