[NO PLAYERS] 82nd Airborne Dropping in to Lurk

[Cornflakes]

Yeah, think I would have retreated too. In addition to what you said, just the act of losing cities & whipping pop makes him less of a tall poppy that needs cutting. Then when they do get to the final city and the same situation arises they're less likely to want to be the one to push forward and more likely to take a bribe. Turns ticking away on the Comm-Corn peace treaty would also effect that dilemna in his favour.

Always a hard place to be though, and the 3 city elimination makes it feel even more hopeless than normal.

I was on a tight clock to get Scooter finished off, and then my stack home and healed before the 10-turn enforced peace expired. Commodore was first in turn order, and therefore I had to get my stack inside my culture and out of Catapult range by turn 9 of the treaty. I don't know if delaying would have helped Scooter or ended up with the same outcome, but that ticking clock is definitely something that was on my mind.

Cornflakes and Commodore don't have Open Borders with each other. That is why Cornflakes could not see Commodore's stack before the Battle of OlympicMedals.
That is an interesting situation for war allies to be in, though less interesting because the settings don't allow you to capture enemy cities and thereby spread your Culture (which is impassable to your ally).

EDIT: .

I didn't have eyes on Commodore, but the only possible path to victory that I saw for either of us involved jointly killing Scooter. I was headed directly to Scooter's 3rd city, having sent Commodore a Rice + (2 gold) indicating that the two border cities with Rice were his responsibility. I was trusting Commodore to follow through, but at the same time I was pretty sure (by the fact that he immediately flipped on Scooter) that he could read the writing on the demographics wall that we were both doomed in the long run if we didn't cooperate NOW. Worst case for me I assumed was that Commodore flaked and I was dead anyway and Commodore was then dead in the long run. If Commodore did flake, then Scooter would have only been down at worst 1 life because I was bypassing the border city ... in a way holding Commodore hostage to following through on his part of the joint commitment, but also because every turn counted with the clock ticking and I knew that my stack could withstand Scooter's barrage while Commodore's wouldn't.

I still don't like that attack out of Scooters. Yes he did damage, but he lost his army and therefore the game. Make them wade through culture. Get more cats. Bring in your knights from the east. Yes the 3rd city is on flatland, but it seems like he knew he would lose the stack on the hill so why not buy more time. There is always a chance both stacks don't advance on your 3rd city.

I probably did not report this clearly enough, but the game was over already at this point. I had no more "knights from the east." There were 3 left over there and they were all redlined, and I had no medics. Everything else in my whole empire was empty, most cities were 3-4 pop with 4-5 whip anger, etc. I was truly pretty tapped out, and they outnumbered me ~2.5 to 1. The issue was once they signed a peace treaty, they both had nothing better to do than to kill me, because they couldn't backstab each other even if they wanted. So the game was over, and all I could really do is follow through on the implicit threat that one attacker would get the bloodier nose.

The other gap that is probably a function of me not reporting well is there was nothing stopping Cornflakes from doing what I was doing to Yuris - which is just run Knights deep into your land and fork cities. When all you've gotta do is find one more raze, the math is super different.

This is quite true. If Scooter had retreated to the northern city, I was already planning to send my knights east and start forking stuff deeper (as long as Commodore followed through with killing the two Rice cities first). On the turn that Scooter attacked me instead of retreating, I was already within 2-turn range of another of Scooter's cities ... and would have been able to reach it with my Knights without getting hit by Scooter's catapults, while still advancing my 1-mover stack on defensive terrain with a Super Medic to heal. Once Commodore and I decided that we were both better off in a duel without Scooter, there really wasn't anything that he could do about it as long as we both followed through.

[Cornflakes]

Thanks for the map RefSteel! It was pretty much exactly what I had envisioned. And it seems that the somewhat more cramped northern starts were compensated by swarms of pestilent barbs endlessly invading from the south. I was shocked that Scooter was able to leave copper unhooked more than 60 turns into the game, while by that time I had defeated 2 separate waves of at least half a dozen barbs each ... actually, I posted a screenshot of the kill stats on Turn 63, the turn after Scooter connected copper:

11 axes, 4 archers, 3 spears, and 5 warriors killed before Scooter had any metal units on the map

   

[Tarkeel]

Thanks for the map RefSteel! It was pretty much exactly what I had envisioned. And it seems that the somewhat more cramped northern starts were compensated by swarms of pestilent barbs endlessly invading from the south. I was shocked that Scooter was able to leave copper unhooked more than 60 turns into the game, while by that time I had defeated 2 separate waves of at least half a dozen barbs each ... actually, I posted a screenshot of the kill stats on Turn 63, the turn after Scooter connected copper:

11 axes, 4 archers, 3 spears, and 5 warriors killed before Scooter had any metal units on the map

Since I played most of those turns, I just want to point out that this wasn't as big of a gamble as it looked. We had large vision due to CREative culture, and a worker was always within two turns of connecting copper if needed. We also had a handful of archers in key areas. Still surprised it was possible to wait so long though!

[scooter]

Thanks for the map RefSteel! It was pretty much exactly what I had envisioned. And it seems that the somewhat more cramped northern starts were compensated by swarms of pestilent barbs endlessly invading from the south. I was shocked that Scooter was able to leave copper unhooked more than 60 turns into the game, while by that time I had defeated 2 separate waves of at least half a dozen barbs each ... actually, I posted a screenshot of the kill stats on Turn 63, the turn after Scooter connected copper:

11 axes, 4 archers, 3 spears, and 5 warriors killed before Scooter had any metal units on the map

Since I played most of those turns, I just want to point out that this wasn't as big of a gamble as it looked. We had large vision due to CREative culture, and a worker was always within two turns of connecting copper if needed. We also had a handful of archers in key areas. Still surprised it was possible to wait so long though!

Yeah this was extremely funny to me. I was about to hook Copper on the very last turn I played before going on my trip, and at the last second I decided to squeeze out another warrior. I told Tarkeel to hook it whenever it was needed to survive. I figured he might be able to get 1 or 2 more warriors out of it. I never imagined I would return a week later - which was like 20 turns - and still see my Copper unhooked at 0 cost!

[RefSteel]

Congrats, Cornflakes! Very well played - especially your tactical and operational execution in the endgame - and I'm glad you liked the map. (It was mostly as-rolled, though I moved the players and a number of resources around.)

First off, sorry for bailing on map-checking, but dipping my toe into dedlurking this one was too tempting. In general, I really liked the map.

I'm glad you liked it too - and definitely no worries on "bailing." I'm glad you got to take part in the game, and though your map insights are always really helpful, I'd rather see you get to play in a game you want to than have the extra improvement to the map. (Especially since the players wanted comparatively few changes to the base result anyway!)

FWIW, my approach is to make sure everyone has uncontested stone, becaused of walls. I think everyone knows I like to also gate it behind Sailing by placing it on islands. Marble is a *huge* boost for some key national wonders so it needs to be taken into consideration.

I definitely agree about stone (and made sure everyone had decent access to it here) and I suspect my greater willingness to let marble slide is partly a holdover from versions of RtR that removed the Marble bonus from MoM and expired it at Nationalism. Even so, I prefer to make sure everyone has similar access to Marble, even if that means each player's marble is equally contested or island-bound or distant ... or (as on this map, at least to a first approximation) completely absent. (There was actually a marble resource deep in the snowy barbarian wastes for this game, and I probably should have removed it or given everyone access, as I think xist suggested, but fortunately it never got connected anyway.)