In praise of tuche (fortune)

[The Priest]

We all like to moan at the times our CR3 tank squadron is detroyed by the axemen sneaking in and causing sparks with those pesky axes igniting the fuel dump and ... boom

But what about the stories of incredible good fortune?

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A starter for me, happened two games ago:

I was trying to overhaul my main opponent and attacked - ground forces getting bogged down so I landed an amphibious force next to his capital. Bad miscalcuation - the forces in the capital were too strong given the 100% defence. As the AI plays its turn I think the only thing to do it to evacuate, and then ... the slaves in his capital decide to revolt. Defense drops to 0% for the turn, my forces suddenly look capable, capital captured and razed. never looked back. I just hope we didn't burn too many of those helpful slaves

[rah]

It's a faceoff of grand proportions. I have about 70 units in a border city. The AI has about 80 in a city 4 squares away. A culture battle over squares has been back and forth over the last 100 years. I'm trying to figure out the best way to eliminate that stack without coming under their seige weapons fire when one of those attitude wedding events comes up and I get the chance for the -3 modifier. As I make the selection I find myself DOWed and almost all of the AI's SOD moves onto my land where it is totally destroyed in two turns with minimal lose and very little WW. I gutted their whole civ in about 15 turns after that. Up to that point I was usually annoyed at most of those negative diplo special events.

[Tattila the Hun]

That's some wedding present.

[ben04]

Couldn't you just have made some excessive demands and cause a -3 diplo that way?

[rah]

I've done that but still not ben able to sucker a DOW out of them. This -3 event has always worked.

[Blaupanzer]

Wouldn't have thought of using that event to START a war. I need to refresh my point of view once in a while. A "bad result" should also be fully considered; might work in my favor.

[rah]

There's also the time I'm finishing off a civ thinking "last city" only to find there's one more out there that I didn't see originally. And I didn't have open borders with anybody in that direction. BUT on the next turn my good buddy asked me to join him in war with a neighbor Which I accept. He gladfully give me his map and it pinpoints the last city and I see that I can get there by going through the territory of the civ that I just agreed to go to war with. I love it when a plan comes together.

Normally all those requests to go to war are intended to kill your diplo relations with everyone.

[Blaupanzer]

Take the offer, wander through the just declared on's territory, kill your real enemy, wander back, then make peace. Great reward for a guy who just can't say "no."

I had one of those fortunate events where an intermediary offers to make peace. I had gone to war with my Eastern neighbor China in conjunction with his eastern neighbor Rome. While we are at it a couple of other Civ's jump on Rome, so I march south with my reserves to crush one of these upstarts. Two turns later, my western neighbor, Gilgamesh, who has been "Friendly" all game and is of the same religion jumps me. His forces aren't equal to 1/2 mine per the power chart (plus I can see most of his cities). But with my 2 main SoDs in China and my reserves south of my borders, I'm down to two or three units per city at home. He takes one city and marches straight on the capitol which he reaches before my troops make it back to my territory which would still be 3 moves away from said capitol. THEN the intermediary event. Peace breaks out, my capitol is saved and, as an added bonus, the troops I was pulling out of China are in a better attack position than previously, because China's defenders are mostly deeper inland. Gilgamesh returns to "Pleased" that very turn.

Of course, he won't stay that way when I go get my city back and then take most of his, but once again, "Shake his hand but keep your pistol handy," is good advice. ALWAYS keep a reserve.

[Addled Platypus]

having what I thought was horriffic SOD knocking at my capital city

many turns later the same three untis are there wit more promotions

and the AI kept sending SOD's that way

[Garth Vader]

I had some Rah style luck in my current game. I got BW, Fishing, The Wheel, Masonry, Archery from huts. That plus some sweet geography has made for a relaxing cakewalk! I usually don't get any techs from huts, it's all maps

[Solomwi]

Playing as Zara Yaqob and pumping out Oromos left and right. I was the first to discover gunpowder by a good stretch, so my Oromos are the only GP units in the world. I get the random event which gives them all Pinch. Not so useful when it happened, but down the road it allowed me to be attacking riflemen with Drill IV-Pinch infantry. Hot knife through butter doesn't quite capture it entirely.

[Arrian]

I won a crazy low odds battle recently... I think I had about a 4% chance of success.

But even better was the recent case of barbs taking out my neighbor for me. It was the (utterly ridiculous) random event that generates 4 barb archers *very* early. After fighting off the remaining 2 barb archers, who came after me next (I was able to produce an archer with 1 turn to spare), I was able to waltz into the neighbor's capital unopposed.

-Arrian

[Theben]

Good fortune in my last game was literally a fortune. 2 plains hills with gold, 1 grsl cow, 1 rice, 1 fish and a fresh water lake tile around my plains hill capital, with stone just outside my BFC.

In a MP game my friend actually had 4 gold hills in his capital's BFC!!!

[Unimatrix11]

I recently had 2 Gold in my caps BFC, 2 in the next city, and 1 in 3rd. Which means, i could actually use them all. 4 Gold in one city, can be kind of a waste, since it will take you a lot of additional, food-producing tiles, to actually work that gold (yeah, i know sharing a BIG secret here ).

[Theben]

He had enough of said tiles also. The only reason I could compete with him is b/c I knew the game better.