[SPOILER] Glory and redemption. yuris125, PBEM77

[yuris125]

And now he went and razed Delhi. I even saw his stack, I just thought it was going to finally finish off AdrienIer. Guess he had to kick me off the island first. I thought I had enough defences, too, but as it turns out Cavalry with Pinch is good unit

Why is it so frustrating to play against someone who makes all the right moves....

Alhazard also founded Mining Inc. Which I expected after seeing him settle crappy cities (1-tile islands 2 tiles away from existing cities) just for iron. Between that, and him being first to Assembly Line, his production is going to explode, and I don't see a way to stop him. Certainly not with my army

Maybe Commodore sees a way. But I don't mind conceding at this point

[yuris125]

I'm going to make an attempt for cultural victory. Mostly because I don't see myself winning a different wincon

I have two great people on ice, a scientist and a spy. I'm getting another one in 2 turns, and it currently has a 37% chance to be an engineer. If I lose this roll, there are more incoming

I will spend the golden age in Organised Religion; I have Monasteries for two of my religions, so the plan is to work really hard to spread the third one into 9 cities (9 Temples = 3 Cathedrals for legendary cities, I won't need more than that). After the golden age, I will go into Caste / Free Speech / Pacifism, and it will be obvious for everyone what I'm doing, which is one of the reasons why I don't expect this attempt to work

I may delay the golden age until I'm ready even if I do get the correct great person in 2 turns. My current plan is to research Flight and Radio before turning off science. I can't really control the seas at this point (I do hope to have enough ships to keep my borders safe), but I probably still can control the skies - and that's important in the late game where we're heading. Especially with a small army like mine - aircraft will allow me to know where it's needed

Radio also could give me access to Eiffel Tower, if Alhazard doesn't go for it - who knows....

Legendary cities will be Aksum (the capital), Adulis (the holy city) and Debre Berhan (the Great Library city). Adulis is the closest to the border with Alhazard (and with Commodore, who might also intervene), but being the holy city, it's the best candidate

I'm still happy to concede if Commodore is, but this will give me something to do in the meantime

[yuris125]

Just realised that Islam is still not founded, and Divine Right has to be a quick research at this stage. So I can get the 4th religion relatively easily....

[yuris125]

Fighting against 8 move Transports without see control or air units is miserable. Alhazard razed Adulis. Almost wish for Commodore to declare on me in the next few turns, so that he can get some of my cities and not leave them all to Alhazard. I'm sure he sees me power rating, he knows if Alhazard is serious about this attack, he can carry on until I die

[yuris125]

The great person came up a scientist. Unfortunate, redundant scientists are fairly useless at this point, an academy won't help to solve my problems, and he would bulb less than a half of Biology, which won't help my problems either. That said, my biggest problem at this point is that Alhazard is 2t away from Tanks (well, it was 2t last night, it probably will be 1t when I return from work and open the save tonight). And there's no solution to this problem other than "get your own Tanks". Which is not really feasible

[yuris125]

Well then. Commodore declared on Alhazard and took a city (probably razed). Hope they stay at war for longer this time...

That's a pretty looking diplo chart, with Alhazard at war with everyone




Not much to report on my side, just building destroyers and airships....

[yuris125]

Went ahead and researched a 1t Divine Right. No idea if it was a waste, but as long as I can build enough of a fleet to defend myself, I can still make a run for culture, despite my holy city being razed. Might as well try, right?

[yuris125]

Some closing thought for the game

* I'n very happy with the way I expanded. It was fairly risky at times, and I landed unescorted Settlers onto remote islands until late into the game. But it was worth the risk, and allowed me to claim two triple-luxury islands
* I think I did a good job managing the first-to bonuses, at least in the early game. I got Stonehenge, didn't compete for Oracle, and got the Music great artist for the first golden age. The two bonuses I tried for and didn't get were Hinduism (on turn order!) and MoM (which was a half hearted attempt upon seeing it was still available, not a serious effort). But all in all I'm happy with how this went
* The big mistake of the early game, and one that's hard to explain, was losing Hawulti to France. Hard to explain because it was was a border city, protected by 2 Warriors, at the time when I was working on unit upgrades. Not making this city a priority was a monumental slip, and the first of many tactical mistakes I made this game
* Civic choice - one point the significance of which I didn't realise at the time was that many players were running Vassalage over Bureaucracy this game. I thought this was because they didn't have Civil Service at the time of the first civic swap, and didn't consider it further. However, there's one thing which ended up very important during the fighting stage of the game, and that's promotions. I didn't build Barracks in may cities - at least not until switching to Nationhood much later in the game. I also didn't have access to Vassalage or Theocracy at the end of my first golden age - I discovered Feudalism on the turn it ended. The result - my units with no promotions were facing off against units with double promotions pretty much the whole game. Now, on a land map, this can be counteracted by stack composition, siege units, etc. On sea, with much less unit variety, promotions can be the deciding factor in battles. Not realising their importance was probably my biggest strategic error this game
* Unit production - this is something I need to look into in more details, and perhaps Commodore's and Alhazard's threads will give me better insight, but the fact is a fact - I was playing catch up in power rating the whole game, kept stating in the thread that something was going to happen that would allow me to close the gap to their power ratings - but it kept growing and growing, until Alhazard sunk the ships with the bulk of my army and made it truly insurmountable. Even when I was in hot war with India and building units in all cities and drafting every turn, the gap didn't budge. There has to be something fundamental I can't figure out
* OK, the big one - war with India. I'm certain that my decision to declare it when I did was correct. I had a unit next on a ship next to an undefended city, ready to capture it, the city just grew to size 2 and wouldn't be autorazed, and AdrienIer was just attacked by ipecac. And I was making plans to attack India in any case. This was the perfect moment. The first problem with this was the aforementioned issue with promotions. I couldn't attack AdrienIer's ships on even tech, while he could do pretty much whatever he wanted. The second problem was that at the time I couldn't fight him, I tried to maintain some level of aggression and moved my ships around the seas pretty aimlessly, giving AdrienIer the option to take advantage of his superior promotions and attack them whenever he felt he had a good trade. At times, I even game him openings to get good trades despite promotion disadvantage - this was how I lost my two GG-powered Frigates. All in all, I'm happy with my initial attack; I'm happy with my first attack on Varanasi, as well as the decision to withdraw when I realised it was too well reinforced; I'm very happy with the late game attacks which allowed me to capture Lahore and Agra and get a decisive advantage in the war. I'm not happy about losing a tonne of ships in random skirmishes for no value in between
* The second war with France - frankly, there's not much to say about this. I needed to end the war against India as soon as possible to get rid of war weariness. In order to do it, I needed to sail my wooden ships past Alhazard's Destroyers. Alhazard was at war with both other players in the game, and I gambled on him not declaring on me as well. He did declare on me and sunk the ships with my army. Disheartening. But not as big a mistake as it may appear. Letting him raise Adulis on the other hand was a huge mistake, however much I try to find excuses in saying it's hard to fight against 8-move Transports. By the time it happened, I knew Adulis was going to be one of the legendaries in a culture victory attempt, which was my best chance to win the game. There was no reason not to upgrade its defenders to Machine Guns. So once again, I got punished for overlooking unit upgrades

Despite the mistakes, I'm largely happy with how I played, and even proud at times. At the start of the game I talked about how important it was to have a game plan and play accordingly, and I feel I accomplished that. On strategic level, my play was solid. Not happy with how many tactical errors I made though - that's one big disappointment and takeaway from this game

Happy to answer questions if there are any

[Commodore]

Stonehenge is scheduled for next turn




Fingers crossed no one completes it before the save reaches me next time....

One turn you beat me by. One turn! Now the massive failgold windfall did help me gain a research edge, but as many Chm monuments as i whipped throughout this game, I'm pretty sure this was a mortal blow.

[Alhazard]

ok on unit productions, I followed mackoti and REM(?)s advice which is to only keep a handful of cities for the commerce and multipliers, and devote all the other cities to whipping units. In this game, I only built multipliers in the core cities, which are cities with double food or great hammer potential, and whipped units from the rest every 6 turns. When I got to destroyers, I went ballistic and just 2 whipped destroyers from the fillers by sending overflow to another destroyer and immediately whipping that. The Kremlin helped a lot at this point of the game. However, this meant that I was stacking some serious whip penalties to the point that some cities had 7~8 whip anger. Those crappy filler cities you mentioned was a mistake in my game since I should have found them a lot sooner, especially if I realized that in the endgame, no city would be above size 13 unless it had fresh water so the cities with 3x food access needed to split off the excess food.