[Spoiler] Fintourist loses his multiplayer virginity

[Fintourist]

Turn 174

Finally some action! But unfortunately not during my turn...



Sareln killed 3 of my frigates at the cost of 3 frigates of his own. Unlike I claimed last turn, I had overlooked one of the attack directions and Sareln was able to transfer his wounded ships into a fort. So no chance for revenge.. Well, 3-3 is a totally acceptable result, especially because Sareln lost both of his C1 Frigates in the process.

If one counts the couple of frigates that I finished at the end of the turn I have now 22 frigates in the area while Sareln has 12 (visible). I guess that means that situation is pretty much under control when one remembers that I'm also only one turn away from draftable rifles.

Since I haven't shown my core for a while, here is one random screenshot of it:



Apart from the just-founded cities these are the only cities that are not producing ships. Oxford for the capital, bank for the shrine city..

Tech Update

All my opponents finished a tech this turn, which makes this a good moment to give a small status update.

Sareln finished Steel, which is potentially a dangerous tech, but due to Sareln's smallish production capabilities this should not bring me too much additional problems.

Azza got Military Science, which is kind of bad news. Ship of the Line works well against my frigates and grenadiers are potentially a pain in the ass. The positive about this is that Azza is still far away from Rifling himself (he still does not have feudalism...)

Viqsi got Guilds and is probably working towards Rifling (Banking -> RP -> Rifling). However she still does not have Astronomy, which means that if I start an aggression she can pretty much decide whether she prefers a major disadvantage on land or at sea.

Beakerwise the situation looks like this:

Fintourist 46400
Sareln 32200
Viqsi 29400
Azza 25000

That actually looks better than I thought, which made me double-check it couple of times.. Azza is still the biggest threat since he keeps expanding. City counts are:

Fintourist 33
Azza 27
Viqsi 14
Sareln 8

[Commodore]

Impressive how much trouble he's causing you with just eight cities! Glad your alpha strike went in heavy?

[Fintourist]

Impressive how much trouble he's causing you with just eight cities!

Yeah, after the strike Sareln was still left with 7 decent cities. A great bureaucracy capital, which is the reason why he has been able to get couple of new military techs and is still ahead Viqsi and Azza in total beaker count. And of course Sareln has whipped all his other cities to sizes 4-5 and turned every pop point into units during the last 25 turns. Additionally Azza is supporting him with happy resources so that Sareln can keep whipping..

Well, as already said Rifling and later Combustion will be moves that Sareln is unlikely to be able to really match.

Glad your alpha strike went in heavy?

Yeah, I won't regret it. Sareln had built a strong economy and we were pretty much in a tech parity. Sareln just gambled with low defenses a bit too long... This game would have been totally different without that invasion.

Of course, now I'm paying the real price for that attack.. From game winning perspective Sareln's attack on me does not make much sense and I guess it's only about revenge and damaging me. Which is at the same time understandable and annoying, because Azza and Viqsi are benefitting so much from it. I have already put ~2500 hammers into Frigates just in my Eastern front to secure the position against Sareln... I guess this is a good learning case about metagame in civ..

[Fintourist]

Turn 175

The empire strikes back!



Sareln has been keeping that stack of 3 Frigates and 3 Galleons there for a while. Last turn I had 4 Frigates in the hitting range, which was not enough to get a positive expected result. So I decided to put the 5th Frigate into my nearest stack and I guess Sareln did not notice that or calculate the odds. Since I had one C2 and one C1 Frigate in the range the expected result of an attack was ~3.4 ships destroyed, ~1.6 lost + a chance to sink some units if those galleons were loaded. Therefore I went for the attack and the results were brutal:



Combat odds were roughly:
67 % C2 Frigate vs Frigate
50 % C1 Frigate vs Frigate
33 % Frigate vs Frigate
99 % Frigate vs Galleon
99 % Frigate vs Galleon

I'm sorry Sareln! I did not deserve that result. I would have been happy with 4-1 and only slightly disappointed with 3-2. I followed the changes in soldier points and unfortunately (for me) those galleons were unloaded.

You can also see that Viqsi started a golden age... and switched to emancipation.. Grr... Well.. I guess I could do something about it now that I need less ships to defend my cities agains Sareln.. Those switches mean of course that next 5 turns Viqsi is guaranteed not to have Slavery or Nationhood.. I wonder if I'm fast enough..

And of course this all is related to... Rifling! Good luck making enough grenadiers guys. The next 20 turns will mean 60 drafted rifles (mostly C1) and I'm also getting bored to building Frigates and Galleons..

My only worry is my low focus on GNP. Somehow I'm all the time waiting that Azza gets his empire in full speed and starts catching up while I build units that eventually obsolete, but well, it's getting close to world war time.

Stay with me, my rare lurkers!

[Old Harry]

Kill!

[Molach]

Stay with me, my rare lurkers!

Good things come to those who wait.

At least if we view World War as a good thing.

I think Sareln's reaction and play after the attack is both expected and good play from his view. Trying to keep you busy so the others might have a chance to catch up....and dogpile. Not gonna happen here, but a decent idea in principle.

[Commodore]

Yep, pretty much the cost of crippling-but-not-killing someone.

[TheHumanHydra]

So sorry, just to clarify - is that Sareln's navy gone, or does he still have a relevant number of ships somewhere?

[Old Harry]

Sareln's focus on you makes sense for his future games too - "don't piss off a guy who holds a grudge like that!"

[TheHumanHydra]

I don't know about all this talk about logic - I think hurting the guy who took you out is just the most emotionally-satisfying thing to do.