[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

I kind of don't want to report, because having a civ legend in the "Last Post" field really helps with thread views.

Turn 82:




Black Stallion got its border pop. The stone tile has 23% of our culture. This is a game mechanic I don't understand. Stallion is producing 3cpt, so my understanding is it drops 3cpt on second ring tiles, and 13cpt on the first ring. (And there's a one-turn lag between gaining >50% and the tile actually changing hands.) But if we dropped 3 culture on the stone tile, and Darkin has 10, that would be 23% (3/13). But if he has 10, why hasn't his border popped? Maybe there's an off-by-1 effect somewhere in there.

At any rate, if he's close to 10 culture, we're never going to be able to "borrow" that stone tile. So I figured the best thing to do here was chop some extra military. In particular, I think we should have at least a couple of archers in every coastal city to avoid single-gally city raze missions.




I moved the new galley to scout around a bit, and it sees Tyr. (Protective archer!) It also shows Pindicator that we could have been a real pain in the butt to him but weren't, and also that if he wants to start a sea war we're going to have boats around to needle his seafood.

I'd like to spot some contacts to the west, for known tech bonus and potential trading partners when Calendar comes in. Also, it would be useful to know the general shape of Darrell's empire.

Oh, Darkin got a 12 point increase this turn. That's pretty likely to be Math. I think we can still afford to go for calendar, but if he's going to beeline Construction, that could be interesting. That's not the sort of decision you make as a sub though, maybe!

I'd think, of all possible subs, Parkin may be one of the more amenable to a long-term implied NAP, but who knows, right?

Oh, Barry no longer shows as the Hindu holy city owner. So that must mean Pin either captured it or razed it. Razing it would be ideal for us, because we could actually spread the religion without feeding someone else's shrine income.

[WilliamLP]

I remeber saying wonders will not fall very easy when you were saying that INd is not valuable,

Yeah I remember you saying that too, and I was thinking "no way, man".

so i was right again and indeed i would had got mids like now having same number of cities or maybe 1 less , and would be in great position.

Yes, that's because you're freaking Mackoti, and your knowledge is better than mere logic. I'm some guy gunning for 8th place or so. I should have just tried to pretend I was you. But actually I think if I tried it someone would beat me by 1 turn.

I seen that usualy wonders fall faster in small games then in big games, dont know why but is a fact.

It does seem counter-intuitive. It feels like it could be a cycling metagame because if everyone thought wonders fall slow in large games, more people would try for them, and vice versa, right? But if this happened you'd know it too because you're the wizard of Civ.

[WilliamLP]

Didn't mean to throw mud then run,...I'm going to have to keep this a little brief.

That was a pretty in depth post for brevity!

Adding a forkable, boatable city ontop of forkable boatable cities is not really more costly. It means that we need to control the coast and that control is achieved at a lower per-city cost as the cities increase (while the capability to do so increases). So watching you give ground on the mainland with the stated intent of instead diverting to the coast and then shying away from the coast seems ineffective.

This could be true with a wider body of water. A trouble here is that the city you want is attackable with a galley moving from inside his city that same turn! And it would be open from 3 tiles, so we can't really defend against that with just navy no matter how much sea control we have. With galleons it gets even worse.

And yeah, the intent of diverting to a hard coastal strategy as a key part of the game ended as soon as I saw we weren't getting whales. And it wasn't abandoned without a bit of grief.

Well I think that I can state that this is not about what I want. I would have wanted a mainland focus, horizontal expansion due to strong food, while leaving the coast until I had the resources to take it by storm. I would have attempted to contain Darrabod while attempting to outgrow both MYKI or Darrabod while backfilling and waiting for opportunities.

But, an attempt to contain Darrabod is at odds with an attempt at horizontal expansion! The kind of cities you were talking about had pretty slow growth curves. The ones actually settled have much faster curves, which is why we have more cities than all neighbors.

Vs an ideal Joao gameplan (for an approximation see a guy named after a color and a weapon in a pb game that is as high as a number in the teens can go) we'd get crushed if we sacrificed horizontal expansion like that. Because he wouldn't have to care about short term land steals, he just makes better economic moves than us and that, plus his traits, means he comes out with a massive advantage in the midgame and overruns us with that advantage, Mackoti-style.

But we weren't playing that game. We were playing the game where we give up mainland presence in order to expand,...first to the coast and then eastwards eventually. And now we're shying away from the coast and hurting a 3-food, 4 hill super mfg city that will be a huge factor in maintaining our costal control and keeping both itself and our Moai city safe.

What do you mean "were playing"? We expanded to the coast! Yeah, with 2 fewer fish and 1 fewer whale than desired. I just don't see three resource tiles being worth a sweeping gameplan. If anything, not needing to focus so much on the sea control means more resources to push east.

On giving up mainland presence:

The grey squiggles are the fair border by capital distance. But as Commodore likes to tease, it's a grossly unfair fair border! And it's pretty much where the borders are now. This is giving up mainland presense? The gameplan was to give up some of blue 1 to push for the much bigger blue 2 area. And we ended up getting more of blue 1 than I wanted, with a plan to concede the wine tile.

Sure, it would be nice to have the pig and the hill sheep too, if not the Ivory. (And stone obviously, which I concede again was my mistake.) But the blue 2 area has _tons_ of resources. Not just 2 or 3, but like 20-30 or something. And the player we'd have to take them from is starting to play about as green as I hoped he would - either that or he has circumstances we don't know about.

In the event of a war that you can't avoid, you look to be setting yourself up for the situation where you're fighting a close, difficult naval war rather than setting yourself up for a dominant naval position.

Here again we diverge. I know you see me as making decisions and standing pat on them in the face of logic, but I really think I'm seeing logic too. I don't think war with Pin is inevitable at all. This is the key point - if it really is inevitable you could be right. I think incentive is at least as if not more important than opportunity. If he doesn't have anything permanent to gain by razing cities, I don't see why he'd devote the resources to doing so. I think it's in both our best interests to avoid naval conflict, and I'm signaling about as strongly as it is possible that I don't want to give him incentives for this.

Another way to say this is that you are acting defensively against the power of naval invasion while simultaneously thinking about a future invasion of MYKI. If the naval invasion is powerful,....why not set yourself up to use that against MYKI (while simultaneously being able to navally defend against a possible hostile Darrabod)?

That's a good point. It's a blind spot of mine not to consider combined land/sea attacks which could be an extremely potent weapon. That's what Alphabet and open borders with Pin are for, maybe? I'm sure not saying we're not going to have a navy, just I want to try hard not to be in conflict with Pindicator. There will be tensions, but also mutual gain in peace through open borders and lack of much incentive to raze cities.

It would be debatable whether your 'give ground for peace' strategy would be the correct one when facing opponents of equal focus and skill but it seems to be working in this case.

If your critique is that we're only doing well because I have at least as much focus and skill playing turns as Pindicator, I'll take it! I'm not as good a player as he is, though I'd bet on myself against being the first one eliminated from a game, because of my fear of potentially game-winning risks.

Fine, but the idea that he'd be doing a naval invasion at this point in the game would be madness.That's darn close to a zero percenter.

You watched this guy in PB8, right? An axe or two in a galley looking for warrior-defended cities, I'm not so sure that can't be a good game plan!

So it's safe to conclude that we're not the target, we're safe for now and we probably can get away with a fish stealing plant. By the time that he settles whatever he's doing and builds the naval capacity to transport all that power we'll be safely behind culture (but not cheap walls ) plus whippable population. We should take advantage of Pindicator's preoccupation since losing that fish will be a 'fact-of-life' 20 turns from now. I cringe at the thought of you passing up this opportunity. Pin can't do squanto about it if we control the waters and it's low likelihood that he'd go crazy over a fish on our coast anyway.

Again, trading a potentially peaceful relationship (you're at odds with this, I know) for a hostile one, plus a single tile that nets a city +4 food when worked. This is worth it?

What if we make an analysis between your HE site vs 1NE of it?




1 has: One food to start (4/0/0). Second ring, it has the deer. The fish is even worse than second ring - it has to pop and also overcome the culture than Pin has already accumulated there. It runs the risk that Pin could get the city over 10cpt, and then be a threat to win first ring tiles. (This isn't that crazy with Industrious and Pavilions.) It has 4 other hills and 2 forests. Two of grass it gets extra probably should be worked by Trigger, since it would be extremely marginalized by the plant.

2 has: Two food to start, including the deer. Second ring, it has a third food as well, the wheat. It has an additional hill. It has 5 forests to chop instead of 2. Instead of the 2 grass tiles that Trigger wants to work, it has 5 additional land tiles, one plains on a river. It's probably a better long term city. And, without the fish for #1 to immediately work, it's a far better short term city which can work two food resources at size 2.

No! NO! I'm not suggesting that. Arrrgggg! Take control of the channel while building the strongest cities!

The thing is, with the 3 tiles including the fish captured by Tyr, Champion is actually a much stronger Moai site, both in the long and short term too! Aside from being much more defensibe. At this point, the more I look at it the more it seems like it isn't even close. E.g. it has 3 hill mines (including gems) to work while building Moai, and 3 food plus 2 lakes to work while growing on it. They both have 10 water tiles but the extra lake usable by Champion is pretty nice.

[WilliamLP]

Quad post: Rego you've got nothing.

Information gleaned from the tech thread: MYKI is waiting for a neighbor to play in a benign turn split. This means tension, and it's not Darkin. Going on who has played, it has to be either Ruff, Xenu, Bacchus, or Hashoosh. Also, Darrell said that Parkin was playing turns with minimal guidance from him. This is great news for us! This, because Parkin is mega-spoiled - he's actually played turns for many empires at this point. So he really can't responsibly influence the game by initiating a war effort.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 83:




Do you ever have that dream where you're playing a game of Civ and all of your neighbors turn out to be literally Lord Parkin? Yeah, me neither. But seriously, Darrell needs a perma-sub, and now Hashoosh does too. So the chances of this game just breaking down are getting higher by the day.

Anyway, right now this game is just about growth and consolidation. Trigger will eventually whip out the settler for city #9. Then Calendar will allow some pretty nice vertical growth everywhere. If we had marble, going for MoM would be something to consider, and it might be anyway, since we're taking a fairly fast and direct path to Calendar.

Note Cyneheard and Pin are bona-fide neighbours, and Cyn is Egypt. People with real courage don't play mods that reduce WCs to below 5 strength. There's jungle between him, but this is pretty good support of Mindy's view that Pin is way too preoccupied to spend much effort on the sea right now.

[WilliamLP]

So it looks like we'll be playing against Zanth now, with Darrell ded-lurking.

I don't know much about him, but he's from the Alae crowd (cult of ruthlessly bloodthirsty and chaotic Eastern European brains). But he and Furungy are the more mellow ones in that group. He's in the lead in PB17, though I think Gavagai is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. If Gavagai himself were taking an active role in controlling HRE, that would actually be the worst possible scenario for us. He's the strongest player, and also a diplomatic terror.

The first thing I'm going to do when he actually starts playing is some flavor of cow for cow trade, or even just donating him a health, get this relationship started in a way that allows focus on eastward expansion.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 84:




So the message I'm trying to send new neighbour Zanth is that I'm trying to cow him into leaving me alone. Also I finally understand the naming scheme Parkin switched to, though it shouldn't have taken me so long. I'm not exactly a stranger to noodle-based empires.




Across the channel is some really nice unclaimed land to the west. There's not even a hint of culture bleed. I wish our south coast looked like that!

There are two ways to play this: whip down and spread like a virus to the east, crash the economy. Or start to become a high pop empire relying more on that for hammers and worker / settler production. Since we're getting calendar soon-ish and our eastern neighbour is slow, I'm going with the second. I feel like there are going to be a lot of advantages to being one of the people teching fast in this game, which growing on to all of these river tiles will allow.

After calendar, there are a few options:

1. Construction. Most paranoid option. Cats the river mobility fully stops anything before knights in our borders at a massive cost advantage, if someone is either noob or overconfident enough to try.

2. HBR. Finally unlock our special scouting unit, for more map awareness.

3. Tech Alphabet. I'm a real believer in this tech in this mod. I wouldn't extort gpt out of people for OB because it pisses people off (or at least it does me, lol). But... being the broker of open borders means it becomes a negative sum game to even declare war.

4. Bulb Alphabet, tech currency. I'm really torn about whether to get an Academy or Alphabet if we get our great scientist. It's ye old here and now vs invest for later dilemma. But Alphabet itself is valuable primarily because it's a long term investment, and the Academy helps to tech it, so it's tricky.

5. Tech Alphabet, bulb Aesthetics?! This would be more appealing if there were marble around, or if Dtay weren't in the game, haha. The chances that he's on a theoretically optimized beeline to music along the top of the tree are as high as they ever could be.

6. Metal Casting. It is cheaper in this mod. I still don't think we get this before Currency though.

[WilliamLP]

This game is going to fizzle out, I'm pretty sure of it now. The growth of players who can't be assed exceeds the supply of non-Parkin subs. And turn splits will be the nail in the coffin. You really want the first half of the split in this game, because otherwise the other one with the first half can take 22 hours to play or just pass forever without saying anything and you're screwed if your day includes sleep.

Turn 85:

Zanth offered cow for cow in return. I did what Seven would do, refused the trade for the theoretical and microscopic information advantage: we know (in a perfect world?) that we have peaceful intent for now, and the other players don't see the cow for cow trade.




MYKI dropped his city #5 on the marked site. He's also claiming the gold, though I'm not sure of the exact site where the city is.

I'd love to get the scouting chariot into the northeast somehow. Options are to move to X (which can be seen as an aggressive move, or, heck, can actually raze the city in some circumstances since he doesn't see the chariot yet and only has a warrior or axe in there). Or to move to Y. X is probably the move, though there's a pretty good chance of losing the chariot to a spear that way with workers to road the pig tile.

And a big strategic decision is the settling strategy to the east. If the game lasts long enough, this is the direction land I intend to fight for, either before or after knights. The bane of Mindy's existence city is probably next, though planting foward and sealing is certainly an option. I'm very unsure right now. There's no obvious dotmap or city plant to me with all the desirable properties - on a hill, first ring food (plains cows aren't food), good strategic location.




MYKI's smaller vertically grown empire and gold makes for a pretty nice looking GNP graph.




I don't think our army growth is particularly excessive, just keeping up with par for the world, and what's needed to minimally defend against reasonable threats. And, yeah, I don't feel good in this game without at least a couple of archers in every coastal city.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 86:

A new turn, a new set of graphs. Also, Zanth dropped two new cities last turn, putting him at 9 to our 8. His new culture isn't anywhere we can see. He also has silver hooked up now, for a third pre-calendar happiness.




Two more cities should crash Zanth nicely for now. It's arguably how you're supposed to play, but it also means I don't have to fear fast Construction very much.







And Zanth is pulling a little ahead in food too. But, again, that's supposed to happen for someone with two early snowball traits.




It will be interesting to see if Pin manages to finish off Barry Lyndon quickly or not.







There's yet another stone on this coast we won't be able to get. I'm very surprised to not have found any signs of life in this land yet.




Over here, Zanth got his border pop finally, so we'll never capture that stone tile for a turn without conquest. He also moved a chariot to Y, so I decided not to try and sneak our chariot into the northeast. It's a little wounded from a barb warrior, and trying to move it through the pass would just invite a chance at free experience for two different players, which isn't a good deal right now.

City 9 should settle on turn 90, if all goes to plan.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 87-88:

Not much is happening, which is actually great news. Being allowed to sit quietly and play builder turns is one of the best possible situations in this part of the game.

Military as of T87:




Galley scouting:




There's an interesting landform over here. I think the dark green culture is either Dtay or Molach. I'm not interested enough to determine for sure with RGB pixel sampling since we'll contact them soon anyway.




Note Pan Galactic has been empty for a while - I know this because I've been moving the scout back and forth, who sees 2 tiles over water. Going for razing this city with the galley would be quite the surprise move, and I think the chances of success would be quite excellent. But... to paraphrase Machiavelli if you're going to injure someone, at least you had better be sure it is severe enough that you don't fear the retaliation. And no way is razing a city worth the difference between a tense friend of convenience and a mortal enemy this early, in my judgement.

Pyramids haven't shown up yet. Obviously Mindy's idea of settling for the stone earlier and more securely, and chopping it out, would have been on point here.