[PB65 LURKERS] We lurk in single-file to hide our numbers

[Zed-F]

Yeah there were a bunch of other small injuries regarding city placement & unfriendly troop posturing. Also and more importantly, this game is not played in a vacuum; Pin and Mjmd have interacted in previous games and this has resulted in Pin’s view that Mjmd is inherently the sort who will take every small advantage he can and will not willingly make compromises or ignore openings in the name of being a good neighbor. So Pin is prejudiced by his history with Mjmd.

[Tarkeel]

Is pindi's latest post a concession? I don't want to prod him too directly.

[Zed-F]

Didn’t he already post concession earlier?

https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid823693

[pindicator]

I razed ONE city. Not two. For the record.

[Mjmd]

So,  the timeline as I have it is:

• Pin and Mj coexist during expansion.  mjmd' s cultural pressure is annoying to pin, but that's Cre
  
• Pin eats most of Bing (And does all the work), Mjmd nibbles a bit at the margins and takes two cities for himself
  
• Cornflakes sends chariots through pindi's territory and taxes an unguarded city or two of Mjmd's. pin even helps him, building some roads. 
  
• Corn sends anl modest attack stack on Mjmd's border city,  Mj tries to hold
  
• Pin snipes two (?) Mjmd cities from the Inca conquest
  
• Mjmd is enraged by the backstab, abandons his defense against corn and gives him peace with significant concessions <- this is the moment when Corn turns from leader to pretty much won the game
  
• Mjmd does some attack (don't remember) on pin, eventually they make peace with more or less status quo ante, but they both hate each other deeply now
  

... which to me appears that pindicator first backstabbed Mjmd,  who was fighting the game leader, and then got furious when Mjmd responded.  And ever since he's been banging on  on how crazy it is for Mjmd to fight him when Cornflakes is the clear game leader. Which is precisely what he himself did,  when in fact Mjmd already had taken up the fight??

So in this story pin is the clear villain, who is totally oblivious as to how his own actions caused the mess they're in. But that sounds a bit absurd,  so probably there's an episode of that story that I'm missing? Of course that's a question directed as well towards pindicator for after the game's over (tomorrow?)

Also,  what a masterful, creative and entertaining game by Cornflakes.  finally one where all the evil plans come to fruition.
I long thought that Arabia had a lot of untapped potential,  but in a regular pick it's difficult to  justify the techs.  He really brought it home here.

This sums up remarkably my own thoughts as well, down to the feeling that I've missed something because of the apparent absurdity.

This also checks out to me.

[civac2]

I remember pindicator being annoyed by MJMD pillaging cottages in fomer bing land which where in his sphere of influence but not yet covered by culture.
The many small injuries between the two led to them preferring cornflakes winning over the other, that has been some remarkable diplomacy by conrflakes.

I remember pindicator being quite angry about the pillaging and this part I do understand.

[Mjmd]

He pillaged cottages at Outside Track, so I reciprocated.

[pindicator]

My thoughts on the pillaging from t133. There's more in that post about the settled cities that turned into contention later on, if you want to understand my thinking there more:

But I also cannot trust those (sic: Mjmd's) chariots; they are going to run through Bing's cores and pillage everything they can get their hands on.  So I am going to have to pillage everything in range of his units first.  Ugh, this is really going to ruin what tenuous peace we've been holding onto here, isn't it?  Oh, and I'm sure that galley either has units on it or will shortly.

...

Then we implemented the Pillage Plan.  It goes a bit like this:

• Pillage all Cottages, but leave all Hamlets and higher that are first ring to a captured city
  
• Pillage everything in range of Mjmd's chariot.  (Had to settle for everything west of the river.)
  
• Don't pillage anything by Vilcos, so as not to piss off Superdeath
  
• Pillage anything that workers can replace in a turn.
  
• Just generally pillage everything that can be replaced and won't piss someone else off, except for Mjmd because he's going to do it anyway.
  

[Mjmd]

I generally don't pillage improvements unless the other person does first or I intend to go to war with them. I was not planning on pillaging until you did. As I didn't report you'll just have to take my word. I see I should have as lurker thread thought I had pillaged first.

Does everyone understand the Great Lighthouse build now? I'm generally shocked by the confusion of me building a wonder that saved my economy from being negative and also provided me a key great person which I wouldn't have been very very bad off without. In general turning excess hammers into commerce is good. I was turning hammers into random walls in my empire just to avoid maintenance at one point..........

Also wanted to mention settling on the gems would have meant delaying locking down that area. I didn't want any resources for Pin and I to fight over. I couldn't have settled on the gems in the same time frame (worker turns were not there, so gem city would have been VERY delayed. It also would have meant giving up the wet corn, which in hindsight with how the map was shaped was maybe fine, but at the time I thought that was a very easy grab that would be good border wise. But ya that stupid jungled gem that I will note Magic pointed out in map review really hurt this game.

[Cornflakes]

Does everyone understand the Great Lighthouse build now? I'm generally shocked by the confusion of me building a wonder that saved my economy from being negative and also provided me a key great person which I wouldn't have been very very bad off without. In general turning excess hammers into commerce is good. I was turning hammers into random walls in my empire just to avoid maintenance at one point..........

I can attest first hand that the struggle to avoid maintenance was real! I’ll admit I though at the time that it was a waste of hammers, but then I went and build Colossus for about 8-10 gpt, and with the eventual Great Merchant your lighthouse totally paid off!