[LURKERS] Setting Up Tents for a Ren Faire

[Mardoc]

I think some of the teams are writing off other teams WAY too quickly.

Yeah. 'I don't understand why they would do that' is NOT the same thing as 'that is definitely a mistake'. Plus, these games go on long enough that even if it is, in fact, a mistake, there's time to recover and for everyone else to make their own mistakes.

[Krill]

I think all the teams misplayed, except Mack and Plako. And that's only because we haven't seen their micro. TBSs' micro shows better expansion routes and dotmaps IMO. I think that this is perfectly normal though, as we have not played a Ren FFA before.

[Mardoc]

Looks like Mackoti might be the only one taking advantage of this bit:

Cities: All cities start with 2 pop, granary, forge, aqueduct and, if coastal, a lighthouse.

Seems like he ought to be able to get by with considerably fewer workers for a while by working those Financial coast tiles, which in turn probably explains how he's doing so well at REX.

[GermanJoey]

I agree Mardoc, that's a real clever way of him to essentially recover/fake some hammers using Fin, I really like it. Ties into his academy plan too, if he can save gold on the coast and then time the whips to happen when he amps the slider. Mack's civ looks really great.

That said, the team that looks *really* good to me right now is the Khmer. 5 cities (two with 7 pop, 22 total), AP, and Taj incoming in 2 turns. I assume they'll try to squeeze out two more engineers during the GA to complete their religious set? Or perhaps SM and an Academy for their capital would be even better. At any rate, just getting that big hammer boost while denying it to the Imp teams is a big boon for them.

I wonder what's going on with plako? I assume he's behind because he's doing something weird with Great People, but who knows. He did something like that in PB27, too and that ended up being kinda disastrous for him due to losing a coinflip on the Mids.

[Azoth]

The funny thing is, Plako might be taking another coin flip for Notre Dame. RMOG doesn't appear to have clued into this yet, but if Plako was saving his Engineer for Taj, and now realizes Nicolae/REM have beat him to Nationalism, he may try to cash it in for Notre Dame - on the same turn that RMOG try to! I doubt the Khmer want any more Engineers (unless it's for the Statue). It'll take a long time for any of the religious wonders to match a Great Scientist lightbulb, and there doesn't appear to be much competition for them anyway. They'll have Stone soon enough; they can hard-build them.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

If I'm remembering PB27 right, Plako got wrecked more by having super aggressive Nylesstandish as his neighbor and having to go to war than by missing out on the wonder. Combined, these two negatives set him far enough back that he'd never be relevant.

Aside, has there ever been a more grinding, gurgling slow death game than PB27? I can't believe it hasn't been called yet. Ouch.

[GermanJoey]

Well, Nyles' aggression was a problem for him too, don't get me wrong. What I mean is that he limited his early expansion in order to build a fast forge and then ran an engineer specialist to rush the Mids. Even if he had succeeded with the wonder, he had 4 cities on T71, when the top rival count was around double that IIRC, and that's partly what contributed towards Nyles' aggression. (he mistakenly thought that meant plako would be weak). Here in PB35, we see him again with the Phi trait and being behind on city/food metrics (as reported by other people) in the early game, which is what makes me wonder if he's doing something similar.

A worse death than PB27? PB22...

[Gawdzak]

A worse death than PB27? PB22...

I apologize for that, I wish things could have been different, but RL sucks sometimes.

I think Plako's just not putting in as much time and effort in playing nowadays comparing to the other players. I get the feeling that Plako's happy enough to be playing the turns and not worrying too much about winning.

I don't get the big deal with the Notre Dame honestly, everyone starts with HR, a religion and got a couple of happiness resources nearby. Surely there are better ways to use a GE? An early golden age wouldn't be too bad if nothing else.

[darrelljs]

I think Plako's just not putting in as much time and effort in playing nowadays comparing to the other players. I get the feeling that Plako's happy enough to be playing the turns and not worrying too much about winning.

That....would be very out of character. He's a pretty competitive guy and he saw the roster for this game.

Darrell

[Fluffball]

Nicolae's dotmap looks pretty perfect at extremely cursory glance. It kind of answers the lurker question in Sculla's thread about how to get the polar wine/spices... "who cares right now there is no food?"

That team is crushing it right now, although it's interesting to see how relatively even nearly everyone is. Not talking score-wise, but everyone has their own chance at winning the game that I can envision playing out. Even Alhazard could if his extremely long term plan comes to fruition and he manages to get like... a settler out before he gets SP.

Unfortunately we have no idea what Plako is doing, but maybe some other teams will update us soon. Go-go Aztec espionage.