SGOTM 22 - Lurker thread

[LowtherCastle]

However, I shoud point out that we did do a very sub-optimal final flurry of turns in order to make the deadline...

Yes, I can see that and for that reason I merely suggested having a discussion (iirc). My main concern is people not becoming any more disenchanted with SGOTM. It can go both ways. Only one team even winning a scenario can be discouraging for some. Allowing only one team extra time can likewise be discouraging for some.

Whatever keeps people happy...

 

[kcd_swede]

Yes, I can see that and for that reason I merely suggested having a discussion (iirc). My main concern is people not becoming any more disenchanted with SGOTM. It can go both ways. Only one team even winning a scenario can be discouraging for some. Allowing only one team extra time can likewise be discouraging for some.

Whatever keeps people happy...

Agreed. Happy people is good.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I haven't studied other threads carefully, but I'm getting the impression that the full benefit of espionage was overlooked. For example:

Still think it's crazy we have 5-7 unhappiness due to emancipation. Only sumerians are even running it.

The obvious solution to me is to use a spy to revolt Gil out of it.

Or the 7th wonder:

What you do if he beat us to Broodway ?.
Electricity in 3 turns and play with what we got.

Use the espy screen to monitor builds and sabotage production of the wonder, if needed.

Espionage has vast uses. We were organized so we could build half-priced courthouses and run mercantile spy specialists and maybe Nationalism for a ton of eps each turn.

 

[LowtherCastle]

A good SG map should try to reduce the random factors in game, not the opposite. Unfortunately, this SG enlarges the most effective or even deadly random factor, AI's choice of DOW target, since human player is limited by the conditions to fend off early invasion.

In defense of BSP, I disagree with this assertion, for these reasons:

Becoming Land Targets (8 culturally adjacent land tiles)
1. AIs were relatively far from us so very early DoW was unlikely.
2. The scenario slowed down our expansion, which in turn slowed down our becoming Land Targets of neighboring AIs.
3. Raging barbs slowed down AI expansion.

Getting DoWed
1. Brennus, Darius, Hannibal, and Saladin, the four closest AIs, will not DoW us at Pleased. Only Gilgamesh and Zara have a 90 instead of 100 DoW factor at Pleased and it was virtually impossible for us to become their land target.
2. We were Industrious with a hammer-rich settling area so settlers were cheap, if we wanted to gift a city to get an encroaching AI to Pleased.
3. Pangaea meant that all AIs met each other and grew to hate at least some others more than us because of religion.

I don't know when teams got DoWed by some AI, so I'd have to see that to make a final evaluation, but it doesn't seem to me that this was excessively random or beyond the control of the team. In the Anti-TSR game, for the second half the game Brennus had a ginormous stack in an adjacent city such that he could have gone into war preparations (fist) and DoWed the same turn because he could attack us that same turn. We observed this, gifted him a city to get him to Pleased, problem solved. Later, when he dipped to Cautious for a while, we just demanded tribute from him for a 10-turn window of safety.

.

 

[elitetroops]

I don't know when teams got DoWed by some AI, so I'd have to see that to make a final evaluation, but it doesn't seem to me that this was excessively random or beyond the control of the team. In the Anti-TSR game, for the second half the game Brennus had a ginormous stack in an adjacent city such that he could have gone into war preparations (fist) and DoWed the same turn because he could attack us that same turn. We observed this, gifted him a city to get him to Pleased, problem solved. Later, when he dipped to Cautious for a while, we just demanded tribute from him for a 10-turn window of safety.

In our game Darius showed up with a stack t84, 4 turns from attacking our 2nd city. Not much, 2 axes, 2 spears and 2 immortals (and one turn behind a Phalanx??), but at that time we hadn't hooked up any strategic resource or teched archery yet, so it was quite tight. It was plain luck that he happened to move his stack so that we saw him 2 turns earlier than necessary. This gave us enough time to tech archery and whip walls + a couple of archers. We saw the red fist earlier, but Brennus was his worst enemy and we hadn't found his lands yet at that time, so it wasn't really a big concern. This set us back quite a lot. But I'm glad we still somehow managed to book a win.

The scenario was indeed challenging, didn't think a monarch game would turn out to be mainly a race against the AI instead of a race against the other teams. In this game, everything was against the player. Not very good lands, extremely awesome lands for AI, no close worker stealing target, no tech trading (=no getting AI to pleased easily, no bribing AI on each other to slow them down), and of course the restrictions, which in the end turned out to be really restrictive. Basically, the teams were robbed of all the usual tools for winning a game. Very impressive how anti-TSR looks to have had complete understanding of how this game will turn out from a very early date. I look forward to catching up on their thread and having a look at their saves. Congrats for a well deserved win!

And thanks to the map maker, despite this map maybe not turning out as it was supposed to. In the end, it turned out to be a very interesting game for us!

 

[yyeah]

I haven't studied other threads carefully, but I'm getting the impression that the full benefit of espionage was overlooked. For example:The obvious solution to me is to use a spy to revolt Gil out of it.

Or the 7th wonder:Use the espy screen to monitor builds and sabotage production of the wonder, if needed.

Espionage has vast uses. We were organized so we could build half-priced courthouses and run mercantile spy specialists and maybe Nationalism for a ton of eps each turn.

Yes indeed that was option, but allso that was point of game where we was against 1 ai, wihtout stack, without 1st best defended city, and with 40 units stack of Grens, Cuirs, Cannnos on hes border.
After game like this i didnt even think about running slider and bulding spies, especialy if we could tech Electricity in 3 turns.

But overall yea thats good point maybe we should done it like 20 turns ealier right after Physics steal. Just run slider instand of and switch him out of Emancipation. We missed that.

Congrats for the winners.
I was hopeing that we can at lest compete with you for 1st place but oh well...
It only shows how great team you are .

And once again thx for map. Realy challenging - i like it. And iam realy impressed by map maker beocuse its not ezy task to make diety map on monarch dificulty.
i have only 1 objection, it would be nice to have at least couple city sites witch are above avarage, considering this restrictions.

 

[WastinTime]

i have only 1 objection, it would be nice to have at least couple city sites witch are above avarage, considering this restrictions.

Yes, this would have at least made Peaceful/Space a realistic option. Not a very serious option for a team that wants 1st place, but if a team just had no interest in such a difficult conquest.

 

[Duckweed]

In defense of BSP, I disagree with this assertion, for these reasons:

Becoming Land Targets (8 culturally adjacent land tiles)
1. AIs were relatively far from us so very early DoW was unlikely.
2. The scenario slowed down our expansion, which in turn slowed down our becoming Land Targets of neighboring AIs.
3. Raging barbs slowed down AI expansion.

Getting DoWed
1. Brennus, Darius, Hannibal, and Saladin, the four closest AIs, will not DoW us at Pleased. Only Gilgamesh and Zara have a 90 instead of 100 DoW factor at Pleased and it was virtually impossible for us to become their land target.
2. We were Industrious with a hammer-rich settling area so settlers were cheap, if we wanted to gift a city to get an encroaching AI to Pleased.
3. Pangaea meant that all AIs met each other and grew to hate at least some others more than us because of religion.

I don't know when teams got DoWed by some AI, so I'd have to see that to make a final evaluation, but it doesn't seem to me that this was excessively random or beyond the control of the team. In the Anti-TSR game, for the second half the game Brennus had a ginormous stack in an adjacent city such that he could have gone into war preparations (fist) and DoWed the same turn because he could attack us that same turn. We observed this, gifted him a city to get him to Pleased, problem solved. Later, when he dipped to Cautious for a while, we just demanded tribute from him for a 10-turn window of safety.

.

I could write a bunch of counter-arguments, but the facts speak loudly. If you are really interested in DOW mechanics, read DanF's article of DOW or I could try to explain.

Here are a couple of screenshot from your game



500BC, you were the worst enemy of Brennus, so that you were the ONLY target of Brennus since his closer target Sumerian shared with his religion. Your power was the last and 1/3 of the strongest, which means even the AI with the least distant DOW cap could DOW you.



Until 1000AD, 65 turns passed, you were still not pleased with Brennus and you were still his target. Moreover, you were also Darius's worst enemy. Your power was only 5th of all, which could not stop anyone from DOWing you. Moreover, you don't have peace treaty with either Brennus and Darius.

The above facts tells, in all those 65 turns, you had done nothing to prevent Brennus and Darius to target you.

I'm not saying you are going to lose the game if they DOWed you, but how many turns the DOW is going to slow down your victory date?

 

[LowtherCastle]

In our game Darius showed up with a stack t84, 4 turns from attacking our 2nd city.

Okay, on t84 we had 3 cities, but had also settled one more and gifted to Darius as a TechSteal city. Darius and Sal were both pleased with us. Brennus was nowhere close to us yet. (Our Horse City was not within 9.5 tiles of his nearest city.) I haven't looked at your saves but clearly you need to have REXed faster.

Our understanding of the game was basically that we needed to use espionage to steal techs, grow Rome to around pop20 for 10 cities, steal Monarchy asap to run Hereditary Rule asap for happiness in Rome and for wineries. The Great Wall was the first priority because of raging barbs and the first Great Spy asap, which we got at 100% odds. We knew we had to gift a TechSteal city to an AI before he settled his 4th city and that was the AI with the most techs, which turned out to be Darius early on.

We settled in place because it offered lots of hammers.

We beelined Alphabet after Masonry so we could build spies for our ~T91 tech stealing spree, which turned out catastrophically. We lost something like 5 spies at roughly 97% odds. We were all ready to quit at that point.

Then we realized that we wanted to get the Aesthetics wonders and get all 7 before the early ones were gone. We succeeded at that, which allowed us to build the Heroic Epic in Rome for tons of units for the rest of the game.

Then Saladin became a tech runaway train and was spamming wwonders, including the Mausoleum of Mausolum, which we coveted so we attacked Mecca first, but failed, recovered and then succeeded. Took out a couple more key cities then Zara became a tech runaway train and wonder whore, beating us to Taj Mahal by a few turns, so we jumped down her throat. Then Gilgamesh started to run away, so we jumped over there. NExt thing we knew Brennus was about to get Riflemen so we quickly teched Steel (no chance to steal it) spammed cannons, got him under control and then the game was over.

We ended up building or creating TechSteal cities for Darius and Hannibal, we did a lot of city revolting before capturing.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I could write a bunch of counter-arguments, but the facts speak loudly. If you are really interested in DOW mechanics, read DanF's article of DOW or I could try to explain.

I've read it a zillion times and have used it successfully. I don't think I've ever been DoWed by an AI I wanted to aoid more than once.

500BC, you were the worst enemy of Brennus, so that you were the ONLY target of Brennus since his closer target Sumerian shared with his religion. Your power was the last and 1/3 of the strongest, which means even the AI with the least distant DOW cap could DOW you.

Not before their units arrived at our borders.

Until 1000AD, 65 turns passed, you were still not pleased with Brennus and you were still his target. Moreover, you were also Darius's worst enemy. Your power was only 5th of all, which could not stop anyone from DOWing you. Moreover, you don't have peace treaty with either Brennus and Darius.

The above facts tells, in all those 65 turns, you had done nothing to prevent Brennus and Darius to target you.

Wrong. We did plenty. We monitored Brennus' settling to see how close he was approaching. We monitored his troop movements. We monitored his war preparations. Furthermore, we had just recently bribed Darius into a peace agreement. We used bribes a number of times with different AIs.

But wait -- 1000 AD?!? The mapmaker is supposed to protect the poor, little teamsie wheemsies from getting DoWed in 1000AD? Give me a break. This isn't kindergarten. CIV is a war game. Pretty sure DanF said as much in one of his posts.

The DanF article is excellent, along with the ori article on attitude management. Add a few other details from klarius and others and it's relatively easy to protect oneself from getting DoWed on Monarch level.

.

 

[elitetroops]

Okay, on t84 we had 3 cities, but had also settled one more and gifted to Darius as a TechSteal city. Darius and Sal were both pleased with us. Brennus was nowhere close to us yet. (Our Horse City was not within 9.5 tiles of his nearest city.) I haven't looked at your saves but clearly you need to have REXed faster.

Pretty much the same, we had 3 cities, also settled one more and gifted it (to Sal, who was the only AI with only 3 cities and willing to accept it at the time we were ready to gift it). Main difference was that we had built mids and gifted stone city after mids was completed. Our game up to that point was TGW->settle fish->settle stone->mids->gift stone->settle horse. Needing to finish mids delayed the gift so much that only Sal would take it anymore. We also wanted to gift it to Darius, but this was not an option. In the end gifting it to Sal turned out alright, he was the fastest techer early on and we got some good steals from there. Except that he also settled on our border before we even did any stealing, so gifting for stealing techs wouldn't have been necessary.

Under these circumstances, assuming we wanted the mids, I don't see how we could possibly have done anything to prevent the DoW from Darius. Okay, we could have gifted him a city before he started plotting, but it was not as he was a major threat and we didn't even know if he was on our own landmass. A city gift at that time would have been purely for tech stealing reasons, not security. It appears he started plotting at the end of t60, t61 or t62, don't have exact save. You gifted him a city t61, which for us could have been just in time to prevent him from plotting. Or not.

By the time the red fist showed up, getting him to pleased would have been of no use anymore. There was nothing to beg for without currency. As mentioned, we had no idea were he was, so we didn't even know in which direction to go to look for his incoming stack. In fact, we hadn't seen any AI culture or any AI units except the scouts in the beginning. As far as we knew, we could have been alone on our landmass. Also, you know the restrictions of the game, we had to keep most our warriors close to cap to be able to settle a new 3rd city after finishing mids and gifting stone city away.

So an honest question, what would you have done if Darius had showed a red fist start of t61, same turn you gifted him the city? Assume that you haven't seen any of his units to give away the general direction of his civilization, and assume that Darius has 4 potential targets that he is cautious with. Would the fist somehow have affected your plans and playing from that point on? We pretty much ignored the fist, which I still think was the right play. At least this was better play than to focus too many resources on trying to find Darius and any potential stack he has.

Our most questionable play was the mids. It cost a lot of resources to settle stone, lost several warriors to get the settler through the arctic barblands. Though the war also really ruined our chances to leverage Rep effectively. We wanted to grow Fish city, build library and run a couple of scientists. Instead we were emergency whipping walls and archers, while our workers had to run away and couldn't build any improvements. Rome also had to delay library a significant amount of time to build archers instead. But at least we put PS into good use later.

Edit: wow, you were lucky to get circumnavigation bonus t93! In our game Zara did that t72...

 

[yyeah]

Our most questionable play was the mids. It cost a lot of resources to settle stone, lost several warriors to get the settler through the arctic barblands. Though the war also really ruined our chances to leverage Rep effectively. We wanted to grow Fish city, build library and run a couple of scientists. Instead we were emergency whipping walls and archers, while our workers had to run away and couldn't build any improvements. Rome also had to delay library a significant amount of time to build archers instead. But at least we put PS into good use later.

I have to disagree about mids elitetroops. I think that mids won our game, taht was move witch put us ahead not behind, i realy dumbt that we could handle this 40 unit stack of Saladin, then Brennus without Police State. Not mentioning about econmy.
I know that you are saying here about snowball efect, even so, that was lot of beakers from Rep and lot of units from PS.

But yea this Darius war slowed us down significantly, and nothing we could do about it.
For me he is reason why our finish date is so late. Here was the real snowball efect, like you mentioned, no Library 2 GS in Iron with Rep!, no Lib anywhere exept Rome etc. etc. Proabably that why we had to Lib Natio instand of MT.
Look if not taht DoW, i just assuming, lets we could have Cuirs like 15 turns ealier.
But that 15 turns would give us option to take out not only Saladin and lets say half of Brennus. But we could take out Saladin, Brennus and Sumerians with 2 units.

Zara was out of reach, beocuse he had Rifling in sick date i dont remember now .

 

[elitetroops]

Well, it's hard to tell. Needless to say, our game would have been very different without mids, but even more different without the DoW from Darius.

Under the circumstances, I think we did very well. Did some comparisons to a-TSR, we were quite equal reaching some military milestones. They settled iron 1 turn earlier than we did, we got cuirs 3 turns earlier than they did. But we were 40 turns later to engineering...

The crazy thing in this game was how the AI always seemed to get their next military tech just when we thought we finally had an advantage. We attacked Hannibal with praets, he immediately gets machinery to build maces (although he didn't build any in the cities we were targeting, fortunately). We get cuirs to attack Sal, he gets grens. We get cannons to kill their rifles, Zara and giggles get cavalry. No AI was easy to take out, except Darius, who mostly got killed by Brennus and Sal.

 

[yyeah]

Under the circumstances, I think we did very well. Did some comparisons to a-TSR, we were quite equal reaching some military milestones. They settled iron 1 turn earlier than we did, we got cuirs 3 turns earlier than they did. But we were 40 turns later to engineering...

I didnt read a-TSR thread yet.

MT only 3 turns ealier ? This is ridiculous.

Only showing me 2 things:
-how Darius slowed us down
or/and
-how much more importand was conquering juicy ai cities then settle this crap in our land.

However going for early rush or i rather say full out with Construcion or something liek this,is risky play. Offcoure depends about map knowleage, but this informations are negate, beocuse of rageing barbs, and beocuse of amount of units witch you need in Cap to suport your expansions.
I dont think that you can make safe decision for early war without good scouting here.
2 closest ais are Brennus in mountains with hes Duns and GW's, and Protective Sal.
Everybody are far away from Human as well as Iron.
Not mentioning about ais starting techs you can assume that ai start with Mansonry, you can allso assume that ai have metal in capitol( walls+ axes).
All this things doesnt make an early war, ezy decision without proper scouting.

At least we didnt had such a problem they came for us

If not early war basicly what you have left is Liberalism.
And settleing this crappy city spots( considering this restrictions) in order for Lib, when you see what land ai have it hurts it rly hurts and probably not optimal.

Thats why iam saying etter city sopts, wouldnt force human to make hard decision go for early war or not, would open option for peace/space like WT mentioned.
And overall made this map a bitmore balanced imo.

 

[LowtherCastle]

@elitetroops: As I examined team graphs I was always most concerned about you folks. I thought you were ahead of us for a long time. Even toward the end I wasn't sure until your power graph didn't keep up with ours. We made a major blunder failing to capture Mecca. That had me deeply concerned.

Gifting a city to Darius gets him to Pleased (+4 for Fair Trade). No need for Currency bribe, which only lasts 10 turns anyway. The calculation is the cost of a 2/3-priced settler versus the cost of a long war with Darius (walls, archers, Archery, et cetera).

We had Darius and Sal at Pleased so a fist was no threat to us.

Self-building the Pyramids was a huge mistake, imo, although I can see how it saved your game in the end. Zara built it for us and we used it for the rest of the game.

I was also surprised we got circumnavigation so late. That was pure luck.

Another key strategy point I forgot to mention in my above post: we built farms not cottages. Did you build farms or cottages?

Significant random factors in this scenario:
1. AI tech choice. This is always the biggest RNG in the code but in this scenario especially important for Anti-TSR because we teched primarily with spies. We were lucky that 1) Saladin and Zara avoided the Aesthetics line forever and 2) AIs all took different paths later on, giving us all sorts of good techs to steal.
2. Circumnavigation. Controllable, of course, by building earlier workboats.
3. Religion spread. Pangaea, so this isn't particularly significant.
4. Early warriors dying. We lost one, iirc.

 

[Duckweed]

In defense of BSP, I disagree with this assertion, for these reasons:

Becoming Land Targets (8 culturally adjacent land tiles)
1. AIs were relatively far from us so very early DoW was unlikely.
2. The scenario slowed down our expansion, which in turn slowed down our becoming Land Targets of neighboring AIs.
3. Raging barbs slowed down AI expansion.

Getting DoWed
1. Brennus, Darius, Hannibal, and Saladin, the four closest AIs, will not DoW us at Pleased. Only Gilgamesh and Zara have a 90 instead of 100 DoW factor at Pleased and it was virtually impossible for us to become their land target.
2. We were Industrious with a hammer-rich settling area so settlers were cheap, if we wanted to gift a city to get an encroaching AI to Pleased.
3. Pangaea meant that all AIs met each other and grew to hate at least some others more than us because of religion.

I don't know when teams got DoWed by some AI, so I'd have to see that to make a final evaluation, but it doesn't seem to me that this was excessively random or beyond the control of the team. In the Anti-TSR game, for the second half the game Brennus had a ginormous stack in an adjacent city such that he could have gone into war preparations (fist) and DoWed the same turn because he could attack us that same turn. We observed this, gifted him a city to get him to Pleased, problem solved. Later, when he dipped to Cautious for a while, we just demanded tribute from him for a 10-turn window of safety.

.

You major argument in this post is that your team did very well to control the RNG of DOW so that you did not get DOWed.

The above facts tells, in all those 65 turns, you had done nothing to prevent Brennus and Darius to target you.

I'm not saying you are going to lose the game if they DOWed you, but how many turns the DOW is going to slow down your victory date?

The facts I showed was that Many AIs including the 2 strongest AIs in your game could DOW you at any time, you did not do anything prevent of being their target. Note: target

While your arguments were how much you had done to defend if they decide to DOW you.

If my points was not clear in previous post, the here are the concise version

• Was it possible that Brenus, Darius and other AIs raise their fists and select you as target in all those 65+ turns in your game?
  
• Will a DOW significant slow down your game progress?

BTW

In defense of BSP, I disagree with this assertion, for these reasons:
I don't know when teams got DoWed by some AI, so I'd have to see that to make a final evaluation, but it doesn't seem to me that this was excessively random or beyond the control of the team.In the Anti-TSR game, for the second half the game Brennus had a ginormous stack in an adjacent city such that he could have gone into war preparations (fist) and DoWed the same turn because he could attack us that same turn. We observed this, gifted him a city to get him to Pleased, problem solved. Later, when he dipped to Cautious for a while, we just demanded tribute from him for a 10-turn window of safety.

But wait -- 1000 AD?!? The mapmaker is supposed to protect the poor, little teamsie wheemsies from getting DoWed in 1000AD? Give me a break. This isn't kindergarten. CIV is a war game. Pretty sure DanF said as much in one of his posts.

When did you give Brennus a city to make him to be please? I guess you did care about being DOW in 1000AD. Facepalm.

 

[elitetroops]

Gifting a city to Darius gets him to Pleased (+4 for Fair Trade). No need for Currency bribe, which only lasts 10 turns anyway. The calculation is the cost of a 2/3-priced settler versus the cost of a long war with Darius (walls, archers, Archery, et cetera).

I think you missed a major point in my post, the fist was already there t63. Don't know exactly when it appeared, could have been there t61 as well. You gifted him a city t61 to get him to pleased. I assume this was about as early as it was possible to gift him a city, if you also wanted TGW and a second city for yourself. So for us, the only way to possibly avoid this DoW would have been to play exactly like you, and even that might not have been enough. If the fist is already there, then gifting a city is not of any help, unless you can beg. At that point of the game it is not our priority to avoid a DoW by a pretty harmless AI that we know isn't within 10 turns from our borders, and who might not even be on our own landmass. We would never delay any other plans, just to get Darius to pleased. A city gift for stealing techs was discussed extensively, but in the end we opted to go with mids instead.

And if an AI can plot t63, it is absolutely not possible in any way to have them all at pleased by then with no tech trading. It is of course extremely unlucky if someone plots on you that early on monarch level, but an AI plotting t63 against the human player is most definitely random and if it happens, it is beyond the control of the team.

 

[LowtherCastle]

When did you give Brennus a city to make him to be please? I guess you did care about being DOW in 1000AD. Facepalm.

You resorting to snide remarks tells me all I need to know about your intentions in this "conversation."

Happy New Year, Duckweed.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I think you missed a major point in my post, the fist was already there t63. Don't know exactly when it appeared, could have been there t61 as well. You gifted him a city t61 to get him to pleased. I assume this was about as early as it was possible to gift him a city, if you also wanted TGW and a second city for yourself. So for us, the only way to possibly avoid this DoW would have been to play exactly like you, and even that might not have been enough. If the fist is already there, then gifting a city is not of any help, unless you can beg. At that point of the game it is not our priority to avoid a DoW by a pretty harmless AI that we know isn't within 10 turns from our borders, and who might not even be on our own landmass. We would never delay any other plans, just to get Darius to pleased. A city gift for stealing techs was discussed extensively, but in the end we opted to go with mids instead.

And if an AI can plot t63, it is absolutely not possible in any way to have them all at pleased by then with no tech trading. It is of course extremely unlucky if someone plots on you that early on monarch level, but an AI plotting t63 against the human player is most definitely random and if it happens, it is beyond the control of the team.

Never mind. There's a lot of know-how that goes into CIV. There are ways to handle practically every situation. Some people either know it but don't share all the details or don't know it. I like to share it.

Suffice it to say, the crucial fact is that Anti-TSR did not get DoWed and I can guarantee you could have prevented Darius from DoWing you, playing the game pretty much the way you played the game.

 

[elitetroops]

Never mind. There's a lot of know-how that goes into CIV. There are ways to handle practically every situation. Some people either know it but don't share all the details or don't know it. I like to share it.

Suffice it to say, the crucial fact is that Anti-TSR did not get DoWed and I can guarantee you could have prevented Darius from DoWing you, playing the game pretty much the way you played the game.

I asked you earlier to share this information, but didn't get an answer yet. If Darius had showed a red fist in your game t61, before you gifted him the city, what measures would you have taken to prevent a DoW? You get him to pleased by gifting the city, but then what? The fist stays, you have no way of knowing who his target is and you don't know in which direction to look for his lands or stack. Would you have delayed other builds to send out chariots in all directions to look for this plotting AI? Would you have teched BW earlier than planned to be able to whip defenders if he comes your way? Or is there some other secret trick to make an AI stop plotting without begging for something?

We pretty much ignored the fist, because it seemed so unlikely that a far away AI with several targets to choose from would choose us as a target at the time. And we didn't have horses yet, sending warriors into barblandia to look for him wouldn't have helped us much. Maybe it was a mistake not to react, I don't know. But looking back, I can't think of any way we could have reacted to the threat without making significant sacrifices regarding our other plans.

Edit: and as said earlier, this was an honest question. I would like to know how we could have played this situation better with the information that was available to us at the time. And gifting a city is not an answer to this problem, because you cannot gift a city to every AI before t63 just to make sure nobody picks you as an unlikely war target.