RBD13 SG - Cretan Army Variant

[Sirian]

Well... there are now so many threads that the genuinely active ones fill up more than the first forum page. If people ignore anything that slides to page 2, and people keep feeling the need to bump threads back on to page 1 to get them attention, the whole place is going to suffer an increase in noise to signal ratio.

I've taken to simply checking page 2, also. Don't see how that can be avoided now -- and will get worse if more Competitors style parallel SG's form up.

I know it's been a while since I took a turn here, and this was largely my baby, but blame Charis, he set the turn conditions. They have worked out OK, overall, as we'd be in about the same spot, I think, if a normal rotation with normal "down time" because people get busy and we're not rigorously enforcing the time limits.

I won't be able to play this one in the next 24. I'll see about making time to squeeze in a turn soon, though.


- Sirian

 

[meldor]

I just search for user "meldor" and that brings up a list of ones I have posted to that I can see from newest to oldest. But then again I don't post in as many as you.

[EDIT] Got it!

 

[meldor]

After sending many years in the harsh and cold arms of his mothers love, Meldor receives a dispatch from the Capital. It appears that the Americans are spreading rumors that Schmutzig is really Meldor's bastard half-brother! Could this be? Have they no knowledge of the wrath of Crete? Of course he is my half-brother! But maybe they are being cunning by trying to imply that he is only my half-brother. They made no mention that he was also my uncle, step-grandfather, and soon to be brother-in-law. Do they think to insult the family name by implying that we are NOT in-bred? I storm passed my dear mother/aunt/cousin and head for the ships. They will pay for this....no American city will stand before I am finished.

Meldor takes the reigns of power and is shocked.....were is Rome, were for that matter is the once proud America. Meldor fears he will be bored to death sending long hours on paper work directing workers here and there. When will this end so he can get to the fun part of revenge!

On a happy note, Meldor announces that the Charis Artic National Forest, that he was forced (ZAP!) to build on his last reign is no more. He will restore partial family honor by cutting every last tree to the ground and turnning the entire area into one vast open-pit strip mine. Any caribo are transfered by the new rails to the capital for roasting. Meldor is proud to leave his hiers a heritage of pollution, and excess industry. No slogans are put on the back of all military vehicles, "If it small and furry, it must be tasty".

We are building three or more settlers per turn and settling as many new cities. I did notice that we had not started Unversal Sufferage, and as Meldor believes that every one should suffeer, he begins this wonderous project immediately in Forbidden.

Meldor directs the troops to continue the utter destruction of America. He spends his spare time re-doing the deals with the other contries to increase the income level. The treasury has plunged to a dangerous low of 5000 even with science at 100% we are still bringing in over 200gpt. The only ones who refuse in deals are Germany. I also notice that they have stationed trrops neaar our lands onthe southern island. Meldor sends agents to investigate.

It turns out that the Germans were bidding their time for our delas to end! I politely asked them to remove their troops next to our city (after rushiing a second defender there the turn before), and they declare war. Its turns out that the German leader is actually a bastard son of Meldors father/half-nephew/great uncle, and is ashamed of his family links. He had once before moved on our family lands in the north and is probably going to try again. He will look to destroy all records of his embarrassment. Meldor had been eyeing the Egyptians for the next target, so he did not have to fight across the water with only small boats to ferry troops, but we are more than capable of fighting on two fronts.

On a lighter note, the same turn that he declared war, Biz landed a settler/musket pair in former America right next to 5 Cav. Seems he wanted to start the war off by trying to bog Meldor down with more workers!

So far, That has been the only action in the war with Germany. The American are down to only four cities on the main land, and one one an island we share with them and Germany. I had watched for four turns the Germans assulat this citiy with odd units and never win a battle. I thought I had bad luck with the odd gods of the galaxy!

I will finish the rest of my turns tonight....The Americans must be dealt with! Once rail is in I would almost suggest we get rid of all native workers and half of the captives. Maybe we can give them away! We don't want them polluting our culture! Were is my sister/cousin/second wife Joanie....is it her birthday? Oh, sorry, wrong game....


[EDIT] http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/rbd13-1440ad.zip

 

[meldor]

The war with America was close. Meldor almost didn't get them destoryed before the end of his turn. On what would have been my last turn, I finally destroyed their last city.....only to have it respawn behind me. I took an extra turn, just so I could keill them off two turns in a row. The respawned capital had 2 riflemen and one longbow in it in one turn!!!! Unfortunately for them, we had plenty of troops to get them out. I even managed to get a couple of armies there to do the honrs of teh first attacks. After I took them out the second time, they were gone for good.

As for Germany, the only German troops I saw was one lonely warrior trying to sneak by with a settler they dropped off in the newly cleared land. Needless to say we have two more workers to haul around. On the last turn I landed a symbolic force on Germany's main island. There are several carivals going to pick up troops to ferry them across (after I found them and woke them up!). Also, two Galleons with Cav are approaching the smaller island we share with them.

I figured it would keep everyone busy and broke if I got them all to gang up on Germany. Everyone is now lined up against him. We finish Unversal Sufferage in a few turns and Meldor is happy to bring misery to all. It won't do us any good as we are still a monarchy and will finish the game that way. Meldor decided we were building too many cav and not enough rifles and so several cities were switched as their units built.

We did lose an army during our battles with America, but not to opposing forces. You will find it still standing down in the area of former America. You can select him, if you fish around with the cursor, but he shows no units and refuses to move. Maybe we will call him a battle mmonument and see how long he lasts.

I sad note to Meldors reign....even though I stole one extra turn, I did not get to finish the destruction of the Charis Artic National Forest. There were still some tiles of forest left, and Meldor feared the Prod if he took any more workers away from railroading between cities and around the Capital and FP. Because of these Meldor takes off to help out with the Destruction of lots of trees, and the formation of the Schmutzig National Strip Mine in honor of my dear uncle/half-brother/nephew/and soon to be Brother-in-law.

[EDIT] Darn, edited the wrong one.....see above.

 

[Schnarrd]

It appears that the Americans are spreading rumors that Schmutzig is really Meldor's bastard half-brother! Could this be? Have they no knowledge of the wrath of Crete? Of course he is my half-brother! But maybe they are being cunning by trying to imply that he is only my half-brother. They made no mention that he was also my uncle, step-grandfather, and soon to be brother-in-law.

Because of these Meldor takes off to help out with the Destruction of lots of trees, and the formation of the Schmutzig National Strip Mine in honor of my dear uncle/half-brother/nephew/and soon to be Brother-in-law.

I would claim "got it" immediately just so I could respond in kind to meldor's hilarious summary, but I still have too much RL stuff to deal with. Maybe if the game is still available tomorrow . . .

 

[Arathorn]

Unless I hear protest in the next few hours, I am going to:

- update this game to the 1.21f patch
- keep it for FAR more than 8 hours -- more like 36
- play despite having just two players since my last turn

I'm certain I can't post as funny a summary as meldor, but I want to get this game finished, so I can mentally cross it off the list of "games I probably should be paying attention to"....

Arathorn

 

[Arathorn]

Boy, I was all ready to write this report this morning. Now...it's Friday afternoon. Things aren't quite working like I would like. My computers at work have been crashy all day. Civfanatics has been down. So this is what you get....

The Reign of Arathorn the Un-Funny:

Arathorn took power in 1440, leading the Cretans to greater heights. We -- and everybody else -- are at war with Germany. We have MILES of unsettled land.

General tenets -- get the worker teams off the low-priority forest-clearing in the tundra down to cities near our capitals to actually do something productive, build lots of settlers in max_food cities, raze a few German cities, revel in being uncultured -- that sort of thing.

It all went well the first few years. Lots of cities (Cranky Toddler and such) were founded over in old America -- including one to cut off a Japanese settler team (but they're getting close to free lands again). Razed a city on the small island we share with Germany. Building up for more.

Bam. About 1455, Cleo demands Sanitation. Why we unwashed masses had researched this is a mystery to me, but I refuse to let anyone else get out of their filth. Cleo's messenger is ... well, abused, and sent back with the answer. The female dog declares war on us.

Of course, with a bit of prodding, India and Japan join us against the Egyptian menace (I didn't include Aztecs as I think we should conquer their puny nation soon, to get at their gems).

The Egyptian army, however, was no laughing matter. I lost a couple cities over on that front, as we are THIN on troops. They sent three separate SoDs at us, not counting a couple dozen knights/cavalry independents. At one point, I even lost our cannon SoD, but I recaptured it (thank goodness they didn't just disband 'em all!).

The three cities of Egypt in old China were dispersed and resettled as good Cretan settlements. The Indian city up there is the only blight on the landscape. Another Egyptian city died to us and then the Indians swiped one right under my nose! I was terribly close to killing it, but they just had more units than I had attackers. And then, India teleported in and took it. That put them on my LIST.

We lost two armies -- one musketeer army caught in the open when Egypt declared did one whole point of damage to the attacking cav army before dying. A bull army attacked a riflemen and won with no damage and then died to the defending musketmen when trying to blitz. Go figure!

One leader -- wasted him with an army for reasons that are not quite clear to me.

I blew a TON of cash (seems to be my role in this game) buying Communism ("WHY?" you ask. "Police Stations" I answer. More productivity.) (~850), upgrading rifles to infantry (~1200) and cannons to artillery (~3000). That's right, we got replaceable parts! Three infantry armies are over on one Egyptian front, just waiting to move in and start razing big cities. The artillery SoD is over where the Egyptians are being aggressive, with a buncha cavalry playing the defensive game. The last SoD was only about 20 deep and mostly longbowmen and musketmen, so I think they're running out of steam. There's one other one still lurking in the jungle there by all our artillery (you'll figure it out).

I drafted a bit up in old China, and more could probably be done. At least they can serve as MP. A couple cities up there got purchased aqueducts, so they could grow to size 7 and draft! I didn't get that done, it's up to the next leader.

I actually built/started a TON of buildings this turn -- weird for this game where it often felt like I had nothing to build but military. Factories, hospitals, police stations, etc. were started in tons of cities. No coal plants, though, which is too bad. Never "felt right", if you know what I mean.

Most core areas are pretty well RRd now. The double speed of replaceable parts was extremely vital for this. Still more time spent on workers than I would wish, though.

Unfinished business:
- Raping Cleo ... 's land
- Resettling America
- Resettling small Germany island
- Creating Universal Suffering (or Sufferage or something like that!)
- Diplomatic deals
- Resettling Roman lands -- that's how far behind our settler trains are!!!

Arathorn

P.S. The links seem to be having some difficulties, so the save file is attached the old way.

P.P.S. Can we get a rules rework? I spent a good 5 hours playing 7 turns. 8 hours just ain't realistic nohow.

 

[meldor]

Meldor is saddened to learn that you decided not to finish the Schmutzig National Strip Mine........

 

[Arathorn]

Yeah, I'm a function-over-form guy. So sue me.

Those tundra were just going to be unused anyway, as the cities there don't have enough food to work more than two squares anyway. And the 10 shields to a pretty hopeless city compared with a couple shields per turn forever was a no-contest.

Still, only a couple forests left, as I didn't stop the teams in progress.

I mean, the game is won, but the AI doesn't know it yet. And, of course, too much of the could take the win away. I just went with best practice civing, under the no-culture rule....

I said it was Un-Funny....

Arathorn

 

[meldor]

I was finding problems with having things for the workers to do because we had no hospitals and all used squares had been worked. Once rail started kicking in, I was pulling them off myself to work better squares. I just thought the joke was funnier as long as it was doing no harm. I think we could probably win this one on conquest pretty soon. We are producing so many units even out of one shield towns.......if all towns only produce one shield but you have 1000 cities, you get a lot of units per turn.

 

[Arathorn]

This thread is littered with attached save files and pretty big pictures. While many are important, I would suggest that everybody involved (especially dotmap-meister Sirian) upload and change to IMG, to preserve our dearly beloved forums. I have done all of mine except the last one.

I have uploaded that save as:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/minos_of_the_cretans,_1475_ad.sav

but I'm leaving the original link, too.

Arathorn

 

[meldor]

Sirian,

The Cretans need their Prod-father to come show them the way.......

 

[Sirian]

I'll see what I can do, but I have a lot of irons in the fire, and mopping up the games that are already won but don't know it yet has been pushed to the backburner. Charis has been out of action to varying degrees and is currently under the weather with no indication of when or even if he will be able to return. I kind of overdid the "mopping up" of modern endgame in my solo deity German game (had to kill over 1000 mechs and 400 modern armor total to conquer the world) and when I started pushing through that, is when I stopped playing this one and RBD6.

I definitely prefer a fixed roster to grab-the-game. Once I've taken off, for any reasons, and the game goes through more than a whole rotation without me, I feel rather disconnected from it, as bad or worse than late-game with a 20-turn-per-player game. I paid less attention to other players' reports, too. Somehow in there (about RBD7 time) I went from sitting around wishing I had more civ to play, to a point at which I was doing triage with my SG commitments to see which would get the axe and be ignored while I tried to juggle my time. The dropout rate of other players has bothered me, too. Games with six or seven on the roster where most of the players are MIA or late, having to decide whether to skip somebody, drop them, or wait it out, none of those are palatable choices. It's even worse when they post saying they will take a turn but keep on failing the deadlines on a regular basis. Worst of all, I find myself now falling in to that in some games where too much time passing waiting on others has led me to lose some or all connection with the game. RBD23B moved along snap-snap-snap so it went way up on my attention-priority scale, while some others that were once dear to me have faded to back pages and stayed there.

The new patch is good stuff. This game currently sits behind a number of other priorities, but if I can make time to squeeze in five or ten turns today or tomorrow, I'll do it.


- Sirian

 

[meldor]

Unfortunately the drop out rate in a lot of the games has been terrible lately. I think that in 3 of the five games I was playing in it is down to me and one other player. On the one hand it is nice that there seems to be a lot of new players joining in, on the other hand a lot of those get bored with the the slow time frame and lose interest. I include myself in the list of newcomers, even though I have been invlovled in 6 or 7 games, I have had only 2 of those finish (both open grab the game types). I haven't had one of the strict roster games finish as yet. It is down to Smegged and myself in RBD23a and that is a total shame. We may very well come in last, but by golly we will finish. Hopefully, this is just due to the fact that so many of the players are in school, and this is a time of exams and getting adjusted to the summer schedule.

 

[meldor]

If no one else wants to help finish this off I will not feel bad about taking more turns.....

Anyone?

 

[Arathorn]

I've thought about it, but I JUST played the last set of turns -- not much of a SG that way, is it?

I'd say that if a month has passed since your last turn(s), you're good to go.

Just remember that a lot of these turns take quite a long time to play, as we have a zillion workers and troops.

Arathorn

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

I'll play some more .. eventually. Just not had the time to pick this up recently, and won't until at least the end of this month.

 

[Zed-F]

Well, Arathorn, then you can play in 3 days.

 

[LKendter]

Sounds like you guys need get some additional players to wrap up all of the outstanding RDB games.

 

[meldor]

I have it.....