PBEM21 [Lurkers] can we beat the duration of PBEM18?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I spent the last few days getting caught up on the ~30 or so turns I missed in this game, and at this point, if anyone other than thrawn wins I will be very much surprised.

* Marco's Aztecs were a poor choice to begin with and since he committed too little force to Buenos Aires [Quick postmortem: Scouting should have revealed that you only had two tiles to attack from, and while the number of archers was a surprise, don't run too tight margins for exactly that reason. In PBEM20, ancient spoilers, I brought far more galleys than I needed to both my early city-state conquests, just so I had insurance in case of surprises. Always leave room for error in your plans.) he's got very little for his troubles.

* Alhambram posts rarely, but he needed to really expand strongly in the early game and at least keep pace with Germany in terms of expansion - it's not like Germany has early game advantages either besides the +7 vs city-states. He hasn't done that. He might be able to eat the Aztecs and then suboptimal, that's his best chance.

* Suboptimal I do not trust. He seems to have no real plan for the Cree and is just a bit lackadaisical and unfocused.

* Archduke is doing decently, but as he's well aware, his lead is built on Seowons. worse, he's in a corner with thrawn on one side and the Zulu on the other, instead of hte easier prey of the Cree or the Aztecs, so as the game enters the middle warring phase he's kind of stuck. I'd've liked a world-wrap to help solve this issue but he's on a regional map, so stuck in his corner.

Thrawn is the only player who seems to have a strong PLAN for how he's going to leverage his civ, and his obsessive attention to detail will give him the edge over Korea, his strongest competitor. Archduke isn't paying attention to much beyond his borders, while thrawn is sucking every last bit of information about his competitors that he can out of the game.

So yeah, I"d lay money on a German victory this game.

[Sullla]

I concur with all of Chevalier's observations. Marco's choice of the Aztecs was a bad one for this map and he's very much still learning how to play competitive Civ6 MP. Hopefully the rest of this game will be a learning experience for him. Alhambram doesn't update so it's unclear what's going on with the Zulus but this is also about as Zulu-unfriendly a map as you'll ever see. (Not a criticism of the map design either - it was repeatedly stated that this would be a builder setup!) Both of them are already so far behind that they have no chance to win.

This is an outstanding map for the Cree and they should be one of the favorites on this map. Low-food setups are amazing for the Cree: the core strategy is to find whatever spot has the most pastures/camps and then build the Government Plaza + Campus districts there, followed by running every trade route to that spot. You can even add the Magnus promotion with +2 food on trade routes to further enhance this strategy although that does mean giving up on the Mangus bonus for chops which may not be worth it. This map has few camps/pastures but suboptimal could have set up a city with a pair of them and then add the Plaza plus a Campus district for 5 food trade routes. (Remember that a 5 food trade route is effectively a 7 food tile because there's no population point that has to feed itself with 2 food.) Then every city runs trade routes there and grows endlessly upwards using the mekewaps for infinite housing. That's what TBS did in his runaway PBEM17 game and on a low-food map like this one no one could compete with Cree cities which were hitting size 7, 8, 10, etc. while everyone else is stuck around size 4 for lack of food.

But this is suboptimal so he hasn't done anything like that. It's the same story as always and I think that I've come up with the best way to describe the playstyle: suboptimal is a tourist in his own game. Reading his turn reports is like watching a visitor strolling by, enjoying the scenery, taking in the sights. It's fun, certainly, and suboptimal writes very nice turn report but there's never any clear goal or purpose. Suboptimal will build away and play around with the Grove districts and passively watch while another player wins the game.

Archduke the other power civ on this map and Korea was another amazing choice. There are hills everywhere for Seowons and they even buff up the yields of the other tiles surrounding them. Korea has been oddly underplayed in our games and this map is a great showcase for their strengths. I think TheArchduke is doing a nice job so far but I don't know how long the peaceful building stuff will hold his attention. He tends to get bored when he can't engage in combat as we all know. Korea should be able to outbuild the other civs and pull off a conquest with superior technology, unfortunately as Chevalier noted there won't be an easy target for TheArchduke to hit. I'd rate him the favorite if he could hit marco as a neighbor; maybe Alhambram will be weak enough that the Zulus will be a viable target instead. I'd give TheArchduke maybe 20-25% odds to win.

Thrawn is the favorite because he's put an extreme amount of planning into his setup. I don't necessarily agree with all of his decisions - settling off fresh water at the start of the game made no sense to me and forgoing a pantheon for the first 75 turns similarly feels silly. Freaking out over a single unit wandering around the borders, with a Declaration of Friendship in place, also feels a bit odd. But there's a longterm plan behind every choice and that's the difference. Thrawn's game is actually going somewhere as opposed to most everyone else who are kind of wandering around aimlessly. I really don't think Germany was anything special on this map but he has a gameplan to leverage Germany's strengths and I expect it will work out swimmingly.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I don't think you'd be a fan of Thrawn's Scout first build too.

[williams482]

I'm amused by Thrawn and Suboptimal both trying to get sub's scout to safety, except 1) Suboptimal thinks Thrawn is actually trying to trap him, and 2) the scout winds up stuck anyway because this game is dumb.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

One thing I noticed is that sub has an...eccentric read on the minds of his opponents. Reading thrawn as trying to trap him with two settlers makes absolutely no sense, nor did his idle hope that he could string it out long enough that he could declare and capture a settler in 10 turns. It was a passing comment by sub, but I thought kind of revealing of his mindset: why on earth would anyone at all keep his settlers RIGHT NEXT TO your scout for fully TEN turns (an eternity), right up until the moment you can declare war? It was such a leap that I wouldn't have even considered it, much less written it down.

Mostly, he just doesn't really seem to conceive of other players as having agendae of their own, doing their best to also win the game. I saw it a lot in the PBEM18 game - he just kind of wandered into the Atomic Era mostly due to his isolated start, and was totally blindsided by Woden's attack when it came - in fact, he never really did any kind of preparation at all for a possible attack from other players. I haven't spoiled myself on PBEM 20 yet, but

obviously PBEM20 spoilers:

I have to wonder if his half-hearted jong attack followed by a lack of any sort of defensive effort at all, was more of the same. He assumed Soviet Australia would just...roll over the way an AI does when he attacked, all the way up until his last jong was sunk by Russian frigates. Then I could see him just...blithely ignoring the impending counteroffensive and continuing to do his own thing, much like he did in PBEM18.

On the whole, he's a great illustration of how you can have an excellent grasp on the nuts and bolts of Civ (I do think he's a better city planner than I could ever be) but be crippled by an inability to accurately read your opponents.

[Bruindane]

I wanted space victory initially but am now thinking that it just can't work out in reality. We'd need something in the order of 50k science, so that's 20+ cities with research labs and rationalism for 50+ turns but who'd want to keep playing at that point?

That is the closest to a single player challenge I've seen to date. The map is easy to shadow, as the first hundred turns have minimal player interaction for 3X.

[Bruindane]

Guess Marco is going to try to take Buenos Aires.  Settlervision indicates that there’s a city southwest of the galley but inland.  No borders are visible in the fog so it’s likely a small or new-ish city.  Next turn I’ll be able to offer peace to Marcopolo and will do so.

I’ll upgrade two warriors to swords there for defense against and attempted incursion by Marcopolo.

  marco hasn't been posting recently, but it's apparent from suboptimal's posts that marco is only headed in one direction and offering peace is just enabling the taking of the city state without being able to interfere.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Sub doesn't really ever connect his disconnected thoughts into a coherent plan of action. Note how most of his reports are quick notes on what's immediately visible, maybe a bit of speculation thrown in, but he never stops to evaluate the whole. How much has he considered what the other players are up to? Has he written much about how he intends to win the game - how the he'll use the Cree abilities to get him an edge over German hansas, or Korean seowons, or Aztec Eagle Warriors, or Zulu corps? We've harped on this a lot about him, so I don't want to hammer it any more here.

I'm sad that so many of the players are already fatigued by this game. I personally really enjoy the complicated lategame stuff more than all the work necessary to get there, so I was really looking forward to the Industrial age or so here - I wanted to see mature empires clashing (this also played into some of my motivations for PBEM20's settings, not gonna lie). I hope it continues. If I had access to Civ I'd volunteer to take over - well, probably Korea, both for thematic reasons and because I think someone needs to stand up to Germany lest the game just end via concession in 30 turns or so - but alas.

I've taken to lurking some of the Civ IV games again to scratch my itch.

[williams482]

Man, these guys really suck at taking a break.

Good for us though!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

So it looks I'm going to eat crow on thrawn's megalopolis. I didn't give it careful enough attention the first time to see how truly viable it was, and he's making excellent use of a half-cost production district to fuel the rest of it - I withdraw my criticism of it as overambitious and unrealistic, he was right and I was wrong. This is the perfect setup to do it, too.

Weirdly, the anti-rush setup was known to everyone beforehand, but only thrawn and Archduke really took civs to take advantage of that.

Anyway, let's say you took over any one of the other 4 civs at this point. What do you do to stop the German monster growing in the north? CAN it be stopped at this point or is the game over?