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[Spoilers] Fun & Games [Lurker Thread]

(June 13th, 2019, 17:30)Bobchillingworth Wrote: Superjim's Worker -> Worker start strikes me as a poor choice, his capital isn't going to grow so quickly that he needs two of them right out the gate for his improved tiles to keep pace with his city.  He's also remarkably trusting of Cairo.  

His opening isn't bad. He's got a lot of great tiles to grow onto and with Agrarian flood plain (+5 food) and Bananas he's +8 fpt at size 2. 2 workers will get the Dye and cotton on line for some early teching power quickly. +8 food at size 2 means ~5 turns to size 4. He'll want the two workers to keep up with the growth rate early, and this is going to be a worker turn intensive map so more workers early = more total worker turns available. smile

It's risky though. Going without military for 19 turns is risking barb trouble, never mind player trouble. Improved tiles aren't much use when the barbs are running all over them because you don't have enough warriors to deal with them in the field.

We'll see if it pays off.
fnord
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I'm surprised Dave hasn't captured that Barb city yet... it'd get him Sugar, some capture gold, and it shouldn't take too many bronze, aggressive Warriors to take it down.


Also Mack seems to be doing very well, despite his constant complaining.
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Note- this comment was deleted circa 9/1/2019 and restored 10/4/2019, both by the author.


Mack must have some sort of insane luck that apparently allows him to win every battle he initiates against the barbs, Auro, and Dave.  



Either that or he's constantly reloading.  



I'll probably delete this post before he can read it legitimately.
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Cairo attacking Dave would be a seriously terrible idea. Dave should be able to put up a formidable defense, he'll be removing one of the few counterweights to Mack running away with the game completely, he'll be vulnerable to Mack and jim, and if he wants to improve his position he ought to focus on settling the roughly 50% of the map which remains unclaimed.
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I'd like to revisit your deleted comment, Bob. I'm not saying that I agree with its implications, but I am interested in why you jumped there then, as opposed to now.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.

1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.

2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.

3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.

4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
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Sure, why not; I doubt I'll play another game with him anyway. I jumped in then because I perceived a trend which as become only more obvious over time. I deleted the post when I did because I anticipated that players would begin being eliminated soon, and/or the game itself might end in the near future, not because the argument ceased to carry the same weight.


I'll lay it out in greentext form:

* Mack hints darkly that Auro may be cheating in order to win a handful of sequential battles

> Mack wins what appears to be 95%+ of his battles when attacking throughout the entirety of the game, including multiple low-odds fights against barbarians early on which led to his unstoppable lead.


* Mack makes multiple posts fretting that Auro could use Maelstrom to break enforced peace, considers asking Auro not to, and threatens to abandon the game if he does.

> Mack finally manages to defeat Auro by exploiting Auro's Defensive Pact to break enforced peace a turn early, enabling him to alpha-strike him.


* Mack is famous for having an extraordinary "game sense", seeming to always know his opponent's plans and where their units will be.

> Mack consistently prefers to attack players who update their threads regularly, and his IP can often be found browsing the forums even while his account is logged off.



In summary, I think this guy's a fucking cheater. Or, if not, then a hypocrite at least.

I'm hardly the first person to make most of the above observations, just one of the few willing to finally lay them out.
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I see. Thank you for explaining.

I was surprised to realize today that my active time on the forum (mid 2012-mid 2015) was shorter than my time away (mid 2015-last month). Some things seem very familiar to me...and sometimes i feel like I've missed a whole lot.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.

1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.

2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.

3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.

4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
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Mmmf. The first point could be ~tested if save games are available. We don't really know what actual odds Mack was getting on any of those fights, do we? Something Auro said about him first asking to enable and then disabling combat odds reporting is worrying, but I don't know any details, or whether it was mentioned and changed back, or what. I really hope it's nothing, partly because:

I'm really curious about his early tactics against barbs particularly: How many 50% fights do you have to win to get enough XP to make a Shade? I'm not sure, and haven't tested it, but FFH gives out lots of XP for lowish-odds attacks. Is it possible it might only take about 3? (Plus maybe one or two very high-odds clean-up attacks when other Warriors lose...) If so, and if there are a large enough number of barbs, 8 Warriors/Scouts each taking 50/50 fights until Shading would on average turn into one Shade and seven corpses - so 128h for each settled Sidar-boosted Great Person of your choice, incidentally killing 15 barbarians. Of course you double the cost for each additional fight you have to win, so the numbers are quite important. But it makes me wonder: Did Mack really get very lucky? Or did he break the game by being more willing than any previous player to spam units and risk them (and often lose them) on low-to-middling odds fights, even when they were injured or maybe even unpromoted and had a bunch of early xp to lose.

There could be other answers of course, including Bob's, but also including "risk four low-cost units on two ~50% odds attacks apiece, quickly end up with one high-xp unit, then maybe upgrade him and get him up to Shade in a more-normal way." I'd like to see how it was done in more detail anyway (if it didn't require ridiculous luck) - I just think the question is kind of fascinating.

The second point is interesting. It's debatable because (as Auro pointed out) that only worked because Auro made the defensive pact before the peace treaty was over. It allowed Mack to get first strike on Auro in spite of peace by declaring war on Dave, but also it prevented Mack from attacking Dave without opening himself up to attack from Auro in spite of peace. Maelstrom, on the other hand, allows you to break peace at will, and there's nothing your opponent can do to allow or prevent it except to keep every unit at least three tiles inside their borders at all times (...and close borders, I think?) which is ridiculous. Actually, I think between Maelstrom and the sheer power of first strikes in FFH generally, it almost makes sense to have a house rule for EitB games: No peace treaties allowed; Cease Fires only.

The third point just seems incorrect to me - I've perceived no correlation between Mack's choice of targets and players who update their threads regularly. I've also never felt like Mack knows where his rivals' units are or what they're planning, beyond what can be seen or easily inferred from things like the graphs (and Civstats/PBSpy in PBs). Mostly the impression I get is that he's very good at building a strong economy and quickly turning it around into a powerful war machine. He's also good at identifying good strategic targets, and ruthless about exploiting his own strengths and his opponents' weaknesses, but with weaknesses in the sense of "they let their power drop too low" or "they didn't expand enough and fell behind" or "they made a major tactical error he could clearly see in-game."

I'm not going to pretend I'm any kind of authority on any of this, but I thought I should share my impressions, for what they're worth.
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I looked into my spoilered theorycrafting a little bit:
Shades apparently require 26xp in EitB (unless you somehow have a Cha leader) which ... is a lot. Taking large numbers of 50% battles doesn't seem very efficient at all, but battles around 75%ish (attested as a "sweet spot" by Pocketbeetle) are a lot better - you'd average about one Shade per four units dedicated to such fights - and I think there's another sweet spot near (but I think not at - I didn't examine this too closely) 90% that's just about perfect if you can get it consistently: Roughly six such battles plus one very-high-odds clean-up for a Shade, and you'd expect to lose only about half of the units you try to advance that way. Getting all the battles just right for the "sweet spots" of danger to xp ratio in the wild and woolly early game seems really improbable though except maybe if barbs are attacking not only in numbers, but almost all from about the same direction. (Or maybe if you have a compact empire and a really good road network?)

The upshot is: Taking a lot of 50% fights seems very unlikely to help you get fast Shades at a reasonable cost. There might be tactics that include risking a handful of 50% fights as part of a larger plan that will get you shades in good time if all goes as expected, and in slightly better time if you win most of the coinflips, but they would be more involved than his comment on creating Shades from T39:

(June 27th, 2019, 00:39)mackoti Wrote: I am planning to get low batle odds til i am near 8-9 experience from there taking shock should be 90% or over to get me some shades.

Anyway, that's not the way he broke the game. According to one screenshot in his thread, he had two shades settled in his capital by T45! This is frustrating because the thing he said he was planning to do couldn't possibly have gotten him Shades that quickly, regardless of the pRNG - as Mardoc points out a little later in his thread. In fact, as Mack's reply sort of acknowledges...

(July 2nd, 2019, 12:35)mackoti Wrote:
(July 2nd, 2019, 11:53)Mardoc Wrote: Your first barb was at T39, it didn't seem like 11 turns was going to be enough to collect the XP you needed.

You right of course but before were some lions , a gorila , i won a batle even against a spider when defending , that was huge....

...most of the XP had to come from animals before any Shock-able barbs appeared. And notice Mardoc was talking about Shades on T50. In fact he had two five turns earlier, and Auro thinks the first one came yet five turns before that!

(July 9th, 2019, 04:32)Aurorarcher Wrote: Looks like he got his first Shade around T40. Not sure how, barbs started to spawn around T40 as most people got their 2nd cities at that time. Mack got his 2nd T34... maybe he attacked the animals and got lucky?

(From context, including the graphs he posted to support his conclusions, I think T34 is a typo for T44, unless he was talking about the second city rather than the second Shade. Antecedents strike again!)

So when Mack posted his plan to get Shades via shock promo and barbs, he may have been accurately reporting his intentions, but if so, he was also reporting very incompletely: He neglected to mention what he would do if (say) the first three coinflips all went against him, and also neglected to say, "Oh, and my existing units have fought so many animals in the early going that I'm just a few xp away from Waning each of two different units already!"

So the disappointing truth is that, whatever plan (or luck or whatever) he did use to get those early Shades, he gave no indication in his thread of what it was, except a vague comment about some lions, a gorilla, and defending against a spider. Of course, failing to provide details of his gameplay is typical of mackoti.
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Sorry about my map bitching, Bob.

My take on "mack is a cheater": it's really hard to prove, and the standard for proof is very high. I'd like to hear mackoti's side after the game is over.
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