Experiment: The duel of the Spy Twins

[Snaaty]

da, auron,diamanten, arbeiter dalang bitte

[Auron]

Surferman stole my position. Where to settle?

[Auron]

Game isnt really good for me, all action is on obs and snaatys side and I dont made much screens.

To sum my game up. In the end I settled my dream spot.

[Belarion123]

To sum my game up. In the end I settled my dream spot.

Hey 2x Silber, what do you want more?

[Obsolete]

My current situation on turn #99. Twice now I was not going to go up the Aesthetics route. The first time I was going to abandon it because Auron wanted to get TGL. Then in our last session he decided to be a nice guy and let me continue on towards it.

Unfortunately, we soon discovered that the no-tech trades option was not enforced on this map, which meant all the Ais were able to do tech trades this whole time while us poor human players were not allowed!

I aborted the plan for the library, thinking it was very unlikely I could get it in time. However, a few turns ago I saw the AI’s STILL did not have Aesthetics yet, so I was a bit lucky there. I then decided to go up this tech-line after all and poured on full-tech spending. It is unfortunate I am about to run out of beakers soon, and I’ll have to think up a way to get literature without too much delay.

It isn’t going to help me that Zulan is forcing me to settle a JUNK city for his spy-stealing, which is going to hurt me even more, but at least I will have six cities after that.

After this turn, I will have to spend 1 more finishing off Polytheism, and then we go straight to literature while I save gold to (see what happens) and get another library up.

The biggest blunder here is “Horsie City”. It really pained me how out-of-position that marble was. I really wanted it, but no matter how I looked at things, I would give up something, like the deers up north. At the time I hadn’t fog-busted that whole ice patch in the north, and I was hoping I would at least get some other food source up there and I could plant an Igloo city. Unfortunately this turned out not to be.

Furthermore, I was able to link up with Zulan finally and get our trade-routes going, etc. So he was able to gift me his marble, which means I really had no need to sacrifice better tiles in that city just for that patch. Arggg. If only I could tell how things are going to turn out ahead of time, my games would be much simpler.

I have also dropped down to the bottom of the list in ranking on my continent. While Joao II continues spin out of control. I hate deity’s who get half price settlers and cheap workers. That’s just too hard to keep up with and to make things worse, he is sneaking past my borders and settling behind my culture (people always tell me the AI isn’t suppose to do that now!).

I am debating on how to knock out Joao II in the near future. I think we can tech up to cuirassiers and blast him that way, or stockpile cuirassiers, then do a mass-upgrade to cavalry and then charge into him that way (easier said than done).

We simply can’t let him keep growing and expanding like this. I’ll wait for him to build me lots of infrastructure and then I’m going to do something about it.

By the way, I did have some luck earlier in the game with the city of “King Crab”. Zulan warned me a stack of 5 barbs was wondering around that city! Sure enough, it headed right toward it, with even more barbs following in with it.

I had a Que unit defending the city all by himself, and wouldn’t you know, I won! Without even the city on a hill or getting river bonus. Thanks to 25% fortification, STR I, STR II, SHOCK bonus, and my free obelisk culture which just happened to pop when I needed it.

The last attacking unit slammed into my city when my Que was down to just 0.4 health! Phew…I got my 4 hits in and the day was saved.

We also ended our last turn-set when Snaaty had just gotten quite some luck himself in a desperate battle against an AI he declared war on..

[Obsolete]

BTW, a little off topic. But what's the proper way to include imagines on this form? I have tried attaching them like a file, and just supplying an off-board URL as well, but for some reason they don't get indexed like they do with everyone else's.

[Zulan]

BTW, a little off topic. But what's the proper way to include imagines on this form? I have tried attaching them like a file, and just supplying an off-board URL as well, but for some reason they don't get indexed like they do with everyone else's.

You can upload the images using the little paper clip. Storage and time are unlimited here . To embed them into text cou can

a) Aither just copy the image url from the attachment listing into an [ img ] tag.

b) Use the image ID in an att2 tag, e.g.

[ att2]423358[/att2]

You can get that ID by using the triangle next to the paperclip - it will insert
[ attach]423358[/attach]

into your text - that you have to replace to att2.

I hope that was understandable .

[Snaaty]

well, my game proceeded like planned, i got theo via GP bulb

then i settled the gem city (city with 3 gem ressources, Pi-Ramses)

then surferman settled a city between gem city and my empire (beating me to the spot by 1 lousy turn), more or less the turn i got gems connected, effectively blocking the gem city and causing boder tensions +2, dropping him to annoyed... ...and he off course immediately closed border on me

so all my poor empire got unhappy and i guess same happened to auron



seeing the miserably state of my empire in 400 BC again now on the screen, almost makes me laugh (... ...well... ...almost)

i havent even researched IW, cause i had to go for the religion, due to the spy-eco purpose, so my empire exactly contains 5 geen tiles i could cottage and about 5 brown tiles more i cottaged... ...and i refused to settle the city in the north, still marked and decided to simply fortify a settler there... ...this spot is sooooooooooo ugly without IW

...

ARGH... ...sight... ...as you already can see in the screen, i immediately changed my plans of peacefull cooperation with surferman (sight, everybody who has already tried a BC war against a deity AI knows what i´m talking about... ...even more, when only having the impressive cities i can field here) and decided to go for him immediately... ...there were 2 reasons behind this:

1. auron and i need the happy from the gems
2. better to go down in flames right now, then to suffer more in this game

...

what happened then, was a big surprise... ...i attacked with 3 warcharriots and 4 spears, surferman defended his city with 3 archers and 4 charriots... ...my odds where exactly:
1. char with str. 1 gains archer with CG1: 54.6%... ...i won
2. char without promos gains archer with CG1, fortified: 26,2%... ...i won
3. char without promos gains archer with CG1: 32.7%... ...i won
4-8: spears gains charriots: 99.x%... ...i won all fights


i took the city without losses, on 3rd turn off attack... ...next turn surferman wants to talk again and offers peace without conditions

...

i havent even taken a screen of all this, cause i have expected a lot of things to happen, but not this (surferman has eles and is already running around with katas...)

...

so seems i have to continue this game a little more

[Obsolete]

The current Que shown here, is my hero that saved the day from a really nasty hoared of barbarians that Zulan’s Great Wall sent my way. It is very unfortunate though, that barbarians only give you a max of 10 experience points. I feel like I got very ripped off!

Since Joao II is running unstoppable across my whole continent, I thought we’d take a closer examination of his capital.

From what very few tiles I can see, already he shows a river, Wine, TWO sea-food courses, and even Gems. What a lop-sided scenario. I searched all over for Gems, Gold, etc, and I couldn’t get any damn commerce tiles. Meanwhile, according to the resource trades, Joao has so many he doesn’t know what to do with….!!

No surprise he managed to get TGLH and a holy city, etc. And he is still flying all over the place.

I think I’m going to assign this problem to Zulan to handle. Since he’s been doing nothing while I’ve been off trying to find a damn commerce tile to work, I think he should start pulling his own weight on my team.

So Zulan, this is YOUR problem…. Now FIX IT… or we will both die here.

[KingK]

jungle has been on the gems at the beginning

[Snaaty]

jungle has been on the gems at the beginning

if your talking about the gem spot i´ve settled:

yes, your right, but auron has iw and he cleared it off

problem now is that he cant chop inside my culture... ...so i dont have a choice and have to get iw myself to get some more workable tiles...

[Auron]

@snaaty: Btw I have use for your war heroes. The barb city in the far west isn't bad: sheep and three flood plains.

I think it is a small advantage just having one ai on the continent. Surferman hopefully will be the first one who dies in this game. .

[KingK]

no i ment the gems in portugal

[Zulan]

I think I’m going to assign this problem to Zulan to handle. Since he’s been doing nothing while I’ve been off trying to find a damn commerce tile to work, I think he should start pulling his own weight on my team.

So Zulan, this is YOUR problem…. Now FIX IT… or we will both die here.

I'm afraid that there is no way to tickle that problem right now. The fact that tech trade is on obvisouly removes our advantage of a Spy Economy. We have decided not to trade techs ourselfs (also not with the AI???) - so the EE is now just to compensate our disadvantage!

My Idea is just to push Obs research with ! I will also try to get some great scientists for Obs to win the librace... of course Gret Spies have preference.

Actuall from the last turnset I only have one useful picture:



Obs is going to get a nice city soon.

Also I supplied obs with some fast workers so he can chop the glib. Actually his worker management can be improved moving 3 workers on one wood plot to road the next turn . By the way the commerce tiles are south of his Land between the two barbcities one of which I caputred for him. Its all full of nice graslandrivertiles

BTW the second GP was a prophet which I built the shrine with.

[Zulan]

For obs