[PB76] Strange women lurking in ponds and distributing swords

[Amicalola]

Really interested to see if Comm's strategy of zero-econ will pay off. I would guess no, but it would be awesome if I am wrong.

Re: the scooter thing, I'm not sure how I feel about it. However, I will add that people clearly hold some players to different standards than others. If some people were doing what scooter is, I am confident it would be denounced as kingmaking. I'm just not sure if I'd agree with that or not.

[Hitru]

Yeah, I agree with not liking Scooters initial idea of giving everything to Comm without fight. It seemed he had pivoted from that last turn, but got his units destroyed by Thoth ( who for some reason is happy that Comm is making easy gains ).

[Dreylin]

I’d like to note that Thoth is the only player who actually thinks they can win this; both Pin and Com think the other has a chance but they don’t. Honestly I think all 3 are still very much in the running, but confidence is definitely important so I think Thoth has an edge.

[yuris125]

I don't know if Pindicator is still in it, partly because of how he sees the game - he has the best economy and the best tech right now, but didn't find an opportunity to capitalise on it (including passing up on the chance to take some of my land). Now that Thoth and Commodore both have the land of 2 players, Pindicator needs to make something happen before they can fully absorb their gains, but his thread doesn't give me the impression that he's looking for a way to accomplish that

[shallow_thought]

I’d like to note that Thoth is the only player who actually thinks they can win this; both Pin and Com think the other has a chance but they don’t. Honestly I think all 3 are still very much in the running, but confidence is definitely important so I think Thoth has an edge.

Yep, Civ MP is most often a matter of breaking the other players' will to continue, one way or the other.

[Ginger*]

I didn't know HG was available in medieval, thoth brought up its unbuilt, which I think is crazy

[yuris125]

Yeah no one had time for wonders with all the warmongering happening

[scooter]

Ummmmm. I don't know if I should post this in Scooter's thread or not; I certainly wouldn't post tactical stuff like this in normal circumstances ... but ... looking at his screenshots, there is something he can do to protect the barb city - if Commodore lets him get away with it ... which he might! Park the would-be city defenders in Commodore's territory, either on the same hill as Comm's units or on the cows 1N of them. If Commodore declares war while Yellow Castle is still in barb hands, Scooter's units would teleport into his own lands (onto the corn or the horses, respectively) - but if Commodore waits until the city flips and then declares, Scooter's units would teleport into Yellow Castle! They'd even keep any fortify bonus they'd built up. (And he'd still get the free Archer). It wouldn't be without danger: Commodore could declare early and attack them on the flatland corn if they use his hill, or if the barbs have produced any units other than their starting frozen LBs, one of those units could attack his units if on the cows. (And Comm could just close borders when he sees them in his territory, teleporting them to not-the-city regardless.) But it would be a hillarious use of silly non-intuitive mechanics to make up for other silly non-intuitive mechanics.

Hmm, this definitely might have worked. I definitely considered trying some sort of repel off this - I tested a bunch of scenarios in a hotseat game. However, I was a bit concerned over losing the units like you said, and the fact that I could not know which turn it would flip made it harder. For example, it was possible he kills the units on flatland, promotes, heals, and is back to full health right in time for the flip. For the same reason I didn't simply attack his units and weaken them - no guarantee they wouldn't heal in time.


But... yeah this probably would have been worth a shot at least.

Wow what a hard  game for Scooter and so unfun...., he invested one great artist on this and lost all....,I would be mad at all...

I mean could have chosen Pins approach. Just go take it by force. Its a surer way to actually hold it. This isn't single player where opponents won't react.

Yeah, but I don't think it's terribly reasonable to expect me to know the mechanics of all this before the plan. Flipping barb cities is so rare, and I'm not sure we've ever had it happen with sequential before. With a pitboss I would have simply declared and taken first half of the timer. And sequential I would have been fine if I was before him in turn order. It was just a confluence of unlikely things and fairly obscure mechanics. In that context, this was by far the cheapest way to take the city and would have been a massive coup had the mechanics been more favorable. And even if not, that Archer still had a 30-35%-ish chance to hold the city according to my tests. The upside was very real IMO, just didn't work out.

You're right, it's certainly looking that way now. I still think it's kind of funny that the majority of the barb cities have ended up going not to the player who had plans for them initially, but the one who attacked them second.

This is a good observation!

I think he put too much faith in his knights yes.

I wish Scooters attack had a couple more cats or heck a trebuchet why not.

FWIW the "attack" on Commodore after the Knight wipe was literally just whatever units I had physically nearby. He was mauled, so I was just trying to press the tempo before he could heal and regroup. Pindicator's scout was in the area watching, so I was also trying to get him to join by showing I was committed. Also I would not be able to get Engineering for another 30T or so after this, so Trebs were out. But I generally had not built many Cats because that's not really the best way to handle unstacked Knights, which is what I was dealing with prior to counter-attacking.

[scooter]

With regards to the 2v1, it seemed most understood my POV, but I'll just reply here to a few that had concerns.

I find scooter's behavior difficult.
In my opinion, it's okay not to defend effectively against a combatant and even to withdraw units - if you can gain advantages on another front. - See my PB72 with Bing.
But explicitly opening a 2nd front and then withdrawing from it is wrong in my opinion.
Nothing to intervene in, but morally difficult.

Other opinions ?

Most damage you can do is usually to concentrate collateral and most hitters possible.

See Scooter destroying Thoths stack as example .

Yeah, I agree with not liking Scooters initial idea of giving everything to Comm without fight. It seemed he had pivoted from that last turn, but got his units destroyed by Thoth ( who for some reason is happy that Comm is making easy gains ).

One detail that might help explain here is I mostly left Longbows in place on the Commodore front while sending what few hitters I had west, for the reasons Mjmd mentioned here. My only prayer was keeping my hitters together so land one big punch if an opportunity presented itself. I think I survived longer because I was able to wipe one of the two invading stacks. If you look at this picture from right before it turned into a 2v1:






Look at the power ratios on the scoreboard. Both neighbors had 2x as much military as I did, and that screenshot of Thoth's stack here represented easily as many units as I had in my entire empire, and he reinforced it after this. I also just got Guilds right before this, so all my hitters to this point are 1-movers, and due to the fact that I'd been at war with Thoth, rougly 80% of my army was just below the interface here because on this turn I evacuated them fron Onesies because they were all going to die. (You can see the "or here?" sign there as I was debating which tile to withdraw to.)


Basically, there were no units at all near Commodore well before this due to the Thoth war - those cities were all basically empty already except for the coastal cities, and sending my stack of 1-movers east would have simply been the same thing in reverse, except worse because this front had my capital.


Also, one more thing worth considering. My stack of cats + 1 movers (mostly xbows and Maces at the time) were ideal for handling the stack of 1-movers Thoth had, but wouldn't do nearly as much to the Knight-spam Commodore had.

My problem is, scooter created the Commodore front.

To be clear, this is not really accurate either. Commodore had all his Knights loaded up on boats and spaced to hit my border city before I "declared" on him, which mostly had the benefit of teleporting my Trade Mission boats home safely. He was clearly coming at me - I had a Sentry Explorer in his land that watched his Knights come home and then load up on Galleons and stage to hit me before I did anything. I also sent Thoth quite a lot of diplo offers giving him the chance to avoid this, which would have allowed me to defend against Commodore. It's not my fault that he killed a ton of my units. (I would 100% still be alive right now if he hadn't taken more pot-shots after I wiped his stack btw.)

[Ginger*]

Yeah Scooter I think you played it well don't sweat the "oooh kingmaking"