[SPOILERS] JR4 tries his luck in PB 37

[RefSteel]

Yyyyyyyup! In all honesty, I'm pretty sure we were ready to concede to GJ for at least the past 20 turns if the others wanted to call the game. I overestimated dtay's chances as late as the 190s, but JR4 understood the situation better, being closer to the game, and we've both known (and said) that GJ was running away with it for weeks. Being happy to continue playing is one thing - this game has been a blast, even after our chance of winning dropped into the cellar (which arguably happened at game start due to our second-order neighbor luck) - but expecting to win (and/or insisting on others playing complex turns when they don't want to anymore) is something entirely different.

We never really did get to leverage Spi in quite the way we hoped at game start, and the map didn't favor our Keshiks, but our Ger Knights played well through the end of the game, and fourth place in this field is no mean feat! Congratulations on a stellar MP debut, JR4! Good luck in your next games too!

Just one more thing: MP civ has been an awesome experience!

I'm glad you enjoyed it too! With your constant well-reported and well-illustrated updates, timely play, and willingness to consider advice but ultimately making your own command decisions, your thread has been a ded-lurker's dream!

(Also, I'm still pretty far behind the curve on my Khatunate stories, but I've written up several more that just need some pictures added, so I'll gladly continue them if you'd like!)

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I feel a little bad that you won't get to keep up your spirited war but when every other player is pretty much done it's time to call the fight. Great job, looking forward to seeing more games from you in the future.

[shallow_thought]

I feel a little bad that you won't get to keep up your spirited war but when every other player is pretty much done it's time to call the fight. Great job, looking forward to seeing more games from you in the future.

 

Now to go and find out what the hell Krill did with his start all those months ago!

[JR4]

After spending a few hours reading through at least a part of the other threads it is time for a

POSTSCRIPT (Lessons learned from 221 turns of MP civ)

Pitboss 37 had a rather strange mix of players, including 4 very good veteran players and 5 newbies. Ending in 4th is not bad at all. If the game had continued I`d definitely have tried for the podium. As I see it, there were 3 main reasons for our relatively good performance in this game.

a) Having a teammate who actually knows something about microing the civ, how to complete Granaries so that we`d keep food in the bin and making a ton of micro plans (including one finishing Hanging Gardens to the exact hammer!) does mean something. I am very grateful for all the input for, well, the last 9 months or so! I think the teamwork part of this pitboss went way better than my expectations. Oh, and I haven`t forgotten about you, Shallow_thought! You are both welcome to team up with me again any time.

b) After the era of micro plans came to an end I had to make more decisions when playing the turns. The number of build queues never went out of control so to say, so I was still able to check on every city each turn. I think that my strengths as the turn player gradually came to a fore in the mid game, where my experience from playing chess was able to disguise some of my shortages in the early game. The "work load" turn playing duties plus reporting was still manageable in the end and I do think that playing a lot of hour long turns improved my civ skills a fair bit. I deeply regret underdefending (and undercommunicating it) our western island holdings. That was a costly mistake but as they say: Everyone can make a mistake but only a fool will repeat his mistakes! Our island cities were better protected after that.

c) This might be a controversial one: Geopolitical luck. Joey was only a turn away form snagging Buddhism before us! Having a Holy city right on our border would not be to my liking for sure. Also, having three other civs adopt Buddhism was pretty hillarious. That helped feed our Shrine. In the end we made close to 200 gpt in Muqa at full science. Also, being squeezed in between Joey and dtay had some advantages. Neither of our land neighbors considered an attack on us and Joey even considered coming to our rescue if dtay invaded! Wow, that`s surprising. Similarly, dtay was slightly upset with us settling up on him but he was content at leaving the border as it was.

So it turned out that we could have spent a lot of time in Caste instead of Slavery. I agree with RefSteel that we didn`t utilize SPI in the best way. With a little bit more experience it`s certainly possible to abuse it more than we did. Still, I liked playing SPI/EXP and we got off to a quick start due to our cheap Workers and buildings. I must say that I underestimated rtr PRO, as getting Granaries up asap turned out to be very effective. Also, the defensive bonuses helped out for Joey when keeping State of Zijin in the early game and for dtay defending against Gavagai`s massive naval invasion later in the game. Mongolia`s Gers were very helpful but our Keshiks, well, it was not a game for them.

We expanded quite well early on, settled Muqa directly towards dtay without being called on it. I think Toregene should have been settled somewhere SW of Borte instead of SE. Somewhere to invalidate the State of ZIjin site for Joey. Lesson learned: The contested lands between civs are settled really quickly. At the very least we should have threatened that scouting Warrior away so that he would need more force in order to get that site. On the western sea we expanded at an okay rate. Having Babukhan on a hill was supposed to be our stronghold in the area. Monggutsar may have been misplaced, I don`t think Gavagai ever bothered to rebuild it! Also, Empress Gi should have been built 1W, on that hill. The northern border was very good for us, as Chubei stole a few good tiles away from dtay. Also, it shielded Muqa from attack. The eastern sea was colonized early by us, fueled by builds from Muqa. Leaving Kokejin unprotected for a few turns could have cost us dearly but again, we got away with it. The only thing I was actively unhappy about there was losing Wildabar island to Dark Savant.

Our middle game was based on recovering from the Ottoman attack, which I think we did pretty well. Also, we managed to snatch a city from Dark Savant while he was in deep trouble. He lost numerous cities to several civs. Our relations with DS never were very good. He rejected our map trade early on and never reoffered (except for 80 gold). In a different world we could have been friends. Maybe an Open Border offer could have cemented the friendship? We were reluctant to give Joey and dtay Open Borders for a very long time, but we managed to secure OB with Couerva. His gift of 18 gold was indeed appreciated. Now everyone knows: My price for eternal friendship is 18 gold exactly, heh! We basically had very little contact with Krill throughout the game as we didn`t border anywhere. I never really trusted Gavagai as he stabbed us once and acted rather, let`s say, unpredictably after that. We were stuck on 150 land tiles for a very long time and we didn`t have any easy targets. Perhaps we could have been more aggressive towards Dark Savant earlier but we were really concerned about our land borders. Another possibility could have been a revenge war against Gavagai. Attacks on dtay or Joey never felt like a realistic option. Except that we actually built up a big force of Knights to hit State of Zijin. Perhaps we could have razed it if we had gone all-in but I`m glad we called off the attack when we did.

After Gavagai declared war on DS the first time and pulled out of the war soon after we joined in we were left with a quagmire of a war. DS refused peace (and who can blame him?) for a veeeery long time. We were able to take Tulearean Forest and Mist quickly but then it stalled. We did research quicker than DS, allowing us to keep ahead in military tech. But we had to stay vigilant for the neverending threat of a big stack landing on one of our islands. The battle for Mist island has been discussed in our thread a lot so I won`t go into too much detail but just say that we won the hammer exchange there but, well, we can`t afford too many of those "victories" if we were to stay in the game! Also, I must say that the fighting spirit of Dark Savant was rather impressive in this game. Keeping Gavagai at bay in two wars and only allowing us gains very slowly is a very good ability! As a matter of fact I`d like to continue the siege of Harmondale (no idea whether DS had backup units there). I was having fun right until the end.

Couerva probably could have ended in top 3 in he hadn`t been entangled in that unproductive war with Krill. I hope you sign up for another game soon!
Joey took the best decisions in this game and deservedly wins PB37. The production graph was, well, pretty scary after industrializing. I agree that Joey very likely would had won had the game continued.

So, what next? I`d definitely like to sign up for a Pitboss again sometime. I`ll sit out PB38 as I expected to play for another few months and I`m already spoiled there. Maybe the next one.. One last thing: Any requests for screenshots?

@BGN: No worries, it`s best to end the game if the others have RL issues or are out of the running.

@RefSteel: If you have the time to write up more stories, I`m happy to read. What kind of ending will there be?

@Mardoc: I enjoyed playing on this map. It was brutal, with a lot of islands reachable by Galleys but still balanced enough for MP gaming imo. Thanks for the time spent building it.

[shallow_thought]

Oh, and I haven`t forgotten about you, Shallow_thought! You are both welcome to team up with me again any time.

You're very kind! I think that the one concrete suggestion I made was to promote one of your spare Keshiks to a medic. I felt a warm glow every time he was mentioned . I just hope he was actually useful.

[GermanJoey]

Hey guys. Very nice first game! I've been skimming through your thread and think you guys had pretty amazing teamwork and also a pretty great attitude for having such a tough position to play from.

I did have a couple of comments that I've been wanting to mention to y'all for awhile:

a.) IMHO, Spiritual was a bad trait pick for you. I generally think it's a really hard trait to play in your first MP game, but you also didn't try to make a lot of use out of it, other than the AP. (which was a pretty smart move, though you coulda gone for it sooner) More than anything, Spi demands that you be pretty much constantly switching civics to get anything out of the trait, and y'all hardly did that at all. I could go into that more if you're interested.


b.) I felt like the way you guys reacted to State of Zijin very, very badly. First of all, I don't feel like you should feel bad for not seeing it coming, as it was a big stretch spot for me and not around an area that would have been high priority for you. However, you then counter-settled in a spot that was guaranteed to not only escalate the situation, but also put you guys in the exact situation that you were so worried about: the thought developed in your mind that I would use SoZ as a launching point for an invasion by making the border so tight between us, when all I ever thought of SoZ was as a defensive crumple zone for my valuable, and not very defensible city of Seven Mysteries.

If you had settled 1N instead, your city would have been more productive for your empire (because you wouldn't have to sink such a huge amount of resources fighting a culture war) and you wouldn't have been vulnerable to attack. It sucks to give up some land that you think is yours by right, but sometimes it's the best thing to do. For example, consider dtay's southern border with you guys. He coulda squeezed another city down there early, but then he'd have been more vulnerable to attack and that wasn't helpful for his plan to attack Yuri, so he just let it slide for awhile.

Once the culture-war got started, y'all got far too obsessed with winning it and/or taking out SoZ completely even though neither of those things have any value by themselves. It's like you wanted to start a war with me so that I wouldn't start a war with you. If that was what you were worried about, there was an easier way to stop me from invading - simply sign open borders and plant a sentry chariot in Seven Mysteries and boom, I no longer had any attack vector into your lands. You eventually did this, but IIRC it wasn't until about 60-70 turns after I first offered them to you. (and I kept trying, repeatedly, to re-offer, despite the fact that you didn't even have all your routes filled!)

So, in the end SoZ ended up being like having a dagger stuck into your belly for most of the game. Which was great for me simply because it meant I had a safe border that I had to spend relatively little resources defending.

[GermanJoey]

The Greek Worker N of State of Zijin is making a farm, that`s why I didn`t mention it in the turn report. However, you`re right that it`s a potentially aggressive move. 

GEEZ LOUISE, FELLAS.

[JR4]

It never crossed my mind to put Oghul Qaimish anywhere else. If we`d moved it 1N we would be on flat ground, giving up the plains hill (although we could have worked the hill instead). It just seemed too risky at the time, allowing you to walk up a slow-mover army. Also, giving up even more of the contested land was not to my liking.

Heh, maybe we were too obsessed with your intentions. We could have accepted the Open Borders much earlier, true, but as you had the Great Lighthouse it would be a skewed deal. Perhaps we should have agreed to the deal anyway. Our economy could certainly use more trade routes..

Okay, it`s getting late here. More comments coming up tomorrow.

EDIT: I`m interested in hearing your thought on SPI. I agree that we didn`t use it very well.

[Dark Savant]

One of the problems with SPI is that it's basically unchanged since the original version of vanilla Civ 4, and most other traits have been buffed between that and RtR.
It's still okay but not terribly exciting; it's not clearly top tier as it once was -- though I would have seriously considered taking Isabella if you hadn't.  (I still would probably have picked Washington over Isabella -- I wanted an EXP civ for sure.)

Anyway.

I suppose we could have been friends, yeah, but I wasn't trading maps with anyone at all for a while since early on I had superior scouting -- for too long; I waited until my once-superior maps had no extra value before I finally decided to trade.  Open Borders might have happened, but I was too stingy about making those (eventually I signed them more aggressively).


I refused peace with you originally because I felt like I had nothing to lose at that point, and I was determined to make a fight of things (partly because I felt like I was going to die quickly and had to try something).  That didn't end up working out, as I'm sure you're aware, but that's far down the list of decisions I regret this game -- I'm not sure I regret doing that even in retrospect.

And like most games, this was decided by who your neighbors were, really -- more so than most other games, since everyone only had two land neighbors.

One thing I wish I was clearer on that I haven't mentioned was doing enough not to be the most hated target of someone -- it doesn't take much goodwill to achieve that in this game, so it's worth the investment.

[RefSteel]

Oh, and I haven`t forgotten about you, Shallow_thought! You are both welcome to team up with me again any time.

Absolutely agreed; this was a terrific experience! Thanks again, JR4!

Also, having three other civs adopt Buddhism was pretty hillarious.

This was an interesting kind of luck: I'm sure some players just chose the religion to which they had access first (or most) but others may well have decided that given the choice of feeding Krill's shrine or ours, we were the lesser evil.

Similarly, dtay was slightly upset with us settling up on him but he was content at leaving the border as it was.

I guess it helped us that he had a crippled Russia to his north, and therefore still could readily expand and was glad establish a peaceful border to his south. Also I guess it was lucky that he had some space to put FAQ down there at a sane distance from Chubei, though it would have been luckier to have that luxury in our own south. But recognizing that dtay wouldn't want to cripple his civ over a city site he didn't bother planting for the first zillion turns of the game (and that we needed something like Chubei to shield Muqa and claim more land once we had a semi-usable southern border established) wasn't just luck.

So it turned out that we could have spent a lot of time in Caste instead of Slavery.

Also could have spent more time flopping OR and Theo - and I liked my plan to swap between Slavery/OR and Caste/Paganism/NoStateReligion early on. Serfdom could have been interesting too if we weren't already managing fine with just 11 workers empire-wide on this map (in spite of getting them on the cheap with Exp). To leverage Spi for a win though, you have to build it into all your calculations, and take advantage of all the little edges (the OR whipping trick, Caste workshops while worrking off whip unhappy, many etcs) it letss you gain. What really crippled us the most here was that we lacked the MP experience to recognize when we would and wouldn't be in danger without the whip, and just never left slavery. On the other hand, we were never going to win this game once the start order was rolledinexplicably established identically with snakepick order - and I love the options SPI opens up, even if in this game we only used a few.

I think Toregene should have been settled somewhere SW of Borte instead of SE. Somewhere to invalidate the State of ZIjin site for Joey.

I would have preferred that too, and I think I argued for doing it in case copper made any city in that direction remotely viable. But ... it didn't. That was a complete wasteland. To invalidate State of Zijin, we would have had to either plant on the same tile ourselves, which wasn't viable for a stable border, or toss down - as our third city of the game - a throw-away front city on flatland on the wrong side of the river with zero resources, forests, or hills in its first ring, sharing one blank grassland with our capital. [EDIT: Or plant one tile off the coast and orphan fish. Or plant with no food except a second ring corn on the wrong side of the lake. Or wander to the wrong side of the lake with no advance worker support....] It's hard to imagine it being worse than settling Oghul Qaimish 1N, for zero first-ring food tiles, on flatland, with a hill right in front of it which would have been adjacent to GJ's borders (there was no way we could have contested the shared second-ring tile with State of Zijin from that site whether we tried to or not) but a blocking city there might have done it.

(GJ is 100% correct that we should have signed OB in spite of his GLH - it wasn't our responsibility to slow him down at our own expense - and put a sentry into his land early on ... but that wasn't an option when Oghul Qaimish went down; we didn't know yet that it ever would be, and Alphabet was a long ways off.)

Also, I must say that the fighting spirit of Dark Savant was rather impressive in this game. Keeping Gavagai at bay in two wars and only allowing us gains very slowly is a very good ability! As a matter of fact I`d like to continue the siege of Harmondale (no idea whether DS had backup units there). I was having fun right until the end.

For sure! The war with him may have been a quagmire, but I thought it was a great experience. I'm really looking forward to seeing him play in 38!

Joey took the best decisions in this game and deservedly wins PB37.

Pretty much, yeah. Neighboring the guy Krill tilted on turn 2 obviously helped, but he had to execute, and he did so better than dtay, who was in a similar situation for what turned out to be broadly similar reasons! It was pretty knife-edge stuff though; there was a real chance that planting State of Zijin could have led to enough conflict to throw the game to dtay.

I`d definitely like to sign up for a Pitboss again sometime.

Cool! I'll note that PBeMs are fun too, and require fewer players, for what it's worth.

One last thing: Any requests for screenshots?

Hmmm ... if I could see the list of all the buildings and units we built/lost/killed throughout the game (I think it's one of the F9 screens, maybe the one all the way on the right) sorted a couple different ways, that would be pretty neat!

@RefSteel: If you have the time to write up more stories, I`m happy to read. What kind of ending will there be?

Only one kind of ending is possible, really! I'll finish writing it tomorrow, but when I post it depends on whether I wait to find illustrations.

@Mardoc: I enjoyed playing on this map. It was brutal, with a lot of islands reachable by Galleys but still balanced enough for MP gaming imo. Thanks for the time spent building it.

Seriously, yes, many thanks for the map, Mardoc!