Actually that might be game. I think Thoth can take the rest of the cities without even fighting an archer, putting him at 8 cities.
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[NO PLAYERS] Lurker Thread for lurkers lurking loudly
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(May 23rd, 2014, 13:54)Ceiliazul Wrote: not sure about that. its awfully early to be so strung out, and Commodore is blasting ahead in other ways. I'm not 100% sure, but CRE/SPI Zulu have all the tools necessary to settle up on joao to get a solid border (not at gold but right before that) and still get good borders to the east and west. If he captures any workers, well...he will end up with some very defensible land, ideal defensive units, perfect civic flexibility and nothing to do except spam settlers, granaries and Ikhanda all over the map. And there are no FIN leaders, right? This is basically PB16 all over again but people can fight each other. They still won't though.
watch for reputation-conscious commodore to bring the hammer in this game (lest people think he's a builder. the horror!)
Also TBS has the confidence of youth, and is probably eager to try his luck. All this is wishful thinking, naturally, but i'd be dosappointed if this field felt thoth earned a concession before t100. Heck, weren't people saying Mack would get a concession in pb13, like, 100 turns ago?
Yeah, but that game is stacked against the leader. This one isn't really. Though yeah, Joao can perhaps keep up due to traits and Commodore might be able to get a bit of a snowball going. But EXP/IMP falls off compared to SPI and Commodore, well...to snowball he needs to focus on building. Of all people he knows not to use praets offensively.
I don't think they should concede it this early, but T120 concession sounds about right.
I suspect we'll see some No Barb games after this. Investing time and energy in a competitive MP game just to get fucked over by random AI units is really lame. The whining about copper is a little silly though, I guess people have come to expect copper at their capitals or whatever, even though that's a big part of the reason why Aggressive and rushing are awful in the RB Meta.
Not really. A lot of the problems occur because the maps are designed to have players so close that players are forced to expand towards each other to claim land incredibly quickly. The issues that then occur are that if one player has food resources in a front city, such as copper, against someone that doesn't, is that a player is given a catch 22: plant forward to try and hold land so they have relevance later on, and die to a rush, or play defensive from T15 and consign themselves to irrelevance.
AGG as a trait has about zero relevance to this, safe unique units like Bowmen and Skirms and chancy UU like impi and WC are more important in how a game plays out. All AGG does is make warrior combat skewed in the favour of one player. Once resources enter the equation, warriors don't really matter.
May 23rd, 2014, 20:08
(May 23rd, 2014, 19:32)pindicator Wrote: Also, just how close is Thoth anyways? It seems like he's a hell of a lot closer than this would imply: It was always possible that whoever started in the middle could end up getting a raw deal, and I never could satisfactorily solve how to place the starts with seven players (other than another boring ring layout). Hence the placements we had here, which have been discussed plenty earlier upthread. I don't think pindicator's problem here is a result of being in the center. He just got rushed by nearby Zulu before he could connect copper, which could have happened anywhere on the map no matter where your nearest neighbor started. Complaining about the location of the copper isn't really helpful. I just counted the tiles, pindicator's nearest copper isn't that much further from his capital than Thoth's nearest copper is to his, 6 tiles vs. 4.5. That's first ring to the capital in either case. Yes, Thoth had a second nearby copper (also six tiles from his capital) that he could also have connected easily, so maybe that part wasn't completely fair, as Thoth could have blindly landed on one of those coppers and gained an advantage in doing so. In another possibly unfair map asymmetry pindicator had a second source of horses very close by that Thoth didn't. Pindicator had the very bad luck that his neighbor was Zulu and he got zerged, whereas in another scenario pindicator easily could have been in a position to chariot rush whoever happened to be near him by virtue of landing on an early horse. It seems to me that either case was as likely as the other, except that Thoth happened to be Zulu and bloodthirsty. For all the heartburn pindicator is suffering now (and I really do feel bad about his game going up in flames like this), I do like the idea that Thoth here, and Seven in PB16, were willing to go against the prevailing currents of RB standard game openings. Everyone knows that early wars are costly to your economy game and your growth curve (if the war is unsuccessful, anyway), and it seems like for those reasons, maybe among others, the trend more and more the last few years has been to micro the last hammer and beaker and debut your game with the perfect opening, measurable by T50 with five cities and twelve workers, or whatever (and sometimes not enough real military units to defend it all). There's something, well nice isn't at all the right word, but satisfying about seeing Thoth (and Seven before in PB16) go balls out for an early attack and succeed anyway, even though we all "know better". I don't say that to delight in pindicator's suffering, I really don't. I hate having my castles kicked over, too. But if events in some of these recent games help to push back against the prevailing ultra-farmer tides I think that's a good thing. Too many workers and not enough impis makes Jack a dull boy. 
Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon |