PB71: Lurkers dwell in blissful ignorance

[Qgqqqqq]

I think in retrospect, Pindi's decision to invade Krill may have been the decisive one. If he'd invaded Thoth, it's likely he would have made significant progress (if Krill didn't invade). As much as lurkers cheered for attacking the front runner, attacking a strong rival 1v1 is rarely a good idea. Whereas attacking Thoth 20t later, when he'd had time to build up was far more risky - and it's understandable for Thoth to nurse a strong grudge (as Pindi now does).


On a separate note, one map-making idea I've been noodling with is to roll a tectonics, and then use randomise resources (a option in the text file of a WB save). Most players like the shapes tectonics gives, but a lot dislike the barrenness (with Commodore as an obvious exception). Randomising resources would give roughly the amount used in a standard map like PB74 - though the starts would need extra balancing.

[Mjmd]

I'm not sure how much in Commodores thread should have been in the lurker thread, but just fyi.

[Tarkeel]

I'm not sure how much in Commodores thread should have been in the lurker thread, but just fyi.

Whoops. I thought that was in the lurker thread, shows how tired I've been this week.

[Mjmd]

I really want to tell Yuris to run a settler north through Thoth and Pin, but I must resist....... I get that maces are pretty good, but why not just keep pumping cats and elephants instead of build research. Use whatever great person you get to launch a GA and get to maces that way. He just needs STUFF. It doesn't really matter what that stuff is.

[Tarkeel]

Thoth has offered to concede - good to keep track. I believe Yuris has but Commodore and Pindicator have not.

Pindicator as well now. I guess just Commodore then, though we'll have to test with Bing if Comm does wish to.

Well, that's Commodore done as well. Anyone want to call it?

[Qgqqqqq]

Could someone ctrl-F in Yuris' thread? I'm pretty certain he's offered it in the past. I've asked Bing.

[Tarkeel]

Bing is eliminated, and found this in Yuri's thread:

By the way, to be explicit on this, I'm happy to concede to Krill whenever

[pindicator]

I wonder if Pins start would be better if he switched from warrior / scout to the other one while growing to two. He is talking about working settler on size 1 which seems wrong.

I didn't explain this well enough (or in enough detail) to show what my idea was.  But what I've found is that for some plains-hill starts with 5f food tiles that it actually saves you a turn to build a settler while the first worker improves your first food tile.  You only start the warrior the turn before the Wheat or the hill Pig or whatever is finished.  At first this seemed counter-intuitive to me, but when you think about it what's the most important thing early on?  It's getting that second settler out on a good growth curve.  If you're growing on a 3f (or in this case it would have been a 2f) tile that is very inefficient.  Better to put those hammers into the settler and then switch so that you're only spending 5 turns growing to size 2, and then can finish the settler.  When you work out the numbers you'll find you gain a few hammers on the first settler, and that can sometimes speed things along by a turn - as it did for me here.

Understand if you're skeptical, but I can show my work and compare the two starts if you want to dig into this more.

[Krill]

Perhaps I'm being uncharitable, but I just see this as a face-saving way for Krill to stop holding the game up. I also have very little faith that he'll really play this game to a normal completion, especially as (I expect) everyone will happily vote to keep playing.

Krill, if everyone voted to end the game and/or you play on till the end, feel free to quote this and mock me relentlessly.

Why would I want to mock you for this? I simply want everyone to enjoy the game, players and lurkers. I thought we were about to get an incredibly low quality (ie low yield) map and that if the lurkers took the liberties with the starts then there was nothing stopping you taking the same liberties with other elements of the map. It is not difficult to extrapolate that the other players would be unhappy and not enjoy the game because they didn't get what they asked for.

To be clear: I've got more experience playing low quality maps than one would think: PB1, PB3 and PB5 were all far lower quality maps than the recent random games. There's even a summary of PB3 which highlights my views. I'm quite happy to play the really, really bad maps so long as they are bad all over. I don't care about winning, I want to be given interesting challenges to overcome and decisions to make. And for that I want and need good quality opponents who are invested in the game and aren't a clown fiesta.

If anything, I wish the lurkers were more charitable with the concept of an escape clause: acknowledge that it's the players game and if they aren't having fun they should have an option to end their suffering. That was the whole point for the T75 vote.