This post contains the reflections of the other players who participated in the game. Each reflection is written by that player from their perspective, with only potential minor editing from myself for spelling
[Hatti] was above me, [Egypt] was below me, I knew I had to push down to secure a decent border with [Egypt] but I wanted my units to remain near each other incase [Hatti] or [Egypt] did some funny stuff. I slow built my cities because I wanted extra pop to be able to defend my boarders as I was always gonna go ahead of [Egypt] when our pop is the same. This came in handy when he decided to sack one of my cities with 6 units (we forgot that you need 7) after he messed up his movement. Because of this I had a ton more pop than him and just moved into the areas that were open due to him losing so many units to sack my city. To follow this up I restricted my trades with him early so that I could get an early metalworking and prevent him from getting any early tech that would threaten me. We both then got hit by calamities I got superstition and he got Barbarian Hordes I think and we both went down to one to two cities. At this point [Iberia] had just gotten Trade Empire and the other side of the map was doing quite well. Also around this time because I missdelt some cards, [Iberia] decided that I was his enemy because he ended up with a famine. [Egypt] declares he will become the sea people and raid the other coast, promptimg [Minoa] to reveal he was planning on doing the same. As me, [Egypt], and [Minoa] determine that we are all down bad at this time we form a sudo[sic] alliance to bring peace to the middle east and to bring down the west. [Egypt] attempts to extort [Rome] for trade goods. At this point I have a stable board position and had just gotten agriculture to increase the ammount of units I have on the board.
My plan is to slowly increase citys but keep a high pop and push my pop to the edges of my territory so that I can send them abroad once I get astronavigation. Additionally, now that I have a "secure" boarder with [Egypt] and [Hatti] and I have had no conflict I do not need to proactivly protect by middling city count. The west was clearly in a winning position.
Day 2[Egypt] attempted to push his luck with extorting [Rome] and gets an epidemic and is rebuilding for many turns. Instead of building above 5 citys I instead take my extra units and invade Sicily along with [Minoa] taking it completely. This helps slow [Rome] down who was in a strong position. I then use Sicily to start invading [Iberia] as he has been greedy with his population to city ratio and can just manage to push out all of my units each turn I invade. As [Hatti] has gotten Fundamentalism, I end up taking it as well to prevent myself from losing units and also to have a stronger board presence. This helps because [Celts] has also randomly decided that I am his arch nemisis and will attempt to take me out despite being mostly landlocked and on the other side of the world. He has Provincial Empire, but with the power to coordinate Fundimentalism with [Hatti] we are able to destroy all of his units that make it to our side (Mostly from a Civil War I drew).
Another way that I protected my position was by regularly attacking the person who was seemingly winning or doing well as long as they themselves having no realistic way of retaliating outside of Calamity secondaries. My two main targets were [Iberia] as his pop was low and did not have Astronavigation and [Carthage] because of his wide coastline and also lack of Astronavigation. The only fear was that someone going after me would take advantage of me attacking ([Minoa], [Egypt], [Hatti]). Due to the Eastern "alliance" it was unlikely that [Egypt] or [Minoa] would raid me out of spite and the fact that I was hindering people ahead of us allowed for all of us to catch up to them. If they were to attack me then I would have to turn my atttention to them and be unable to bring down the "real" threats.
At this point I have been hitting 6 cities consistanly for a few turns and have gotten some decent trading done and choose to pivot into economy with my tech. I get a nice Library + Empericism + Written Record to get me up to a decent amount of tech + discounts. Instead of advancing AST by buying 3 T1 techs I instead get Library and some cheap T1 tech to discount max. My main strategy with purchasing was to only cash in value stacks and save potential prospects for future turns. The few time I went hellbent after purchasing, I did very few trades and stopped early when I had no Calamities in hand. This allowed me to retain my board state and to be able to trade better in the following turn. With this I was able to go into Mathmatics and start just buying tech for value. With this I was able to sustain a good city count going into the final few turns and was now close to even in the final few turns in terms of Civ Card Points.
Going into the final turn I had a big buy putting me in the lead. I knew that if I was able to keep enough cities to advance and to get a moderate amount of points in trade goods (~150) my discounts/current lead would carry me to victory. My movement was entirely based around building cities and keeping a healthy pop as I knew I could not defend all of my cities from assault as I was going first. [Egypt] chose to raid one of my cities which brought me down to 7 but no other cities were lost going into the trade phase. I traded well enough to get my points and got no massive calamities and was able to weather the secondaries aimed at me leaving me with enough cities to advance. I had good buys and won the game by a reasonable margin followed my [Minoa] who was also able to build up a large amount of Civ Cards mostly unnoticed.
Final Thoughts- Board Control is KingBoard Postition is how you beat calamities. If you have excess population you can take damage safely and rebuild faster. Do not max cities. Doing so will lower your population and lose board position. Board Position techs are the best early buys if you can use them (disounting 250+ point early buys). If you can bully others off of their territory your position is safer and you can get cities that will last. The less cities you have the less of a threat you are. if you can keep a stable city count 4-6 it is better than an unstable 3 or 8. The best sets are 4,5,6 as most people have them and they go very high. 7s are good but you cannot consistently get them.
8 cities is a trap. No one else is getting 8s, the non-tradeable calamity is awful, and 9s can be bought. Offence is a good Defence. If you are hitting the people who need to be hit, you are less likely to be hit. If your boarders are secure get on a boat and hit someone far away, it is harder to be retaliated that way. Tech should prioritize getting a good board position by discoraging your neighbours from attacking you. After that getting mobility tech is good to be able to answer distant threats or take advantage of weakness far away. This helps you punish greedy players and to discourage distant foes from attacking you.
I took a gamble on a new first card after trading in all the fruit early in the game. Trading empire was going to be amazing until the epidemic hit. I never truly recovered from that first epidemic dealing 20 damage plus a famine hit in the same turn. I maintained a leading position thanks to mutually tied connection with the celts but I took another risk on a new meta choice to go all in on coinage + rhetoric to try and maintain an economy of trade cards after that.
Day TwoAfter the end of the game I can say I made many good decisions but I need to build more defences. I was wholly underprepared for calamity’s and should have taken public’s works first to help withstand the onslaught of attacks. The strong relationship with the celts was massively beneficial for both parties as we helped each other countless times when we were down. 3-meta with rhetoric was imperfect but I believe was the best choice given the struggles I encountered.
first of all, man what an eventful and fun game! So much fun and interesting shit happened. From the sea people raiders striking from the middle east to the great migration of Iberians which somehow ended in London and the sacking Rome from the Celtic hoarders.
Truly an eventful and fun game, everyone also being close in score was cool too. Really didn't expect it to be such a tight race between basically everyone. That was a nice bonus to all the flavour that was happening on the board.
Also the host was amazing, such wonderful food and nice open playspace. I had a great time chatting with everyone and eating some wonderful food
In short, an awesome way to spend a long weekned!
Messed up growth, used messed up growth to invade Assyria using turn advantage (4 cities for Egypt vs 3 for Assyria) and captured a city turn 5 (?). Got counter invaded now that I had low pop (lolol). Made sure to keep 4 cities for trade food so it was whatever though.
Update: it was not whatever though. Assyria and Egypt are now locked in eternal conflict.
After a few turns we both realize we are screwing each other over and dooming ourselves to last place. Following this we form the coalition for losing people. This coalition intends to invade and extort winning players. The coalition commits to becoming Barbary states using astronaviation, engineering, cloth making etc. to apply pressure. - at long last, peace in the Middle East.
Mid gameThe first extortion target is Rome, who is quite ahead at this point. An agreement is reached that time will pay the coalition 14 points of trade value in exchange for a non invading agreement. In that trade round Rome gave me 3 points of trade value and barbarian hordes. Obviously this meant war.
The coalition mobalises and invades Sicily. Egypt (now wrecked by barbarian hordes) has to do an eco round to become somewhat relevant again.
The coalition (mostly Assyria) began a harassment campaign attacking cartage, iberia, and Rome. Noone accept Egypt's extortion demands, most likely due to the failure of Egypt's ability to enforce those demands on Rome, the second wave of Egyptian barbarian hordes, and the mixed effectiveness of the coalition raids.
End gameFollowing a few more eco rounds I decided to flaunt my horrible position to reduce my heightened agro and hold 5, then 6, then 8, then 8, then 7 cities, buying 9s each turn. I transition this into a max discount build and save hard for the last round (we ended early) ending the final round with a 375 point buy that tied for third, and tie broke down to 5th. Which was a substantial improvement from the old position.
Thoughts:
At this point the whole extortion thing needs a rethink. At least it needs to be implemented as a "pay to make me leave" as opposed to a "pay to make me not come" at least until their is a substantial reputation. Then again, I did not have naval warfare as I flatlined before the build completed, so mayyyybe it is still viable
Discount builds (especially literacy and math) also seems to clearly still be the best strategy as it catapulted last and second last and debatably 3rd last into 1st, 2nd, and 3rd (before tie breaker) even after a pretty bad start.
I think math may even be better than wonder early on. A math literacy opener that somehow does not draw agro seems busted.
Even with the minor calamities added I think I got really lucky with not getting too many calamities that did a lot of damage (until the last round which ruined my last chance to progress). I got flooded 3 times but didn’t really matter for my spot. I tried to be very peaceful on the board to avoid being attacked, but next game would want to try to be more invasive since being only safe doesn’t get you winning and I haven’t tried that yet. I think I mainly did better than normal because I wasn’t hit too much with calamities, and when other people needed to target people I wasn’t much of a threat. I think I was able to do more in this game because I spent more time actually thinking about what cards would help me in the game (still love agriculture), but there are cards I wish I considered in other games, like diplomacy and monotheism. I do wish I focused more on discount cards, I felt like they were pointless but it did take me a few rounds to be able to purchase things. I also wish I spread out more on the board. Even though I managed to build 8 cities one turn, it was very hard to maintain cities and not have population starve since I didn’t expand very far, and I let Celts and my neighbours in too close
first day: not much happened just figuring out the game. Second day: strategy was to invest in defence and hope no one attacked me. [Assyria] attacked me at one point. Got sorta fucked by calamities at one point. Tried to keep as many cities on the board as i could.