[LURKERS] PB 42

[Elkad]

Having glanced at the map now (or the c3 candidate anyway), I'm less than pleased with the strategic allocation, at least between Gav and I.
His logical choices give him 2nd city copper and 3rd city iron and horses both, while I had to go looking to get copper (and divert tech path if I wanted food with it), and didn't even find "my" horses for quite some time. Iron was even farther.

[Zed-F]

Map was explicitly not balanced except for capitals, so variance is to be expected.

[Bobchillingworth]

Probably a mistake for Lew to not make a play at conquering Donovan now, who is currently low on military and doesn't have the population or production base to replace his loses.


Not that it matters, Krill has the most land, the best land, and is almost certain to win the game.

[Commodore]

Deck Chairs on the Titanic: The Game. (Starring Krill as the iceberg)

That said, Krill is pretty consistent in flaking out. He abandons his civ, this could still be an interesting game.

[Bobchillingworth]

In the east three galleons can make their way into Lewwyn's mainland and cause trouble (not sure what they'll find - it's exciting!)

Exciting indeed

[Mardoc]

[*]Superdeath is the straightforward option. Shielded from vulturing, no army to speak of and no tech ability that matters. There is a window to dump units onto his starting island and wipe him out. Spoiler from T154 report though: superdeath has Optics and Paper now, so he can stop the galleon warfare by pumping out privateers and his weakness in army no longer matters! Well played superdeath, you managed to push enough that OH no longer has a route to attack you. If OH had attacked earlier, I would have been unable to punish, and then OH could have swung north and secured DZ and then sat on his spoils behind a still relatively short border. OH would have been back with Gav and myself, and could have prepared his position to try and vulture stuff from Cairo if Gav tried anything, and I'd be stuck with just Lewwyn or superjm as options to attack. This is riskier than attacking DZ, but it has a prize that matters. I don't believe that DZ gives anything or relevant value to OH, who needs tiles to work and workshop.

[*]

I wonder if Krill missed noticing that OH tried to take on superdeath?  OH seemed to have the same opinion, except for the 'no army to speak of' bit where superdeath massed enough longbows to be unappetizing.

I think I agree with Krill that OH is in a bad spot, but I'm not convinced OH had any better options.  I may have to take a little blame here as mapmaker. Although I'll point out that only Lewwyn seems to be having an insufficient fun problem from the map, which is actually better than average for games here.

[thestick]

Did Old Harry ever explain what his rationale for attacking Lewwyn was?

[Bobchillingworth]

I believe his reasoning goes something like:

* I need land, and have a strong military .

* Lewwyn has land, and his military is weak.

* I should take Lewwyn's land.



The only Malian land he's scouted happens to be Lew's handful of not terrible cities, so OH will be in for a surprise when he finds that most of it is borderline worthless pre-Bio... followed by an even bigger surprise when Krill, Cairo, and Superdeath all declare on him. OH is kind of screwed

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Turn 160
...
I need to make a decision quickly because I'm on the clock: Gav reaching superjm and taking his land is the final clock, if I am not ready to met him that is game over for me and probably everyone else, and OH repositioning his units to defend will lead me to needing too many turns to break him. I have to act quickly.

I am lucky as slut in this game. Ot4e did not account for me having Engineering (even after I have flashed him Pikes) and put his stack into a position where I could reach it without even bothering to give his Knights promos. The result was a long row of Formation Knights vs naked Knights battles (90%) odds. Ot4e's main army, about 20 Knights plus some assorted trash got destroyed in one turn with minimal losses, this war is over. Seriously, I feel a little bit bad about it.

Here's the relevant picture from Krill's post above:




The clock is ticking faster now.

[Bobchillingworth]

As is often the case, this game is a wonderful study in human nature & psychology:


OH: Wonders if Krill realizes that they're now mortal enemies.

Krill: Wonders if OH realizes that they're now mortal enemies. Criticizes everyone (including himself!) for ignoring the impact their actions have on other players, then signs yet another cease fire with OH.

Cairo: Abandons plans to attack OH, because Krill's constantly signing cease fires signals that Cairo can't rely on him to maintain pressure on OH. Switches targets to SD.

SD: Utterly oblivious, thinks he's in the running for third place.

Gavagai: In much higher spirits than typical, recognizes that the game is now his to lose.