[PB62 Mjmd] Let the Bullgine Run!

[Mjmd]

One last ramble.

-Being creative gives you the power to push around borders. That is one of its advantages. Is it fair to say people may not like their borders being pushed around? With great power comes great responsibility to not make potential allies feel threatened. (feel free to push around people you want to go to war with / are ready to)

-Everyone is going to have different modifiers on what to them makes an unstable border (I maintain my list of base conditions is pretty good). I highly suspect that many of you if you were playing in a future game you would not be thrilled having a creative neighbor put a city at any "no" spot equivalent.

-The best arguments I've heard in order from worst to best
        Its far away. - Yes its a second ring city. It was on a hill and I had a skirm coming in 2 turns after it was founded with 2 warriors already there and connected by road. You may yourself one day decide to settle a second ring city under less protected situations.

        It can't hold either of its food - As stated I didn't anticipate Nauf stealing. As far as the sheep...... the whole point was kind of to push Vanrober elsewhere? This obviously failed in a hilariously bad fashion, but trying to prevent a bad border and that plan failing I suspect will happen many times more in future games
       Its slow to develop - Ya 100% fair. I haven't settled a city this slow as an early city since my greens game PB51. I haven't done this as obviously its REALLY bad. I present this as evidence on how badly I didn't want a bad border.

[vanrober]

I think i agree with Mig and Civac. Nau city there had no sense, the second city of bing for instance it was much better being able to share food from his second city and also bings capitol. 

But that doesnt make that a good city. Its not only about how far it was from your capitol, its also about how close it was to my capitol. just 5 tiles. It would totally perfect if you had just settled 1 north or one north east. The border would be totally fine i think. the only way we could be in game was fighting tarvac or Nau, instead of each other, although my decision of moving and the map was forcing both of us into a weird spot anyway.

I really think i tried to annoy you the less possible with my second and third city in terms of cultural pression, or at least i intended that way.

[Mjmd]

I mean again its perspective. Its a great border from your perspective certainly. I don't expect full agreement at this point, but maybe just understanding. Which at the very least would make me feel less like a crazy person explaining why 1 tile borders across multiple cities are bad.

Just for fun I was looking back at chat with Pin and I had forgotten I had actually originally thought about 1E to keep you from settling for sheep at all, which might have been the actual smart play. The hill defense, extra chops, and silks were the reason I moved 1W, but I am um obviously second guessing that now.

[pindicator]

The other issue is that Mjmd did not have a lot of good spots to settle. If you look at what he has available after his 3rd city goes down ... where do you go next? It's all bad choices, no matter which way you go. The advantages of settling far to the west were securing a luxury and one of the only food tiles visible.

[civac2]

vanrober said in his thread that without a northern city he would have no strategic depth at all.

With only 3 tiles of culture north of his capital a two-mover raid on the second part of the turn would have left him unable to even whip an emergency spear.

[pindicator]

Which is why I tried to get mjmd to do that to him with chariots even before that city was planted

[Mjmd]

vanrober said in his thread that without a northern city he would have no strategic depth at all.

With only 3 tiles of culture north of his capital a two-mover raid on the second part of the turn would have left him unable to even whip an emergency spear.

Perspective. We either both have 1/2 turn of depth or I have 0 across 3 cities (my first 3 at that). Again I'm not arguing the border he wanted was bad for him, but rather that you consider both perspectives and that it is just horrible for me.

Perspective. I was the good guy here instead of trying for the sub 30% chance of killing you right away, I was trying to make a border we both could be ok with. If Pin had been playing I can confidently say +/- that the game would have been different. The uber spot Commodore gave you to move to and how tight the map was was always going to be an issue.

[Miguelito]

Mjmd, I can understand why you felt like you could not accept the Boron plant when we made it. I think you still should have accepted it and tried to build a working relationship. We were trying everything to signal good intentions, starting with settling the 3rd city such that it would leave tiles for your 3rd one, and  then giving you OB once we were able to. Here metagame steps in, because we (you, van and me) had discussed at length after PB56 how OB could serve to build trust, and you could have concluded that that was the intention. We would have been the only 2 civs with 2c trade routes, and it was pretty evident that both our civs would need to find an answer to Tarvac in the east before a confrontation could make any sense.
Maybe we could have accepted your "make war with nauf/Tarvac" messages, but we didn't even border either.

I've written in vanrober's thread already how I failed to understand how badly shaped Boron would leave your land, as I did not look at that coast properly. I still think it's mostly on you for founding Oak where you did. If you wanted to cede us the sheep, SE of the corn could have worked much better for you imo. If you really would not accept a city on one of the NO tiles, then you had to make sure that there would not be one. That means founding NE of the sheep. We would certainly have loathed that, but realistically you still had the skirmishers, so we would not be able to do anything about it, and maybe by the time we'd have catapults things would have calmed down and stabilized and we'd learn to live with it.
naufragar in his thread alluded to another option - chopping Stonehenge into Oak. Maybe that was feasible after peace with nauf? Of course, we wouldn't have loved it, but maybe it would have left the border in a shape that we all could have lived with?
But with where you planted Oak I basically assumed that you would be ok with us planting one of the NO cities. I mean, how are we supposed to infer from your exposed plant that you expect us to not found 3 tiles from our capital? So you already stole our sheep and claimed a monopoly on ivory, and now you expect us to just leave several floodplains orphaned? Did you have a look at the map? You complained how the land was looking bad in basically every direction, well guess what it was the same for us. We had tundra to our south, tundra to our east, and dry plains to the west. That river valley was too valuable to leave it rotting.
You somehow seemed to think that we could have planted a uber spot next to Fabled's capital, and even made the effort of a meme, but we'd have to connect that by a single road 2 tiles from your 3rd city - precisely what you hated so much about Boron/Oak, no, worse actually. And then we'd have to march through the desert 5 tiles from our next city and plant on flatland in the face of the guys who already killed someone and are leading. I mean, we did fantasize about doing that (without the gold, that was just too absurd to cross my mind), but it was wishful thinking, both for us and for you to think that we could get there. And of course we had no way to know that you wanted to cede us that rice.
Final question - if we had put Boron 1E, would that have been better for you? It would have left you the sheep, but eaten more into your floodplains.

Btw since you mentioned several times how turn 59 Boron was a late 4th city, for saving face I need to point out that the element has the atomic number 5 actually

I do want to say as well that I am very impressed with how you managed to prevail at Oak over several rounds, and ultimately managed to take nauf down while we were still on the other side. If this had been a 3 player game you would have been coming out on top

[Miguelito]

And while I haven't followed vanrober's recent games, I do know from ded-lurking him in 49 that he will aggressively grab land.  (He'll also chase wonders, which may give us that horse archer opening.)

Also pindi I should be offended. It was me whom you delurked .

And I would hope to have become a bit wiser since.

[Mjmd]

I would have LOVED a stable border and open borders. But hell if Nauf hadn't done the same exact thing on the other side and forced me to build an army you would have had a good shot at it despite not taking the hint. Without an army right there I would have had to not open borders which would have been a dead giveaway. I also was probably a little titled due to map, 2 players being knocked out, you guys not taking the hint, and again Nauf having just done the exact same thing

Your 3rd city had 2nd ring wheat to the south and you got a plains hill plant, don't make it sound like you were purely being a saint here lol.

I maybe should have settled 1E on ivory (which bring in wet corn so better than 1N of sheep). Its a tough call though. If I think you guys will understand / have other expansion opportunities on the hill is 100% better. However 1E prevents the misunderstanding which I maybe should have valued a lot higher. It probably depends on the odds of misunderstanding vs % better city. I obviously thought it was pretty clear how intrusive the border would be though so my odds of misunderstanding were way to low lol.

I had 4 hammers into Stonehenge there from way back (or maybe they had decayed by end of game). I had actually planned on chopping it out if you had given me open borders. I would have kept mids and with it stone then. Without I had to just chop units.

There only would have been 1 floodplain orphaned with my plant. I didn't fully realize how barren the land was either. I just knew I didn't have a lot of expansion opportunities outside of the wet corn. Again I didn't really consider your guy's internal development, but I knew of at least 1 uber plant available. My scouting was also pretty bad. I used my scout to fog bust mainly for a long time (didn't want it dying to barbs / wanted less barbs).

As far as  the uber spot being worse border. You would have had vision over the lake of the vulnerable corner attack tiles. Also unless I'm just razing it, all I would do is create a longer and more awkward border with your gold city and you would then have had hill vision of 2 of my cities. Also, again me not knowing your internal development all I knew is you got a faster capital by moving and your 2-3 cities came what 1 or 2 turns after both my imp ones. All the demos looked good for you; I thought you guys were killing it hehe. I also knew I would be gunning for that spot with creative! And again even if it wasn't that spot, I was trying to get you guys to take territory in literally any direction of one of the runaways instead of creating an awkward border with me.

I almost moved my 2nd and 3rd city btw to prevent a bad border due to that 1 floodplain lol. However, Barge Ballad was too perfect as a 2nd city with tiles it could share and forested river spice. The micro was very good for that spot. I tried the micro with Barge 2N so I could place horse city 1W, but the micro was just bad and city was a lot weaker. I wasn't willing to weaken my 2nd city like that. Also, at the time I thought your sheep city was likely going to go 1SE of sheep so it would have locked you out of settling for anyway. Even if you settled elsewhere I didn't think you would be that provocative for 1 floodplain.