[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal

[mackoti]

Still wanna concede the game?

[Krill]

I concede to Gav, not to OH.

If Gav wants to concede to OH, then play on.

[Krill]

To be clear: OH is making headway against Gav, but he can't fight Gav and me and win. If OH were to try and fight me, then he would realistically not be able to also carry on his attack against Gav, or defend his core which Gav is approaching. He would also need to spend turns repositioning his army and navy, turns which he doesn't have because he has to deal with Gavs units, and he has to hold his conquests against superdeath. If we carry on playing, then either Gav razes OH's core or he doesn't, and Gav takes more damage regardless. I'm about to trigger my fourth GA, and get to the relevant techs for rifles and Cav and I still have second power, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only player with navy in position to actually defend cities.

That means I don't think I'm at risk of imminent defeat, I think both players have to reach destroyers and Inf and then I'd die. In no way can I win this game unless both Gav and OH somehow wrecked each others armies and I could then take over OH's and superjms cores. That isn't happening.

If everyone wants to just call it though, I have no issue with them calling it a score draw without a winner. It's a test game, I got what I wanted: IND is fucked and the naval changes work.

[mackoti]

To be clear: OH is making headway against Gav, but he can't fight Gav and me and win. If OH were to try and fight me, then he would realistically not be able to also carry on his attack against Gav, or defend his core which Gav is approaching. He would also need to spend turns repositioning his army and navy, turns which he doesn't have because he has to deal with Gavs units, and he has to hold his conquests against superdeath. If we carry on playing, then either Gav razes OH's core or he doesn't, and Gav takes more damage regardless. I'm about to trigger my fourth GA, and get to the relevant techs for rifles and Cav and I still have second power, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only player with navy in position to actually defend cities.

That means I don't think I'm at risk of imminent defeat, I think both players have to reach destroyers and Inf and then I'd die. In no way can I win this game unless both Gav and OH somehow wrecked each others armies and I could then take over OH's and superjms cores. That isn't happening.

If everyone wants to just call it though, I have no issue with them calling it a score draw without a winner. It's a test game, I got what I wanted: IND is fucked and the naval changes work.

Game on then.

[Gavagai]

No one is spending 60 hammers to transport a single unit for a large invasion, so we should expect to see, at most, small stack combat on overseas islands in the gap to Astro.

[Krill]

I have been wrong lots of times in this game, but I don't think I was wrong there. That was a bad more.

[Mr. Cairo]

Originally they were positioned all over to hit a half-dozen of OH's cities at once, but when that opportunity ended I figured the game was over and wanted to do something with them all before it ended.

[Old Harry]

I don't even see how to interact with OH short of attacking him.

I love this line.

Whatever else happens in this game, I feel very strongly that the Privateer fits in nigh on perfectly at Paper+Optics. Because if you opt into the privateer as a defensive measure, it precludes you bulbing Astro AND Chemistry. Or you can can bulb Astro, then grab paper and be left with researching Chem. Or you can just try to bulb Astro and Chem before Paper but be left with a massive hole where you GA plans should go, and down Education/PP. But you can fight Frigates in small numbers with just privateers, it's only when they start appearing in stacks that keep on growing that privateers start to fail.

I *think* I agree with this. At the time it felt a bit unfair that we'd spent all that effort on our bulb strategy when caravels are already the same strength as galleons and being cheaper they can zerg rush the galleons (a strategy that totally failed for me in PB31 against Mack when caravels were str3). But it pushed us to frigates, which I think was reasonable given that we were even in tech. What are your thoughts on the fact privateers can still cause turn splits while at peace?

I just played T172, and it looks like the turn will roll, but I doubt I can play T173 tomorrow due to a wedding.

But here is T171.




No.





Looks like OH isn't taking the hint.

The funny thing is we never got a whiff of this hint, we thought that Lewwyn's land was so bad and would stretch you so that you'd never be interested in it.

Ultimately war between OH and myself is counterproductive. It always has been, until it reached a point where we had to fight to find a game winner. The moment one of us came to the conclusion that the only way to win, was to go through the other player, was the point we went from friendly neighbours to mortal enemies. In that sense, the surrounding players always needed to act to contain us both, and try to bring about that realization sooner. I reckon the sheer amount of land I had meant I had no one that I could realistically attack until around this point in the game. There were extremely poor coastal city locations, so actually being able to build a navy is quite difficult, which leaves OH as the main opportunity for conquest. The amount of land, and the lack of happiness essentially pushed me into a path that has made this more likely.

So now we end up in the position where if OH doesn't recognise that fact, we go to war. If he doesn't care about this, we go to war. If he feels threatened by me, we go to war. In fact, OH, we're going to have to try very hard to stay alive. (Thanks go to Rory Breaker/Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels).

Exactly. We just couldn't believe that you spent all this time hassling us when there was no way we could hurt you (well we could perhaps burn a few coastal cities if you were asleep, but that's what a sentry net is for) and we were too spiky for you to make decent gains from, even with your enormous production edge.

In our eyes it was inexplicable that you left the 'mids sitting undefended 15 tiles from your coast. Sure OT4E and then Gav had big armies, but you had carracks and once you took SJ's core you'd have the defenders advantage. As land goes it wasn't much better than Donovan's, but it was amazing compared to Lewwyn and much closer to you. With that land you'd have about 4 civ's worth of land and could have fought Gav to a standstill if he did want to attack.

Turn 185




OH runs away, and starts to reposition to defend against an attack. At this point I'm not interested in spending the time doing that, but if I were playing this as aggressively as I could in search of a win, I'd want to get a naval advantage, and that means frigates, SoL, drydocks and cannon. So peace is not an unreasonable move IMO. That means de-escalation, which I've been trying for the past 25 turns.

This last line made me

Obviously we got the hint eventually and went to take stuff from Superdeath. We tried demilitarizing our border so you could go get SJ but you never moved that stack of 30 knights, and your 16 galleons covered by more SOTL and frigates than strictly necessary up in the north suggested you never intended anything other than attacking us at some point. Or was that just a handy place to keep them?

So where did you go wrong? It was so odd that as the score leader with a tasty meal on the doorstep at t150 you just flatlined for the rest of the game. New IND is obviously a bit of a dud, and you weren't happy about your cottage base and tech rate, but RtR means tech rate isn't so important as mfg and you had that in the bag, so why so despondent?

[Krill]

I *think* I agree with this. At the time it felt a bit unfair that we'd spent all that effort on our bulb strategy when caravels are already the same strength as galleons and being cheaper they can zerg rush the galleons (a strategy that totally failed for me in PB31 against Mack when caravels were str3). But it pushed us to frigates, which I think was reasonable given that we were even in tech. What are your thoughts on the fact privateers can still cause turn splits while at peace?

That's actually not intentional, and I think the simple solution is best: privateers lose the "can attack whilst at peace" ability, so they turn into a standard strength 6, 4 move boat with sentry as a free promotion.

I do feel that the privateer should have an attack bonus against SoL, just to force SoL to be stacked with frigates and keep combined arms open. +55% plus whatever the terrain defence is.

The funny thing is we never got a whiff of this hint, we thought that Lewwyn's land was so bad and would stretch you so that you'd never be interested in it.

At that point in time I didn't have much of a choice.

Exactly. We just couldn't believe that you spent all this time hassling us when there was no way we could hurt you (well we could perhaps burn a few coastal cities if you were asleep, but that's what a sentry net is for) and we were too spiky for you to make decent gains from, even with your enormous production edge.

In our eyes it was inexplicable that you left the 'mids sitting undefended 15 tiles from your coast. Sure OT4E and then Gav had big armies, but you had carracks and once you took SJ's core you'd have the defenders advantage. As land goes it wasn't much better than Donovan's, but it was amazing compared to Lewwyn and much closer to you. With that land you'd have about 4 civ's worth of land and could have fought Gav to a standstill if he did want to attack.

I don't think you realise this, but I did not have the capacity to build boats on the east coast, even at the end. To have put together an army that was capable of attacking superjm was not possible whilst also getting the tech to defend from your circumnavigation boats (also, I originally thought circumnavigation was off, so it was a bit of a surprise when you got it).

This is the turn report for T154. I had about 80 hpt worth of production in the far south, on your borders. but only 18hpt on the east coast. Literally, from 18hpt available in all my coastal cities from TX along to AoM. I didn't even have Compass at that time either. When you think about the production advantage, a lot of it was locked away in inland cities, or came from cities that had been settled in the last phase of expansion and came online right at the start of our hostilities and didn't have any other infrastructure.

What I don't think you had eyes on was Gav's attack on Ot4E around T158, which actually occured before my power caught up even with yours. If I had built up, positioned and attacked Superjm, which couldn't have occured before T175, then I would have ended up attacking into cuirs, and opening up superjm for the conquest by Gav that happened anyway. On top of that, it would have opened up the entire west coast to razing from your navy.

Obviously we got the hint eventually and went to take stuff from Superdeath. We tried demilitarizing our border so you could go get SJ but you never moved that stack of 30 knights, and your 16 galleons covered by more SOTL and frigates than strictly necessary up in the north suggested you never intended anything other than attacking us at some point. Or was that just a handy place to keep them?

By the time the border was becoming demilitarized the game was over for me. This economy basically flatlined because it was built around workshops and watermills, and I only just got the Education and haven't research Economics yet. I had to go to Chem, and Mil Sci, and Steel, to manage the Astro and Chem bulbs you did! If I hadn't crawled to them, you'd have been able to just walk all over the coast and raze enough good cities to prepare for a later conquest once I was stuck between Gav and yourself, and you'd have been free and clear to compete with Gav for the win.

The units were stacked there because, as you said, best place to leave them. I did send a good chunk of units over to deal with Gav, but I did have a fair few boats of there anyway. The galleons were there in case I got an opportunity to go and put Lewwyn out of his misery. It's not like I got any use out of them, because I was never able to scrape the hammers together to use the transports.

So where did you go wrong? It was so odd that as the score leader with a tasty meal on the doorstep at t150 you just flatlined for the rest of the game. New IND is obviously a bit of a dud, and you weren't happy about your cottage base and tech rate, but RtR means tech rate isn't so important as mfg and you had that in the bag, so why so despondent?

I do not think it is possible to understand why the specific macro decisions were made without reading through the first 80 turns of the game. The obvious reply to the above comments is "settle coastal cities earlier, prioritise them". I couldn't. Other than the incense at the start, the only happy resources available were the furs 10 tiles to the north of the capital, and the gems 13 tiles south of the capital. Then there was the sugar 10 tiles south of the capital, but the gems and sugar were on jungle and then the gems was covered by a barb city.
I capped out both horizontal and vertical expansion at the same time. I don't think I've ever done that in an RB game. The second retort to expanding, would be to use a completely different dotmap. Again, there weren't any other available city locations that had available food resources. The second city had a grass sheep and the capital sheep that I moved away from. The nearest Hunting food resource was 7 tiles away, in a direction other than the happiness and strategic resources (not that you'd know that at the time). On top of this, I also lost the first scouting warrior, and about 3 chariots at over 90% odds (I lost one attacking a barb warrior on flatland).

I lost the Pyramids to superjm because I didn't have stone, or standard IND wonder bonus. If I had either, I would have gotten Mids. But Mids was the third choice wonder: I tried to Oracle. It fell the turn I dumped overflow into Myst. I tried for GW, so I wouldn't get crippled by unit costs. Elkad built that and then died. I tried for Mids and lost that, but the wonder gold helped salvage the economy and is what got me to IW, Currency and Calendar in some fashion. I then lost MoM to OT4E and finally just went for Parth for the same reasons you did.

I don't think I could have played the first 90 turns or so much differently given this leader/civ choice. IND did nothing. I built 2 NE, 2 HE, and built both Moai on the same turn. I don't think they paid back their own price. One of the NE was used to push out a single GP. I don't think it is hyperbole to say that I played this game with a single trait and the equivalent of a half decent civ (I never built the UB, I used the UU, and the half price base forge is about equal to a UB in value). To call it a dud is an understatement. I think that because of the lack of a second useful trait, I bottlenecked the economy after 80 turns, and then all of the growth that should have come earlier was delayed, which is what pushed back all of the potential interventions and attacks. All for a second Heroic Epic.

It wasn't possible to build more cottages before that bottleneck. It wasn't possible to grow more vertically. There wasn't another tech path that worked because all the wonders and religions were taken. IND removed enough choice from how to play the first 80 turns, that any other trait would have provided, and I can't see the late game payoff from it. I actually don't agree that tech rate doesn't matter, the balance between production and commerce matters, and every time a player runs wealth, or research to achieve a goal, then it's worth noting that cottages would normally have been a better investment in another one or two cities. I had to turn every city to research and wealth in a golden age to get to Chemistry and Astro, so I feel the economy I built was fundamentally flawed. I just don't see how it could have been changed without IND, given the constraints of happiness on this map.

[superjm]

Just want to say I enjoyed skimming through this thread and all the detailed comments on both yours and our games, mine especially as we were neighbors and keeping eyes on each other the whole game. I also enjoyed looking at the many mistakes you called out on my end that I'm now kicking myself over. It really shows the difference in experience and knowledge of the game that you completely predicted my over-reliance on Rep specialists the moment I finished Pyramids Also it's pretty obvious how little I know about playing on water maps that I didn't value Astronomy anywhere near as much as I should have.

It seems like everyone had pretty significant frustrations over the nature of the map. Maybe I'm wrong but I feel like I still would have preferred being in your position, with lots of land but not a whole lot of happiness, as opposed to not having a lot of space to work with at all, but, admittedly, better use of whipping to get settlers out sooner could have alleviated a lot of my troubles related to that. Just getting more island cities quicker to just grow into coastal commerce forever would have been worth the trouble I imagine.