AU 601: sabrewolf's DAR 2 (rome)

[sabrewolf]

trade advisor

thanks to the capturing of delphi, i've actually recieved the spices-source i was keeping herakleia for! because it's got a harbour, i immediately recieve it a now have 7 luxury resources!

and as you can see, i would be able to get the 8th resource from the germanics (for engineering), but i think i'll pass on that for now and take it when i've got hospitals and marketplaces everywhere


persia has btw researched astronomy and now definetly needs "trimming". fortunatly, my armies are now to full disposal for such a manouvre and with musketmen defending the isthmi (what's the correct plural here? isthmii? isthmos'? isthmusses? ). i'll need to rush 3 of them near knossos, build fortresses and lots of cannons

[sabrewolf]

angry ;(

ok, now i'm angry!

andy nobly decided to resign 2 turns ago, agreeing to let me march into his capital.

i moved my army to a fairly unprotected (just forest) area to be able to march into his capital next turn.

but what does this "player" do? he throws all his units against my army, killing it
and then he comes up a miserable excuse that he "tried the best to resign"... sure!

that's what i call a very bad loser!

and all he tells me is to "chill out". i wouldn't even get this uptight if he were an player who sticks to his word and STOPs playing when resigning


if he has a bit of honour, he'll replay that turn

[sabrewolf]

oh well, *sigh*, it doesn't look like...

pity, now athens has been taken by an AI instead. next time (if there should be a next time) i won't ask for a resignation, but i'll go all the way to the bitter end. then at least i wouldn't need to get uptight about such stuff...

anyway. a turn earlier, i urgently needed cash, because i thought andy would send his swordsman to take back delphi, so i sold iron for some gpt and 115g to persia. that let me hurry a (reg) medinf.

it turned out to be unneccessary, because a AI marched into athens between the turns. oh well...

[sabrewolf]

this (screenshot) is what the map looked like before that happened and the turn changed into a single-player PBEM.

babylon unfortunatly placed a city (samarra, on the right side) near to where i had intended one (grabbing all spices between the two cities). 3 of my settlers are on the way by boat on the inner ocean and the first would have been in place within 3 turns. i guess i'll now have to divert them (grabbing the gem source, possibly the iron and/or saltpeter on the outer side of the doughnut land.


now that i'm the only player, i'm faced with several possibilities:
- peaceful (go for diplo/spaceship victory) in democracy
- domination (like nathan did it, but i'm on a lower difficulty level) by culture-rushing and getting AIs to fight each other in monarchy and later communism
- warmongering and pillaging (get out armies ASAP, cripple every single nation every 50 turns or so (like the "shadows" in babylon 5) and win by spaceship.

i could also change the rules that i could go for conquest now...
what rule-changes i'm sure about (except if someone convinces my of the oposite) is that i'm going to be allowed to grab any city between the persian-greek isthmus and the (now)-egyptian hills range, so basicly letting me claim the greek lands. 2/3rds of the area will be mine anyway, because they are non-AI-founded cities, so the rule changes only really affect cases like samarra or coastal cities.
any vetos against this rulechange?

[Andydog]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
but what does this "player" do? he throws all his units against my army, killing it
and then he comes up a miserable excuse that he "tried the best to resign"... sure!

that's what i call a very bad loser!

and all he tells me is to "chill out". i wouldn't even get this uptight if he were an player who sticks to his word and STOPs playing when resigning


if he has a bit of honour, he'll replay that turn

I've just arrived home from work to a heads up PM about this post. I haven't looked at this DAR before now as the game only finished late last night, and I've been busy since then.

In my defence I did think that the game was over and that was it, I wasn’t aware that sabrewolf wanted to carry on the game in single player, he hadn't told me. The killing of his army was in a way meant to be a kind of joke, a leader who got a pinch of revenge for the savage slaughtering of his peace keepers as he faced his imminent death. I didn’t think it would make any difference - the scores wouldn’t change, the power graph wouldn’t change. If I’d known that sabrewolf wanted to continue, I’d have played out the turns so that the game could continue its natural course, him and the AI taking my cities and suffering the associated losses.

I don’t particularly feel like doing that now though.

[sabrewolf]

ok, then that chapter is over. i'm still not happy, but what can i do...

now as soon as my c3c works again, i'll continue with the SP-game...

[vmxa1]

It seems to me that once you have only one human player left in the game, you can play by any rules that you wish.

[sabrewolf]

andy decided to replay that turn without killing my army.

for that, i thank him and hope that in future we don't have any more of such miscommunication and misunderstandings!

[sabrewolf]

430ad

this move changed a lot for my second attempt at this turn.

for one, i got some gold from the athens vaults. next, i didn't have to rush the medinf in delphi, which meant i could do a different deal with persia.

as 3 civs had printing press, i bought it from egypt fairly cheap: for iron and i got all their gold (48)

with that, i renegotiated peace with persia, gave them a RoP (but i'm still blocking all access to my lands), invention (unfortuntly) and some luxuries and got 2gpt in return.

now i'm up gunpowder, chemistry (in 2 turns) and behind in whatever they are researching.

at break-even pace, i can get techs (like banking and navigation) at 6 turns per tech... (once the AI start paying me in gpt, i'll switch to tech broker). so military tradition will take me about 15 turns... i'll make 20 out of it, because of my peace treaty with persia, then the "pillage and burn persia" will start.

what's more worrying: egypt has declared war on the germanics... just after i gave them iron. i guess i'll support the germanics with iron too (they've got wines) to make the war less unfair (and not make egypt a kAI)

[sabrewolf]

530ad

interesting thing just happened: persia declared war on me for no reason real obvious reason!

a single horseman attacked my fortified, barricaded musketman, retreated and that was the only thing persia did that turn. a medinf of mine killed a persian archer near athens and my armies (so far provisorically defending conquered cities) departed towards persia to pillage... earlier than expected.

the only bad thing of this war declaration is the 53gpt-deal i lost. and being at only 20g before the turn, a harbour was lost... fortunatly not in an important productive city...

i got egypt (who's now at peace with germany) and babylon into the war too, even if it's just to make them not attack me... and thereby making me lose herakleia's spices.

[alexman]

Re: 530ad

Originally posted by sabrewolf
interesting thing just happened: persia declared war on me for no [...] obvious reason!

[snip]

the only bad thing of this war declaration is the 53gpt-deal i lost.

You've solved your own mystery: the AI often declares war against a lender when it can no longer afford to pay him gpt.

[sabrewolf]

but a turn earlier they were willing to pay 22gpt for gunpowder?

and the deal had been going for about 15 turns until then...

[alexman]

I obviously don't know the whole story, but lots can happen in one turn. Perhaps a gpt deal that they were receiving from someone else expired.

[sabrewolf]

by the way, i've noticed an SP-PBEM exploit:

if you CONTINUE a game instead of saving and loading, you seem to get additional moves.

eg. 2 workers irrigating:
- in SP, it's finished in 2 turn. basta...
- in >=2 player PBEM, they'll finish it at the end of the 1st turn, but during the 2nd turn, they cannot be moved, hence: 2 turns net
- when 1 player MP, they'll also finish at the end of the 1st turn, but you can move them in the next turn!

next example: wounded units in cities:
- in SP and MP: move units in a city, 2nd turn: don't move them, 3rd move: they're healthy(er) again
- in 1p-MP: move units in to city, 2nd turn: healthy AND moveable.

due to speed reasons, i prefer continuing (with exceptional safety saves every 10 turns or so), so am i illegally exploiting the game? nathan, what did you do after you got theseus' password?

[sabrewolf]

i failed to screenshoot the 500ad scores and the last save before that was 440ad.

so here is the scorebox and minimap of 520ad