[LURKERS] PB27 Map & Lurking: Walking in a :weed: wonderland

[GermanJoey]

Oh wow, a MoM race between two of the frontrunners, that's exciting! It looks like they even have it planned to fall on the exact same turn. I love how much drama there is in this game, it's really fun to follow.

Speaking of drama, I do feel bad for AT. He's really getting dogpiled strangely hard, despite there being many other civs a lot weaker than him. Molach attacking him so early despite there being so much unfilled awesome land is surprising, but it looks like it was the right move. Ichabod is preoccupied with dtay, Adrien is super behind, and now AT is in a quagmire from three sides, so Molach can still settle all that land at his leisure.

AT *IS* right in that he has slightly less superior food resources than Barteq and Molach (Barteq has three 5f+ 6fh land resources nearby him, outside the capital, not counting what is pretty much an island pig that will likely be his last city to settle, and Molach has 4, while AT has just the wetwheat and grasspig at his 2nd city), but that's not to say that AT's land is bad at all. He has approximately a billion floodplains, sheeps, and cows, and if anything can do well with lots of strong-yet-not-strongest tiles it is a Pro civ. His real problem is that his 3rd and 4th cities were both settled without first-ring food, and thus were insanely slow even with a Pro granary. I'm still amazed that he planted two cities at that cluster of 4 sheeps without getting a single one in first-ring borders! He also got Pottery pretty late, considering how cheap the ancient-era techs were... I think it was his last 2nd-row, non-religous tech. The thing about fast granaries as a trait is that the trait is only powerful when when you get your granaries... fast...

There's also no reason that Barteq should be able to claim a spot 11 tiles north of his capital when it is 5 tiles from AT's... which also blocked off a pig and wet-corn that I thought would go to AT.

Well, AT's still not out of this yet. If he can get some Pro archers up in a walled city, Barteq's 5 str jags will fall flat on their ass and then he has a chance to counter-attack with Keshiks.

[GermanJoey]

Serdoa/NH's thread is funny... they constantly sound so depressed about their game, but then every two weeks or so Serdoa is like "oh yeah, by the way, we're 3rd in CY (despite only Pro for early game) and 1st in GNP (despite having basically zero culture)" And then their neighbor situation is fantastic; taotao is super strong, sure, but while taotao, donovan, and CH are basically out of room, team england has settled such that they still have an open front to their NE plus a huge, rich backfill area to their E and SE that could contain like a half dozen good cities.

[Bobchillingworth]

And then their neighbor situation is fantastic; while taotao and donovan are out of room, team england has settled such that they still have an open front to their NE plus a huge, rich backfill area that could contain like a half dozen cities.

... Which is another way of saying that two neighbors have a strong incentive to turn toward conquest while England still needs to invest in Settlers.

[GermanJoey]

That is true. BUT! Protective Longbows.

[The Black Sword]

Sounds like Serdoa/NH can speed things up to T89 if they can fit the tech in earlier while Tao can't beat T90. I'd tend to think ~50h wealth building is worth it to ensure a 450h wonder. Do they think they need to do it though?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Not much to report on from T78, but there is one thing...

Aside from the incredible luck popping so much free commerce at his capital, CH, please, for the love of all that is holy, whip some workers off these unimproved forest tiles and start chopping out...anything. Settlers NE to block off as much land to your uncontested east would be a start. Turn 78. Look at the forests!!!! What are you saving them for? I'm counting five unimproved forests being worked. Ouch.

Also, since I'm already being critical, I don't love the dotmap and I haven't from T0. I played a SP game from this start. MP and O are in good places, T not so much but given the capital location this was much harder for him. While I can't totally claim ignorance over the map, I did move the scout T0 and "discovered" the river corn and moved the cap NW to settle for a much stronger capital. I didn't have any specific knowledge/recollection of that resource from the map creation process but it made the start a lot faster for me than for CH. And, obviously, chopping helps. Fenn, help your guy out! Less roads, more chop.

[BRickAstley]

Please Boldly, more posts critically demeaning all of the players in the game.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Please Boldly, more posts critically demeaning all of the players in the game.

Oh, my turn! I only played out TheWannabe's Egypt start, but I like my expanded dotmap quite a bit. He'll have to get Krill and HAK to go along with it, but whatever, we're just spit balling here:

The West - Emphasis placed on settling up in the face of the Maya, then killing them. AI HAK did a terrible job of surviving, as neither holkan nor archer spam are an effective counter to RtR Death Swords.

Conquer in the direction of the arrow!

The North - Emphasis placed on leaving China alone until I was done with Maya, and then dealing with an Unwise War Declaration. Admittedly, this is a slightly different situation than TheWannabe is dealing with in the real game, since Krill settled a cool line of cities right into his face and got away with it. AI Krill was a chump though, and didn't find defending with lots of axes a bad idea against war chariots.

Follow that arrow, it's a great battle plan!

I abandoned playing this out a month and a half ago since it was taking so long to do war turns against the AI. Otherwise this could have been an easy sweep of the continent from TheWannabe's decidedly advantageous corner position. I wonder if whoever emerges in this game will come to lament the size of the map? Conquest is right out, just like in PB18. Conquer unto concession, yeah, but actual domination...no way.

[BRickAstley]

I abandoned playing this out a month and a half ago since it was taking so long to do war turns against the AI. Otherwise this could have been an easy sweep of the continent from TheWannabe's decidedly advantageous corner position. I wonder if whoever emerges in this game will come to lament the size of the map? Conquest is right out, just like in PB18. Conquer unto concession, yeah, but actual domination...no way.

Only so much you can do when working with 23 players.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah, it's a statement, not a criticism. Big games need big maps.