Fix the 5th trash game

[cabert]

OK guys and Kmad, wouldn't it be time to finally post your games?
more to the point, we're missing cam's save and Kmad's save.
Since Kmad said she'll post soon, i'm ok with waiting one more hour. Cam? did you play?

 

[KMadCandy]

ok that took forever, i wish i could have started that day i had to spend reinstalling over and over instead! here's the save, i'll try to type a few words before i sleep.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/63440/kmadTrashy_gandhi_AD-1400.CivWarlordsSave

now lemme see if i actually linked the save the right way.

 

[KMadCandy]

basically: peace first turn, no new wars, no new cities, no old cities lost, and i think that all the AI relationships that existed at turn 0, they like us more now at the end. but it's still complete and utter trash, ain't no way i can make us a spaceship with this little land and so many other civs out there that are too much smarter than me! they're all cheating somehow!

Spoiler :

i'm a big wimp, so turn 0 i sued for peace with brennus of course. luckily i didn't get into any other wars during the rest of the set.
-1030 cyrus adopted merc, i was still 3 prereqs away from being able to start banking then! he had double our population, and i begin to curse cabert for inviting cyrus to play with us.
-1070 roosevelt showed up, confuscian but not the founder of it. the only place i saw him on the map was a boat at berlin, we have no troops there but we have LoS because of our state religion, i guess that's how we met him? i do map trades that cost me 30g and bring in money.
-1090 GS born, he pops most of education. i got MC and calendar from roos for paper + 380g, it's more than i want to spend but i did just get a lot from maps, and having calendar will earn me some, and i don't need stonehenge any more, so i go for it. the next turn, i give bismarck paper and some gold for machinery. so now i have the prereqs to take nationalism or printing press if i magically get lib first. with calendar in, i sell dye to cyrus for 5 gpt, and trade spices to bis for his spare gold mine (i don't need the happy yet but i'd rather seal it in as our resource now than just sell him the spice and risk him trading the gold to somebody else by the time we do need it).
it's here that i realize bismarck has more cities that are jewish than he does that are hindu. his state religion is still hinduism tho.
-1110 peace treaty with brennus expires. i feel like i'm going to die any minute now, and continue to feel that way through the rest of the round. i move troops to get the chance to revolt at camul down to 5.54%, i only ever got one revolt, later i upgraded a couple of troops, that lessened the chance a bit more. it's still over 5% tho.
-1130 is when i freaked. cyrus came by asking for philosophy as a freebie. i refused. i look around, the 2 cities that will next give us great people favor prophets most likely, so i decide to go NSR and drop pacifism. it'll save money, even tho paganism is a more expensive civic than pac since we have all these troops i don't want to disband. i'll keep running scientists, and hope to influence the odds, and i do still want to get great people, but politically i just feel better going NSR right now.
i look at the trade screen and see cyrus has just learned education!!
-1150 islam founded in boston, brennus voluntarily becomes cyrus's vassal, and we hit WFYABTA with bismarck. we hit it and then he forgets a few times more in this round, was frequent enough that i checked every turn actually. the change to NSR moved brennus from Furious to Annoyed. tech trades are still redlined, but the reason now is "we just don't like you enough" rather than "we would never trade with you, our worst enemy". i much prefer the new reason!
1160 part of the reason cyrus is annoyed with roos is that roos has traded with cyrus's worst enemy apparently? would that be us, or bismarck? but then again, we and bis have been trading all along and neither of us have that - with cyrus. maybe he met somebody else from roos's homeworld who's the worst enemy, and it's not us. i hope.
1170 cyrus gets a great merchant out of the same city he got a great scientist from 3 turns ago. either he was first to economics or he's cheating, or both.
1180 i've not yet finished education, and a distant civilization discovers lib. it wasn't even cyrus. i see korea on the map and wang can be quite the tech fiend, i'm rather afraid to meet him at this point! cyrus knows philo now, i trade it to bis for feud +230g. WFYABTA comes in again.
1200 roos gets a GS, and bis gets alzheimers about WFYABTA. and cyrus is pleased with me! i don't know when that changed from cautious. i asked him to teach me literature and he did. i get theo + guilds + 220g from bismarck for education.
1220 roos gets philo for banking and i forget if there was anything else, might have been just gold.
1230 somebody circumnavigates. i start making a caravel in gergovia, figuring that atm i'm not any particular brand of heathen, and that might be the safest time to make a first impression on new people.
1260 bis builds angkor wat, cyrus gets a GE.
1270 roos wants me to cancel deals with cyrus, dream on. cyrus built taj mahal, and wang gets a GE. note the message i got in game did tell me it was wang, altho i still hadn't met him, only seen his cities. it did that later with augustus too, and i had no way of knowing whether rome was him or julius. i thought that was a little .
-1310 roos knows astro and offers me clam for cows. i don't accept the offer yet. i have a caravel on the way to meet the other 2, hoping that they'll have goodies too. roos is already on cyrus's hit list, so if i can get health from somebody cyrus doesn't hate that would be better. of course they also have to know astronomy, since i don't yet, but we'll see.
-some time between here and 1400 i did meet wang and gus.
- 1350 brennus decides not to be a vassal any more. i get my scientist but go completely indecisive. i'd originally spent some turns research astro. then i swapped to PP since i knew the GS would lightbulb part of it. but now, almost everybody knows it. they didn't when i started! too bad i'm the slowest researcher in the entire history of the world. and, i self-researched too much, he'd finish it, and there's no overflow, i don't know if i'd waste 5 beakers or 250. 250 doesn't sound like much but that's like 2 turns of our science so i decide that delhi needs an academy, it's already bringing in half the beakers of our entire empire, i'll just boost that permanently and not hurt my brain with lightbulb decisions.
- 1400 printing press will come in next turn. everybody knows it except for cyrus and brennus at this point. it would be really nice if cyrus still does not know it when i learn it, but i'm not counting on it, the way he exploits.

and my reaction after opening a couple of spoilers:

Spoiler :

O M G!!! i thought i hated cyrus! you guys must hate him even more!!!!!!!!!!!! at least he didn't pick on me directly, he just kind of overpowered the world in general. he was nasty to y'all, good grief.

and now i'm gonna go sleep in bed. my neck hurts from falling asleep here

i'm awake now. things that reading other reports (and a post from cabert below) reminded me of that i think forgot to mention, spoilered for space:

Spoiler :

at the very end i noticed that every single one of my trade routes was internal, even tho at that point roosevelt knew astro (surely because everyone else's cities are bigger than ours by far). so i did a final check of "who wants one last crack of the whip?" and killed off a couple citizens, then switched to caste and merc at the very end, we're not able to do a civics change for another 3 turns
i loaded the game just now to try to investigate that "who is cyrus's worst enemy" mystery that i mentioned up with year 1160. well, it isn't anybody from the other continent. he resents all 3 of those guys for trading with his worst enemy. he's mad at everybody but bismarck, brennus, and us for this trading. but bismarck and the indians have been trading all along, so why would he not be mad at whichever of the two isn't the worst enemy? i don't understand that one bit. i did not technically trade with gus or wang, i said hello to them. i didn't sign OB, didn't do any tech trades, and couldn't trade resources with either, none of us knew astro (wang does now). but bismarck has not yet met gus or wang. so umm, whatever cyrus, you're wicked smart with researching techs but you are mentally confused somehow.
the only thing even slightly military that i did was build a couple stable in cities on the west side of our empire in case we needed to build ellies or magically got ponies.
i noticed at some point after the NSR change that cyrus was actually Pleased with me. i asked him to teach me literature for free and he did . the log shows me learning lit in 1360. i don't know when the change to Pleased actually happened, i hadn't been monitoring that really often. i just really wasn't afraid that he'd DoW me. i knew we were hideously weak powerwise, and i did freak at rejecting his demand, but i just trusted my politically-motivated instant loss of religious faith to help out enough. quite a surprise to read some of the reports, good thing my oh-so-naive thinking there didn't end up getting me killed off!
religions:
-i made sure i have at least one monastery of every type of religion that we know somewhere. that's just what i do, i like the science boost but i mostly want to have the option to spread faiths around post-SM. with the culture pressure we face in some cities, it was more a priority than it usually is. i haven't yet gotten hinduism to all cities. two missionaries failed in vienne grrrrrrrrrr.
-i spread judaism to delhi and madras (i think those were the cities) as soon as i could fit it in with my fix-the-economy focus; i know i put it in at least two cities that i considered key. this was so that if cyrus came by demanding that we change to it, i could do that and also pick a religious civic for as long as i stayed in it to get the most out of the deal. i did not want to earn another -1 with him.
-at the very very end (last 5 turns i think), cyrus read my mind on that one. he spread the word to two of my cities.
-bismarck made the change to jewish very very late, and the shared faith had only been worth +2, he doesn't really put much weight on religion. brennus totally does, and cyrus is up there.

 

[Cam_H]

Apologies for the '11th Hour' submission!

I've put it in 'spoiler' tags just as much to save everyone from scrolling down two or three 'screen heights':

Spoiler :

In Summary: Overall a hardly impressive round – lagging the world with technology and little progress made on the war front. Disaster free other than missing Liberalism and having little technology trade options. Nice to have The Pyramids though.

1000AD – 1110AD

Picked up the game still at war with Brennus – I switched a lot of the builds over to Catapults and began a Settler for the costal spot to the north west.

Brennus moved a big stack of War Elephants – Catapults – Horse Archers in front of my invasion force. I had a lot of good fortune with bringing down this stack, losing just three Catapults and Oliver Cromwell – our Medic III War Elephant (defending). This skirmish led to several promotions, and a Great General. I attached him to a City Raider III Axeman, as I was desperate for a Medic.

Currency > Drama

War weariness was pretty steep, cultural borders were looking threatening, we would pick up Dye – good reasons to create the Culture Slider and make Theatres available - Bismark did not have Drama, so it was also tradable.

Cyrus’ technological progress was alarming; Banking and Paper both secured by 1040AD. Bismark was no complete slouch in the technology stakes with Machinery and Engineering on hand.

In order to push the science rate along, I queued up some Monasteries in Delhi.

Following the decimation of Brennus’ big stack of units, the troops recuperated in Camulodunum, although following healing, the invasion force moved south straight into an isolated Celtic War Elephant, which skirted around our stack on its turn and took out the City Garrison II Archer that was moved to Camulodunum. Thankfully a sole Catapult resided in the city, and it was able to counter punch the War Elephant. Despite plenty of exposed units dribbling their way south doing a bit of pillaging along the way, I was able to get to the foot of Bibracte and reduce the defences down to 1%. With the loss of two Catapults and a City Raider Axe, the Celts were overcome and The Pyramids was ours!

Hereditary Rule > Police State

Drama > Paper

The only deal for Drama is Fishing + 200 gold out of Bismark. We drop Fishing out of the deal because of WFYABTA issues.

Delhi’s unhappiness and good commerce haul prompted a switch to a Market. Unfortunately Cyrus drops off a Settler party before our own Settler could be completed at the north west coast and founds Ergili. The Archer there goes for an explore to the north.

Our invasion force heals in Bibracte before heading over the hills to the south east to take on Tolosa – the Celtic capital. From 1100AD to 1110AD, Brennus moves seven Longbows and an Axeman back into the Capital, and our invasion force is clearly not up to this task.

Sue for Peace in 1110AD, and take Metal Casting and 110 gold in the deal.

1120AD – 1200AD

Stuck in Police State, we’re unable to refocus our government civic towards a more developmental civic for three turns.

Brennus peacefully vassalises to Cyrus in 1120AD. The new near-by city of Ergili founds Islam – so no quick flip there without some effort. With war weariness gone, there’s a renewed focus on peaceful empire development. Cyrus begins sending in several Jewish Missionaries to both India and Germany.

Paper > Education

Cyrus has had Paper for a while, so again we go to trade it with Bismark for a fairly lame deal of Horseback Riding + 170 gold + Map.

Police State > Representation

A Barbarian city with a good three-way resource split on a river to the north is spotted by our Archer, but is no sooner discovered than captured by Persian Archers.

Cyrus’ efforts with Jewish Missionaries pays off, and Bismark converts in 1160AD. With our three rivals all now Jewish, a good spread of Judaism within India, and our Spiritual trait:

No Religion > Judaism

Paganism > Pacifism

We pop Socrates (Great Scientist) in Madras in 1170AD, and he is burned on Education;

1200AD sees us enter the Renaissance Era with the discovery of Education.

Education > Liberalism

Bibracte pops its first border and helpfully picks up its Wheat tile.

1210AD – 1400AD

With 16 turns to Liberalism, a Ananda (Great Prophet) is born at 50% odds in Delhi. While we have two prospective shrines, he joins Delhi as a super specialist.

We don’t wait much longer, as 1220AD another tribe is the first to discover Liberalism. With little value in holding on to any monopoly technology, Education is traded to Bismark for Feudalism + Machinery + 300 gold + Map.

Liberalism (part-researched) > Fishing

Many cities drop their current builds for Forges.

Fishing > Sailing

Philosophy is traded to Bismark for Compass + Calendar + 20 gold.

Sailing > Optics

Delhi builds a University.

While the University of Sankore and Angkor Wat are build elsewhere, perhaps of more concern is Versailles in 1280AD.

Optics > Printing Press

Printing Press is chosen because it will boost our cottage economy in our commercially oriented cities. It’s a technology that Bismark did not possess, so again of some trade value.

Two Caravels are quickly constructed in Gergovia and head west.

The Settler originally intended for the site that Ergili was built upon ends up being finished, and Lahore is built in a spot formerly covered by jungle to the south west of Delhi.

Pacifism > Organised Religion

By 1350AD all Indian cities have received Judaism.

Bibracte runs some Specialist Artists for a few turns with the aim of getting a second border pop before Brennus’ Workers replace some Villages with Farms now that he no longer owns the city but the tiles are still in his boundary. Unfortunately the border pop does not move the boundary, and the Celtic Workers knock over the Village and start on another.

By 1390AD the Caravels have bumped into Korean and Roman borders. Both Wang Kon and Augustus Caesar are annoyed with us for trading with Persia and religious differences. Open Borders are nonetheless signed with Rome. Augustus builds the Taj Mahal and begins a Golden Age.

1400AD sees some technology trading options if we’re quick, although we are still lagging everyone. Only Korea has Liberalism, and Nationalism has not been secured by our immediate neighbours. Bismark still lacks Printing Press, so that’s a possible upcoming trade.

Good relations on our home continent, but some effort will be needed to peg back the technology lead held by all rivals. Korea looks comparatively weak.

 

[cabert]

ok...
time for the votes, Pigswill will be our returning officer.
reminder: this was a trash round .

I don't really expect us to have the "winner" before monday, but it would be great if it was possible.
So try to send your votes in the next 24hours.

giaur, you played so you can vote.
please read the thread to see how it goes, i'm a bit short on time right now.

 

[Giaur]

@Cabert:

I've already read. Only I do not know if opinions will be after or before voting ...

 

[cabert]

@Cabert:

I've already read. Only I do not know if opinions will be after or before voting ...

if you have time to share your opinion, it's best before the vote. It can enlighten others.
I did open a few saves (all but Kmad's and cam's) and have a few things to say :
- IMHO being a city down is less a problem than being 10 techs behind
- giaur, you have banking, all your trade routes are domestic, why didn't you switch to mercantilism? Not game breaking, but being spiritual, the switch is free
- mice, ojevind, FB (? can't remember for sure), you're not at war with brennus, and you're certainly not going to declare in the next few turns. Why didn't you redeploy your troops, either vs bismarck (obvious target) or for happiness keeping?
- ojevind, why do you build a cathedral (mandir) in delhi? we're not playing cultural!

 

[KMadCandy]

cabert you know i love you right? so i'm gonna say it: i hate you! how did you manage it so that roosevelt knew so few techs when you met him? and get to use bismarck before he learned so many? grrrrrrrrrrrr.

and i don't think i've said it yet, so hi Giaur! good to have you along! i don't hate you yet *giggle*

 

[KMadCandy]

man we have such vastly different results in this round! everything from cyrus beating us up so recently that we're still in a peace treaty, and he has 2 riflemen in every city we can see, to my happy-go-lucky peacenik universe where only bismarck and brennus know gunpowder, i still have mostly axemen and archers, and according to the diplo screen the indo-celtic war in the prior round is the only war in all of human history (the roman city named philadelphia remains a mystery). i won't get into the game submitted by a green player who shall remain nameless who lucked into america waltzing over the water while they were still technologically backwards *giggle*.

i'm just sitting here going "oh man, so much of this was luck!" even more than the other rounds, even more than losing a city to the barbs, or taking over a german city the barbs had conveniently captured for us. i guess real life is that way too tho.

 

[mice]

- mice, ojevind, FB (? can't remember for sure), you're not at war with brennus, and you're certainly not going to declare in the next few turns. Why didn't you redeploy your troops, either vs bismarck (obvious target) or for happiness keeping?

Yes this is weak play it's true. something I need to sharpen up on.

The other big mistake was to dither about Delhi,working cottages until half way through the set then deciding to force a scientist. The scientist was of course useless because liberalism couldn't be lightbulbed, and education was resarched by the time the scientist appeared.

 

[cabert]

i'm just sitting here going "oh man, so much of this was luck!" even more than the other rounds, even more than losing a city to the barbs, or taking over a german city the barbs had conveniently captured for us. i guess real life is that way too tho.

well, some was luck, some was plan
I don't understand why some players didn't sue for peace with brennus when they saw HA and elephants, while having only one elephant and no spear or pike.
Didn't you guys see that that war was leading nowhere witout proper counter???

 

[KMadCandy]

oh cabert another question. why don't you have a -1 with everybody for 'we fear our rivals becoming your vassals' or whatever the phrasing is? i didn't see people holding that against you on your save, but i did see it on somebody's (mice's maybe?) where brennus was cyrus's vassal, and i know i get it every time i have a vassal.

you're right, some was luck and some was plan. and some was pure wimpiness and signing peace right away! i scrolled back in the thread on turn -1 actually to see if i'd warned you guys (i hadn't, actually) about how i tend to not go to war until i feel ready for it. hubby thinks my definition of "ready" is what any sane person would consider "overprepared to the Nth degree". but he's my husband so i'm required by law to discount his opinion of course *giggle*.

and ummm, do me a favor and don't read the ALC thread until my latest reply on there scrolls off the page ok? thanks buddy

mice i worked a lot of cottages too. partly i needed the money, that got better as courthouses got built and i met roosevelt and got to do profitable map trades and such. and for so much of this round i hardly felt philosophical simply because my health was just so very low, i couldn't afford to get population up really! i whipped people away often for infrastructure, it was kind of good that way since i could justify "sorry guys, you have to die, you'd die anyway". i'm just not used to being that low on health, i think it's because i don't know if i've ever had just 1 of the 3 granary resources except in OCC. i didn't even build forges since i didn't feel i could afford the hit until i got grocers in place, probably on my part.

i still can't get over seeing cyrus with riflemen in some saves, that he'd actually used on us , when in my world he hadn't even learned gunpowder! i checked his feelings about me every so often but knowing what i know now about what he did to some, i didn't check nearly as often as i should have! i didn't notice the "traded with our worst enemy" modifier he had against roosevelt until right after i'd gone NSR. i still don't understand that one at all. if he disliked me that much, he probably should have already made the decision to DoW me and then me changing religion wouldn't have stopped him. i think i must have gotten incredibly lucky and done it at the perfect moment right before he was gonna do something. i wish i could take credit and say that i planned it all out, but i didn't know how bad the situation was really, i simply did it since i got the -1 for refusing to help and wanted to counteract that. but i'm not complaining, better lucky than having rifles pointed at me.

in all honestly, it's hard to pick a trash round, knowing that i'll have to try to fix it. whichever one we pick, if the players that do good jobs turning things around have the time to post about how they did that, and why they did certain things, reasoning and strategy and stuff, more than we usually do in this game so far, that would be awesome, for newbies like me to learn. since this one is a doozy.

 

[pigswill]

The whole 'fun' is picking the weakest round and trying to salvage it or the game would be a cakewalk if we kept picking strongest round. The game is certainly salvageable at this point.
Obviously I can only really comment on my round. In answer to cabert's point re eleHA stack a large stack of catapults is a good counter to any stack (at least in my game).
I sued for peace soon after because it was going to take me a while to recover and I wanted to pick up MC. Philosophy has two uses, first to get a substantial lead in the lib race if you have a monopoly on it, second as a powerful tech trade chip. I generally have been tendingto use it for the second. Ideally I'll trade philosophy for CS, machinery and feudalism which tend to crop up at about the same time. In this game we only had two trade partners at the relevant stage (because Brenuus was upset with us over some trivial misunderstanding (taking half his empire which is a feeble excuse really)). MC opened up machinery trade, we'd already researched CS so I got feudalism and machinery for philosophy which was imo a reasonable trade.

 

[mice]

The game is certainly salvageable at this point.

Really? I see Giaur's as the most fun because it would probably lead to nuclear weapons. The others, mine included, Cam and Cabert excluded, look like a space race loss.

The only possibility as I see it is a conflict that would slow down Cyrus and Roosevelt, and Wang.

 

[KMadCandy]

The whole 'fun' is picking the weakest round and trying to salvage it or the game would be a cakewalk if we kept picking strongest round. The game is certainly salvageable at this point.

*giggle* i just don't think i'm a good enough player to win the game from some of them. but i know some folks are better than me, and i wasn't saying we should pick the best. it was just an 'oh boy, i'll be honest when i vote, but it's kind of scary knowing that my try at fixing this is going to be out there for people to see my failure' you know?

i know somebody will win it tho!

 

[Giaur]

I have already voted.

1) Strong army was my priority when chosing best/worst. However one person dominates beyond the others very clearly. I mean the best save.

Some of you did not prioritize forges. That's minus (but quite small). Some of you did not sell resources for gold to help the economy. I wonder why. Some of you converted to Judaism and it's very important (good) move.

2) About my planning (concerning my save). My intension was to draft muskets first and override Bismarck. Forgot to mention that. I was born from war, so it's natural path for me ...

 

[pigswill]

Four votes in already. The tension is mounting or the mountain is tensing or something like that.

As I understand it as the duly appointed returning officer (by virtue of my previous outstandingly trash play) I don't get to vote but I do get a casting vote if two (or more!) people are tied for the trashiest game. Hopefully cabert (having survived all the hurtful things someone had to say about his game in another thread ) will be able to enlighten me .

 

[cabert]

Four votes in already. The tension is mounting or the mountain is tensing or something like that.

As I understand it as the duly appointed returning officer (by virtue of my previous outstandingly trash play) I don't get to vote but I do get a casting vote if two (or more!) people are tied for the trashiest game. Hopefully cabert (having survived all the hurtful things someone had to say about his game in another thread ) will be able to enlighten me .

of course you get to vote + you have the casting vote if needed.
4 votes already in sounds good.

And I didn't read the other thread yet, so I'm not hurt

 

[KMadCandy]

-3 "you have made up blatant fibs" diplomatic modifier on pigswill!!! *giggle*

 

[shyuhe]

I have already voted.

1) Strong army was my priority when chosing best/worst. However one person dominates beyond the others very clearly. I mean the best save.

Some of you did not prioritize forges. That's minus (but quite small). Some of you did not sell resources for gold to help the economy. I wonder why. Some of you converted to Judaism and it's very important (good) move.

2) About my planning (concerning my save). My intension was to draft muskets first and override Bismarck. Forgot to mention that. I was born from war, so it's natural path for me ...

Giaur - don't forget that we're shooting for a space victory here, not a domination win Although at this point in the game, taking a few more cities may not necessarily be a bad idea...