Yes, Mortius does have a good read on the Pirates. Mostly, anyway - he has them walking into the Pirates capital before Turn 50, which is not going to happen unless they make even more egregious errors. I'm very interested to see how Mortius plays this. I still believe that literally "anything" can happen between these two teams. I'd believe Mortius killing Pirate new city and going onto choke them into the ground, Mortius calling off the attack to build Stonehenge, Pirates getting attacked but holding their city due to a lucky roll of the dice, anything. Low numbers of units + early game combat + unpredictable turnplayers = chaos.
In particular, a Menagerie attack against the projected Pirate new city is not a slam dunk. That will be a quechua in a city on a hill; if it gets the full fortification bonus, that's 85% defensive bonus (25% innate + 25% hill + 25% fortify + 10% combat I) = 3.7 strength. One warrior will lose, two warriors has about even odds to take the city, and three would be almost certain to capture it. But Pirates would hold the city for sure if they got even two quechuas in there. We might see firsthand in this game the folly of settling so aggressively. Pirate city is 5 tiles away from the capital, all on the diagonal, no roads in place, one warrior for defense. Pure foolishness. Better to settle a safer second city, get it up and running faster, and build from there.
Gillette is demonstrating the weakness of trying to have multiple turn players. I've said this a couple of times before: it doesn't work. You need to have one person in charge of playing the turns. Gillette has both scooter and mackoti trying to run the turns, with the result that each of them is off doing something different, and they wound up with workers building roads in the wilderness while the capital worked an unimproved floodplains tile. Whoops. So much for rushing Pottery tech to build cottages! That was very badly handled, and it was all organizational. They have great players on the team, but they haven't organized themselves properly. "Whoever is free first can play the turn" only leads to bad things. And even though mackoti is one of the best players at Realms Beyond, he is *NOT* someone who should be serving as a team turnplayer, for this reason:
His writing is dreadful. I'm sorry mackoti: you're an excellent player, and I have mad respect for that, but you can't write to save your life. It's impossible to run a team effectively when your turnplayer is describing the turns in this fashion. No one will be able to tell what's going on. A good example of this was Dave's early turnplaying for Pirates, where he only posted what was going on once every 10 turns. Umm - it doesn't work. The turnplayer needs to serve as the conduit for each turn's flow of information, and set up the discussion on key topics. Without those reports and that setup, the whole operation quickly falls apart. Gillette will still probably win the game because of the follies of the other teams, but they sure aren't maximizing their resources here.
I've been a major critic of how Team has run their diplomacy, and I'd argue that this is becoming more and more apparent. Their war against Trolls makes some strategic sense, as it puts Trolls behind and doesn't let them run their fast expansion strategy. Absolutely true, I completely see the logic behind it. The problem is that it turns Trolls into a gamelong enemy, and it also slows down Team as well. That's why I hate early war so much in this game: it nearly always turns into a "War Games" situation. Everybody loses. The only way to win is not to play. In this context, Trolls and Team both lose. Gillette wins. Choking only really works in a 1 team vs 1 team context. Not so well in a free for all.
But what really makes this silly is the way in which Team approached Gillette. As I wrote before, Gillette is the natural ally of Team. Right now, they would be far better off if Gillette were working together with Team against Trolls. Instead, Team declare war on a whim and declared a game long "jihad" against Gillette. It was funny, we all had a laugh - and it was strategic suicide. Now Trolls have zero fear about their backside, they've negotiated a borders deal with Gillette, and Trolls can concentrate fully on opposing Team. Rarely have I seen a team sabotage their own chances of winning as hard as this. So Menagerie fights Pirates, Team fights Trolls, and Gillette happily walks away with the game. GG.
I don't see acting like jerks and declaring war repeatedly in the early game to be a winning strategy. I just don't. It's the Civ4 equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. Repeatedly.
In particular, a Menagerie attack against the projected Pirate new city is not a slam dunk. That will be a quechua in a city on a hill; if it gets the full fortification bonus, that's 85% defensive bonus (25% innate + 25% hill + 25% fortify + 10% combat I) = 3.7 strength. One warrior will lose, two warriors has about even odds to take the city, and three would be almost certain to capture it. But Pirates would hold the city for sure if they got even two quechuas in there. We might see firsthand in this game the folly of settling so aggressively. Pirate city is 5 tiles away from the capital, all on the diagonal, no roads in place, one warrior for defense. Pure foolishness. Better to settle a safer second city, get it up and running faster, and build from there.
Gillette is demonstrating the weakness of trying to have multiple turn players. I've said this a couple of times before: it doesn't work. You need to have one person in charge of playing the turns. Gillette has both scooter and mackoti trying to run the turns, with the result that each of them is off doing something different, and they wound up with workers building roads in the wilderness while the capital worked an unimproved floodplains tile. Whoops. So much for rushing Pottery tech to build cottages! That was very badly handled, and it was all organizational. They have great players on the team, but they haven't organized themselves properly. "Whoever is free first can play the turn" only leads to bad things. And even though mackoti is one of the best players at Realms Beyond, he is *NOT* someone who should be serving as a team turnplayer, for this reason:
mackoti Wrote:Turn playeed killed lewwyn scout, finished mining and cotage its done.Team need to decide if bW or agriculture after.
His writing is dreadful. I'm sorry mackoti: you're an excellent player, and I have mad respect for that, but you can't write to save your life. It's impossible to run a team effectively when your turnplayer is describing the turns in this fashion. No one will be able to tell what's going on. A good example of this was Dave's early turnplaying for Pirates, where he only posted what was going on once every 10 turns. Umm - it doesn't work. The turnplayer needs to serve as the conduit for each turn's flow of information, and set up the discussion on key topics. Without those reports and that setup, the whole operation quickly falls apart. Gillette will still probably win the game because of the follies of the other teams, but they sure aren't maximizing their resources here.
I've been a major critic of how Team has run their diplomacy, and I'd argue that this is becoming more and more apparent. Their war against Trolls makes some strategic sense, as it puts Trolls behind and doesn't let them run their fast expansion strategy. Absolutely true, I completely see the logic behind it. The problem is that it turns Trolls into a gamelong enemy, and it also slows down Team as well. That's why I hate early war so much in this game: it nearly always turns into a "War Games" situation. Everybody loses. The only way to win is not to play. In this context, Trolls and Team both lose. Gillette wins. Choking only really works in a 1 team vs 1 team context. Not so well in a free for all.
But what really makes this silly is the way in which Team approached Gillette. As I wrote before, Gillette is the natural ally of Team. Right now, they would be far better off if Gillette were working together with Team against Trolls. Instead, Team declare war on a whim and declared a game long "jihad" against Gillette. It was funny, we all had a laugh - and it was strategic suicide. Now Trolls have zero fear about their backside, they've negotiated a borders deal with Gillette, and Trolls can concentrate fully on opposing Team. Rarely have I seen a team sabotage their own chances of winning as hard as this. So Menagerie fights Pirates, Team fights Trolls, and Gillette happily walks away with the game. GG.
I don't see acting like jerks and declaring war repeatedly in the early game to be a winning strategy. I just don't. It's the Civ4 equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. Repeatedly.
. They seem to have been swayed by Lord Parkin, who hasn't been playing the game, and doesn't realise how poor their opponent is. I also suspect Mortius is not confident enough in their own assessment of Pirates' military and tech (which was accurate) to argue that the Pirates have no practical way to reinforce their border city anytime soon.
. I would accept Mortius' argument (that war had already been discussed), if Menagerie had decided to launch an immediate war over the contested city spot. But I (and I assume HAK) considered the Scout kill to be a magnitude more trivial, and so if a war was not to be immediately fought over a city, then it certainly wasn't over a Scout.