(spoilers) wetbandit proposes his own civ4 mod

[wetbandit]

Should be able to get to this today before I leave.

[wetbandit]

No pictures yet, waiting for Kuro to play first to preserve turn split from last turn. Kuro settled a third city with an axe for defense north of the clams. Built up some axes and WCs to go take his 2nd city in lieu of building my own settler. He has no horse, no fear about needing my own spears, and a far-flung defense. Moving into one-tile range next turn with war in two turns.

Posting now in case Kuro plays late, as he has a varied turn-playing time, in case there's some wonder as to why I haven't played.

In other news, finished writing and ventured a turn into Meditation as Buddhism was still available. With scouting more or less confirming we are on a 2 player island, religion may be hard to come by. Given that I will be building troops for the near future, prioritizing Med over Writing may have been a better play.

[wetbandit]

Trying to keep a turn-split with Kuro, stack is on the border to declare this turn. Unfortunately, Kuro is taking the entire timer to play these last two turns. Didn't take a picture from last turn, but he has a more developed road network than anticipated which may allow him to reinforce quicker than I had hoped.

[wetbandit]

Declared this turn, we'll see how much he can get into the city, at least one more axe. Worst rush ever.

[wetbandit]

Worst rush ever indeed. Kuro was able to reinforce the city and I more or less abandoned the attack after losing two rolls. I've managed to get back to fairly competitive GNP with Kuro, but he has a far greater army. Most disturbing is the fact that the eligible trade route sign popped up two turns ago with Seven, who is playing with Krill in their own sandbox.




dat GNP.

Managed to beat Kuro to 5 cities at the cost of military, now heading to construction after Masonry finishes. I'm up Currency on him. Musing a hare-brained attempt to run some priests and bulb Theology, but cats to take his land will probably be a better idea.

[wetbandit]

Belated 1AD update:






Ten Cities at 1 AD and significantly behind the major players in this game. I got here through two failed rushes of Kuro and 1 aborted probing war that may have caused a whip or two. Lots of early development hammers died in Kuroland. Thankfully, I am ahead of Kuro who, at seven cities, is playing turns in 2-3 minutes. He's stopped expanding, for some reason.




That's my GNP at max tax, however, it's somewhat inflated and is current at ~240 at 100% research on Meditation. I decided to beeline guilds. I may not make much of a difference globally, but my goal is to conquer the island before I am attacked by foreign-islanders (i.e Seven/Krill). S/K settled 4 cities this turn (T116), bringing their city count up to 18. As you all know, their early knock out of retep gives them a tremendous advantage. I am further disadvantaged by the fact that I'd have to defend against S/K from two sides, since world wrap means they are my northern and southern neighbors. Thankfully, I am up metal casting on them and trying to get a Trireme in the water. It's not much of a condolence, though, as they bulbed Philo and are currently in pacifism, probably aiming to generate enough GP for a deep beeline of Cuirs/Rifles before they decide to invade anyone.

My Western neighbors are Noble/Gaspar and Gavagai. I am even at 10 cities with both of them, although I suspect they've had longer to develop those cities. Both appear to be deadlocked on their island, albeit Noble/Gaspar have the Mids. Ideally, I'd like to move off of O/B with S/K, but need to set up O/B with Gavagai to ensure I get enough trade routes. You can see from the demos that I am raking in a ton of income simply from TRs.

I have almost no military and could succumb to a PB8 style invasion from a determined foe. This risk is to try and develop my recently settled cities in time to pump out some knights when Guilds arrives. Annoyingly, I will have to settle a filler city by the capital to claim My Iron, which spawned on the FGH 2SE of Ahhhhhhhhh.

Questionable city placement/builds/errata in spoiler:

[wetbandit]

I can see some foreign activity through interface magic:






I'm glad to see S/K are at war, especially with the score leader.

Gavagai offered OB plus 6gpt. He currently only has O/B with ad hoc as far as I can tell, so I countered with 12gpt. I'm full on trade routes thanks to NobleGaspar and S/K.

Two turns to Feudalism and then I need to save some gold for Machinery+Guilds. I have a GP due in 5 turns and aim to use that for a GA to generate some more GPs and fund/carry the way to Guilds.

[wetbandit]

Not much interesting happening in this square of the world. Chugging along to Guilds, popping a non-specific GP to fire GA to generate 1, but hopefully 2, caste-aided GSs.

I could hire a priest next turn to speed the birth by a turn, but I need to generate enough gold to stay at 100% through the GA. Max tax I generate about 175 gold compared to -62 for 100% research. I need 3 turns of max-tax to have enough for the GA, especially considering iron city is going down soon.




Viva being the only kid with financial in the local neighborhood (ignore the other crappy demos):






That top GNP has been over 500 for several turns. There's some behemoth on the other side of the world.

[wetbandit]

My own postmortem for the game:

1. 15t worker build really set me behind most everyone. Only retep and I ended up settling our first city in a manner that precluded a quicker than 15t worker build.

Gaspar (2nd ring forest ivory)
Gavagai (2nd ring forest deer)
Commodore (1st ring forest ivory)
Hashoosh (settled on plains hill)
Mikehendi (settled on plains hill + 2nd ring plains forest ivory)
Seven/Krill (2nd ring forest ivory)
Kuro (moved onto plains hill, improved 2nd ring to 1st ring ivory)
ad hoc (1st ring forest ivory)
bantams (no thread - no clue)
*2metraninja (moved to plains hill - this was a very similar start to what I had)
*retep (nope - also similar start to me)

This explains my confusion at the high MFG I saw early in the game. Several players had immediate vision over a 4 yield tile and moved to exploit it. Others, I suppose, were expected to move onto plains hills. I imagine this may have been the design for me. I had stated reluctance to move to either plains hill since I would either abandon two flood plains, thereby reducing my non-farm food surplus to +4 in the capital, or take two turns to move with increased moves for the worker to get to the wheat.

Interestingly, 2metraninja had a very similar decision. The change for him, though, was that his move would still ensure 1 FP in his capital's BFC.

Looking at retep's start, I believe Serdoa anticipated for him to move onto the plains hill to the southwest. This, of course, mandates that one of his future cities border the clam lake. Eyeballing it, I think I would have waited to put a chop into a WB with a 2nd city. It's a tough start, to be sure.

Turning to my decision, I certainly could have controlled the situation by choosing an expansive leader. I could have got the hammer bonus after the 2nd ring pop. With the bonus, I'm sure I could have been ready to attack a few turns earlier.

Tangent: I found the Warrior First discussion in the lurker thread amusing. I had never considered that, but playing it out in my head, you figure you can abandon your worker at turn 2 and start with 4 hammers towards a warrior. You first move the warrior on T6, it has 9 tiles to go. Kuro sees it 3 tiles away, if not earlier. With his hammer start, he can 3t a warrior. He sees me coming and has a warrior ready. No dice.

2. The Rush, as it was

I had intended to attack with my warrior first to soften one of the axes. Instead, the warrior became free xp after I lost a roll. Certainly, losing the ~77% attack was not ideal, but I still needed to win a few more after that. Even then, I doubt that I would have been able to ultimately compete in the game, as Kuro was still likely to put up effective resistance, at least for the next 15 turns. At that point, I would have had control of the continent around T75. This doesn't account for the fact that I'm not as good in a sandbox as Seven and Krill.

Not much more to add to the eulogy. Kuro played defense well and war turns were smooth, well done. Congrats again to Seven and Krill. Thanks to Ichabod for GMing and Serdoa for the map.

Fittingly, it appears that this game ended as it started:

[Goreripper]

You got hurt bad by that capital that is terrible.

Sorry you never got the chance to finish your duel with knights.