[LURKERS] Setting Up Tents for a Ren Faire

[GermanJoey]

I am annoyed that he's blaming me for 'didn't get to use IMP to claim more land' and not factors like:
a) Mackoti very carefully blocked scooter off, making sure to always have enough power on the border for deterrence
b) Scooter never prioritized anything naval: not coastal cities, not Astronomy.
c) Turns out, Spi is really pretty strong in these late-era games.  

Yeah, sure, there were one-tile blockade points available.  There were six of them!  Per team!  Scooter could have grabbed some extra land toward Plako and RMOG, he could have grabbed some extra islands, he could have built a navy and sailed around the chokepoint - every time he didn't, it was a choice.  It was a choice to grab the short term power at the expense of the longer term potential.

The borderlands were lower quality land than the middle, yes.  That was deliberate to make people choose between claiming more than their fair share vs. claiming the strong cities first.  Imp + strong cities first ought to have let scooter be the first team ready for war, and get the borderlands anyway.

That said, I think I agree with Commodore

Aggressing PLAKO is nothing for the burnt out.

Except that you can substitute any of his neighbors for that.  Pretty much any of the options for grabbing more than his fair share would have required awkward borders - which could have been defensible, but only at the cost of constant vigilance.

IMHO this map is one of the best pitboss maps this site's ever had, I wouldn't worry about his complaints. Scooter burns outta every pitboss he plays like this... hell, even PB13, where he just had to coast to a win.

I still Imp was really good on this map *specifically* because the contested land (the islands and chokepoints) were so *strategically* important, even if their yields weren't as impressive as the core areas. But, considering borderlands get settled so much later than the core, and thus that area will end up far less developed anyways, the yields there weren't important to begin with. But, like you and others have said, Scooter and Sulla ignored those spots because they wanted to brag about how much better their T40 demographics were. His post also implies that their use of Imp was optimal, but if you look at what their early status and compare to the sims TBS and I were running early in this thread, you can see that's not the case either. 

Scooter's claim that he didn't want to attack the Dutch because "the Dutch are good players," despite being far ahead of them, really got under my skin. Like, well, so what? First of all, always assume your opponents are good players! Second of all, neither of them have played civ in like 3 years and made tons of mistakes in this game. Plus, even if you're still thinking of oledavey as he was in his prime, just compare your damn civs! The Aztecs were way stronger than the Dutch at every single point this game! And then they got invaded, so, well, here's a crazy goddamn idea - how about you crush them then! Oh wait, you weren't even prepared for that! On another note, Scooter's complaints about REM's "luck" on scoring the religious trio were especially obnoxious because none of the other 5 players - Scooter and Sulla included - even thought those wonders were any good. Plus, you have your own strong points! Org was super awesome on this map! Mack whined in almost every post he made about how much better Org was than every trait and how he wished he had it! The SA was also super great! And nobody even thought of invading you, hey that's a pretty nice advantage!

More importantly, you know on T0 that you're gonna have to conquer somebody if you're gonna win the game. So, you gotta be thinking about that the entire time... watching others conquer others and then cursing your own luck when there's no one left for you is just stupid. Everything you do has to be focused on answering the question "How do I kill somebody?" Half of that question is figuring out who "somebody" is. Here, it shoulda been easy for him. If you know by T10 that your 3 neighbors are plako, mack, and RMOG, and you decide that you don't want to fight plako or mack if at all possible - and I also agree with you two, this is reasonable to think! - then you gotta start planning *then*, on T10, on when/how you're gonna kill RMOG. That might mean making reach plants against plako to make sure he's not able to interfere, or planting a key canal city near RMOG instead of planting a good production city earlier that will enable you to invade the dutch by surprise much later. Maybe it means skirmishing a bit with mackoti or plako just to accruse some GG points, so that you can get some Nav I/II Galleons that'll let you boat some cities that RMOG won't think you can reach. Or naybe you need to get Chemistry before Democracy so that you can effectively counter EIMs. I don't know what would have worked best, but I do know that fiddling around for 70 more turns and then realizing you're burnt out is not how to win the game!

[GermanJoey]

Also, if anyone's still not sold as to how much more effective the SA is compared to the Hammam, check out REM's recent civ update. He said he's got 10 whip unhappy, plus draft unhappy and WW unhappy, in most of his cities. Almost all of his cities look like this:

At this point, these cities are basically burnt out. They won't ever be able to transition to workshops because REM's need for units is more urgent then ever. Worse yet, because he has little tile-based production, he has no choice but to keep whipping and drafting and thus his unhappiness situation will continue to get even worse. In contrast, not only would the SA give +5 extra happy faces, and thus double the amount of tiles this city could work, it would also allow the city to be able to quickly transition to a pure workshop mode.

[OT4E]

Also, if anyone's still not sold as to how much more effective the SA is compared to the Hammam, check out REM's recent civ update. He said he's got 10 whip unhappy, plus draft unhappy and WW unhappy, in most of his cities. Almost all of his cities look like this:

At this point, these cities are basically burnt out. They won't ever be able to transition to workshops because REM's need for units is more urgent then ever. Worse yet, because he has little tile-based production, he has no choice but to keep whipping and drafting and thus his unhappiness situation will continue to get even worse. In contrast, not only would the SA give +5 extra happy faces, and thus double the amount of tiles this city could work, it would also allow the city to be able to quickly transition to a pure workshop mode.

For REM's situation I'd recommend Byz

[GermanJoey]

Same. Rather have Khmer over Aztecs too. I'm just saying that Aztecs were a good pick, at that point.

[Psillycyber]

The thing that I find interesting is that everyone had the correct hunch initially that Mackoti would rush with phracts. But their sense of timing was off. They expected to see phracts as soon as mack could whip a few out. Then, when the super-early rush of phracts didn't come, people got complacent and assumed that the phract rush plan had been called off, and SURELY they were coming up to the point in tech and production where they would be able to defend against a hastily thrown-together phract rush or exploit it if directed at a third party, right? Nope. Once again, mack's sense of timing was perfect. A few turns later, and it might not have worked.

Scooter's window, in hindsight, was when REM declared on RMOG. If scooter had had rifles or cavs by that point, he could have decided to either hit REM or vulture more of RMOG. Even just annoying REM enough to keep REM from mustering his full force against RMOG at first would have given RMOG just enough time to keep more of his core intact and REALLY become even more prickly than he ended up becoming. Yes, one could argue that that would have handed Mack the game, but not necessarily. If Scooter could have vultured a handful of cities from either REM or RMOG, that would have put him close to economic parity with mack, considering that Scooter's cities are all higher quality per city. Plus, if there is only 1 runaway, there is always hope of a dogpile. With 2 runaways and 2 other civs remaining, there is basically no hope of a dogpile materializing.

[Mardoc]

I'm not personally convinced that Scooter had only that window.  Two things that seem like they could have worked if not for burnout/despair:

1.  I still think Frigates + Airships would have been enough to take some islands.  Instead he went with 'just keeping them honest'.  He ought to have been able to cut them off from reinforcements and then swamp the garrisons with numbers, especially when he had grens vs. rifles most places.  Maybe-perhaps follow up with a few coastal city razes to ensure the seas remained his.

2.  Mining, Inc, is *still* available.  REM is just now starting to think about maybe grabbing it.  Scooter saw that possibility early, already has his Altars built everywhere.  If he'd pushed for it, I think he could have that extra ~20 hpt per city.  Apparently there are other corporations worth having, too, which he also pretty much abandoned.  Would have been great synergy with capturing more metal islands, too...

Do I think those would have been enough to win?  No, at most they'd have made him back into a contender.  He still would have needed to keep pushing somewhere, against someone.  That said, a half dozen more cities and an extra 400 hpt would make 'keep pushing' a lot more reasonable!

[antisocialmunky]

I'm glad I'm not the only one getting tired of Scooter/Sullla not being opportunistic enough in this game. I made a rage post lambasting scooter for not pushing aggressive expansion harder (or at all!) right about the time he started to burn out of this game but later edited it to be more civil. There's only so far you can get with an overall plan of peaceful expansion -> build vertically -> wait until you are ready to do conquering -> kill a weaker neighbor (X's in 4X).

Sometimes you luck into something that resembles that plan like REM in PB33 because of fortune and sometimes you plan for it and succeed like Mackoti did this game. In fact MOST GAMES will look like that unless you can find a shortcut like culture or space. This game plan in fact isn't actually a plan or strategy at all. Rather it is the RESULT of executing your overall strategy successfully whatever it might be. If you try to naively execute this plan, it is actually a trap - it can't actually be executed as at best it is a template of a plan or a goal to strive for. You need to have awareness and strategic vision so you can execute something concrete that results in this 'plan' like the game leaders in this PB did.

The difference between success and failure at least to me seems in how you try to get there. You could as people have already pointed out go into a game and assume you can execute this winning 'plan' and then whine about not being able to do it like the game setup and the field owe it to you or you can damn the field and try and figure out a way. To do that you need to have initiative - you need to make others react to you. If you have that and you have some sort of plan, you are probably in good shape because people have to spend effort to stop you which is an additional hindrance for them to execute their plan which it seems like Mackoti has done quite well with his civ pick in this game.

Not to get long winded so in brief my appraisal of Scooter's game is:

1) Good initial plan of expanding, getting more pop, and whipping like mad. I still think this was a good Civ pick.
2) Being too afraid of his neighbors caused team Scooter to become very passive. Basically they gave up all initiative. This was probably the biggest mistake they made - to assume they couldn't pull one over against an equally competent opponent. You won't beat people if you assume you can't.
3) I think he could have filled in the really weak cities sooner. Could have had more build queues for whipping since the cities basically cost nothing (may have been net gain after SoL).
4) Good adaptation with SoL plan to a cramped map, it was a strong synergy to combo a per city bonus with a civ that could make lots of cities. I mean I guess. I'm kinda ambivalent because conquering more stuff before the neighbors got redcoats or half the map might have been a good idea too.
5) And this is where it fell apart completely, Scooter just sat there paralyzed by indecision until deciding to go for Communism after SoL and seeing no easy opportunities. There was no grand plan except 'deny Communism to REM'. When that fell through Scooter was basically out of the game because he had no idea what he wanted to do.

Really where it went wrong was #2. It basically lead to SoL because Scooter was too afraid of plako to be opportunistic in taking the land between them or the islands. I'm not saying that SoL was bad because its actually quite good but it was chosen for Scooter rather than Scooter choosing it if you get what I'm saying. Maybe it wasn't actually possible to do anything once the land was filled but we don't know what might have been because Scooter wasn't looking for any openings, not even his softest opponent.

#2 also lead to the Enforced Peace which I had no idea why he did with both the game leaders. I can only assume was a result of fearing he could get attacked which seems strange when he knew which targets both his opponents were going to go after long term. That coupled with assuming they were good players that weren't stupid seemed to make the Enforced Peace strange. I dunno if anyone saw something I didn't.

At any rate, Sullla & Scooter played a very passive game with good mechanical work. They are both really good players. However, I wish they wouldn't moan about how they deserved an easy victim and how the map didn't favor them. I would love it if instead they focused on what they could have done better given the conditions. They still may have ended up in the same place even if they were more adaptable. I'm not saying they could have done more or anything - they are quite winning as history shows. But until they do that I don't think they'll improve. They are quite good at executing plans, but its their planning that needs improving.

[OT4E]

SoL is good thing to have, but going for it can drop you from other more important races.

I agree with the most of stated above. If you dont take initiative, you can only hope that others do major mistakes. Scooter mentioned that Mackoti never does macro mistake, so waiting the gift from Luck was over optimistic strategy.

Julius of aztec was the greatest possible pick. I insist that their main mistake was naming schema which has driven them into nostalgy instead of reminding them who they are.

[Psillycyber]

Scooter/sullla should have been able to execute some opportunistic coups-de-main in particular because they had the espionage lead over everyone else. Everyone else was in the dark about them, but they knew exactly what others had researched, when they would research the next thing, and in some cases even had city visibility. That is huge! But only if you take advantage of it....

Ultimately, at some point, you've got to gamble. You've got to whip your cities to oblivion like Mackoti did and just hope that your momentum play pays off.

I do have to hand it to REM, though. They played one hell of a micro game early on. I think it flustered Scooter/sullla because scooter/sullla were planning their macro-strategies with the assumption that they would at least have a slight early game lead in demos to compensate for lack of other advantages like a killer UU (phracts, redcoats, jans). That way, they would have the whipping economy to be able to pounce on a weaker civ + defend against opportunistic attacks from the strong-ish civs at the same time. But when REM took the demo lead, it really intimidated scooter/sullla and made them feel vulnerable to an opportunistic backstab from an economically stronger civ. Scooter/sullla's mindset made sense from the standpoint of a civ already in a slight lead and looking to expand it methodically without taking unnecessary risks, but it was not suited for a civ that needed to make up some ground. Instead, it made them too passive.

[shallow_thought]

(Scooter  claimed) that he didn't want to attack the Dutch because "the Dutch are good players,"

Ultimately, at some point, you've got to gamble ...   Instead, it made them too passive.

So, would not knowing who the opposition was make players more or less aggressive?

To test this, how about a blind game, with veteran players assigned aliases by a neutral admin? Ideally they wouldn't even be sure who else was playing, let alone under what name.

Would require some thinking to allow posts / lurking without leaking information (I think we could all tell a scooter thread from a mackoti thread just from the count). Obviously, a malicious or careless lurker could do serious damage; the former is not an issue here, but careful design might be required to minimise the chance of the latter.

Of course, this may have been tried before - I've read a lot of RB threads in the last year, but there's a lot more out there...

"RB - Where nobody knows your name (this time)"