[PB76] Strange women lurking in ponds and distributing swords

[Dreylin]

a fabulous way to absolutely gut someone's kneecaps

That's a fantastically mixed metaphor.

[scooter]

Well, Commodore was busy attacking the softer target of you instead.

Pindicator arguably should have pressed his Astro advantage, but he was worried both about Thoth's land armies getting over to him too quickly after finishing Yuris, and any possible attack from Commodore while Pin might be out overextending

This is correct

I think also something interesting in this game is the difference between a war to hurt and war to conquer and what boats mean—
Astronomy is a fabulous way to absolutely gut someone's kneecaps but it doesn't make conquest or snowballing possible

I think I'm ultimately reacting to Pindicator primarily. He's had it for 30 turns, and his brief mini-war with Commodore that was obviously never going to work represented like 8T of it. I still have no idea why he didn't contest Yurisland even after reading everything? His Galleons very easily could have forced Thoth to choose between holding those vs losing core inner coast cities. It's not like Thoth's land army was unbeatable - his power has been roughly the same as Pindicator's this entire time despite splitting his military in half to fight a two front war.


But also just generally I think I'm still mildly annoyed that he thought I was throwing intentionally when the only reason I was even dying was because he gave both of my dogpilers peace for no apparent reason and still didn't win Liberalism.

[coldrain]

Has there ever been a three way standoff between last remaining players? I mean something like each player being afraid of the other two players allying together if they make a first move to invade?

[Gavagai]

Has there ever been a three way standoff between last remaining players? I mean something like each player being afraid of the other two players allying together if they make a first move to invade?

I thought we had this situation in PB22. Boy, I was wrong!

[Krill]

It doesn't need it? 37 + 175% is a 100h grenadier per turn. And if it needs more for something, either the engineer or plantation could be swapped to the 4h plains mine.

Thoth likes posting screenshots of Beq de Corbin, and rightly so. If we have the Ottawa scale for capitals, there is also another such scale for HE cities. But those cities don't win games by themselves. Look more closely at the screenshots and there are whole swathes of lands and coast which are not settled, or worked, and put to productive use. Is there a plan around that? Does Thoth think the game will be over before such land can be made profitable?

Sure, he can make a commando gren per turn. That's still only three tiles movement, commandos normally win games once railroads are down. So all he is doing now is preparing for that eventuality, but no one is getting to Railroad, so Beq de Corbin, as nice as it is to look at, is not strategically relevant right now.

The insight I was looking for from Thoth, following his comment that he might win, was how he saw that eventuality occuring.

[yuris125]

It appears that Thoth chose conquest as his primary expansion route, he was well behind in city count when he attacked me, and got to competitive position because his attack was successful. He didn't cover much of what he did expansion-wise after the war, but it felt like he started prepared for another one as soon as the war with me was over. He also mentioned not building workers and relying on capturing them from barbs and other players. So it kinda makes sense that he continues to build military instead of settlers

[Krill]

Yeah, he is fixated rather than focused on the next war. I'm not saying this is wrong. The next ie current war decides the winner. But a good strategist would at least consider if it is going to be a long war and this feels like a weakness in Thoths game.

[T-hawk]

I think he's right - all in on military, this is the last war. Yes, he does think the game will be over before any more land improvements become profitable.

Remember military has a compounding effect too - kill a city now and it won't be producing 100 hammers 100 turns from now. In fact that was Thoth's first big leg up, when he nailed Scooter's capital.

[Mjmd]

I'm not sure which route I would take, but to defeat Thoth they should focus on one of the seas and harass / invade via those. Part of why I asked him for his empire overview.

Inner sea - can take horse islands - but its where a lot of his navy already is.
Outer sea - longer to travel, can't take the cities, longer travel, but much easier to gain naval supremacy as Thoth has not settled a lot of cities along and others have.

[scooter]

I admit my actual Forbidden Palace mechanics understandings is shaky, but:

I do have a project to possibly be able to get into positive gold even with no wealth builds, thanks to this beauty:

It feels incredibly unlikely this is a good use of hammers, yeah? He's building this thing with just 25% production modifiers. Because it's a Forge, Wealth would also get 25%.


If he'd spent this 200h on Wealth instead, surely it would come out ahead of this national wonder for quite awhile? I'm guessing it's worth like 10-15gpt? That seems like a super shaky payback, particularly when the game is so swingy. If the game was likely to have 100T left I'd say go for it, but I think we're looking at more like 25T, if that.