Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Big news for this turn was the assault on Kabhalg. It went pretty much as these are supposed to go - and yet another example why PoL are nice freaking units. The four tigers were sent in to soften up and they pretty much redlined both archers whilst dying. That left 3 Priests and Al Snow to clean up 2 warriors and the archers. The first battle was 76% odds and they only got better from there, ending with this final battle:



The capture got us an impressive 140 gold as well. City named Kaya, as it was tragic we had not yet used Bob Marley in this meme. Here's the link for those uninitiated: Kaya

One more song, in honor of Sugar Shane Elms, conqueror of Kaya:

Vertebreaker.

Never entirely sure if that's the best or worst entrance song of all time.

Beyond that, pretty mundane turn. Hawk scouting revealed there's another island north of Kaya - not entirely sure whether it'll ever be worth settling those, other than as a runaway spot vs. Kyan. When The Chronic and Cypress Hill finish their current builds, we'll churn out a few more workers and the probably those last 2 Settlers. Hilariously, Kaya got AV spread quite immediately. Here's the overview shot:

[Gaspar]

In the diplomacy department, this came in from Rawkking in response to Nicolae's latest.

The one good thing about the diplomacy with Kyan is that we have an
agreement to not use that pass you described that so easily leads to
my capital. Ever. My capital is still close, but not quite stupidly
vulnerable.

Judging by the nature 3 puppet my hawk just saw sitting over a flood
plains/plains farm tile, you can use vitalize on flood plains. Not
broken in the slightest, clearly.

I got the "child that could bring peace to the world" event and used
it on the overlords-only option to get a free great prophet for my
shrine and thus +3 AC. I was sorely tempted to pick the option that
gives +10 AC, I'll admit.

Brian just sent a lengthy message to me which he claims he also sent
to gaspar about why he wants to attack the grigori soon. Any thoughts
on it? I wonder if we can persuade the Elohim to go to war a bit later
to give us more time to wait out my NAP.

I replied thusly:

Between the 3 of us, Brian and Acalostas' messages to me have been so misguided I've barely replied to them. Its just several paragraphs of them justifying why they're working with the runaway. You guys might have gotten screwed into NAPs but at least you understand there's no need to help him out any more than absolutely necessary according to your prior agreements. Brian blathers on about hitting Kyan T150... except that he also discusses how he's going to war the Grigori *with* Kyan in an arrangement which nets Kyan more land.

So yeah, if somebody wants to herd cats in the west, by all means, but there's so much weed being smoked over there that I feel like I should donate my city names.

Gaspar

[NobleHelium]

Oh interesting. I hadn't thought of using Summoner puppets to terraform faster. Hahahah.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Bit of catching up to do.

Also, we now know what Kyan's doing with Gibbon and its dangerous in a whole different way. I'm guessing he plans to switch religion to make him go away and then rebuild him later with a more dangerous configuration.

I’d be seriously surprised if Kyan tries to dump and rebuild Gibbon, but that would seem like the best play once his cultivating duties are done. I don’t think we could snatch him if we only react to the opportunity - we’d need three turns of research, and then hammer overflow and/or Heroic Epic to have any chance of completing Gibbon quickly.

Big news for this turn was the assault on Kabhalg. It went pretty much as these are supposed to go

Excellent work with the city capture for no hammer losses and two turns of extra research cash. Sailing and Trade are already helping as we don’t even need a road to get the two trade routes established.

Do we want to think about a location for National Epic, assuming we can slip in Warfare at some point? Choices are between the Chronic, Paradise City and Kaya. Chronic has lots of tiles to work and will always run at a food surplus thanks to Ancient Forest growth, so will probably often be running specialists and (hopefully) building wonders. Paradise City is reaching the limit of good tiles. Kaya obviously has a good food surplus from the triple resources, but will need a lot of hammers invested to get the Epic and specialist-allowing buildings in place.

In the wider world, I can sense Gaspar’s frustration rising and I’ve got some more general thoughts in a second. One thing (of the many) I don’t understand is that Acolastas stated clearly that he can’t get involved in a Clown dogpile because he has a NAP, yet Brian seems convinced that the Clowns are helping to attack the Grigori in a few turns. One side of that is either mistaken or misled.

And now we’ve reached a sticky bit of “philosophy” that seems to be a general issue at RB (this is the point where most people should stop reading, especially given the horribly liberal use of “quotation marks” ).

I really don’t think that a norm of behaviour has been established for what to do when you are playing as a civ that now isn’t going to win. It’s easier when there is a single obvious winner, but even then I always feel calling the game is a bit unfair to the victor, who doesn’t get the satisfaction of playing out whatever plan they’re executing with their lead. As perverse and frustrating as it is, there’s a part of me that wants to see Kyan tearing people apart so the game comes to a “real” conclusion.

The challenging issue is how players should behave when they look extremely unlikely to win, but they can still have an influence on the game. There seems to be three approaches, which have wildly different impacts on the amount of fun for the other players:
- Playing for a place, attempting to come in the highest scoreboard position at the point where the game concludes. The problem is that as soon as you stop trying to win, you start to cause imbalances for other people. The example here would be signing a Turn 250 NAP with Kyan so that you guarantee finishing “second”.
- Playing to win, no matter how hopeless. This would involve contributing to as many “dogpile the leader” attempts as possible until you’ve actually caught up with the rest of the players and have a chance at victory. In this world, any choice that increases the chance of a leading team being victorious by more than it improves your own chance of winning would be a questionable decision. However, the problem with this is that it’s a boom or bust approach (e.g. as Gaspar found in PB4) where you can actually harm your own game position by doing nothing but try to create a glimmer of hope for victory.
- Playing kingmaker, where you gain satisfaction from the victory of an ally, generally being manifested as “survive at all costs”. This can seem legitimate and logical if you’ve built up an in-game relationship, but it is also very frustrating for the other players if they believe that someone is “throwing their own game away” for no good reason.

I’m sure some might argue that attempting to develop your civ as much as possible would be a fourth option, but I personally feel that is either failing to make a choice at all, or failing to recognise the choice you’ve actually made of the three available. Maybe it’s still the least bad option, though?

I think part of the philosophical problem is that there’s no shared understanding of whether the game ends with a ranking, or if everybody should be taking the approach of “there is only one winner and everybody else is equally last”. In the absence of an established expectation about how people behave when things turn out badly for their civ, you can get confusion, frustration and unpredictability for the other players that can make the game less fun. Let’s say you’re the civ in place 4 but still trying to win, and in a dogpile with 3 and 2 against the number 1. If the fifth placed civ stabs from nowhere so that they end up finishing third at the end of the game, they might be happy with that but it goes against the intention of the outset to finish in first place. I’d be really interested to hear some views on this.

Now, I don’t think that this is a particular issue in this game yet. Kyan is so far ahead that we are all still playing to win, and the only way anybody can do that is if we work together to fight on as long as possible. This balanced situation falls down as soon as anybody breaks ranks to one of the other two options.

One more song, in honor of Sugar Shane Elms, conqueror of Kaya:

Vertebreaker.

Never entirely sure if that's the best or worst entrance song of all time.

Worst

So bad it might be the best, and clearly has nothing to do with wrestling!

[Man Behind the Mask]

To rapidly steer people away from my ramblings, have a tech rundown!



I’ve not had a check of the latest turn, but here is the tech situation as set out by Gaspar after we got Trade.

Looking at base beakers, the glorious Ljosalfar currently have 5920 beakers of technology researched (and we’ve already added a tech since then). In terms of where we stand with regard to our rivals, here is how the world looks.

Balseraphs – Total beakers = 8925
We are up: Cartography, Hunting, Way of the Forests, Way of the Earthmother, Priesthood.
They are up: Masonry, Way of the Wicked, Way of the Wise, Code of Laws, Warfare, Knowledge of the Ether, Military Strategy, Drama, Elementalism, Necromancy, Sanitation, Deception

Hippus – Total beakers = 7212
We are up: Bronze Working, Way of the Forests, Way of the Earthmother, Trade
They are up: Masonry, Archery, Code of Laws, Construction, Message from the Deep, Sanitation, Stirrups

Sheaim – Total beakers = 4629
We are up: Fishing, Cartography, Philosophy, Sailing, Horseback Riding, Way of the Forests, Way of the Earthmother, Trade, Hunting, Priesthood
They are up: Masonry, Code of Laws, Construction, Knowledge of the Ether, Necromancy, Sanitation

Grigori – Total beakers = 3795
We are up: Philosophy, Horseback Riding, Way of the Forests, Way of the Earthmother, Hunting, Priesthood (some of these are actually blocked for the Grigori, of course)
They are up: Masonry, Knowledge of the Ether

Elohim – Total beakers = 3747
We are up: Cartography, Writing, Bronze Working, Way of the Forests, Way of the Earthmother, Trade, Hunting, Priesthood
They are up: Masonry, Way of the Wise, Code of Laws, Orders from Heaven

[Gaspar]

Lots to digest here. If RB had awards, I think you might be dedlurker of the year, MBTM.

[quote=Man Behind the Mask]I’d be seriously surprised if Kyan tries to dump and rebuild Gibbon, but that would seem like the best play once his cultivating duties are done. I don’t think we could snatch him if we only react to the opportunity - we’d need three turns of research, and then hammer overflow and/or Heroic Epic to have any chance of completing Gibbon quickly.[/quote]


I doubt he'd do this in a normal situation where he wasn't so far ahead, but it seems like the sort of fancy play Krill would advocate in this sort of situation. Roughly akin to asking if you can build Cristo to "get it over with faster."

[quote=Man Behind the Mask]Do we want to think about a location for National Epic, assuming we can slip in Warfare at some point? Choices are between the Chronic, Paradise City and Kaya. Chronic has lots of tiles to work and will always run at a food surplus thanks to Ancient Forest growth, so will probably often be running specialists and (hopefully) building wonders. Paradise City is reaching the limit of good tiles. Kaya obviously has a good food surplus from the triple resources, but will need a lot of hammers invested to get the Epic and specialist-allowing buildings in place.[/quote]

Instinctively, I think the capital might be the best place, since its likely to build wonders and be ahead on food all game, as you suggested. Probably I would consider Paradise City next, if we got the Leaves shrine that's a couple more GP spots. Kaya has a ton of food but is way behind in development.


[quote=Man Behind the Mask]In the wider world, I can sense Gaspar’s frustration rising and I’ve got some more general thoughts in a second. One thing (of the many) I don’t understand is that Acolastas stated clearly that he can’t get involved in a Clown dogpile because he has a NAP, yet Brian seems convinced that the Clowns are helping to attack the Grigori in a few turns. One side of that is either mistaken or misled.[/quote]

Unquestionably the global politics make little sense even out of context in this game. In context they make even less. Kyan has them all dancing to his beat, though.

[quote=Man Behind the Mask]<snip good stuff>

I really don’t think that a norm of behaviour has been established for what to do when you are playing as a civ that now isn’t going to win. <snip more good stuff>

I think you ask an interesting question. I've been in a lot of different places in this debate and it pretty much is the whole of the metagame. In PBEM12 I kinda/sorta tried to engineer a dogpile and ended up trying to just play my best game and landed 3rd. In PB4 we ruined our Civ which was probably headed for a 3rd-4th place finish to try and catch the leader and ended up getting trashed. In PBEM14 I got hit with a "stop the leader" assault that worked. It feels really lousy when the players are so far behind that they're acheiving nothing other than spiting you. I don't think its so bad for the 2/3 Civ's joining up against one though. Its just common sense. But its the nature of the game that everyone wants everyone else to make the best choices for them. I think ultimately the logical decision is to do what makes the game fun for you without inordinately ruining the fun of others. For me right now that's to encourage the dogpile while working towards a peaceful victory condition. For Brian and Acal maybe its to settle an old grudge.

On the tech front, I knew we were behind the Hippus but surprised its by so much. The main thing there is just how much of a tiered game this is. The Clowns are sooo far ahead.

[Mardoc]

Hmm, one interesting consequence: we ought to get significant 'other civ known' bonuses for KoTE and the route to Sanitation.

[Gaspar]

I've got to turn in early tonight and won't be able to get at the save until ~16:00 EDT tomorrow. So MBTM or Mardoc, if it comes in late, please do play and keep it moving if you can. Research can go back on. Other than that, nothing really worth mentioning - I trust your respective judgements.

And by the by, completely forgot about that tragic Steve Regal entrance. Jive Soul Bro is a classic though.

[Mardoc]

And, the save came in right before bed for me, so I managed to grab it. We may be losing, but at least we're losing at a quick pace .

1-turned Way of the Wicked, next we can go for Corruption of Spirit, then...I'm not sure. Maybe that'll be the time to pick up our bonus beakers and go up Masonry -> Construction -> Sanitation. Between a Mage Guild and a bunch of Ashen Veil temples, plus all our leftover Markets, Carnivals, Libraries, Kilmorph temples, etc, we'll have a lot of building still to do. Either that, or spend 10 turns and go up to Taxation via Currency - another set of trade routes would help, and we've got an absolute ton of villages/towns that would appreciate the boost. I think I lean Taxation for now.

Now that our military plans are met, the PoL are dispersing, to plant forests anywhere and everywhere, when they're not summoning Tigers to stick into cages. The only build decision I had was Where it's At, I decided to start it on a carnival. Hard choice, though - library would pay off quite well here too.

[NobleHelium]

Sanitation for sure I say. Food is power. And it's a lot cheaper.