[Lurkers] Putting the Old Fogeys into a List

[Fintourist]

Just commenting some micro stuff here re Nobles earlier C&D:

This turn we noticed that superdeath has been chopping some forests.  The tile 1N of the wheat was chopped just this turn.  The tile 2N of the wheat was chopped previously.  We also know from the score that superdeath grew this turn, which means he did not chop into a settler or worker.  We can also deduce from the graphs that he hooked up his seafood several turns ago and thus he did not chop into a work boat.  And actually after updated graphs at EOT we can see that he chopped into a warrior.  Why would he chop into a warrior?  That is a highly unusual move, because warriors are 15h and pre-math chops are 20h.  We also know from the graphs that SD produced 3 natural hammers this turn.  So that means if he has more than 7h in the box from previous turns then he is going to lose hammers to overflow.



Anyway, in addition to the fact that he might be losing overflow hammers with this move, there's really no reason to chop into a warrior unless:
1) He is overflowing into a settler (or maybe worker).
2) He is overflowing into a second warrior and the chop is essentially for completing two warriors.



So we must conclude that either he is doing a somewhat normal move of building a warrior (his first) and then a settler, or he is chopping warriors and thus possibly warrior rushing us.  Or maybe he just wants warriors to escort his settler.  Either way I'd say all these possibilities fall under the weird end of the spectrum.  In addition to this, due to the fact that he is chopping into a warrior we also conclude that it is very likely that copper is not at the capital.  Otherwise he would have mined copper by now and be chopping into an axe instead.  We will see copper at the end of next turn and we can maybe deduce or guess many more things after that.

Oh, I just remembered.  The mod fixes the overflow converting into gold bug, right?  So now excess overflow that is over the cap is correctly converted into gold.  So SD may have just converted part of his forest into some gold.  Maybe this is a sick Fintourist micro play??

Nice analysis   There was nothing too fancy going on though. The chop went indeed into a warrior, which finished at 30/15 hammers and the overflow was then put into a settler .

This allowed the capital to grow from size 2 to size 3 (no impact to actual settler timing while picking up the 2/2 deer tile)

[Fintourist]

I can understand Rusten's frustration re Serdoa - it's always annoying when someone attacks you and the only result of the battle is that it drags both participants down. At the same time I don't see him recognizing that he did settle very aggressively in multiple directions and especially towards Serdoa. If you are playing that pink-dotty sometimes you are left alone and can snowball into winning position, but I think you have to expect that there is a realistic chance that your neighbors will not just watch at the sidelines.

[pindicator]

Answering superdeath's question about settling a little...

It looks like he has a very spacious border with Lewwyn compared to other players. Most people have gotten up close and personal settling up against other players' culture to cram in spots and superdeath still has several locations.

Now I think I could have given him a bit more land that was "his" compared to others, but that would be 1 or 2 cities more at most. Also, I seem to have forgotten to put metal luxuries between him and Lewwyn ???

[Cornflakes]

Following up on Superdeath's question ... Lewwyn has 16 cities vs. 11 for Superdeath, 5 total advantage
- Lewwyn has 5 island cities vs. Superdeath's 3 ... 2/5 accounted for ... one of those extra islands is arguably a border city with Bob, and the other Lewwyn fit 2 cities on one island (stealing the only mainland food from another city until border pop can pick up 2nd ring clams).
- Lewwyn's Hanzo is 8 tiles from his capital and only 6 tiles from Rusten's capital, so call that 3/5 accounted for.
- Lewwyn's baclkines peninsula with Bishop and Reaper looks to me like the remaining 2 extra cities. Superdeath's starting area doesn't have a similar peninsula, but those are just a couple fishing villages.

Overall Lewwyn has a slight land advantage, but nothing decisive there. Superdeath's position overall however does feel more cramped with 4 neighbors

[pindicator]

Superdeath's backline peninsula was supposed to be the area to his northeast. But it looks like that was not made strong enough or easy enough for him, in hindsight.

[pindicator]

I get a bit of nostalgia seeing this superdeath v noblegas fight starting

[Old Harry]

Any particular game?

Anyway, I think SD has his stack composition wrong - NoGas' best units right now are horse archers and he's brought no spears. Two or three cats will let them get odds on every fight, so SD's best chance is that they hold off whipping HA's because they want catephracts. That said, if he takes/burns two cities and retreats this could be a (temporary) win for him, and he was going to die anyway when 'phracts appeared, so why not?

He does need to promote his units and stop building that market though.

[pindicator]

NobleGas post about the enforced peace war Dec and their goals reminded me a lot of how I tried to approach superdeath in 52.

[Charriu]

So will this be the classical immovable object vs unstoppable force?

[Mjmd]

Gasper

SD has already made it quite apparent he's chosen us as his enemy, despite the fact that we were never anything other than friendly to him before he attacked us and the guy running away with the game is on his other border.

Also Gasper from earlier

so I think its likely we still go after SD

Just chucking it out there that choosing Byzantium has two main weaknesses
1) awful starting techs
2) people might get in their heads they should attack you before your UU and you killing them.

I'm not saying SD is perfect in his attack, but I don't blame him for the target. It doesn't sound like Serdoa will join in the 2v1, but I think it was a reasonable attack vector.