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[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia
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(May 26th, 2014, 12:46)MindyMcCready Wrote: Interesting. So if I understand this correctly: Yeah, it does feel awfully brave! Maybe they have a personality read on me and know I really want to play a peaceful early game? From the power graph, their drop on T54 was just 1 point, and I have them whipping on T53, so that's probably all it is. Here's my C&D chart. I don't think they lost a warrior lately. Them going so light on military is also a benefit to us, since we don't really have to worry about building a lot of military either. I think many players in this position would be planning a sneaky military strike on them, and I'm not even going to say they'd be wrong. (May 26th, 2014, 13:08)WilliamLP Wrote:(May 26th, 2014, 12:46)MindyMcCready Wrote: Interesting. So if I understand this correctly: I'm going to remind you that Ichabod spent no EPs on you nearly the entire game in PB13,.... I'm a little fuzzy about the ethics of discussing Ichabod's PB13 intentions with you given that he's out of PB13 whereas you're not. I'm going to go ahead and reveal some PB13 spoilers on the basis that the knowledge can't possibly influence PB13 at this point as well as the equity that he's free to read your thread (despite his civ still being alive), while you're not permitted the same. Here's the thing,...Ichabod identified you as enemy #1 very, very early in the PB13 game. Largely, that's why he got caught so badly on the island - at all points you were target #1 and the island sharing (Old Harry) was his buddy who he wanted peace with. Just like, you wanting/hoping for peace with him. Of course, that blew up spectularly on both fronts with Ichabod doing committed attacks multiple times against you and Ichabod getting gutted by Old Harry and co. For pretty much the entire game, Ichabod's intentions towards yuo were to either kill you or cripple you sufficiently to kill you later. Everything else was strictly timing. So all of that 'no EPs' is totally bogus signage. IMO you'll only ever get the benefit of peace while its convenient and beneficial from him. In other words, you'll get no permanent benefit from not calling this farmer's gambit. We're simply giving up prime land to him, letting him have key luxaries as well as a resource that will neutralize our UU. Our reward for all this will be a Darrabod who's stronger than he otherwise should be and chooses to attack us when its convenient for him. Anther way to look at it - you've said that gaining control of a contient is necessary for survival. So I have to ask, how is allowing this farmer's gambit condusive to that strategy? The problem is, he's playing his opponent. You, with your spear + axe builds will not benefit as much from this peace since we (rightly) don't trust him as much as he thinks that he can trust you. Can you tell that I don't find peace 'convenient' while we've got axes and he doesn't while taking my bacon! :LOL: Other options include simply walking a bunch of units up to his border and force him to whip away his farmer's gambit while not actually declaring war. That'll put us on more even footing,....but razing that city is better. :LOL: (May 26th, 2014, 13:06)MindyMcCready Wrote:It doesn't. But mouseover should say "needs mine" if unhooked.(May 26th, 2014, 07:51)WilliamLP Wrote: The tile yield should change when he improves the copper, even behind the fog, I think?
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out. (May 26th, 2014, 14:41)MindyMcCready Wrote: I'm going to remind you that Ichabod spent no EPs on you nearly the entire game in PB13,.... Yeah, that was one of his more bizarre moves. Do you see that being connected to this game? As of now, they've spent all EP on us only, other than the first 16 turns when they wasted 2 EP per turn by still having it on Commodore by default. Maybe you're saying they really could have other contacts, but are luring them into a false sense of security? Quote:I'm a little fuzzy about the ethics of discussing Ichabod's PB13 intentions with you given that he's out of PB13 whereas you're not. I'm going to go ahead and reveal some PB13 spoilers on the basis that the knowledge can't possibly influence PB13 at this point as well as the equity that he's free to read your thread (despite his civ still being alive), while you're not permitted the same. PB13 seems to have passed a statute of limitations for early game spoilers in a way that I'm not sure I remember happening in another game! I see lots of open discussion of it across various forums. And I'm sure the early game as experienced by us doesn't have much bearing on the future of the it. Quote:Here's the thing,...Ichabod identified you as enemy #1 very, very early in the PB13 game. Largely, that's why he got caught so badly on the island - at all points you were target #1 and the island sharing (Old Harry) was his buddy who he wanted peace with. Just like, you wanting/hoping for peace with him. Of course, that blew up spectularly on both fronts with Ichabod doing committed attacks multiple times against you and Ichabod getting gutted by Old Harry and co. Interesting... What's also interesting is that I think that was completely the correct strategy for him. He had the strongest start on the continent (if not the world), I was a no-name, or at least likely down in the power rankings with the guys who we forget were even in the game like Cheetah and Nakor and mostly_harmless. I don't even think I was looking very good in PB11 at that point. I think that overall strategy could have worked for him with just a little better execution. He was so much better off positionally in the early game that he could have reached for land in a way that he could have defended, then just built up and teched to knights and grabbed most of our land or something, kind of like what Mackoti did on his side of the world. Another way of looking at it, maybe he was viewing us the way I'm looking at MYKI now? Important questions are: has he learned from his mistakes, and even how much say does he have in the game vs Darrell. He seems to act more like he's in a ded-lurker role. Maybe I'm wrong and probably it's not relevant for predicting behavior in a game, but he seems like a pretty decent and cool guy in real life. Quote:So all of that 'no EPs' is totally bogus signage. IMO you'll only ever get the benefit of peace while its convenient and beneficial from him. In other words, you'll get no permanent benefit from not calling this farmer's gambit. We're simply giving up prime land to him, letting him have key luxaries as well as a resource that will neutralize our UU. Our reward for all this will be a Darrabod who's stronger than he otherwise should be and chooses to attack us when its convenient for him. I'll say up front that your points are very valid. If either of them have read much I've written here they know I'm really not keen on zero-sum (or worse) early warfare, and we don't have the same knowledge of them. I'm pretty scared of the barbs and bad luck right now, probably more than Darrabod at this point in the game, or even a "scouting" axe from MYKI wandering toward us. So I guess I don't think we're going to have excessive military in that light. Quite the opposite, there could be real chance we passively profit from them having problems with barbs (or MYKI axes, etc.) Quote:Can you tell that I don't find peace 'convenient' while we've got axes and he doesn't while taking my bacon! :LOL: That's a metaphor, right?  Here's the point you've quite explicitly said you don't like in the past: I'm more concerned about progress and standing vs the rest of the world than vs Darrell, as long as we're at least even. The future of the game is much more interesting in the ballpark of the world tech frontier, than with an early upper hand that results in stagnation over time. And I think that's achievable here. This is because our land is really good, and just from game mechanics our time to shine is a little later and (in my opinion) a little stronger than theirs is. Joao is supposed to win the early game land grab! As I see it if we end up with a border that is fair that's not even a neutral but a positive. And I think we're set up for that. And, with the central positioning we actually come out ahead in a way that doesn't reflect clearly in the game stats because it is about where things are pointing and what moves will be convenient later. It's not really about whether they want to kill us - everyone wants to win, right? But if they see peace now as a good opportunity for their self-interest later, in some ways that's the best possible neighbor you can have because you can reason about what they will do. There's a spectrum somewhere and it's possible to tend too much to how Jowy plays and to get the results he does. Perhaps in this very game, in fact! His score, and Nakor's show something pretty unusual is up. Quote:Other options include simply walking a bunch of units up to his border and force him to whip away his farmer's gambit while not actually declaring war. That'll put us on more even footing,....but razing that city is better. :LOL: And the things that aren't better are forcing an escalation, or committing and finding you're just short of what's needed to actually make this kind of thing profitable. You gain the possibility of catching someone by surprise or making a mistake. You lose the possibility of an actual, friendly relationship, or at least being the one who isn't hated as much. See, my border with Xenu and Boldly in PB11.  And that might just be point of principle that we clash on (not grounded in rationality). That, yes, I do have maybe an excessive optimism that I could work together with someone in a game even though some of the time it could turn out that it was always a little naive.So yeah, on all this I totally admit you could be right. There are lots of examples here where players went aggro early and it paid off for them, in situations where I wouldn't have pulled the trigger like that. And it's going to come down to taste. There are situations where I think gearing up for war is the right thing to do. And I like the discussions like this very much, but I give just another fore-warning to you that you might be grinding up against a brick wall here. Fairly unrelated: it's turn 57 and Oracle still has not been built! I think T57 is about when we could have had it in a third city while going fairly all-in. And Judaism did fall a turn or two ago.
Yes, I didn't actually expect to convince you - only to make my point that you should be considering this a peace of convenience and nothing more. As long as you're thinking about it in that sense, I've done what I set out to do.
Anyway,....the EPs,...  ,.....I guess I misread that he hadn't spent any EPs against us,... . That made me draw some possibly incorrect parallels between this and PB13,.... And absolutely, Ichabod is a very decent guy. Just that he's probably our main competition for this chunk of land. I know too little about Darrell to draw any conclusions. I'm translating the unfinished Oracle into a non-zero chance at Pyramids. I'm also translating Darrabod no military into "no reason not to settle one tile out". Of course, that can change but it's suiting my argument right now. :LOL: I think that there's a very real chance that everybody is scared off of wonders by the 34 players.
Yeah, I think it's good to remind me of that! I mean, it's a game, if the best way to improve the position is to wipe someone out, you do that. Machiavelli teaches that in that case you'd better hurt them so much that you don't fear revenge.
Oh, forget the business of their copper being unconnected. That's me being out to lunch - tile yield displays don't change through the fog. The mouse-over right now says "Requires route", not "Requires mine". Mind you, I don't understand why it says it requires a route when it's on a river. But I think we can assume their 4-point power jump was a spear, and that they can easily and quickly build axes and possibly chariots. The simplest explanation for the EPs here is that they just haven't met anyone else. That's pretty disconcerting by itself at this point in the game. To discuss what's really important: whatever else, Darrell and Ichabod are very engaged in their thread! They're one of the few getting more posts and thread views than we are. (And I'm pretty happy that after the PB13 thread we now get some respectable thread views ourselves!) I think it's because Darrell is something of an RB legend for thread spam. I lump him in the same category as Gaspar in my mind, rightly or wrongly. Obviously Krill and Novice will win for thread views if they stay engaged like they are. That would be a really funny metagame effect if 34 players makes everyone fear wonders! (Because, like me, everyone "logically" concludes they're mostly devalued with so much competition and variance.)
So about the stone city location.
 What I'll freely concede is that if it weren't a border city, the orange site is clearly better. And what I'll also admit is that I'm influenced by my gut, a lot here, that says the small and tight two-road network connecting red is a much safer and more comfortable position and I feel a kind of foreboding about the thought of settling orange. Orange: + Allows fast stone hookup. I'd value this a lot if I thought that there was an available plan to get Pyramids that is worth more than 0 in the analysis. Also, slowing down Math (due EOT68) is a cost - we're poised to get a lot of extra hammers out of chops at exactly that point. + It captures more and better tiles. The plains cow is a good tile in a production city. + It gets the 3 flood plains in first ring. Thus it doesn't absolutely need a border pop at all pre-calendar. Though, it might want one anyway to unlock the forests and cow. + The river health bonus is real, when next to flood plains when we're not Expansive. (Levy vs no levy I think is so distant that I treat as 0 in analysis. And it's not a game breaking building even when you get there. Maybe if it's a city that we know is going to be a HE site and the two competing options are really close. Maybe...) + Free incense hookup at Calendar for faster happiness, vs having to wait for a plantation. And the tile isn't good anyway. + Hogs a little bit more land in the center of the board. Red: + Plains hill hammer is worth considerably more in this city than free incense commerce. + Sharing the corn is very useful. The orange site probably needs 2 flood plain farms because it has a lot of dry tiles it will want to work. This site doesn't need flood plain farms at all. - The biggest downside, perhaps: This site sucks without a border pop. It only has two good tiles to work before then. And this is costly when we're skipping Myst. A saving grace is that it's a production city - a barracks is a necessary investment anyway. But it would be better to not build it so soon. - The site is absolutely worse in the late game, without as many tiles, or river tiles, or health. But, it can still be really good at size 10-12. + For short term worker micro, it's much better. It's much easier to road to, it's on the same chess board square color as Silver for the more efficient diagonal road network, and workers improving the flood plain can quickly get back and do other things without wasting turns. At the edge of the empire workers working also need defense and one square of a position for military units can be a big deal, even against just barbarians. + Short and long term defensive considerations. We're going to need to be vigilant about this border for the whole game, perhaps. It feels to me like 3 squares between cities gives more and better tactical options when reasoning about unit moves, if it comes to that. + Slightly better distance mainenance. Very slightly - the difference is probably never a full gold per turn. + Doesn't waste the forest hill 1S of sheep. (An extremely minor point, this is not worth the extra tiles Orange gets.) There are more than enough disadvantages that I can happily admit I could be wrong in preferring the red site. (May 27th, 2014, 09:32)WilliamLP Wrote: What I'll freely concede is that if it weren't a border city, the orange site is clearly better. And what I'll also admit is that I'm influenced by my gut, a lot here, that says the small and tight two-road network connecting red is a much safer and more comfortable position and I feel a kind of foreboding about the thought of settling orange. So the points are all easy to agree on, it's the personal preference weighting. However, one thing that I don't understand is why red feels so much safer to you? In all likelihood we'll have a southern city roughtly 3 tiles south or some amount S-SW. So we will be triple-fork defending from 2E of Silver and the city seems just as safe from the north. From the East, we reinforce just as quickly but have the added benefit of river protection and the fact that an eastern attack does not have the benefit of sitting on hills. Protecting workers will admittedly be more precarious, but the city itself should be as protected or better at least until post-Engineering. If we're still at those borders post-Engineering the odds of being a contender of this game would be pretty low anyway. I might also say that, if our borders are going to end there for the near-term, then that little extra land grab is pretty highly valued. |
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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
