[Spoilers]Krill PB80 - The Long Road out of Eden

[Qgqqqqq]

You're sure it's playable? You had to ally with Thoth to get that close finish and Yuris was in a terrible position from T1. I love natural maps but this is too much for me.

[yuris125]

I posted some thoughts in my thread, but tldr - I think naval changes are great, to the point where RtR would now be a strong preference over CtH for me. Only nitpick is that I would like workboats to have mobility; I didn't enjoy waiting for borders to expand so that they can improve seafood in the ocean, and then losing another turn because ocean tiles cost 2 movement. However, I don't think Totestra works at all, and imo advanced start only makes it worse (the person with the strongest start kicks off their snowball faster)

[Krill]

Yes, I'm pretty sure it's playable.

Thoth and I used each other, and that was the correct play. You're essentially saying that dogpiles are bad, but this was a time when neither party defected from the dogpile because we realised that if we did we lost.

But to be candid, I didn't actually do much except pillage some seafood thirty turns before the end, and tried to keep Commodore off balance so he didn't invade me by skirmishing around the backdoor (in Pindi-land). I'd disagree with the point that Thoth and I allied, Thoth got to this point on his own. I simply tried to keep up for 200 turns with everyone else.

TBS made a comment about how to play Yuri's start. Very hard, but it was doable. I still need to read that thread, but just from looking at how much harder the conquest of Yuri was than I realised whilst playing I'd question what would have happened if Yuri had managed to get to corps?

[Commodore]

I love the naval changes, was it intended that ice on the sea is not double movement? I felt cheated when I realized I had promoted all of those submarines to mobility for nothing.

[pindicator]

I'm not sure how I feel about corps balance but they do need to be kept for a mod like this.

Kill the HQ gold bonus? Would make it less correct to spam them everywhere.

[Krill]

I posted some thoughts in my thread, but tldr - I think naval changes are great, to the point where RtR would now be a strong preference over CtH for me. Only nitpick is that I would like workboats to have mobility; I didn't enjoy waiting for borders to expand so that they can improve seafood in the ocean, and then losing another turn because ocean tiles cost 2 movement. However, I don't think Totestra works at all, and imo advanced start only makes it worse (the person with the strongest start kicks off their snowball faster)

I'd table the points about Totestra, Classical era and Advanced starts fopr the moment, to just focus on the mod changes (because none of those are balance-able within a mod).

Mobility on work boat makes sense, consider it done.

I love the naval changes, was it intended that ice on the sea is not double movement? I felt cheated when I realized I had promoted all of those submarines to mobility for nothing.

I'm not sure I follow? I have/had an attack sub with mobility which moved under the ocean ice at full speed, so it looked like it was functioning as expected? All the subs I saw that you had except one were double promoo subs so didn't have mobility?

I'm not sure how I feel about corps balance but they do need to be kept for a mod like this.

Kill the HQ gold bonus? Would make it less correct to spam them everywhere.

It's more complicated than that though. the food corps take time to ramp up, at a stage of the game where there might not be that many turns left; the hammer corps give immediate pay out. Civ Jewellers only really matters to a culture victory, and Standard Ethanol and Aluminium Inc are about resource balance. And within the four food and hammer corps, there's the spread limitation of the exec limit and the output due to culture which effects profitability and pay back.

All that said, it would be far easier to balance if the HQ yield was zero, or if the HQ could be turned into a national wonder (Imagine if player A spammed the corps to all cities, and Player B benefited from the HQ gold just as much as player A, as the HQ gold generated would be based on global cities with the corps? Too complicated for players though).

[xist10]

Thoth will only fight Commodore if Thoth thinks Commodore will win a culture victory before he can get to space, and vice versa. If both players think they can win the builder race, then nothing I do really matters. Right now I think Commodore is the slower of the two players. I think Commodore thinks that as well. Thoth is building forts on desert tiles, I think to possibly locate jet fighters to to play defensive, so I think that Thoth believes he can win the peace.

So right now, I need Commodore to attack Thoth[...]

The game has ended, I can write to that.
I think your reason here is wrong. If you want Commodore to focus on Thoth, you should give Commodore the peace on the second front.
Even if you know you can't archive anything against Commodore, you shouldn't expect Commodore to know that. In the end, it's often a lot better to overestimate the ability of an enemy than to underestimate.
And even with airships, you get only one turn warning ? I forgot that you set the movement cost of ocean to 2 in RtR and as such, Commodore has more than 1 turn early warning.

Still, if Commodore can ignore you, why do you want to remain at war ?


I don't think you were wrong to continue to fight Commodore - Commodore was faster in the end.
And I removed a few other reasons in the quote, but this is something I want to highlight.

Anyway, thanks for reporting, this was a fun a game to lurk.

[Krill]

Thoth will only fight Commodore if Thoth thinks Commodore will win a culture victory before he can get to space, and vice versa. If both players think they can win the builder race, then nothing I do really matters. Right now I think Commodore is the slower of the two players. I think Commodore thinks that as well. Thoth is building forts on desert tiles, I think to possibly locate jet fighters to to play defensive, so I think that Thoth believes he can win the peace.

So right now, I need Commodore to attack Thoth[...]

The game has ended, I can write to that.
I think your reason here is wrong. If you want Commodore to focus on Thoth, you should give Commodore the peace on the second front.
Even if you know you can't archive anything against Commodore, you shouldn't expect Commodore to know that. In the end, it's often a lot better to overestimate the ability of an enemy than to underestimate.
And even with airships, you get only one turn warning ? I forgot that you set the movement cost of ocean to 2 in RtR and as such, Commodore has more than 1 turn early warning.

Still, if Commodore can ignore you, why do you want to remain at war ?


I don't think you were wrong to continue to fight Commodore - Commodore was faster in the end.
And I removed a few other reasons in the quote, but this is something I want to highlight.

Anyway, thanks for reporting, this was a fun a game to lurk.

I bolded a section of Xist quote for emphasis, and italicised part of my original quote.

I would agree with you in the situation that I believed that Thoth was going to win via space before Commodore could reach a culture victory. What I wrote was a non sequitur because what I wrote (what you quoted) was my interpretation of what Thoth and Commodore were thinking, not my interpretation of the game state, and then I leapt to the conclusion that I needed Commodore to attack Thoth. I think my italicized point also came true.

What I missed out was that I didn't know who was going to reach a victory condition first: I thought Commodore was slower as Thoths corps blew up his tech rate, but once I saw Thoth took three turns to complete Plastics my opinion flipped because I knew Commodore had at least 1 GA on hand for a bomb. I know what I wrote, but I also thought I could easily be wrong. In hindsight, that view is vindicated IMO given how close the end game was, and I stand by the follow up point that I would have needed Commodore to keep Thoths' attention if I tried a nuclear back door to destroy Thoths' capital.

What I was hoping for was that Thoth finished Manhattan "too early" and I had an opportunity for the nuclear capital raze after a nuke at Pool had delayed Commodore 20 turns. That was the only route to a victory I could see, so I played as if that would happen. It's wasn't that far off what happened.

In terms of remaining at war: I needed war to be able to ferry spies (and in the event, a great spy) to try and discover the location of Pool, so it could be nuked. I used a galleon to transfer over the unit, and then deleted the galleon. Couldn't do that at peace. I wouldn't have been able to launch nukes at Commodore if necessary. And on the other hand, what would peace have done for me? I can't think of a single benefit.