[SPOILERS] Pindicator plays PBEM62 (not to be confused with Twitch Plays Civ)

[Gaspar]

I'm in favor of zerging him. You're not going to win this game anyway with him behaving like that.

[pindicator]

Heh, I was expecting you guys to talk me out of it

Okay, I'm thinking no settler. We can hook up the copper by t24. Grow until then, then we take advantage of being CHM and whip whip whip

[Gaspar]

Heh, I was expecting you guys to talk me out of it

Okay, I'm thinking no settler. We can hook up the copper by t24. Grow until then, then we take advantage of being CHM and whip whip whip

Well... I'm not necessarily saying no settler. It probably requires some degree of analyzing this situation to figure out how you can best get enough units to hurt him. The problem, of course, is that he's going to tech Archery early so there's a fine balance between fast enough to hurt him before he gets 3590684 archers in there vs slow enough so that you're not all in on 2 axes.

I think what might be best is finding Commodore's copper.

But yeah, I don't think its as simple as wait, hook up copper, whip axes forever.

[pindicator]

I dunno, we might be letting Gawdzak off easy here by pointing all our aggression towards Commodore

[Gaspar]

Yeah, for sure. Though its hard to say - given the map setup guidelines, this sort of thing was likely to happen. If I've learned anything recently, it is to be way more picky when the map is getting setup to generate the sort of game I want to play.

[pindicator]

Yeah, I'm asking for dimensions next game. Although that doesn't always tell the story (like pb19).

[Gaspar]

Upon further reflection, I think you have to decide what you want out of the game. It doesn't matter what I want, you're the one playing. Like forget the idea that you're going to teach Commodore anything - he dances to the beat of his own drum - and he wanted a cramped map special here. You can kill him and it might make him dislike you for the short-term but it won't have any impact on how he behaves towards you in the future. Anyway, when you're playing 5 games at a time any one of them going to pot doesn't really impact you.

I don't really have a formula for winning these pseudo-duels, I've never played one unless you count PB16 (lol). But to me, it seems like the answer is to be the aggressor. Get a slightly better slice of every conflict zone, you get ahead. Take a city off a neighbor - you get further ahead. Keep doing this until you've pissed everyone off but have more land than everyone else so nobody can really hurt you. The marginal impact of each additional build queue is pretty huge. So upon reflection it might be best to make sure you're expanding well but yourself in position to punish that settlement from Commodore in the future.

The only question in this case - can you maybe afford to play that game with Commodore because the other players are less likely to take advantage and surge ahead due to the skill gap? I think that on a normal map, I'd say they wouldn't. However these cramped map specials have tended to produce less likely winners because I think the smaller map increases the influence of factors outside of the player's direct control.

I'm not sure I answered anything there, but I figured I owed you a less emotionally driven response than my first one.

[pindicator]

Well, to say he won't learn from it I think is wrong. He's been sending me chats on Gmail for half the day, starting with when I first posted. He knows exactly how I'll react - which is perhaps the biggest reason not to aggressively attack - so it's more a misguided notion that this is the only way he can win.

But- it's possible he doesn't mean to be aggressive towards us and he instead wants a buffer between our capitals. Notice that he did not take the Pigs in the city's BFC. I wonder if this is his idea of an olive branch, by leaving that for me. The problem with it is that he went and put a religion in that city so even if I settle a city with the pigs as first ring it's going to be difficult to get that food under my control. Maybe I build Stonehenge there as my counter? It's not a bad idea if we can do it. Plant on the plains hill 1N of the fur and chop the 3 trees into Henge? That makes a 7-turn build with a plains mine to work - probably not worth it.

Wish i had taken Cathy. If I realized just how cramped this was I would have taken Cathy ... No wonder the list is for civs was how it was. We just failed at mind reading to know how cramped it was going to be.

[Krill]

Well, to say he won't learn from it I think is wrong. He's been sending me chats on Gmail for half the day, starting with when I first posted. He knows exactly how I'll react - which is perhaps the biggest reason not to aggressively attack - so it's more a misguided notion that this is the only way he can win.

Wut?

[Gaspar]

He won't learn from it in the sense of - if he dies from it, he won't blame the aggressive action. He understands it - I don't mean to say he's dumb, he's not dumb. Its just that he generally attributes things that happen in his games as things that happen to him rather than things the happen because of him.

You're doomed in the area with that being a holy city. Pretty much you either capture it or settle around it.