[SPOILERS] Novice and SevenSpirits play Suleiman of Korea

[spacemanmf]

Heh, we were always a bit more circumspect when declaring war, with weeks of discussion and planning.

So what's the thinking?

[SevenSpirits]

Nice introduction, Novice.

First the revolt into caste. Well, that was a gimme. This golden age is for our protection - we are permanently entering nationhood, and accelerating Rifling as well as Steel-Railroad-Combustion. Leaving slavery doesn't hurt us much because nothing we can whip will make much difference compared to drafting, especially drafting rifles. And caste system lets us get rifling sooner, so, it's in.

Second, the war declaration. Here is a picture of the theater of war. You can't see much that clearly but all you need to know is Mackoti has a big army where it looks like he has a big army, namely in his gems city and 1N of it. What you don't see is a Sumerian worker adjacent to Poetic Moss building a road. The reason for this is that we declared war, used two knights to take out the mace and knight that were guarding it, and deleted the victor along with the worker. This did two things:

1) Mackoti can't attack Poetic Moss for an extra turn. In that extra turn we will at the very least draft another musket and we also threaten to raze vopsitoria (his coastal jungle city) with our own knights. Every turn we delay his knights is a big win because he will have to tech MT and upgrade them to cavalry for them to do anything vs riflemen.
2) We got a great general. Not sure what we will do with it but it's sure nice to have.

The knight that killed the mace in fact got lucky (winning a 34%ish battle) and now has 12xp, so we can build the Heroic Epic now regardless of what we do with the general.

So basically the answer is we were already all but at war by his hand.



Friendlier matters: with the golden age popped there are 3 cities that got careful calculation, the ones that will produce a great person during it. No other cities could get near.

Attach Mimes is scheduled to pop first even though it had the fewest gpp going into the golden age. The reason is that neither of the others are expected to ever produce another great person, but AM is, so we want it to get as big a head start on the next one as possible. Luckily AM is first in city order so it's relatively easy to make it pop first. It's just going to run specs down to 0f over the next 5t, pretty easy.


BY also turns out to be easy. Similar philosophy and it pops the turn after AM.


ES was a hard one to get right - basically I had to either let it go first (which was bad) or it had to lose a pop. So I went with plan C and am making it lose 2 pop. Why? Well instead of filling the food box I just let it grow an extra size right before the golden age, and it turns out to be more efficient this way. Plus it has several nearby cities which can borrow its food resources while it's starving, so that's a fantastic bonus.

The best part of this though was that to pop out the third GP, ES has to run an ungodly number of merchants. And guess what? Due to taking its time, having just half a food bar to run out over three turns, I was able to work a bunch of hammers this turn and finish its grocer. It was close enough that before ending turn, the interface said the grocer was due in 2t. But hey, that's a windmill there, and it got +1h when we teched Replaceable Parts, and what do you know, tech happens before production.

[SevenSpirits]

We have a hell of a scary position here. If NoBellTollsForGaspar wants us to lose, we will lose because we need every last bit of focus just to keep slightly behind Mackoti. If they attack us amphibiously with galleons next turn when our peace treaty is up, well, shucks and maybe the game should be called. We've got enough defenses to deflect half-hearted attacks but we can't afford true security, especially when we need their help to win anyway.

[spacemanmf]

Scary but fun.

[novice]

We have a hell of a scary position here. If NoBellTollsForGaspar wants us to lose, we will lose because we need every last bit of focus just to keep slightly behind Mackoti. If they attack us amphibiously with galleons next turn when our peace treaty is up, well, shucks and maybe the game should be called. We've got enough defenses to deflect half-hearted attacks but we can't afford true security, especially when we need their help to win anyway.

Yeah. In a way I feel Mackoti's earned a win at this point, since the other players need to cooperate to a degree if we're going to have a different outcome. On the other hand I guess it's part of the game that the leader gets ganged up on when he starts running away. I guess in an MP game you need to handle the metagame as well if you're going to win, or alternatively pull ahead by a lot before you get ganged up on. If the game ends with a win for somebody other than Mackoti I'd still say he outplayed us. (And outpicked us, of course )

Regardless, there should be some fun to be had from this game still!

[Commodore]

I've said it in the Greens, I'll say it here, ought to have held the line on Arabia over Sumer.

[novice]

Yes but also Ind/Org makes the GLH guaranteed, on a map where it's quite powerful.

[SevenSpirits]

Yeah. In a way I feel Mackoti's earned a win at this point, since the other players need to cooperate to a degree if we're going to have a different outcome. On the other hand I guess it's part of the game that the leader gets ganged up on when he starts running away. I guess in an MP game you need to handle the metagame as well if you're going to win, or alternatively pull ahead by a lot before you get ganged up on. If the game ends with a win for somebody other than Mackoti I'd still say he outplayed us. (And outpicked us, of course )

I agree he's outplayed us and also got the better leader. But also don't forget that we were attacked by a big army of horse archers. You can't exclude metagame stuff like that for him but not for us. And furthermore remember that we are last in turn order. Without that we would be quite a few beakers ahead due to the trade route bug not hitting us and also we'd win turn tiebreakers in wonder races, so I am confident we could have gotten the Mausoleum in that case.

I'm still very happy with this game, I think we did an amazing job with our position. And if we got an engineer instead of a scientist to rush the Taj we would be winning right now.

It's bothersome to think that the game may be decided by metagame stuff but I don't know how to avoid that. Always War helps a bit...

[Ceiliazul]

It's bothersome to think that the game may be decided by metagame stuff but I don't know how to avoid that.

Single player?

MP is great because players are more efficient at exploiting weakness and competing for wonders and such. While the computer is too predictable, humans defy prediction... a double edged sword.

[Rowain]

Yeah. In a way I feel Mackoti's earned a win at this point, since the other players need to cooperate to a degree if we're going to have a different outcome.

OTOH In pbem23 you outplayed mak and were stopped from winning by a coalition so 'Quid pro quo'