CharlyShadow

[krikav]

Not sure if this is called a shadow game, because I'll just play more or less like I usually do, but chip in if you have any pointers.
Joining in on the fun of the latest Lain-game.

Spoiler T0-T51 :

No resources in sight, I see SW as a possible candidate position for capital due to plains hill hammer, possible seafood and a lighthouse-powered lake.
Moving scout NE to reveal the three tiles I can, that I would lose in such a move.

Have heard somewhere that you get at least 3 resources in your BFC. Seeing that I have wheat and surely a uranium or something similar on that naked green tile, there is bound to be some resource west, so I just SIP.

Spices! Not really suprised as this is a Laingame.

Looks like I'll have problems with workerturns, not much to do. I would like to get to BW soon and profit from all the forest, but I feel forced to go agri->TW. Try to get some use from this by going early settler taking some advantage of the IMP-trait, and boosting commerce abit with TW.

About here I get a eery feeling that I'm just about to meet Shaka.
Also, ocean crabs?? I think I have never seen crabs outside of coast.
Very happy to see rice even if it's dry.

Taking up fogbusting position.

Workerturns and road lines up pretty nice. Justinian seems to be at least some distance away, already have room for at least 4 cities. Phew!

Warrior spawn in the north, land seems pretty easy to fogbust.
Some hammers into SH to speed up teching.

BW is done, commerce is dire, will go fishing next for the lakes+discount on pottery and later crabs. But crabs will come much later as they require borderpop and is uncontested.

Capital pops borders, and behind the peak is a pig! Oh yeah! makes for a excelent city 1N of peak borrowing wheat.
Justinian is spamming settlers like there is no tomorrow. I get visibility of his teching, it seems like he is shielding me from some other AIs. I kind of like that. If I can get religion spread I'll be pretty safe.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

^^

Spoiler :

Standardized start has at least 3 resources, yes. But sometimes lake tiles mess it up and the resource is pushed 1 tile away. Floodplains count as 1/2 resource. Coal and uranium count as full resource, which is great...
Scout should move SW if you're considering settling on the PH, no ? Check for seafood.
SIP is right. I think Agri-Wheel-Fishing is better than that early Bronze Working. The 2 lakes pay off fast and the commerce is needed desperately. I'd even go Pottery before Mining and cottage the hills around Prague. Settler at size 2 is probably good (then grow on lakes).

What are you gonna do, now ? Axe rush 10 tiles away ?
// To be more constructive : I'd try to go for Catapults. Land is too poor to tech up to the Renaissance.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T51-T55 :

Settled Vienna at the same turn, trying to place it careful so that I won't invite Justinian to settle more toward me, while at the same time avoiding uneccessery bordertensions.

T54 Justinian boxes me in completely.

After pottery, I'll go AH and then writing for OB and religion.
Have to settle a city for the copper and I think the wisest choice is that which reaches the deer too.
Cities should also be north of the peak for the juicy pigs and the crabs also deserves a city as there is helper-city potential in it.
Map reminds me abit of the Immortal University shaka game I played last week or so, although everything is abit worse. But with cold climate I can perhaps hope that the AIs lands are also kind of bad?
Room for 3 more pretty bleak filler-cities if I'm forced to make do with this land.

Marble kind of tells me that I should go aesthetics and if AH rewards me with horses a cuirs breakout would be tempting.
The calendar resources and the lack of other happines resources could also tilt me more toward an astro-bulb, but will have to see much more of the map first. No clue if this is a pangea or some continents style map.

 

[Fippy]

Interesting
I would have recommended a construction rush to Lain here.
Copper would be available, Axes & Spears do well enuf with Cats.

Imo there's one thing we have here, forests.
Aachen should have nps with getting a library, running 2 scientists and bulb maths.
Which is not that great, but makes reaching Construction in reasonable time possible.
Chopping a nice Cats army should be possible.

On HAs, with such a poor start they rely on luck more than normal imo (when does your target get certain techs and counter units).
From my experience, Cats can do anything if we have the numbers.
Axes & Spears are also less vulnerable to counters.

 

[krikav]

@BornInCantaloup Axe rush?! Nono, I'm peaceful! I never wage war.
Now I'm going to watch Lains video up until roughly the same turn, and see if I can learn something.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

@BornInCantaloup Axe rush?! Nono, I'm peaceful! I never wage war.
Now I'm going to watch Lains video up until roughly the same turn, and see if I can learn something.

I see... I think I get the idea
Well, a marble play is conceivable, I suppose.

 

[krikav]

@Fippy A construction attack is absolutely a nice idea, but I want to scout abit and judge the situation before commiting to that.
Never played a map with cold climate before I think, and I don't think the land is THAT bad. Enough green around this capital to endure longer before a breakout.
But would be nice to put that IMP trait to use sooner rather than later.

 

[krikav]

Oh, watched the first 30min now.
I feel very sorry for Lain, what incredibly bad luck with barbs.
I didn't even have a barb archer spawn, he had TWO, and they where lucky and killed forested-hill warriors too. :/

 

[krikav]

Lain was nearing AH, so I stopped and played on abit more before horses was revealed.

Spoiler T56-T68 :

After pottery I just cottaged alot, whipped a worker in Prague, up at 4 workers now, even felt I had time to connect Vienna.
Up at AH horses is revealed, even two of them. One will not help as a tile but can be nice for trade. The western one will really help deer/copper city as it will have something worthwhile in it's inner ring while waiting for monument.

T68 I meet Hannibal, and he has alfabet already! That was quick.

And it was an explorer I met... Compass at T68 must be super early. Wasn't even him who built Oracle.
I guess he places extra emphazis on compass due to his UB?
Now I feel I'm going to lose this game.

 

[krikav]

To be more constructive : I'd try to go for Catapults. Land is too poor to tech up to the Renaissance.

Ofcourse! I know the perfect compromise! I go for that lovely medieval warfare that I just tried out in NC138.
And powered with Landsknechts too.
If only I have iron I'll consider it.
In Lains position, yes I think construction would be better, but I lucked out and got more land (and the marble).

 

[krikav]

Spoiler Up to T117 (CS, 1AD) :

No iron, so scrapped plans on some medieval stuff.

AIs teching like they are on speed.
At least no problems getting trades.

Got GLib, lost music with one turn to Pacal who seem to want to build every wonder in the game.
I really needed that artist, now I'll lag behind at least 2 more turns just from revolts, and the extra GPP from GA would have been awesome.

Now I suspect the chances to win lib is down at 10-20%.
Should probably just self-tech Philosophy, try to save up some scientists and see if paper comes up for trade.

Failgold from parthenon, MoM and sistine is at least something.

NASTY map, I think it's worldbuildered, because it looks like every AIs capital is stuffed silly with resources. And i have seen flatland silver and ocean crabs.

Will make a try for a cuirs breakout, likely against Pacal and probably while he techs physics.
If I get all his wonders there might be a slim chance of achieving something, but I doubt it.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler Resign :

I did make some progress. Even managed to win lib (to nationalism), although I think it was only by maximum 2 turns.
Onward to tech MT.

Traded for gunpowder, military buildup now.
Got a GMerch and started wandering toward Wang ToAR, but half-way I realized I really needed the GA. AIs was building wonders like there was no tomorrow, and I got alot of trades for massive amounts of gold anyway.
First few turns of the GA was still in pacifism, then 5 turns of OR to get forges/barracks and 3 stables up. Then full tilt on whipping with vassalage/theocrazy.

Cheap cheap iron. >_<

Traded for astronomy before declaring to preserve traderoutes.
Trades where very easy in this game (only thing that was).

Bribed in Pacal too. Astro+MT for chemistry+ war.

First GGeneral raised 7 lvl3 guys to lvl 4. Big difference between combat2 and combat3.

Here I cheated, first time around all 3 spies failed, so I loaded back a turn or so to try again.
Tried a super-retreater with the attached great general. He died the second attack he did.

Ceasefire after Constantinople, trying to recover to get teching up again.

Hanibal declared on justinian shortly after this screenshot. He took Bactrian, I sniped his new capital south and Laodoicea up by the copper.
Gifted back Antioch to culture pressure Bactrian.
Demanded the iron from Justinian abit later when I wanted to upgrade trebs to cannons. He declared war right away...? I thought you always got one resource? Had to reload again and pay up for the iron instead.

Pacal finished Pentagon, so I sent the cuirs west to see if there was some easy pickings. Kublai had a 1tile city totally engulfed in Justinians culture, so I placed cuirs ready in the heat of the war between kublai and wang.
Took Ulsan, Turfan and Hyangsan without causalties. Gifted Ulsan to Wang, razed Turfan and holed up in Hyuang.
Kublai made a heroic attack on Wonsan, and I slipped in and finished of his stack.
Got half of rifling for a peace treaty.

Then Mansa declared on Wang, I was going to tag along and see if I could snipe some of Wangs cities, but then I misclicked and declared war on Mansa.
Oh well... Time to let this game rest. I have no chance to squeeze a victory out of this.
Perhaps someone more skilled at this stage of the game could pull it off, but it's way above my abilities.

 

[krikav]

Some screenshots from last turn.
Not sure how one should go on here... Probably not enough land to go straight for tanks. And if teching toward AL/Artilery to get Wang/Kublai or perhaps Mansa as vassals, Hannibal would leave the planet while Pacal wins culture at the same time.

Abit low on motivation as I had rotten luck with 3 spies and had to reload at a critical point too, that paired with the fact that the map seems cooked.
Lain writes:
"And MOST importantly: Not cooked in any way. Naturally generated. To avoid artificial situations that are not representative. I don't want to play for 10 hours to find Darius has a continent with 40 cities to his own." so this was extra annoying imho.

Spoiler :

 

[Fippy]

Yep it's an edited map, one quick look in wb is enuf.
Annoying..should be mentioned by the map poster for sure.
Many liked those prepare to die maps by Gwaja, but obviously everybody wants to know what they will play before starting.

 

[krikav]

In my case, I do think it's a case of "sour grapes" too though.

 

[Fish Man]

To 400AD (t131):

Spoiler :

This might be harder than @Gwaja 's prepare to die maps, in all honesty. If you know that you're up against a rigged map from t0 you can use that knowledge to do some things you would normally never do. Like spend 3 turns moving your settler west on a PH and then building a size 1 settler after worker to claim the only viable source of horse available. Some would consider foreknowledge cheating, but I really don't see any other way to beat this, especially if you had to go in blind.

Ah, things are not so bad when you get a few lucky fights:

Spoiler :

In fact, with Rathauses actually being useful for once I'm beginning to get some sort of tech parity.

Spoiler :

And hey, t131 CS! Better late than never, and I can even get 2 or 3 trades from it!

Spoiler :

...Please ignore the fact that Hannibal has nearly 20 cities and libbed nationalism at 200AD . I think he might be going for cuirs now. This might be the only recorded time in civ history ever that an AI has reached lib or cuirs this early, by an enormous margin. In fact, the only time I recall getting cuirs in the 400s AD was playing as the OP HC on deity and taking out Mongolia's capital by t30 with Quechas, while also having started with a free gold mine in my cap (it's an old NC map; coincidentally also my first deity victory just about a year ago).

Though still very far away, if I get cuirs of my own I can conceivably take on Hannibal. With room for 2 more cities, 12 vs 17 gives me a fighting chance. This is, of course, assuming he doesn't get grens or rifles, which he most likely will given his medium military flavor. Promptly followed by economics because of his gold flavor, and then 1200s AD infantry :/

 

[krikav]

Haha, glad to see you are ironing on @Fish Man

I had my third city out very early I think, and got that horse/cow/marble patch, but in Lains video Justinian had settled that spot already 1 turn before or so.
I think that it's possible to luck out and do something on this map, seeing that I only lost music by a turn, and then philo by a turn and I was able to win lib T133.
But (the way I am able to play) it requires the stars to align up perfecly.

Things are soo much more doable if you are ahead and work with a initiative.
I learn so much from Lains playthroughs fighting like a underdog.
A year ago, a map was GG if one wasn't able to win lib and go from there, now I see more options and can play more creatively.
This map though... way beyond my abilities. I get flashbacks to that LHC-Boudica map that I struggled so mightely with where HC ran away completely. And compared to Hannibal here, he was a kitten to a lion.

 

[Fish Man]

Haha, glad to see you are ironing on @Fish Man

I had my third city out very early I think, and got that horse/cow/marble patch, but in Lains video Justinian had settled that spot already 1 turn before or so.
I think that it's possible to luck out and do something on this map, seeing that I only lost music by a turn, and then philo by a turn and I was able to win lib T133.
But (the way I am able to play) it requires the stars to align up perfecly.

Things are soo much more doable if you are ahead and work with a initiative.
I learn so much from Lains playthroughs fighting like a underdog.
A year ago, a map was GG if one wasn't able to win lib and go from there, now I see more options and can play more creatively.
This map though... way beyond my abilities. I get flashbacks to that LHC-Boudica map that I struggled so mightely with where HC ran away completely. And compared to Hannibal here, he was a kitten to a lion.

I'm not ready to give up yet! Hannibal may have more cities than HC but a few key things here. I don't need astronomy, I'm within striking distance, I've scouted his land and once I take his 4-5 core cities his resistance should be broken, and he doesn't have anyone to trade with since he's in his own religion but also too far ahead of anyone else. I think cannons is the much safer bet here, considering he can get rifles anytime he feels like it, and is just 10-15 turns from it even now. If Hannibal gets early infantry I can still turn my attention and assimilate Pacal, and from there either gun for (non-AP) diplo (a first for me!), go around him and conquer the rest of the continent for domination, or engage in a bloody and protracted war that's either nuclear (like my final showdown vs HC on that Boudica map), or conventional (like Lain's impressive tank performance against a fully modernized JC).

I was commenting on Lain's playthroughs a couple months back saying how I was bored of every map ending in a cuir rush. Well...now that I've played through a bunch of maps where cuirs were simply not an option, I wish this map could've been ended with something as easy as that!

 

[Fippy]

Sorry but it's probably pointless (moving your Cap with map knowledge).
Not saying it's cheating (everybody can reload if they want as well, sp anyways), but where i try getting at: you will not be happy long-term with it in games.
I did so for a Gwaja map, was set up for fun that you can do nothing else, but here we can play normally.. it's just very difficult.
Even on Gwaja's map, i had zero motivation afterwards to ever do so again (and never finished that game too).

 

[krikav]

It's a thin line to walk, and such play can really damage the motivation to wrap up the game.
But I think this is very personal and different from person to person.

In this game after I reloaded after tripple spy fails, some of the motivaiton was gone.
After reload once Justinan broke free amost all motivaiton was gone.

Some maps it can be fun though, treat it like a puzzle.
I did that alot in the recent DeGauelle game, replaying with map knowledge multiple times. Very fun to see what can be achieved (T111 astro or something?), but final victory feels way more hollow.

This adds greatly to the enjoyment I get from BOTM and also from watching Lains games.
"Oh, in this one I screwed up, oh well new chance next month!"