[SPOILER] Dark Savant's thread: Competition for limited resources remains a constant

[Dark Savant]

I have a couple of mature-ish cities that have too many forests in their city radius for no good reason.  That's probably a reason why I'm not doing as well as I should be.

[JR4]

Those trees can be chopped into a wonder later if a golden opportunity presents itself. Fingers crossed for MoM!

So, Superdeath decided to focus on the eastern peninsula instead of going for all spots in the area. I still feel that the border is unstable and our border cities will need a few Skirmishers to dissuade Superdeath from getting any ideas.

Are you thinking about capturing or razing Rusten`s aggressive plant on our shared border? If that city is on his continent it won`t really be any point in trying to keep it. If it`s on an island, attacking it looks more promising. Btw, what is the eta of Astronomy? I suspect that it might be a good idea to get it sooner rather than later..

[Dark Savant]

Those trees can be chopped into a wonder later if a golden opportunity presents itself. Fingers crossed for MoM!

So, Superdeath decided to focus on the eastern peninsula instead of going for all spots in the area. I still feel that the border is unstable and our border cities will need a few Skirmishers to dissuade Superdeath from getting any ideas.

Are you thinking about capturing or razing Rusten`s aggressive plant on our shared border? If that city is on his continent it won`t really be any point in trying to keep it. If it`s on an island, attacking it looks more promising. Btw, what is the eta of Astronomy? I suspect that it might be a good idea to get it sooner rather than later..

The trees at Porto-Novo (Stonehenge city) are deliberate, those are being saved for this Mausoleum bid.  If that fails, some other wonder, although if this fails to pan out I'm not sure what I can get in time.  (Too many players, and once you're well into Classical, being Industrious doesn't help nearly as much as reaching a key tech first.)

Both closest cities to superdeath already have an axe and 2 skirmishers, which is good enough for now, I think.  I'm taking a chance that he doesn't really want to attack me, but I'm gambling that's what he actually intends.  Zugor actually no longer even has the axe it has, it's got one whole warrior now.  (Any attempt to attack with my mostly defensive units is going to give superdeath 2+ turns to come up with defenders, which is likely too slow.)

Yeah, I need to scout that city of Rusten's.  I haven't reported the latest turn yet, but I have a scouting work boat out that's going to check out what I can of Rusten's -- it was too awkward to get one there before.  I was wondering how all these other scouting work boats are even getting to me, but Rusten is now known to have Open Borders with 2metraninja and Elkad.  Bleah, why.

Attacking Rusten is a low-odds, possibly suicidal, move, but someone has to make a move on him, I think.  And people with Open Borders with him aren't especially likely to help out.

My current plan is Metal Casting (mints/triremes) to Iron Working (swords) to Compass (harbors).  Rusten has enough of a lead already that even that might be too slow, frankly.

[Dark Savant]

Also ... I wouldn't consider attacking Rusten if I had a considerably weaker neighbor I could alternatively attack, which doesn't exist.  Or if Rusten were actually friendly, but (I haven't reported some of this yet) he's been considerably more obnoxious than superdeath playing Boudica of America has been.  And that's with superdeath making that aggressive city claim.

And my thought on why turtling won't work as well as it did in PB39: I was able to get a reasonably good enough land claim there (partly by force) to make that a good strategy.  My land claim here is OK, but even though I'm currently #4 in land, that's significantly Stonehenge-inflated.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 111 (100 BC)

Wait, what do you mean by this, Rusten?



Rusten has a spare Whale and I don't actually have any plans to actually connect spare Silk for several more turns, even though we've got a bunch of them.  And Rusten is larger, so this benefits him more than me.

This is not a fair offer.  In fact, now that I'm writing about this, I realize that I was making a similar lux-for-different-lux deal that Rusten may be benefiting much more from.  I need to take a look at that next time I play and cancel that if it's actually benefiting him more as well.

Also, Rusten has a bunch of deals with others.



This is benefiting Rusten too much.  

I have a work boat just about to finally scout some more of the west, but I can see a few of Rusten's other borders poking out of the fog now.



I probably need to get more defensive units over there -- I only have 1 skirmisher and 1 axe at the moment.

That was all turn 110.  This is what things look like on turn 111:





Latest graphs and demographics in spoiler:

OK, trying to maintain graphs on AT might be futile, he's got a lot of courthouses which we're not getting soon.

Also, I've been doing enough whips to cause demos to drop recently, hope that recovers.

[Dark Savant]

Oh, it's just crab/gold for crab/gold -- false alarm there, at least.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 114 (25 BC)

There's a (n other) serious problem: No one else is researching Alphabet.

It's pretty normal for a lot of people to get that not only for Open Borders but to build Research.  It's a risk not to because it's possible a bunch of other people won't get it, and at this point, Rusten is still our only contact who does have it.

So I rolled the dice, and lost that one.  Our gold-per-turn, now that Open Borders are starting to appear everywhere, is starting to be very uncompetitive.

I wonder if I should just bite the bullet and research Alphabet ourselves.  Ugh.

I've poked around Rusten's advance city.



It's an island, yes.  With not one but two luxuries we don't have nearby, nice for him.

I'm concerned superdeath is not a fan of my own counter-aggressive city plant, so I'm making sure the forward cities are well-defended for now, but I may actually withdraw defenders eventually.





Probably really should fill in some more cities soon; I do have three settlers underway.

[Dark Savant]

Man, I really don't have the time to report as lavishly as I'd hoped before starting the game.  Still have enough time to play, easily, but you know, real life.

Ah well.

Turn 117 (AD 50)

Rusten is up something fierce in more peaceful techs.



Yeah, I should get to preparing this war soon-ish.

He's also trying to offer more deals to me.



At least this trade favors me and isn't tantamount to flat-out demanding a luxury.  But it'll help just one city that I'm having unhappy problems with (Accra, on the frontier with superdeath, which has a library for culture instead of a market).

I'm not sure what else this is going to accomplish.  And it'll favor him more if he has more Spices he can connect soon.

Also, he offered Open Borders.



Well, with his deals with others, this would benefit me much more than him.  But I'd rather not feed him unless he pays me more than this.  (Note the absurd disparity in gold-per-turn.  Ugh ugh ugh.)

Also, this treaty wouldn't be worth full value, because someone made an aggressive city plant that forced me to declare war just to work food.  It'll be another couple dozen or so turns before that effect fades away.

Really, I feel like I'm already far behind the leaders enough that I'd rather seriously hassle one of the leaders than anything else.  And if I asked for enough (25+ gpt) from Rusten for such a deal that I'd be happy to accept (enough to call off any war), he'd likely think of it as a demand, though I don't think that is actually as unreasonable as moves he's already made.

Maybe I can just sell him Silk for a small fortune.  I know people complain about this in Civ (especially 3) all the time, but the AI tends to value lux-for-lux trades fairly, in terms of equal happy generated.  Actually trading lux for lux flat-out between a stronger and a weaker partner strongly favors the former.  But people tend to think in terms of "I get a lux and you get a lux, even trade, right?"  No.  No, it is not.

But I'm just staying quiet for now.  I'm not sure what to do; he's likely to interpret this silence as hostility.  Which it totally is, but I just don't want to give that away like this.

And there's no one else to offer Open Borders to, still.  I did now remember to offer fish-to-fish to AT.

Also, check this out:



That's quite a bit of military 2metraninja is suddenly building.  Maybe he's bordering superdeath?  I wish I knew.

I thought I grabbed a screenshot (oops no), but the Mausoleum is due next turn.  I'm actually likely to grab a second half-assed wonder build in a game with 16 players!  Stonehenge plus Mausoleum feels like OK payoff for being Industrious, though I'm still jealous of what Gavagai has managed to snag.

Iron Working is now due in 2 turns.

[Dark Savant]

Just got a message from superdeath saying that I'm in the first half of a turn split.

Well, this is going to be interesting.  That's not great timing, I had just pulled back one skirmisher wondering if I could demilitarize the border, but I guess that's not happening.  I've got two skirmishers that can move between any threatened cities.

I also left one unguarded worker on the border wondering if he'd come in to try to grab it.  At this point, one worker is a reasonable price to pay to see if someone's really friendly or not.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 119 (100 AD)

Ayup.  This is bad.  Not one, but two incoming sword stacks (that I presume all have two promotions available).




Mombasa is hopelessly lost; I pull out all troops towards Lomé, promote every single unit I can, and turn on auto-promote.  That miiiight hold up against even that many swords.

So superdeath really was aiming to attack me.  And this has to be pretty much everything he's got (he doesn't have power so high as to allow any real military elsewhere), so he must have no other neighbor he's concerned about.  I could have been well-protected against this, with several hundred hammers more of units, but that's a lot -- I gambled that it wasn't necessary, and lost.  It's going to happen with my playstyle, never mind the frustrating lack of scouting I have at my disposal.

Well, this is going to be very hard to counterattack, what with cities so very far apart (it must be that superdeath took forever just to assemble these stacks -- I'd thought any attack would have come earlier, apparently not), and with not yet having Construction.

Iron Working comes in; I do have Iron already connected.  Time for lots of units!  Next tech is Construction; abandoning any and all plans to attack Rusten at this point.

Oh, yeah.  Time to experiment here and see what I can offer for more chaos and war!





Trouble is, I'm wildly guessing at what to offer Elkad or 2metraninja, since I have no idea what sort of assistance they are even capable of offering, since I don't know where they are.  And really, this instinct is from my Civ 3 experience, I can't make any promises that it'll even remotely pan out.

I may have to fire the Golden Age in my pocket just to scrape together enough economy to buy people into wars and get to Construction in something vaguely resembling decent time.  No, no civics available, but I think it's likely I'll have to do it.