[PB62 Mjmd] Let the Bullgine Run!

[vanrober]

I dont find still any solution for that land north of my capitol? did you want to fill it? Do you think i can leave my capitol as border city in the north?????

I just read your thread and you said when settling your 3rd city that its 3 tiles far of your capitol, that you hopes thats fine to me, that you had to settle there.

Again, i settled a 3 tiles away of my capitol on turn 59 and you wanted me to settle in the gold area that is 6 moving tiles far from my 3rd city and i had no road in between that city and my capitol? I would arrived there in turn 67 xD

I insist that that area was really bad communicated with my. somehow i moved to the east and i still had 12 tiles far Fabled capitol with a natural wall in between us, so it was really hard geopolitically to atack there. Even if i wanted i couldnt fight tarkeel without giving him 6 turns of seeing my atack comming. Its sad but the map was that shape.

I dont agree with the granary thing, since i had no quick settlers i had to make them efficient by whips, and the best way to do so is with a granary, i think i was in game because of those granaries.


I agree with mjmd i think you just couldnt rush us, but we had to defend anyway, just in case you thought you could. Also we had some whipable spears when you were talking about atacking with those chariots, i thoink we would have defended either way.


And btw in PB56 you were the one that did an akward border with us, and it seems you either didnt notice or didnt care. I tried all this game to settle carefully and not bother you, and i felt it was you the one making tension again. Our third city was far from yours so that you didnt have the cultural pressure from us, our 3 first cities where all in the same line, the only one that steped on us were you, and the only city i try to ahve as defense from you is a huge probelm for you? i really cant get it. Again, you settled a city 5 tiles from us and 7 tiles from your capitol and we still allowed you and didnt go mad with you. I really feel we gave you the hand and you tried to take all the arm.

[Mjmd]

I wanted the land to the north of you to be empty yes. I had 0 plans to fill it. Even after a horrible copper filler I had 0 plans. Your capital would have had 3 tiles of culture between it and the border; cultural depth. We would each have had 2 tiles deep in the west and the tightest border would have been the gold hills where you would be overlooking my city. But that is 1 city and livable with open borders. The problem is partially that you're thinking of it in terms of your new capital spot. If you look at my border line and where you started you'll realize I was actually willing to give up basically all the contested and have fewer of them in general than if you had SIP. To me that sounds bloody generous.

Again, it isn't my job to worry about your expansion speed or order you build things in. T59 is a late 4th city. I just saw that you had at least 1 spot of high quality that stole a resource that was probably mine (which I thought might increase the appeal), but that I cared way less about than a safe border. BTW that spot was only 4 tiles from your 3rd and with 2 roads you can move and then settle.

Ya I didn't think I could rush you with you having such a stupidly good capital. I also knew Mig at the least can do a power graph analysis very well and he was logging in a lot.

This is going to shock people reading, but in civ4 you're supposed to try to claim land. This game I was trying to claim a wet corn, forests, and ivory. PB56 I was just in general trying to claim land up to the river delta. Its not like your supposed to leave land blank for your neighbor who is at war. Yes it ended up with a long border with little depth (to note I had less control over depth than you in both games). Its not shocking with no open borders we ended up in a war. BTW the razing of the mids this game was because you didn't give open borders. I was going to try to make it work. The first raze was because I saw it as a blatant concession and in fact I called for the game to end right there lol.

[pindicator]

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.

I guess I felt I should have said it more and/or more emphatically

Regardless it is your game and you definitely have to play the strategy you feel is best. I think I would add one more list to your factors for a stable border: Proximity to capital/core cities. If it is more tempting or the opportunity is there for someone to easily raze an important city off a neighbor then it is going to have more likely odds of happening.

[vanrober]

I wanted the land to the north of you to be empty yes. I had 0 plans to fill it. Even after a horrible copper filler I had 0 plans. Your capital would have had 3 tiles of culture between it and the border; cultural depth. We would each have had 2 tiles deep in the west and the tightest border would have been the gold hills where you would be overlooking my city. But that is 1 city and livable with open borders. The problem is partially that you're thinking of it in terms of your new capital spot. If you look at my border line and where you started you'll realize I was actually willing to give up basically all the contested and have fewer of them in general than if you had SIP. To me that sounds bloody generous.

What i wonder is, why wouldnt i thikn in terms of my new capitol? Spots are safe or dangerous in terms of your ability to defend them. Its really funny you say im talking about my city and your city in tiles distance of my "new" capitol and then you say that i had to settle that gold spot. I had to settle that gold spot even with my old capitol? You are a bit crazy xD
So really, i think i have to talk about my capitol ebcause its the city that will produce the units to defend and it more or less act like the centre of the empire. 

Im glad you didnt have those plans but i couldnt know, and it felt risky to me that you would fill that land and then i would be really exposed. I just needed to get a city there.

Again, it isn't my job to worry about your expansion speed or order you build things in. T59 is a late 4th city. I just saw that you had at least 1 spot of high quality that stole a resource that was probably mine (which I thought might increase the appeal), but that I cared way less about than a safe border. BTW that spot was only 4 tiles from your 3rd and with 2 roads you can move and then settle.

Mmmm i felt it was too far to be able to defend it, and logistically it was really hard, i had no road between my capitol and third city and i still would have needed 4 roads more to get to that spot. Being closer to you than to me it was a deterrance, i didnt want to bother you at all, and i trully believe that i settled really carefully trying to annoy you the less possible.

This is going to shock people reading, but in civ4 you're supposed to try to claim land. This game I was trying to claim a wet corn, forests, and ivory. PB56 I was just in general trying to claim land up to the river delta. Its not like your supposed to leave land blank for your neighbor who is at war. Yes it ended up with a long border with little depth (to note I had less control over depth than you in both games). Its not shocking with no open borders we ended up in a war. BTW the razing of the mids this game was because you didn't give open borders. I was going to try to make it work. The first raze was because I saw it as a blatant concession and in fact I called for the game to end right there lol.

Well, i gave you OB and then you razed a city 3 tiles far from my capitol. After you had told me to focus on tarkeel and naufragar. This was exactly what i thought in PB56 it would have happened if i gave you OB, something you said it wouldnt... You had more units and you could have taken the land, because i had not enough units.


You can see it here, you scouted with your warrior to see what i had in the city and then razed it. Since i gave you OB it would be really hard for me to fork your cities if you plant a warrior in Boron, but instead you took the opportunity to throw my game.

The difference between this game and Pb56, is that this time i had a 25% more power than you. And a stack of 20 axes would go towards you if charriu didnt call the game. BTW it was Nau the one that didnt want to concede... not me.

[Mjmd]

Proximity to capital/core cities to me is more of a modifying factor like empire size. That being said its absolutely an important modifying factor. In this case my cities 2-4 were under threat by any "no" spot. And ya other than pillaging wheat and setting us both back, I don't think a skirm rush would have worked with his copper pointing away and him being able to 4 turn warriors.

I'm not saying you shouldn't think in terms of your new capital, but you also have to realize how insanely generous I was trying to be in the old. If you had SIP what are the odds Imp/Fin Mali wouldn't have settled on the hill next to the gold before you could even think about it lol (the answer is very high). This was a situation where I think a diplo game would have been helpful. I equally think you're crazy to think that just because a city is close to you that if it breaks almost every factor in a stable border with high modifiers that it is justified. Did you think there were no consequences for moving capital once you saw how tight the map was???? 

One of the reasons OAT was a nice spot to prevent a bad border is it forced you to place a city not on a hill. I figured you would get the hint that having a city intruding on 3 of mine was a bad idea that way...... and you know go any direction that took land from one of the runaways. 

Open borders are only good if you have the scouts ready to go. I was very aware of our prior conversation and that is why I sent back (as otherwise it would have been a dead giveaway). I actually got really worried after I sent back because Mig logged in later that turn and I was afraid you had some ready to go. When I sent open borders before razing mids, I had turns of enforced peace to get scouts into position. Not that you couldn't have backstabbed still. I had been fighting a 2 front war on and off and wasn't in the best of shapes. But I thought maybe we could still stop T/C at that point, so I thought it was worth a try.

Obviously if you had settled any other 4th spot. Open borders would have been great for both of us as far as safety and trade. Think about us working together as Nauf kept slowing himself down and SD helping out. We could have all split Nauf together. Or if Nauf hadn't been as provocative, go after T/C. SD seems to have been willing to do either hehe.

[Tarkeel]

Amica do you remember PB58. I can't find it atm, but I remember you and Tarkeel not liking Thogs culture (because massive thread). Any Vanrober city isn't quite as bad as Thog was, but it is the same concept. I identified that issue the instant Tarkeel and you took some city; see quote from that lurker thread. I identified sites in this game with bad culture T15. 

Tarkeel taking that city is basically going to mean they 100% will need to deal with Thog at some point. AT can threaten multiple Tarkeel cities from there. AT's cultural presence and vision will be super annoying.

I'm sorry to say this, but from my perspective it's Oak Ash Thorn that's similar to Thog, not Boron. The main difference being that you didn't have creative to back it up. As I see it, that city is impossible to hold in the long term due to supply logistics.

I will say that we very much approved of Amity Men, and felt that was a nice stable border conductive to everlasting peace. The gold we took south of it though wasn't Vanrober's, but Fableds.

[vanrober]

he knew it was fableds, he meant that i should have tried to steal it from you. But i still think that it was really hard for me to hold that city because of the logistics

[Amicalola]

I was going to say the exact same thing as Tarkeel's first paragraph, but didn't have the motivation to argue about a game that I didn't even play in. Especially when you are threatening to ruin other games over it (not cool, even as a joke). But yeah, OAT is the Thog in this scenario. It had zero chance of keeping its food tiles peacefully, making it a weak city, and was impossible to defend due to being surrounded on three sides.

Mjmd, you asked for opinions. I assumed that was because you wanted feedback, which is why I gave you mine. So far, every single relevant comment has taken more issue with your location (or subsequent actions) than van/nauf's, both other players and global lurkers. I think that's worth considering.

[Tarkeel]

he knew it was fableds, he meant that i should have tried to steal it from you. But i still think that it was really hard for me to hold that city because of the logistics

As you pointed out, any attack from that area would have been seen 5 or 6 turns in advance due to the terrain. The peak/lake combo didn't exactly help. We even held off on settling Jerez for a long time so as to not provoke a respone, but settled it in the end to fill out our borders, but in the least intrusive spot.

[Mjmd]

Boron's culture literally was / would have been within 1 tile of 3 of my cities. One city of one player giving min depth to 3 cities and literally forming an indent in my culture sounds more invasive than what it would have looked like otherwise. As far as OAT having 3 borders at least Civac agrees with me that it probably wasn't smart for Nauf to settle for the corn (and I considered highly highly unlikely). In my mind OAT goal was to have 1 border where both Vanrober and I had 2 tile depth each. The depth of border with Nauf would have been great for both of us (3+ for him and 2 for me). A city having 3 borders with 2 different players is also different than a city of 1 player again indenting someone else's culture at close proximity to of a singular player.

Look down the list I made for a stable border, add to it if you want, but you can't say Boron at any of the "no" locations is something you would feel comfortable with in any future game. That's what I'm trying to get people in the mindset of. Put yourself in my shoes. Its easy from Vanrober's side or looking at both sides to say "well its close to Vans capital its fine" vs looking at it from my view going "any of those spots crunch my empire and I can get forked very easily". I've made tight borders work before (PB52 Charriu and PB56 Amica), but having your entire beginning core threatened / a high proportion of your empire? Add in that we will need to work very closely together to defeat the people who took a capital on T43. I am definitely saying in this specific game I did not consider it a border I wanted and I 100% wanted Vanrober to settle to take land from a major competitor instead of making our border as awkward as possible. I 100% wanted a safe border in that scenario and it had the added benefit of hopefully forcing Vanrober to settle to settle towards one of the runaways. It was literally a win win win.