[No Players] Lurking in the Time of Covid-19

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Game, set, and match, yes?

It's been burned. I concede whenever Yuris is ready.

I don't see a path to victory from here. I was ok with losing the city, but I needed a good trade to have a chance, and I didn't get it

[sunrise089]

I think so, yes. It's weird to spoil the players and I wish Yuris was a little more direct like Scooter was, but given the situation I'm confident all would be happier with things called.

[yuris125]

Yuris is making a mistake by not having any spears in this force. Yes, it almost certainly won't matter in this case because superdeath is on his last legs, but this is still sloppy. Just one or two spears would protect him from being hit by mounted units and make the whole group so much safer. Not having even one anti-mounted unit in your slow-moving stack makes no sense.

Others commented on this, but I had visibility on most of SD's territory and the only mounted unit I'd seen was a single chariot. Given this, investing hammers in spears didn't seem worthwhile, I expected war chariots to be good enough to protect against anything axes were inefficient again

[Cornflakes]

Wouldn't cornflakes alleged tech hiding be illegal because it's technically breaks the sequence? The moment he presses end-turn it's the other player's turn.

I was not hiding tech ... just really indecisive with the few beakers per turn I was getting from 2 Scientists while waiting for the Math or Alphabet bulb. I was originally planning to bulb Mathematics, but I invested a few turns there (about 30 beakers) before realizing that those would get wasted by the bulb, so I swapped to Alphabet. Then a couple turns later I realized that Alphabet would be the next bulb tech for the GScientist and decided to just research Match to save the 30 beakers (only wasting the 12 or so I'd put into Alphabet  ). Since I was still a couple turns away from having enough gold to burn through Math + Currency back-to-back I think I spent a few turns putting those trickle of beakers into one or two other techs.

[scooter]

Wouldn't cornflakes alleged tech hiding be illegal because it's technically breaks the sequence? The moment he presses end-turn it's the other player's turn.

I was not hiding tech ... just really indecisive with the few beakers per turn I was getting from 2 Scientists while waiting for the Math or Alphabet bulb. I was originally planning to bulb Mathematics, but I invested a few turns there (about 30 beakers) before realizing that those would get wasted by the bulb, so I swapped to Alphabet. Then a couple turns later I realized that Alphabet would be the next bulb tech for the GScientist and decided to just research Match to save the 30 beakers (only wasting the 12 or so I'd put into Alphabet  ). Since I was still a couple turns away from having enough gold to burn through Math + Currency back-to-back I think I spent a few turns putting those trickle of beakers into one or two other techs.

This speculation was my fault, but I figured this out pretty quickly. I was just super confused by the tech swapping for a few turns there and asked a question in my thread over whether tech hiding was now kosher or not, because I couldn't figure out what you were doing otherwise . It was pretty obvious a few turns later that you just changed your mind a few times once I realized you bulbed Alphabet.

[Cornflakes]

Is there something about this mod that would cause Alphabet to be a good Great Scientist lightbulb target (?) I agree with scooter that an Academy seems like a far better choice on this tiny map featuring stacked capital cities. Am I missing something here?

So, Cornflakes has no Academy! A new turn rolled last night for a rare double turn day, and I was thinking about his tech path, when I realized I overlooked an obvious very weird thing yesterday. How did Cornflakes get Alphabet? I've never actually seen him tech it, and by my count it should have taken him at least 3 turns. Maybe 4. So, sure enough, I check his capital and... there's no Academy there. WTF.

Ok, so he bulbed Alphabet, which costs 381 in this combination of mod and game settings. There's no way that's worth it, right? The payback horizon for an Academy is really strong here. Right now my capital is producing base 24bpt, which would make an Academy worth 12bpt, initially implying a 30T payback horizon. That's actually pretty borderline, but that's not the actual number here. First off, Alphabet has the prereq bonus, so that drops that 381 cost down. Second, I expect his capital to grow in commerce output, and it may already be ahead of mine, which also brings that cost down over time. I would think an Academy would "catch" the bulb in beaker output within 20T max, which makes it pretty questionable. An Academy is especially strong here in a world where you can run a high slider all game due to low city counts.

I'll entertain the pro-bulb position here briefly, because it's worth considering. This speeds him to Currency by 3-4 turns, which means an extra 2 commerce per city (IC routes). If he's going to beeline down this tech path, it also compounds a bit and maybe that slightly earlier Currency speeds him towards Civil Service by another turn, which is very much a key tech here. I dunno. I can't imagine giving up the Academy is worth 4ish turn of research. The thing is - he's going to want an Academy at some point. Why not plant the Academy now, and use your next scientist to bulb something like Optics and harass my coast with Caravels well before I can deal with them?

Scooter's pro-bulb position explains my reasoning pretty well. I was planning to hit Currency immediately and therefore added the additional prerequisite bonus to the value of the Alphabet bulb, plus the few turns of additional commerce from trade routes. I valued speeding up the immediate tech goals more than the future return of the Academy. I think I came up with a similar breakeven horizon of 20 turns. In reality I only teched for about 30 turns from that point.

Another factor in choosing bulb over Academy was the relative weakness of commerce at my capital as compared to my overall empire output (only about 1/4 of total empire commerce). The last couple dozen turns I was working Gems from Currency and maxing production through my capital's forge, and overall about half of the game or more the Gems were worked out of Currency rather than the capital simply because Currency didn't have much food (or many good tiles as all) and the grass gems made more sense there. At the capital I was only generating commerce from a half dozen coast tiles ... and I was actually working as much or more coast tiles in each of my island cities while I was still teching.

[scooter]

Scooter's pro-bulb position explains my reasoning pretty well. I was planning to hit Currency immediately and therefore added the additional prerequisite bonus to the value of the Alphabet bulb, plus the few turns of additional commerce from trade routes. I valued speeding up the immediate tech goals more than the future return of the Academy. I think I came up with a similar breakeven horizon of 20 turns. In reality I only teched for about 30 turns from that point.

Another factor in choosing bulb over Academy was the relative weakness of commerce at my capital as compared to my overall empire output (only about 1/4 of total empire commerce). The last couple dozen turns I was working Gems from Currency and maxing production through my capital's forge, and overall about half of the game or more the Gems were worked out of Currency rather than the capital simply because Currency didn't have much food (or many good tiles as all) and the grass gems made more sense there. At the capital I was only generating commerce from a half dozen coast tiles ... and I was actually working as much or more coast tiles in each of my island cities while I was still teching.

Yeah, this all makes sense to me. I think if I had been able to stretch the game out longer and really get things rolling in Representation, this decision might have proved to be a mistake, but in a world where you push to end it sooner, it's the right call.