LotR 2 - Zealous Zulus (Monarch variant)

[Arathorn]

We're doing pretty well. Ulundi is a culture giant and will probably win us the game. Our infrastructure is solid and we're growing at a fair pace. We are a ways behind in tech, though.

I saved up a fair chunk of gold. I implore the next leader to do the same, until we make contact with our next opponent. Purchasing a few techs might be critically important. The AI should be in the Industrial Age, but I didn't see any riflemen (conscript or otherwise) yet. One of the reasons I pushed the offense a bit was because I am expecting to have to start razing a whole lot more, once the AI drafts all their cities to worthless.

I have two ships out looking for the next civ. One found the Aztecs (again) and the other is still in the ocean. I ordered a couple more, because ships will be nice to have. No naval invasions by any civ during my turns, though.

Cumae had some unhappiness problems, after the Romans pillaged the gem mountain there. Nothing I could do about it. I recommend a harbor after the temple completes this turn.

Chinan is still in need of troops, as I expect it to be a lightning rod of aggression. It's OK right now, but it needs some more. Yakutsk/Rostov are also thin. Amazingly, Hispalis doesn't look too bad right now. Walls were rushed (pretty much the only thing I rushed all turn) in newly-acquired cities, so they should be well-defended.

Workers were moved towards the Yakutsk jungle and to try to get Anyang truly online. A few are in the Eretria/Chinan area to try to get them attached to the road network. We now have three luxuries, with a fourth to arrive when Chinan is connected. Rostov is also unconnected, but there are about five million projects in that area that need doing first.

Jester is next. 24 hours to claim. 72 after that to play. PLEASE!
Sirian, what's your status?
Toecheese, status update?

Up to 10 turns. They're getting LONG, IMO, so feel free to play less if time is a problem.

Exec summary:
- Contact and purchase techs
- Defend new territories
- Keep on keeping on

Save file:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/lotr2-zulus-1350AD.sav

Picture:

Save file (again):

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/lotr2-zulus-1350AD.sav

Arathorn

 

[Sirian]

I'm patched and ready to play.

 

[Iester]

I'll play it right now.

Jester

 

[Iester]

I'm three turns in.

It's 1315 ad.

There's something wrong with this picture. About 50 years wrong.

I reloaded the save. It says 1350, it IS 1300.

Is this right? I don't want to play this through if this isn't the right save.

Also, the minimap isn't as advanced as the one in the screenshot.

So it's probably wrong.

Jester

 

[Sirian]

Sounds wrong to me.

Also, I understand that it's a distinctly bad idea to upload and download raw sav files. They may now have their own compression and not benefit much from zipping in that regard, but I'd rather take 5 seconds to unzip every time than to waste five or ten minutes, or more, over a corrupted file, even one time.


- Sirian

 

[cpp1]

I downloaded the save file also. It's the same file that I uploaded at the end of my turn, so its the file that Arathorn started with not the one he ended with.

I may have started the trend in this game of uploading sav files instead of zip files, but the consensus seems to be to still use zip files so that's what I'll do from now on.

 

[Arathorn]

Various curses....

I apparently don't have the right save file uploaded. And I don't have it at work with me. I'll post it this afternoon/evening after I get home. Very sorry....

I *do* have the 1350 save, I'm certain, at home. I just can't get to it right now. So, please wait for that.

Arathorn

 

[Toecheese3]

Still here - still not able to play.

Hopefully this weekend - maybe middle of next week.

 

[Arathorn]

Sorry for the delay. Brain fart on save file last night. Then, the wifey person kept me BUSY for hours and then was on the phone for another half-hour at least. Anyway, the new save file is at:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/lotr2-zulu-1350ad.zip

I didn't double-check the veracity, but it should be fine. (It better be!)

Jester -- clock starts over -- 24 hours to claim and then 72 to play.
Sirian is still on deck.

Arathorn

 

[cpp1]

Arathorn: I just downloaded your latest 1350ad.zip file and its still the 1300ad file that I finished with. I hope that you can find your ending save file or go back to autosave files and reconstruct it, if it comes to that.

You have some very impressive kill numbers there. I'd love to be able to look over your shoulder as you plan some of the attacks. My general rule of thumb is that I multiply my attacker's strength by hit points and compare that with the defender's strength * hit points. If I have a 2:1 advantage or more I usually go for it. Also, the first thing I do in combat in a new turn is figure out what targets each catapult is going to hit.

From your map it looks like you made great progress capturing 4 new cities and getting Shakespeare. I'm beginning to think that a cultural victory is our most likely outcome. Even if we conquer our whole continent we probably won't get a domination victory and a diplomatic victory is out of the question. Also, the game probably won't last long enough for a space victory (given Ulundi's culture). I'd say the best bets are culture victory or we race Ulundi's culture while trying to conquer the whole world.

 

[Arathorn]

STREAMS of profanity...

More streams....

OK, I will check the game carefully, loading it up and everything before I post anything. I might have to redo the last turn or two, but I save pretty frequently.

Still muttering,
Arathorn

P.S. I'm terribly sorry!

 

[Iester]

Don't worry about it.

While it is kinda nice to keep these games going, this one's been going fairly much like wildfire for awhile.

I don't think a couple days is going to kill anything, especially for an innocent mistake.

So go easy on yerself.

Jester

 

[Arathorn]

I've included both the 1345 (1340?) and 1350 save in this zip file (I hope). I'm terribly confused by this whole mess. Anyway, it's at

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/ThirdTry.zip

or it should be. If someone could check this in the next couple hours, so I can check before I go to bed tonight, I would greatly appreciate it!

Arathorn

 

[cpp1]

I checked the ThirdTry.zip file and the 1350ad.sav file inside that zip file is the one that we want!

The 1340ad.sav file also looks good, but probably we should use the 1350 file since that has 10 turns from Arathorn.

 

[Iester]

Got it!

Jester

 

[Iester]

In 1395, rostov fell. The russians and greeks brought in overwhelming forces of knights, longbows and... riflemen. I couldn't get reinforcements through the jungle, so I went down in a blaze of glory and killed all I could.

The romans, on the same turn, attacked us with a cavalry. We beat it soundly, but we can't count on that forever.

We're falling behind in tech, and I don't know what we can really do about it. I've set our tech to steam engine, coming in 4 turns (those rails will REALLY help).

Hopefully, the egyptians are at tech parity, since I didn't contact them, only the english, from whom I got metallurgy and magnetism. If we can buy military tradition and nationalism off the egyptians, we can rush our tech to the scientific method to get hoover, which is both production and culture.

I did manage to get newton's for us, and ulundi's even more of a cultural behemoth than when I got it. Our infrastructure didn't develop too much, and I ordered a lot of knights on my turn. Feel free to veto them; I thought we needed the troops, but I tend to oscillate between paranoid and reckless.

The chinese/iroquois front seems, as always, to be somewhat of a joke on my turn. They didn't pose a threat.

The romans aren't too bad either; one of their cities flipped (the one on the far west coast, can't remember the name) but got taken back in a turn. They're only dangerous if they start in with the cavalry. I fear for poor cumae.

The greeks and russians are awful. I hate them with a passion. They have overwhelming numbers, and riflemen. We're going to have to cobble together our defense as best we can.

So, the big challenge for the next leader, I think, is going to be balancing our chance at the wonders (a long term goal, both for the ToE and Hoover, and for the culture) and our need for the "unessential" military techs, Military Tradition and Nationalism.

Sorry my turn took so long. I got my wisdom teeth out, and there was a day and a half there where you REALLY wouldn't have wanted me in command of our troops.

On the plus side, we've only got about 150 more turns to go!



Go get 'em,

Jester

 

[cpp1]

Here's the world map after Jester's last turn (1400AD)

 

[Iester]

Who's up now? Sirian? Toecheese? I doubt it's arathorn, and I _know_ it's not me...

I know I'm hardly one to prod, but... let's keep this sucker going, at least at a gentle crawl.

On the other hand, if Sirian's up, and just stalling for time to finish his Deity solo report... by all means! Take all the time in the world!



Jester

 

[Arathorn]

Yep, Sirian is up.
cpp1 is on deck.

Every time I post something about Sirian being up, though, he seems to have been aware of it hours before and has played and is preparing his post AT THAT VERY MOMENT. Anyway, yeah, getting close to the 24 hour limit to claim, Sirian.

Arathorn

 

[Sirian]

I'm still not in the frame of mind of "claiming" the game with a got it post. I know that it's necessary to ask this of others, so I understand the point that I have to submit to the same requirement, but still some part of me rebels at the idea, too. That may not be rational, but it is. I grabbed the game almost as soon as it was posted and put it on my queue of things to do. I thought I would get to it last night but I didn't. It's next up now, though, with my lawn mowed and other things handled.

I will try to get back into the spirit of this one, although having been skipped one round and not played any of it for a couple of weeks is hard on continuity of frame of mind. A game almost HAS to keep moving bam-bam-bam to hold my attention nowadays, and once the attention wanders, it doesn't always want to come back.

As painful as it may be, I'm starting to think that it might be useful, at least for me personally, to make a list of those who are historically highly reliable (getting their turns in on time, not having to be skipped) and exclude those who don't make that list from any of my games, as well as cease to join games with those who have proven to get in over their heads or have schedule problems on a regular basis. Painful, because some of the nice guys fall into the unreliable category, and the situation feels like it's lose-lose either way, in doing what is necessary to include, or to exclude, them. Yet SG's are somewhat dying off for me as a fun thing mainly because of the disconnect factor of time passing with little or no action, and other things grabbing my attention. My ehtusiasm attaches to new games and ideas and SG's and then some of the old ones start to feel like obligations instead of opportunities for a good time. That's not a positive thing.

Why should it bother me to take fifteen seconds to post "got it"? I don't have an answer. The notion that I shouldn't have to just because I've always been reliable in LOTR games doesn't sound good enough when put out in the open, does it? And it doesn't help you with the effort to keep the game moving and apply the same rules to everybody, as you're one of the few making effort to correct what I'm describing here as the main problem.

Perhaps a little of it is that snafu you had with the wrong files. By a strict interpretation of the timing rules, you should have been skipped for not getting that straight on time. Then again, that would be silly, it was just an oversight. The rules are there to help us keep the game on track, not whack each other with paper cuts over adhering to the letter of the rule. But if you can be allowed to exceed the time limits, I suppose that removes a bit of the sense, in my mind, of you strictly enforcing it on others.

This isn't a very helpful post, is it? Sorry about that.

I refused to take fifteen seconds to post got it, which was silly, so instead I take five minutes to rant and rave like a and then post got it.

The biggest irony, I think, is that while many SG's are fading out with a high dropout rate and too much idle time, the current patch has the game itself in by far the best shape it's ever been.

The amount of fun I had in the deity GOTM7 is illegal in fourteen states. Something may have to change in the way I approach this game, but I don't know what that should be.


- Sirian