[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

Also, it's not really 1 zerk + 1 galleon. It's also + opportunity cost of not holding on defense so that we can use a few Galleons to add cities cheaply. Also, is the strategic value of burning cities Mack likely views as disposable (same way we view Utes and Jazz as ultimately disposable) greater than the strategic value of adding naval production cities? Also, the capture gold from TBS cities will be higher, fueling upgrades and/or tech.

I honestly don't understand what you're arguing for here

Heh, that's what I get for trying to explain on my phone. I'll try to explain with illustrations in a few hours.

Anyway, let's wait for mackoti to play his half of the turn and then we can discuss when we see what we're dealing with. Which we are probably going to want to ask for a pause, because I really want to be a part of the playing of this turn, and if mackoti plays at his usual time then we will be in work / getting ready for work when he plays.

Yeah agreed. We really ought to have shifted to a 36 hour timer or something by now, since that's just the realistic pace at the moment.

[scooter]

Okay, here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to use the following 3 Galleons:





To quickly take the following 3 cities:



Hiram and Kid Dinosaur being the priorities, but Chrysalis likely being the easiest. I would load 9 Zerks on those 3 Galleons, take those, then shuffle a few Longbows and Knights into Hiram on the boat, so they could immediately move into Kid Dinosaur. Past that we'd have to see what TBS looks like, but I imagine we could then make peace in exchange for another city or two, or just take them ourselves. We can do all this within about 3 turns pretty easily, and the capture gold would likely get us to Chem quicker.


This should all be fine if we just carefully watch and defend from Mackoti in the south. He's shown no signs of having an actual Galleon invasion force (which is the only thing that could cause us real problems - really don't care if he pillages a bit for the next half dozen turns). Even if a few Galleons show up, he has several turns of travel time to our mainland AND we have a respectable 4 Galleons + 1 Caravel (2 if we bring the Expos one down) for defense:



However, right now we're talking about burning a Galleon + possibly Caravel to kill those boats (good call IMO), and now we're talking about very possibly losing another one to burn that copper city to the west. I'm afraid if we try to do both of those at once, we could be awfully stretched. Therefore, I think we need to choose between the two objectives, and I think the northern objective is way more valuable for our bottom line. Hiram in particular would instantly be our best naval production city - even out-muscling Pirates I believe. I think that's insanely valuable for us, strategically. Kid Dinosaur would provide serious commercial value too once Captain Trips is out of the way. The bonus here is Mackoti can't do a whole lot about this either, and TBS has way bigger fish to fry.

The reason I'm so convinced we'll lose a boat doing that is because mackoti HAS to have multiple boats in that area too, otherwise TBS either A) wouldn't take the deal or B) it would have been even more unfair, and Brick would have intervened.

(note: I'm 100% all for burning Father Squid if it's still empty after mack plays, because we can guarantee a safe Galleon since it's 3 moves away)

Does this make more sense?

[scooter]

hey pindicator, how do you know i got an excelent deal?If you wanna see cities beeing'gifted' see nakor in pb13.

This is a dumb and trollish thing to say and it made me mad, but pindicator, please don't take the bait and respond in that thread. I don't think anything good can come of that. Anyone who has the slightest clue how civ works knows he's comparing apples and oranges.

It's also highly ironic that he mentions Nakor. At least Nakor didn't build 2 wonders for us.

[pindicator]

Yeah, i'm for attacking Black Sword with those boats. We can still try to raze mackoti's "Fair Trade" islands this turn if the coast is clear

[pindicator]

Also, what I really want to post in the IT thread is:

hey pindicator, how do you know i got an excelent deal?If you wanna see cities beeing'gifted' see nakor in pb13.

We tried to get him to build us Colossus too, but somebody beat us to that trick

[scooter]

Ok I logged in again after Mackoti finished his turn. So about that plan:



3 Frigates now, including one which has promotions available. Hooray for drydocks. General reactions:

1) We could kill the Caravel, safely raze Father Squid, then come home all in one move... However, it should be noted that the Caravel is only a 74% shot to our Galleons. 26% chance we lose a Galleon to a completely unthreatening unit. I very slightly lean towards rolling the dice (because the upside is 2XP for a promo), but I don't think anything about that decision is a no-brainer.

2) I'm not so sure about double/triple teaming that 1E Frigate this turn, given that there are two more to take its place. Kinda makes me just want to wait until we have our own on the water. Any thoughts on this?

3) The heavy use of Frigates confirms the one bit of good news - Mackoti has no plans to actually threaten our cities. He can afford to pump water units at us, but not so much land units.

------

On the Black Sword portion of things, I did a little counting on land units we have in the region. This is not suggesting we use all of these at all, I just wanted a handy reference point for what we have readily available to participate:



10 Zerks:

1: Red Wings
1: Sonics
6: stack SE-E of Sonics (includes GG Morale Zerk)
1: Expos
1: 1W of Nets

Nearby Units:

Sonics: 2 Knights, 1 Catapult
Browns: 1 longbow (CG)
Nets: 1 Knight, 1 C1 axe
Expos: 1 Knight, 1 Longbow
NE-NE of Sonics: 2 catapults

Less Close Units that are still mostly close enough:

Colts: 7 knights, 2 longbows (CG), 1 catapult
Grizzlies: 2 Knights, 1 longbow

That's about it. I didn't include a couple spears, unpromoted axes, and archers, since who cares about those. I only included the C1 axe since we tossed around the idea of upgrading him to a Zerk at one point, but that can probably safely be ignored too.

Anyway, these are all units that are sitting around doing nothing, and would be ready to go now. The only unit we're "waiting" on is the Galleon completing end of this turn. So we could probably actually do this in 2T rather than 3T if we want. Quick general thoughts:

1) We could go for shuffling those 3 catapults towards Bigger, and maybe return a unit or two back towards TBS from there in exchange. Bigger is not a threat right now because his army is so far south that he would be in bad, bad shape if he harassed us, but in 10T or so I expect we'll want to reinforce that more heavily. Ideally, we'll be well done with the TBS stuff by then.

2) The Zerk in Red Wings is well positioned to go join the Galleon that's completing EoT in Bulldogs.

[scooter]

Also, I feel the need to comment a little further on this city purchasing thing, but I'll do it in the safety of our own thread. Half the reason for commenting is to clarify how things look from our perspective and why we're super not thrilled about this, and the other half is for figuring out how to avoid this in future games.

First, I concede that pindicator using the word "gift" in his original post in the IT thread opened the door a little here for mackoti's comments. We are aware it was not a gift in the literal sense, pindicator's comment just referred to the fact that mackoti got it so cheaply that, realistically, it may as well have been a gift. However, I'll start by addressing these here so lurkers are aware:

hey pindicator, how do you know i got an excelent deal?If you wanna see cities beeing'gifted' see nakor in pb13.

I just wanted to show how you can speak when you are not completly informed , i apologies for my words but other should be more carefull about saying stuff and knowing nothing

1) We are very informed about everything mackoti is doing. I check his trade screen, cities, graphs, EVERYTHING, etc. multiple times per turn, and I literally have a tab on my phone dedicated to Civstats .

2) Barring something unusual (mackoti triggering a trade mission midturn and offering a ton of money to TBS for those cities), the price tag was very low. We don't know the exact number, but we're pretty certain it was less than 500g, possibly quite a bit less. Let's say capturing those cities would have resulted in about 18 turns of anarchy total across 3 cities. Based on what our island cities are generating in income, that's quite a bit of cash those anarchy turns would cause him to miss out on.

3) Those cities alone are immediately profitable by virtue of FM trade routes, plus the commerce they general from coast. Just avoiding the anarchy alone probably pays for the bulk of the money he gave up, and that does not even take into account the hammers, infrastructure, culture, and tactical value all saved by getting them peacefully rather than capturing them. The price tag was basically free, in that this was already very likely a better economic deal than capturing them, even if he had the units ready to go. We are JUST NOW finishing re-building infrastructure that got destroyed in capturing those Nakor cities 30+ turns ago. Getting cities peacefully and fully intact is always a way, way better deal than capturing them.

4) We've seen 0 Mackoti Galleons, and everything suggests he's mostly walking around with boats that can't load military units (all Caravels and Frigates thus far). Mackoti is still at war with OH, so poking around those cities with Frigates and actually committing land units to load up into Galleons and capture those cities are two entirely different stories. I'm skeptical he actually was ready to do that immediately. I don't know this one for sure, but there's certainly evidence. For example, he was unable to get a defense unit into Father Squid this turn. If he was actually capable of capturing it that turn, he was certainly capable of getting a unit into it.

5) The worst part is this was a peace time deal! This didn't even come with guaranteed 10T peace!

So I think we're pretty informed about what went down, and assuming you take it for what it means rather than what it literally says, pindicator's "gift" remark is pretty fair. We actually offered this to TBS after it happened:



Now, that's an offensive deal and not one he'll accept (right?!). However, we at least made it clear that we're willing to purchase as well, and that's an attractive offer to him for the right price, especially since he's about to lose some of those cities to us. None of those cities are defensible, because they're all on that island of his that's right next to us. I would pay a few hundred gold for Hiram + Dinosaur Kid alone in a heartbeat if it meant we also get to keep the infra. That would be amazing. Then we'd just take the other stuff later. Anyway, I think it's lame that mackoti opened the door to us doing that. It's clearly not prohibited by the rules we're playing with, so I don't think we have a major leg to stand on in the legitimacy of the move, but I do think it pushes the limits of playing fair.


As for how to solve it for future games... I think the simplest rule is simply to say that peace-time city transactions are banned. This means the only valid way to give up a city is in exchange for guaranteed 10T peace. Reasons for this:

1) It removes purchasing cities as an option. You can't both exchange something in a peace deal, it's either straight or one-sided.

2) It requires you to nuke trade routes if you want to acquire a city this way.

I know a couple players like the idea of peace-time city purchasing if the deal is fair; however, the only way it's *really* fair to all is if the players involved are on generally equal footing. In this case, this deal that happened is totally worth it to TBS, who is just trying to live longer, and those cities under his possession don't really help him do that. For Mack it's a no-brainer for reasons outlined above. I don't think peace time city transactions really add a lot to the game, but clearly they open a nasty can of worms, so I think in the future it's best to simply remove the option. Some may want to go further and ban all city exchanges of any sort, but I do feel that cities-for-peace deals at least add something positive to the game in a way that peace-time city deals do not.

[pindicator]

Maybe we should have some of the smarter people here try to come up with a way to quantify what fair value for a city is. Then say any peaceful exchange has to be +/-20% of that value

[Mardoc]

Maybe we should have some of the smarter people here try to come up with a way to quantify what fair value for a city is. Then say any peaceful exchange has to be +/-20% of that value

That would depend on city size, resources, supporting tech, military in the area, trade routes, infrastructure, and probably more factors. Even ignoring foreign relations effects. I would rather ban city trades than fill out a tax form to figure out how much I'm allowed to charge or accept for a city.

I think your fundamental issue is the same question that's been around for ages. What's appropriate when you no longer have a chance of winning the game? Whatever answer you come up with needs to apply to both this one and PB15...

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Also, I feel the need to comment a little further on this city purchasing thing, but I'll do it in the safety of our own thread. Half the reason for commenting is to clarify how things look from our perspective and why we're super not thrilled about this, and the other half is for figuring out how to avoid this in future games.

First, I concede that pindicator using the word "gift" in his original post in the IT thread opened the door a little here for mackoti's comments. We are aware it was not a gift in the literal sense, pindicator's comment just referred to the fact that mackoti got it so cheaply that, realistically, it may as well have been a gift. However, I'll start by addressing these here so lurkers are aware:

hey pindicator, how do you know i got an excelent deal?If you wanna see cities beeing'gifted' see nakor in pb13.

I just wanted to show how you can speak when you are not completly informed , i apologies for my words but other should be more carefull about saying stuff and knowing nothing

1) We are very informed about everything mackoti is doing. I check his trade screen, cities, graphs, EVERYTHING, etc. multiple times per turn, and I literally have a tab on my phone dedicated to Civstats .

2) Barring something unusual (mackoti triggering a trade mission midturn and offering a ton of money to TBS for those cities), the price tag was very low. We don't know the exact number, but we're pretty certain it was less than 500g, possibly quite a bit less. Let's say capturing those cities would have resulted in about 18 turns of anarchy total across 3 cities. Based on what our island cities are generating in income, that's quite a bit of cash those anarchy turns would cause him to miss out on.

3) Those cities alone are immediately profitable by virtue of FM trade routes, plus the commerce they general from coast. Just avoiding the anarchy alone probably pays for the bulk of the money he gave up, and that does not even take into account the hammers, infrastructure, culture, and tactical value all saved by getting them peacefully rather than capturing them. The price tag was basically free, in that this was already very likely a better economic deal than capturing them, even if he had the units ready to go. We are JUST NOW finishing re-building infrastructure that got destroyed in capturing those Nakor cities 30+ turns ago. Getting cities peacefully and fully intact is always a way, way better deal than capturing them.

4) We've seen 0 Mackoti Galleons, and everything suggests he's mostly walking around with boats that can't load military units (all Caravels and Frigates thus far). Mackoti is still at war with OH, so poking around those cities with Frigates and actually committing land units to load up into Galleons and capture those cities are two entirely different stories. I'm skeptical he actually was ready to do that immediately. I don't know this one for sure, but there's certainly evidence. For example, he was unable to get a defense unit into Father Squid this turn. If he was actually capable of capturing it that turn, he was certainly capable of getting a unit into it.

5) The worst part is this was a peace time deal! This didn't even come with guaranteed 10T peace!

So I think we're pretty informed about what went down, and assuming you take it for what it means rather than what it literally says, pindicator's "gift" remark is pretty fair. We actually offered this to TBS after it happened:



Now, that's an offensive deal and not one he'll accept (right?!). However, we at least made it clear that we're willing to purchase as well, and that's an attractive offer to him for the right price, especially since he's about to lose some of those cities to us. None of those cities are defensible, because they're all on that island of his that's right next to us. I would pay a few hundred gold for Hiram + Dinosaur Kid alone in a heartbeat if it meant we also get to keep the infra. That would be amazing. Then we'd just take the other stuff later. Anyway, I think it's lame that mackoti opened the door to us doing that. It's clearly not prohibited by the rules we're playing with, so I don't think we have a major leg to stand on in the legitimacy of the move, but I do think it pushes the limits of playing fair.


As for how to solve it for future games... I think the simplest rule is simply to say that peace-time city transactions are banned. This means the only valid way to give up a city is in exchange for guaranteed 10T peace. Reasons for this:

1) It removes purchasing cities as an option. You can't both exchange something in a peace deal, it's either straight or one-sided.

2) It requires you to nuke trade routes if you want to acquire a city this way.

I know a couple players like the idea of peace-time city purchasing if the deal is fair; however, the only way it's *really* fair to all is if the players involved are on generally equal footing. In this case, this deal that happened is totally worth it to TBS, who is just trying to live longer, and those cities under his possession don't really help him do that. For Mack it's a no-brainer for reasons outlined above. I don't think peace time city transactions really add a lot to the game, but clearly they open a nasty can of worms, so I think in the future it's best to simply remove the option. Some may want to go further and ban all city exchanges of any sort, but I do feel that cities-for-peace deals at least add something positive to the game in a way that peace-time city deals do not.