Fix the 5th trash game

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

yeah that's a big part of my trash factor. "i need more cities if i'm ever going to catch up on this world-wide tech lead" vs. "this world-wide tech lead means i'll get slaughtered if i even eyeball anybody's cities". my natural wimpiness won out!

i'm off to load saves again to take a careful look (last one was the curious look) and vote.
 
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!

I find it wise to keep many troops near the Persian-Celtic border because I am convinced that Cyrus is going to attack me soon. Happiness is not an issue with all the luxuries I have domestically and through trade.
I am still hoping to be able to culture-flip Frankfurt east of Delhi, hence I am building the mandir.
 
Well, all I can say about my game is: nothing! :lol:
Non-military wins are not a piece of cake for me. Even the military ones aren't, but at this stage I know steel and cannons are the way to go. At least until somebody else gets infantry.
I didn't do tech trades wisely, also. Cabert, would you please show us how the begging works? I tried to beg from everyone and got nothing. Seeing your report, they always gave to you. Why is that? If you beg for something too big, do the AI remember it and don't give something smaller?

I'm gonna see the games now. I'll vote briefly.
 
fb, if you beg for something they consider too big, so they say no, and then you beg again that same turn for anything, no matter how small, they'll refuse for sure. you only get one chance each turn, so you have to guess wisely what's their limit for how high they'll go that day.

they'll only give you help every so often, i'm not sure what the time limit is or whether it's the same for every person. there's no negative consequence if they say no, as long as you're asking 'can you spare this for a friend'. demanding it as tribute is different of course :lol:. i asked and got help sometimes, and sometimes i was denied. techs you get that way do count towards WFYABTA btw.

edit for fb: the one time i always remember to ask for help is when i give in to an AI demand for gold and it moves them from pleased to friendly. i turn around and ask them for some of it back. if i guess correctly about the amount they'll part with, they never fail to give it back, cuz now we're friends *giggle*. so those are great investments in diplomacy when they work out.

ojevind: i'm not sure we can legally flip that city. if one city is far enough away that it can't exert pressure on the actual tile the other city is on, then the other city will never flip, even if tiles around it flip. and dehli's pretty far away the way the game calculates distance. i don't know for sure tho. i can tell you that being three tiles away, the closest you can legally be, makes a city FAR easier to flip that being four tiles away. i mean, more than four times easier, just in one tile, maybe more than four times easier. and we're kind of 6 tiles away here. for culture purposes, being directly north of a city makes a flip easier than being north and then one tile east, or our case of west and then one tile south. if i had to bet, i'd bet we're not in a legal spot to flip it.
 
I was thinking how to improve this SG. How about playing the trashiest save?

blasphemy!!!!!!!!

my thoughts because of course i have to be typing something at just about all times. they are spoilered because they are, as usual, quite long and rambling, and not necessary reading. if you do read it, keep in mind that just about everything i say that's negative about somebody's game is either something i did also to some extent, or something i should have done but didn't, so what right do i have to disagree with how they did it *giggle*.

Spoiler :
mice - cyrus has rifling and we're so far from it that we can't even see on the tech page that he has gunpowder! we're 6 techs away from rifling itself. but he's pleased, so that makes it less a concern than the saves where he beat us up. and brennus is actually up to cautious with you, i am quite impressed with that.
you're bulding an awful lot of troops. i know you planned to go to war with brennus, so you needed them, and i don't know when he vassaled to cyrus, maybe it was right before the end. if it was, then i understand why. but there's no way we can afford to upgrade those puppies to gunpowder troops any time soon, when we learn it, so if you were still building up after you knew brennus wasn't the target, in preparation for plan b without knowing what plan b is, i think that's :smoke: given our economic situation.
i'd really like to see some city improvements tho. our shrine city doesn't have a market (it brings in 14 gpt even at 100% science, and a market would increase that), and cities that don't have libraries (or even a barracks at gergovia) are still building troops. keep in mind this is coming from the girl who still has only the archers and axemen i started out with, so what do i know.
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ojevind - i was thinking the artist in vienne, when we already own the city tiles, and the next GP is heavily favored to be a prophet anyway with no chance of a scientist, and it is our next city to put out a GP, was an odd choice. but now i see why you did that.
cyrus is only cautious, but i think he's only as advanced as he is in my game militarily, so that's not as bad as it could be.
you're up two national wonders on me, since i kept putting off lit), but i'd not have put national epic in dehli, i plan on putting wall street and oxford there.
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shyuhe - cyrus just sucks. we are so far behind in techs, but we do have gunpowder. 6 away from rifling tho. i would have settled the GP in dehli rather than making a new shrine, to get the production boost, planning on wall street there, and not knowing when we'll find the time to spread another religion, but that's a judgment call.
you did get cyrus to pleased real quick, with OB and resource trades even, while we're still in the peace treaty, a very good thing.
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giaur - cyrus still just sucks.
calcutta has no defenders, shame on you! arbela has a 9.1% chance of revolt and only one defender, rush some more in there pronto, the more the merrier. it may be recovering from one now and not still the original capture, i don't know, but this nagging applies in either case.
mostly i like the builds in your cities. vienne i understand, it changed hands a few times and suffered. i'd definitely prefer a market or university in dehli instead of the theatre (the grocer's kinda better than a market tho).
techwise i'm quite impressed, we're just two techs away from rifling even tho we had the neighbor from hell. there is no way i could have improved the cities, teched so well, and fought a war at the same time, i do think i believe that you were born from war!
you have bis at friendly (most of us have him only at pleased) so that's good. cyrus is annoyed, we razed one of his cities, and there is no doubt looking at diplo that we are his worst enemy, that scares me to death. then again, he gave you open borders and resource trades already while you're still in a peace treaty. i am impressed, and he is confused.
brennus in your save has "you have traded with our worst enemy!" with everybody except cyrus, including us! i guess he changed his mind on his worst enemy, like he did in my game *giggle*.
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cam - you have the pyramids so you suck (altho not as bad as cyrus) because you are lucky. yeah i hear that to get the pyramids you have to earn them but pshaw, technicalities.
we are way behind in techs, including gunpowder. cyrus has only longbowmen in that one city we can see, but i have this sick feeling it's a ploy to fool us into not suspecting that he has rifling, altho that is certainly influenced by the other saves *giggle*. he's pleased with us, so even if he did have rifles, i'd not panic. well, i would, cuz that's what i do, but we'd not need to really panic i mean.
thank you for explaining Khalid the GG CR3 axeman who will hopefully someday grow up to be Medic 3. i understand the sense of urgency completely. without the explanation i'd have given you bigtime :smoke: points *giggle*
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cabert - what can i say, i love you but, you know the rest. i don't know why you don't have a -1 "we fear our rivals becoming your vassals" modifier that's bizarre. gus surprises me in yours, he's rather behind on techs for being 2nd place but then i looked at his power graph. he jumped quite a bit ahead of cyrus this round, he's scary.
and, on the bright side, i don't remember to ask for help as often as you do. this round i did, because i remembered that you do (and because you've mentioned it in other threads lately), and i got yes's most of the time. so thank you for making me think to do that :). i forgive you a little bit for being such a better player than i shall ever be.
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as far as little miss hippy peacenik kmad's save - i could go on and on, but i'll say that the main thing as far as what i've typed about everybody else's is, here i go harping about who has gunpowder and who doesn't, and who's close to rifling and who isn't, and i've done what exactly militarily? built 2 stables and upgraded i think 2 archers to longbowmen and 2 axemen to macemen. and that's it! i did get guilds in a trade, but mostly for grocers since i was obsessing over health due to lack of resource trading options (altho we don't have ponies for knights anyway, and cyrus wanted 51!!!!!! gpt + dye for 'em on the turn i asked, cuz i had science at 0 :lol: ). i got engineering in a trade but haven't made a single trebs, i just wanted to walk farther. i didn't give a thought to HE really, except to figure i'd put it in calcutta soooooooomeday far off in the future. i only bothered to get lit when i realized offhand that cyrus was at pleased. "well, Great Library's already been built, and i want such-and-such tech now" kind of thing. basically i got very lucky and had no idea how lucky until i saw the alternate universes. so i pick at your saves but if i was to list what i didn't like about my game, especially knowing what i know now, i'd be here until the deadline for next week's game.

the process of writing it down usually makes me think about it more carefully and therefore more decisive. i am now off to go meditate in a '60s flowerchild "make love not war"* manner and then vote.

*ummm, we have some internationals. i don't know if that reference is obscure and makes me look like even more of an oddball than usual. hippies had lots of rallies in the 1960s in san francisco and that was one of the phrases they'd chant. and they had reallllllllly bad taste in clothing. i'm actually too young to have been part of that. but not by nearly as much as most CFC posters. and my taste in clothing is not nearly that bad.
 
I was thinking how to improve this SG. How about playing the trashiest save?

That's what we do. We vote for the trashiest save and then play it.
Next round we vote for the best save and then play it. Or were you kidding? I cant tell.
 
I was serious :)
can I then ask what you voted for?
not the names, but best or worse games?
This was a trash round, and I have the feeling we'll need a big fixing round next week :mischief: .

I opened Kmad and cam's game.
Well, cam, I thought I had opened mine :lol:
And Kmad, you hold your ground in the tech departement, so no big problem.
 
oh cam i forgot to say about your "The new near-by city of Ergili founds Islam – so no quick flip there without some effort." ... as long as he's jewish, that city being islamic, holy or not, does him no good (other than if he builds culture buildings). once he goes to FR or NSR then yeah, he'll get 5 cpt from it, but right now it doesn't add even 1 cpt. so muhahaha to cyrus!

sending my vote now but i still feel like dang, just because cyrus was in a bad mood that year ... sheesh!! they were so different, i can't get over it.

oh and i had a lovely thought today. cyrus still sucks of course, but his lovefest with brennus may come in really handy! if we're using a save where we're bottom half of the scoreboard (i can't remember if we were in all of them), well, brennus is too. and WFYABTA doesn't matter if you're both in the bottom half (including dead civs). if they don't like you enough to trade with you, that's different, but if they do, there's not the usual limit to how many they'll trade. usually it doesn't help a whole lot since you're both obviously not doing all that great, so you can't get the most up-to-date techs. but brennus is doing fine tech-wise since cyrus seems to be giving him everything he learns :)
 
Yes, *if* we voted for the best save the game would be pretty safe. Cam's and Cabert's saves were really excellent.

Playing from one of the precarious saves will be a lot more interesting.

Thanks for your critique Kmad. This week as well as playing the next turnset I'm going to play again the previous one trying to improve based on the better saves. I learned a lot in earlier trash threads this way.
 
now be careful mice ... "critique" makes it sound like i know what i'm doing. let's just call it "thoughts" or "ramblings" ;). and partly it was hard to tell what you were thinking, since you didn't give dates on important events in your report (like when brennus decided to be a vassal so your plans had to change entirely). so i might have really misjudged some things based on not knowing exactly what happened when.

your plan sounds good tho. improving and learning are the point right? think i should try to get over my bitter feelings? i'll do my best :)
 
Waiting for one last voter (I've sent a pm). Couple of contenders but no clear champion yet. The mountain is tensing, the tension is mounting, whatever.
 
Yes, *if* we voted for the best save the game would be pretty safe. Cam's and Cabert's saves were really excellent.

Thanks but I think you're being kind.

I was fortunate in that Germany switched to Judaism and Cyrus has done a great job at spreading the faith in four Indian cities for us, including Delhi, so getting him to Pleased took no effort.

I also gambled to a certain extent with the Celtic war, guessing that Brennus would be running out of steam by the time we picked up the game, let alone after I took out that big stack of War Elephants - Horse Archers - Catapults. There was little retaliation on the way down to Bibracte, and I thought that it was a race between knocking him completely out of the game or him vassalising to Bismark or Cyrus. Again good timing that I sued for peace before he vassalised and got something from the deal.

I should point out that my unwillingness to trade technology (no two-for-ones here!) and focus on Great People rather than working cottages up further has put my game in among the weaker technological submissions this round. This has seemingly slowed the overall technology pace of the game.

Anyway, that's enough about me. :)

Cabert's game was exceptionally strong :goodjob:.

I was very reluctant to comment on the games during the voting period, but seeing that others have, my surprise was how many games took the option of switching to Hinduism with a very powerful Jewish neighbour. I am also not sure why so many people actively traded good technology for Theology (discounts on Paper research aside). I should
tapedshut.gif
while there's still a vote to come.

oh cam i forgot to say about your "The new near-by city of Ergili founds Islam – so no quick flip there without some effort." ... as long as he's jewish, that city being islamic, holy or not, does him no good (other than if he builds culture buildings). once he goes to FR or NSR then yeah, he'll get 5 cpt from it, but right now it doesn't add even 1 cpt. so muhahaha to cyrus!

One and a half years with this game, and I still don't know the rules! :lol:

One last thing on the roster;

I have yet to thank Roland for some excellent comments and observations in the early round - I really appreciated your input. I hope Mice doesn't mind me saying that I was very split between Roland's and Mice's games when it came to voting in Round 2. Again, lots of thoughtful observations that prompted some good discussion.

And a very belated welcome to Giaur :wavey:.
 
Cyrus has done a great job at spreading the faith in four Indian cities for us, including Delhi, so getting him to Pleased took no effort.

One and a half years with this game, and I still don't know the rules! :lol:

i was really glad to see cyrus sending me missionaries. i was trying to fit some in here and there, but i had two in a row fail in vienne and that was discouraging! at the very end he got 2 on the same turn i think, and it was definitely enough for me to switch over, i just haven't done it yet. should have when i made the merc/caste change, but at that point some of the big cities weren't jewish yet. and i don't even know when he got to pleased with me, i'm such a noob :lol: maybe if i'd switched he'd be friendly already, not that it would change much, i'm not at WFYABTA i just haven't have trade-bait in a long time.

i saw ojevind's comment about cyrus sending missionaries and how we might want to close borders to stop that. i understand that thinking, and i'm not saying you're wrong, a lot of people think that way. i usually, and especially if i'm a spiritual leader, try to use religion (and favorite civics when convenient) to help out the political situation. if cyrus had asked me to change even if only one city was jewish, i'd have changed! then i'd have changed back 5 turns later *giggle*. but that's really a style thing, some people are more comfortable with axes, some with politics, some with a mixture. i like getting the +1 and i like easy ways to avoid wars. there's a lot to be said for the benefits of going to war and winning tho that's for sure.

cam, if you had any idea how many of the rules i know in my head but don't manage to apply all that well when playing ... :crazyeye:

i've bored my poor hubby telling him about this round. i just cannot get over the differences. he's sweet and listens, and he does understand somewhat, since he plays civ4 every once in a while, but of course the stories i'm telling don't mean nearly as much to him as they do to me, and he doesn't know you guys. i'm sure results at the end of the next round will be very different too, no matter which save we use. hopefully not for the same reasons as these were. (are you listening to me cyrus? don't be mean!)
 
I don't know about the other savse, but I adopted Hinduism AFTER Cyrus declared war on me. I figured it wouldn't make a difference if I was an opposing religion when he was attacking me and Bismarck was Hindu also. NOw let's see if I've won the trophy :)
 
I don't know about the other savse, but I adopted Hinduism AFTER Cyrus declared war on me. I figured it wouldn't make a difference if I was an opposing religion when he was attacking me and Bismarck was Hindu also. NOw let's see if I've won the trophy :)

that sounds logical to me! did he ask you for anything and you told him no? or he just decided we were weak and he had bored troops that needed exp? we were very weak in my game of course, since i did no further build up from where i started, and i was nervous bit i did say no to his demand for philo. knowing what i know now, sheesh! i got soooooooo lucky. and he was sooooooooo mean to you! and then opens borders and trades resources right after, with you and giaur both. you know ... maybe he's being played by an SG too. so that's why he seems so confused, he actually is different personalities on different years? he sure doesn't seem consistent to me, even within my own game, with the whole "worst enemy" thing.
 
that sounds logical to me! did he ask you for anything and you told him no? or he just decided we were weak and he had bored troops that needed exp? we were very weak in my game of course, since i did no further build up from where i started, and i was nervous bit i did say no to his demand for philo. knowing what i know now, sheesh! i got soooooooo lucky. and he was sooooooooo mean to you! and then opens borders and trades resources right after, with you and giaur both. you know ... maybe he's being played by an SG too. so that's why he seems so confused, he actually is different personalities on different years? he sure doesn't seem consistent to me, even within my own game, with the whole "worst enemy" thing.

Cyrus just didn't ilke me. I knew I was in trouble when he adopted theocracy 2 turns into my set. I was hoping for a dow against Bismarck but I prepared elephants just to be safe... good thing I did or I would have been in a bigger whole against knights.
 
And the last voter has withdrawn from voting :eek: (no time to examine each game and come to an evidence based conclusion) and so last night's results stand.

Shyuhe has inherited the mantle of Trash King :king: :king: :goodjob: .
 
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