[SPOILERS] Lurkerloos and map discussion

[Nakor]

Thanks for your thoughts, guys! Will try to do better next time...

[Gavagai]

Wow, Sulla... It looks like even losing horribly in RB game can have excellent side-effects. Really wish some of my starts were analyzed in this way.
Thank you very much for your work.
Two minor nitpicks:

However, I do think that the team should have waited until later to push for the wonder (there was absolutely no competition as I understand it)

There actually was a competition. Azza had been building TGL and India team has beaten him for only a few turns.

Those were immensely valuable units thrown away for no reason at all. They both should have retreated and lived to fight another day; the one inside the city could have made it down the capital with ease, rather than dying here uselessly. In our pretend scenario, we'll pull both of these units out and use them to protect the capital instead.

Axes in IW were lost at the moment chariots were revealed. After IW was captured, chariots could reach every tile to which they could retreat. On the other hand, the one which ended up on the iron mine could be saved.
Regarding IW situation, I would say that India, of course, should have a Spear in this city. But I wrote plenty about the India war earlier, so I wouldn't repeat myself here.

[CFCJesterFool]

@ Sulla : Very good critique. However, my mindset was to be a good team member so some of our decisions were due to the pitfalls of reaching consensus. Personally, I agree that GLH was not the best opening but once the decision was made, I did my best to make it happen. Our second city placement could have been better but we did expect to land a religion and we wanted it to eventually be a gp farm (so sheep had some value). Anyway, thank you for the time it took to make the video (liked it for the record) and the write up on what you feel we did wrong...very helpful.

[Krill]

I think Serdoa can win this game. He has a tech lead at present, and he has two weak neighbours to go and trash leaving him then with Commodore. Knights should be able to make short work of both Brick and Xenu, if Lewwyn et al haven't taken over azza then Serdoa should be able to control some of that fight to round off his empire into one continuous stretch of land and then look towards domination. The main events to look for are Commodore declaring war and commiting to it, and Lewwyn taking out azza. The main competition for tech will be France, the slower they are the more time Serdoa has to take land before he has to focus on not getting destroyed by galleons.

[flugauto]

It's turn 148 now. What's your bet on when the first galleon will be built? I bet on turn 185.

[Krill]

Considering need Paper (which means MC, Lit and CoL) for Astro now...I think France is lacking MC, Machinery, Optics, Literature? If that is the case then I think your are about right with your estimate if they beeline.

[flugauto]

So Serdoa has plenty of time to take over. All the taken cities will give him couple thousand gold to keep teching.

[Krill]

Yeah, it sounds doable. Not saying he'll win mind, but I wouldn't write him off just yet. I can see how he'd win the via domination whereas I think the only other player that could win via domination now is Commodore.

[Gavagai]

Serdoa's big problem is that his two main cities are really exposed and are difficult to reinforce from the other parts of his empire. I can hardly imagine how can they be saved from razing by Commodore if he truly commits himself to it.
Also, I think his only current horse resource is near Commodore's border which doesn't help either.

[Krill]

Sure, but if any player takes the position "OMG I can't do anything or I risk being invaded" then they've already lost.

Commodore isn't infallible and doesn't have a relevant stack aymore, all he can attack with in the next 25+ turns are Ballistaphants and cats which can lose to knights and cats and Serdoa can see Commodore start to build an army from the power graph. Serdoa generally doesn't fall for sneak attacks, so whilst I don't see him losing his horse tile easily, the length of time it takes Commodore to actually build an army, and move it into position, Serdoa can still have taken out Brick and have built a reasonable second stack to defend the south with.

How that turns out depends on what Commodore wants to try and do, but Commodore will know he is attacking into knights and probably Engineering so not only does he need to build an army to attack with, he needs to have enough units to defend against a knight stack thrown at him. Commodore isn't certain to attack Serdoa at all, he might instead decide that restarting his war with the Zulu is a more profitable concern.

Nothing is certain, especially with Serdoa and Commodore. All we can do is watch and see how it plays out.