[PB62 Mjmd] Let the Bullgine Run!

[Ginger()]

Well, you go BW to give your worker(s) something to do, and grab the very cheap hunting/archery techs and then you get access to a unit that cannot be dislodged from a hill, let alone a forested hill. You then send these fun little guys straight towards Mjmd(or someone you dislike) And it makes them hooking up and keeping copper a very hard process. ESPECIALLY if you have Pro-skirms.

 Is there a past PB that saw this happen that I could go read up on?

[Mjmd]

Should have skirmisher rushed.

I've held off saying that, but I think the latter game is a great example why you had to

I mean you did say it multiple times. The reason why it wouldn't work very well is still the same. Vanrober got access to a an uber early game capital. Vanrober I had a post in here somewhere about all the different ways I could have rushed you, but basically because of your start and the terrain they were all pretty bad. Ok, big post coming up.

[superdeath]

Well, you go BW to give your worker(s) something to do, and grab the very cheap hunting/archery techs and then you get access to a unit that cannot be dislodged from a hill, let alone a forested hill. You then send these fun little guys straight towards Mjmd(or someone you dislike) And it makes them hooking up and keeping copper a very hard process. ESPECIALLY if you have Pro-skirms.

 Is there a past PB that saw this happen that I could go read up on?

Uh, i dont remember exactly what pitboss, but Commodore rushed me with skirms before i could get copper online. Pb41? 42? Somewhere in there. I think he was still mad at me for eating his settler in pb38.. (and probably still is)

[Mjmd]

What makes a stable border? I want people to take a step back from this game and give it a think before reading on.

Strategic depth
Lets start with the big one. The more tiles between cities the better. The more tiles in your control the better. Obviously any border with any number of only 1 tile between opponent and your city makes it more vulnerable to 2 or 1 movers.

Length of border
This one is contextual as size of game and empire will give context, but its fairly easy to understand that the longer the border is the more unstable it is and the harder to cover with scouts. Also, if you build up small defensive stacks your opponent also has to and as the game progresses its a burden on you both and hilariously less effective due to how movement is sped up from other fronts as the game progresses.


Hills
Cities on hills are obviously more defensible and require less of a force so you don't get situations where you have to build up a large defensive stack (which again spirals). If I settle 1N I obviously have 3 cities NOT on hills.

Resource Contention
Obviously if your culturally fighting over a resource its more likely to create tension. Nauf border actually passes all the rest of these as far as a safe border for me*, which is why I actually thought his plant was more defensible in a vacuum, but it obviously still broke this point. Now back to Van; as shown in my T15 picture I was willing to give up both contested resources (sheep and pig), but for what I wanted, which was a safer border in terms of depth. You can actually see this in my spots "van settle" and "Van please settle". The Van settle spot acknowledges the likely wanting sheep. It still creates some 1 tile border there, but I was hoping to build a wonder there eventually and then I would have had 2 tiles of depth vs Van 1 but on a hill. Even without a wonder however its still would have just been 2 cities vs 3 and the whole bloody border. You can envision a stack that is floating around Nauf border that can protect the western city and a stack in the east against T/C covering that city. All while not building up a separate stack to cover my Van border. Obviously the "Van please settle" spot was the best in terms of depth, but I didn't give that high hopes (not knowing copper was 1S).


One of the best borders I've ever had was with Vanrober in PB51 because it was all desert in between us. So even though the border was 4-5 cities long (about a 1/4 of total cities) there A) weren't resources to fight over and B) there was an extremely low chance of intrusion.

This game I would have had a 1 tile border THE WHOLE DISTANCE across 3 cities (say 1/3 of total empire no conquest and all better than some later filler).

So just checking with anyone who still didn't like this. Please respond below that in future games you are ok with your opponents settling up on your cities that aren't on hills, across a long border, and you have no depth. I for one will be happy to do so and expect 0 retaliation from you!


Quick note about your settling speed Van. You seemed to go Granary before expanding correct? While this strat can pay off on larger maps where you don't want to crash, on tight maps like this obviously spots are going to get snapped up. That being said you settled that spot what T59? Quick check of T/C thread they settled pig T60. Also, its not my job to know or worry about your expansion spots (which I could only see the 1 uber one and didn't know much else) and how fast you can expand (which 4th city T59 is pretty slow with how uber your moved to start was). My concern was for a safe border.

Just to address Gingers point about settling Rice instead of Wet corn. Wet corn not only is better food, but it has TONS of forests to chop. Also, it has actual tiles to work (vs mostly desert or tiles I already had). Also, that would mean giving up the wet corn to Nauf. My biggest miscalculation was that after taking a capital I figured Nauf wouldn't want to put a city with no cultural depth stealing a resource right on my border while likely building a hammer heavy wonder...... In any case the rice spot is worse on almost every single metric except curling up into a ball. Edit: I hope you can see why I was fine giving up. 

Now could I have settled the 2 first ring food rice and pig spot? I hope you can easily glance at that and say NOPE. In addition to some of the above it also places me in between Vanrober and T/C, which if I want Van's help with T/C isn't smart.

[superdeath]

My only thought(s) on that area is that you might have overextended and taken advantage of Vanrober not expanding as far that way as he should have for how close his capital was. This maps Overall small size and the ridiculous small distance between capitals didnt help, but im not arguing whether his settling of his own city threatened so many of yours. More that you threw a city pretty far out compared to where his capital was, and knowing that.. created the whole situation.

[Mjmd]

His moved capital yes. Again I was willing to give up both contested resources, but only for a safer border in return. Vanrober settling on copper meant it I couldn't give him sheep and have a stable border, so I took the sheep to try to force him to not settle a city that made the whole border aweful.

[superdeath]

Could you have just not settled farther that direction? Maybe settled just closer to the corn that Nauf thought he needed? (i only skimmed threads) This pitboss was a dumpster fire, but it feels like alot of it was also some "why did they do that's" being thrown back and forth.

[Mjmd]

1N or 1NE were the only real viable alternates and we've discussed how once Van settles for sheep that that border is just aweful.

I doubt you SD are willing to settle for an aweful tense border; history shows quite the opposite in fact.

[superdeath]

Right. But judging solely from the screenshots of where his capital is, and where yours is + how far that city was.. i dont think i would have settled that. Probably would have just used that settlers hammers on war material.

[Mjmd]

There is the SD we all love lol. I mean that was an option, but chariots could only get a sneak west to do anything meaningful, which would give him time to see graph or the hill east (which is what I was planning at end), but that spot doesn't knock him out just injures. So I could either 1) low odds attack with chariots to knock out 2) attack and injure and 100% consign us to fight each other or 3)  try to have a peaceful border and work together. With 2 people being knocked out working together sounded like the best plan....... Oh 1 and 2 were even worse due to my copper location which I didn't hook until T62 lol, so 3 sounded extra good.