Chairmen NobleHelium and Gaspar Demand Your Presence in the Collective

[Gaspar]

Okay, I'm giving up. What does PYFT stand for? And boo on not rating 26 because even though I don't know what it means I still wanted a rating

(Wait, it may have just dawned on me but I'm still not sure. )

QFT. Maybe it was all a brilliant plan by Gaspar to get more posts in his thread?

I spoke with Commodore shortly after this, here are his ratings:

Commodore: So if I'm 5k, what are you?
And fairness to Rego, he's 8 or 9
Gaspar: I'm a solid 10 I think
I don't think I've ever missed a turn
Commodore: The scale is logarithmic or I need to seek counseling.
26 had 8.5 Rego, 9 Pin, 10 Yuri, and 6 Sian.
Gaspar: lol

[NobleHelium]

So we're down about 7.6k beakers to N7. We know since they researched Alphabet. Not bad compared to 23 where they were up ~12k beakers on second place on T100, I suppose.

[Gaspar]

So, I'll skip the normal turn report stuff and get right to the overview. Here's the overview, if you're less interested in a billion screens:



Ok, to start with here is our territory:

Core.

West Indies.

East Indies.

Equatorial Region.

There's no picture of the tundra hub because we got skunked there. All in all, as I said above, I think we did a pretty good job improving our cities (I'll do the city by city in a bit) and planting them in the right spots. Just a touch slow on expansion because we had nothing to boost the economy. At the end of the day on a toroid whomever gets Mids/Colossus/GLH is going to win, you can't micro past that advantage. Even Lewwyn got himself a shrine. We got bupkus. That, despite whatever the lurkers think (and you're all assholes® ) is why those two are ahead. More on that later.

Let's talk about the economy. These shots are before ending turn (unless I say so, all other pictures are after.) This is our economy at max slider both directions:

We breakeven ~30%. Its not terrible really, we're probably 20t from the "economic explosion" as cottages mature/we get to PP/etc. The problem is, N7 already landed liberalism, no doubt took Nationalism and are working on Taj, etc. By the time we get to things like PP, they're already going to have Cavs in the field. And that's too late. Mack's killing himself with his usual overly-cautious attack on Lewwyn, and losing Liberalism basically was game for him, IMO.

Tech-wise, we're working on Philo/Alphabet to clear out for an Astro bulb. We should have that done in roughly another 8 turns. Here's F6:

We have everything before that and nothing after it. N7 got Alphabet this turn. Add gunpowder to the "Can Research" pile since I didn't feel like cropping.

Yeah, we're screwed.

Anyway, I'd rather just focus internally. There's nothing we can really do about the N7 snowball - hell razing Colomids wouldn't do anything at this point since Astro's on the menu and Constitution is in the can research pile. So no sense in crying about it. On that end, I'll end any foreign discussion in this report with a quick dump of everyone's cities.

Lewwyn:

Mackoti:

N7:

Here are demos and graphs, presented with occasional comment:

Demos:



Score:


GNP:

Deceiving a bit, N7 has been bulbing their heads off.

Production:


Food:


Power:


mack and Lewwyn brawling, each got GGs this past turn.

Culture:

That just leaves a trip around the empire. Here is F1 before end of turn.

And now the cities. I'll split those into a separate post since this is getting pretty unwieldy.

[Ceiliazul]

GNP:
...
Deceiving a bit, N7 has been bulbing their heads off.

The growth-curve benefit of early bulbs is large, bummer. In the flip side, you guys have a number of cheap GPs still to produce... maybe you can catch up a bit there?

Edit: I liked the report card, and I'm really glad I never had a teacher that harsh in grade school!

[oledavy]

Hey, the semester is only half over

Look at what happened in PBEM23! I doubt anyone could have foreseen that outcome at t100.

[NobleHelium]

Well, we don't understand why mackoti attacked Lewwyn and not N7. N7's jungle cities are highly exposed and mackoti's dye city basically thrusts into them and naturally forks several of them. I'm pretty sure he would have had more success against them even if they have more tech than Lewwyn does.

So since he picked the wrong target, I highly doubt anyone will be able to rein N7 in.

[Gaspar]

The cities, each presented with comment.

The Hive, capital.

Probably worthy of a since we're working a pair of fresh plains cottages. Generally not a huge supporter of continuing to cottage this late but our economy is in the toilet so every cpt helps. It swaps tiles with the three nearby locales pretty frequently so there's not really a "normal" configuration. Currently pumping missionaries as it is out of useful normal stuff to build. Substitute military unit of your choice after this.

Worker's Nest, failed GLH build city.

It is what it is. A contributor, but not what a 2nd city should be.

The Colony, should have been our second city.

Colony just finished pumping out Euclid, a Great Scientist and our 3rd GP. Probably the last time it has that duty, the next one will come from the next city and the rest will come from our future NE city. The crabs its working are to re-grow from GPP duty. Normally those are FD's. One of the beauties of this city is how easily it can swap configurations from commerce > growth > gpp > production.

Factory Drift, Moai city and Jewel of the empire

Currently banging out a quick lib so it can stagnate on some scientists over that Ocean/PHM once it gets the crabs back from Colony.

The Labyrinth, solid contributor.

Producer of the first 2 GP, again probably won't see another. Just finished that Courthouse, will probably be on Longbow duty for a while soon.

Factory Mine, gold city.

Just finished that Forge, will whip in a CH shortly before going crazy on LB production.

Unity Lair, productive runt

This was a link city to the Floodplains that has managed to be fairly productive. Noble likes his windmills, don't ask me. Its done 3 straight settlers and will probably knock out a 4th before resuming infra/military builds.

Deep Clustering, fine island getaway.

Just whipped in that Forge, now working on Courthouse. That equation in one order or the other is pretty common across this part of the empire.

Plex Anthill, tundra fortress

Uh, yeah. Terrible city. Was intended to be a link to the middle but we got usurped in the area.

Social Artery, floodplains bonanza.

Definitely didn't settle this quickly enough. Just finished that lighthouse, next turn Noble and I will argue for 20 minutes about Library/Market vs Harbor. Maybe not a terrible spot for the Forbidden Palace as well, we haven't discussed that.

Fellowship City, capital of the West Indies.

Probably on the multiplier stuff for a while, this city is pretty safe.

Communal Nexus, floodplains part two.

Courthouse > Forge here.

Watcher's Eye, what we built all those Horse Archers for.

Future National Epic city. Look at that food surplus even working several really crap tiles.

Ocean Core, not really worth the trouble.

The other city we took (and kept) from N7.

Labor Network, newest burg.

Courthouse > Forge.

I'll do a little bit of future thoughts and whatnot in a third part. Nobody can say I don't put a thorough landmark turn report together.

[Gaspar]

Thoughts on the game from here, our opponents, and other sundries...

Ultimately, I think its all been said. We lost this game when Lewwyn cost us Mids. We might still have lost, but from there we've been playing the string. The maintenance costs on a toroid are just too high to compete without economic assistance against foes who have it. Don't get me wrong - we made our own bed. And not just when I foolishly signed up for this game. Mostly trying to do too much early on. I think Noble is experiencing in this game a lot of what I experienced in PB4 - I had played one game prior to that with really weird settings and it heavily altered my perceptions of what to do in my next game. Noble's PBEM21 experience was played against pretty mediocre opposition on the greatest cottage script on normal speed. This is about as opposite to that as you can find. And its been my failing not to use my greater experience to push us in a different direction. So make no mistake, I'm not pinning the whole game on the mids. But we'd be in a very different place if we had landed it. And just as significantly, so would Seven.

Noble said a couple posts up that we can't understand why mackoti is not attacking Seven now and I believe that's accurate. If he had done so, he could definitely have made a dent, we could have piled on and he'd be in great shape to win this thing. At this point I assume he's gone to Nationalism directly and basically has to land Taj Mahal to have any chance. I don't expect that to happen, but if it does you probably have a two-horse race. In that situation Seven techs up to Cavs probably and devours us while mack polishes off Lewwyn finishing off a late game battle of the titans which I have little doubt will end in a space race.

In the more likely event that Seven lands Taj Mahal, then I expect the same sort of thing to happen except with Seven getting so far ahead in the tree that he's building tanks and the game ends with a concession.

As far as our future is concerned, we're going to try and connect on the Astro hail mary and grab an island city or two and maybe knock back the economic powers by forcing them to defend more fronts than they can handle. Realistically, its moot since they're both so close to not needing their early game wonders to drive their economic engine any longer. But it should be fun to put some pressure on those guys before the inevitable SoD's start heading our way.

A note on the game setup: I really dig the map - it has a lot of interesting choices to make and plenty of conflict flash points. I think the "indie leader" thing was balanced poorly though with the map - Ind/Org is so vastly superior to the other three options here, particularly with a good civ to exploit Org in Sumeria. I do think Lewwyn might have been better off with Brennus than Justinian as originally intended. And I think we got an interesting combination of good start techs and the best individual trait coupled with a worthless UB, mediocre to bad UU and essentially a null second trait. If FDR weren't so well positioned to take advantage of this map, it might have been more interesting. I think Ind should have been left off though, it gains heavily in power when only one person has it and all the wonder doublers require overseas expansion. Only N7's amazing wonder-micro'ing skill has them competitive. Three different times this game (GLH, MoM, SoZ) we lost a wonder to mackoti where the difference in timing was the Ind bonus. Maybe bad play on our part for even trying. But nonetheless, it has been a major factor.

As time has gone on, I've become more and more assured that this is my swan song MP game here at RB Civ. I've enjoyed my run here but I'm not competitive enough to win against the top opponents and I just don't like the highs and lows of FFH to wade in that far more leisurely pool, even if I enjoy the company of the FFH players a good deal more than the BTS'ers as they are all much more laid back (Bob excepted ). So it seems reasonable to just become a full-time [strike]asshole[/strike] lurker. For this game, I'm mostly determined to have fun playing it out AND not finish last. I've never finished last in a game and while that's no huge feat I'd like to maintain it. I have enjoyed playing with Noble, even if he is a gigantic pain in the ass.

Anyway, thanks for reading along with easily the most pictures I have ever taken for a single turn.

[scooter]

As time has gone on, I've become more and more assured that this is my swan song MP game here at RB Civ. I've enjoyed my run here but I'm not competitive enough to win against the top opponents and I just don't like the highs and lows of FFH to wade in that far more leisurely pool, even if I enjoy the company of the FFH players a good deal more than the BTS'ers as they are all much more laid back (Bob excepted ).

I selfishly hope not - your threads are always great. I think the key is to sign up for games with fun setups and players you can hang with. And no diplo ever - I have no interest in ever playing a normal diplo game again after the mess that was PBEM14 as I'm sure you agree. As for my PYFT rating, I'd guess that in every OTHER game I've been in I'd have scored a 9-10 as I'm usually VERY quick, but the tail end of PBEM14 burned me out so bad that I took a break from RB almost entirely for awhile (several months I almost never visited). Anyways, I'd just say there's seriously no shame whatsoever in feeling over your head in a game that includes Seven/Novice, Mack, and Lewwyn. That's a brutal group. I'd say the average talent level in this game is arguably even higher than the insane PBEM17.

I'm thinking many people seem to find games unenjoyable when there's a large talent disparities in the game. We've always taken an approach at RB that we pretend like such disparities don't exist in signups because we don't want to turn away signups and/or offend people, but it might be good in the future to try to plan games for players of similar skill levels. For example, I'd happily play in a game that included you, Commodore, and a couple similar people because I'd feel like that was roughly in my range of skills and that makes for a fun game. In contrast, I know if I played in a game with Seven/Novice/Mack/etc, I'd have to spend enormous amounts of timing planning and micro'ing just to last a respectable amount of time before they left me in the dust, and that wouldn't be fun for me at all... but give me players of my skill level, and I find a lot of enjoyment in the game because I don't feel like I've lost on T0.

[luddite]

As time has gone on, I've become more and more assured that this is my swan song MP game here at RB Civ. I've enjoyed my run here but I'm not competitive enough to win against the top opponents and I just don't like the highs and lows of FFH to wade in that far more leisurely pool, even if I enjoy the company of the FFH players a good deal more than the BTS'ers as they are all much more laid back (Bob excepted ). So it seems reasonable to just become a full-time [strike]asshole[/strike] lurker. For this game, I'm mostly determined to have fun playing it out AND not finish last. I've never finished last in a game and while that's no huge feat I'd like to maintain it. I have enjoyed playing with Noble, even if he is a gigantic pain in the ass.

Hey Gaspar,

Gotta say I'll be sad to see you go. But I know how you feel, I've also promised myself that I wouldn't start any more MP games here. It's just way too stressful and time-consuming and brings out too much negativity. Way more fun just to lurk and make fun of people behind their back. I think the free-for-all nature of civ makes it really problematic for a competitive multiplayer game.