[spoilers] Commodore is strategic in Pitboss 74

[Commodore]

Talk to us about Darius, both getting to this position with the slow leader, and what he means going forward.

Good one.

So, Darius (Fin/Org). There’s an argument for Darius being one of the slowest leaders in the game, with nothing besides cheap lighthouses directly concerned with speeding up the early snowball. I had a very reasonable expansion rate early on, leveraging geography and geopolitics to nail out a wide landgrab before backfilling. Without any hammer boosters it was painful to be disciplined about building granaries, monuments in strategic locations, and “enough” workers to always be working improved tiles. I also was fairly strict about cottaging every available riverside tile and working the darn things, to the extent that I’ve actually not had nearly the coastal commerce boost that you’d expect. The how is several factors:
-Mass deforestation. If you look above at my empire’s screenshot vs all the others’, you’ll see I’ve been utterly ruthless about chopping, mostly into granaries and more settlers/workers. No forest in Original Avalon was untouched.
-Tight spacing. I built out everything designed to share tiles to maximize my whip cycles, as a result no megacities are available but plenty of good ones have been optimized for this midgame size.
-Mines suck. Until the last 30 turns I had a copper mine and an iron mine as more or less my only mines. Now I’m building into the workshop/mine transition, but early game it was about growing on cottages unto whips.
-Darius. Yes, his traits aren’t considered expansion traits, but my break-even NEVER dipped below 50%. That’s basically unheard of in this phase, but it’s been a big deal here.
-Laser-focus on the Guilds beeline. Knights are essential and need to gain you territory if you’re going to win*.
*Viking Berzerkers like Plemo is using are a rare exception.
Obviously this has led to some long-term challenges as a direct result of this rather ruthless development path…beyond the captured Bingonian Royal Woods I have no forests to burn in a wonder push. The not-quite-ICS spaced cities are going to mostly stagnate in the mid-teens, with no super-cities available except for Midway or the hyper-vulnerable Afrika Korps. And of course, my nice huge knight army got used up pretty thoroughly. So there’s some realignment and rebuilding needed.
 
There are huge advantages going forward to be Darius, though. The captured territories will need courthouses given maint costs, so that’ll be a huge savings, and all my villages+towns are still thriving with Financial. As I finally recover from the whipping more and more coastal tiles are getting worked so that’s a massive +50% boost each time. Darius loves attacking the center of the tech tree and I’m just going to double down on that, with the biggest deal being the first and fasted to fully industrialize at Assembly Line. The efficiency I’m enjoying is insane right now, if I didn’t think that Plemo was about to completely overwhelm Tarkac then I’d feel like I could almost sit back and enjoy front-running.

[Qgqqqqq]

Really appreciate the analysis! If you were to give a rating to the six contenders you identify chance to win (or perhaps path to be a major contender with a prisoners dilemma shot of winning) what would it be?

[Commodore]

Really appreciate the analysis! If you were to give a rating to the six contenders you identify chance to win (or perhaps path to be a major contender with a prisoners dilemma shot of winning) what would it be?

Hrm. Well, discounting the most likely outcome still being some form of turnpace-related draw...
Plemo -30%
Commodore -20%
Pindicator -15%
Gingelito -15%
Gavagai -10%
Picadilly -10%

[Commodore]

I'm really really keen to know what's going on with Plemo vs. Tarkac. Haven't seen much yet, but met Gavagai, who's another member of the 17-city club.


Another? That's right, Pindicator is making moves now, he took another major site and settled a filler. New Sumer is going to be *nice*:


My next cites are going to be exclusively in the New World, which unlike the rest of the map is about at natural levels of lushitude. I'm fine with it, just need food, enough woods to chop infra, and lots of areas for workshops. I've begun a galleon at max extension, so incoming settler in ~6t.

There are other bits of New World land visible too. It's not going to be as nice as my core or Bing's, but I suspect I'll be able to get bonus cities up to net contribution soon. Maybe some to the east too, just whipped a caravel on that coast so if I can scoop Gingelito/Gavagai from New Worlds that way I'll be happy too.


Just thinking about the future here.

You know, you gotta think about...stuff.

[Commodore]

A Tour of Lower Avalon
With the conquest of Lower Avalon (formerly Bingia), we’ve added 10 new cities to the empire, settled in a few frustrating places at times, but with extensive infrastructure and (in the north) heavy tile development. I’m going to look through the new cities and evaluate them; I’m going to pause and offer critique in a few instances, but if you’re watching Bing please don’t take them personally…ideally, I’d like this to be a constructive exercise. What I won’t be commenting on in most cases of course are the tons and tons of aqueducts all over the place, back when the cities were Khmer of course those were actually barays, which with the +1f are a very different calculation. As it is…I guess I’ll appreciate them in the Industrial revolution?


Air Assault on Crete

Nestled among the lush and looping coils of the upper Greater Avalon River, Assault Crete benefits from no major single source of food, indeed giving up even its nearby floodplains to the burgeoning metropolis of Afrika Korps, but with its outlying commerce-rich villages and towns all on well-watered grasslands it will never need intensive food aid either. While technically on the border with Sumer, this sleepy commerce city is shielded by formidable peaks from direct assault. At least until levees are available, this city just exists for commerce and trade.


Napoleon

Perched high on the imposing ridges south of the upper Greater Avalon, Napoleon stands poised to be a great manufacturing hub for the entire region. While not entirely uncommercial with a handful of dependent towns and the nearby wine country famous for the Bingonian Rose, most of the region governed by Napoleon is given over to mines and workshops, always pressured somewhat by Sumerian culture from nearby Saddle Mountain.


Wizard’s Quest

The simple fishing region of Wizard’s Quest is even more pressured by Saddle Mountain than its sister city. Even the pastureland in sight of the city’s walls occasionally has a Sumerian claimant show up from time to time. The violence of the initial Avalonian sack destroyed the city’s granary, setting back development for decades, but the new food storage infrastructure will allow the city to grow populous with fish from its miles and miles of coastline.


The Longest Day

Just a little east of the vast primeval forests of the Bingomanian Royal Wood, The Longest Day governs a region split evenly between the mountains and the sea. The first caravels of the Eastern Avalonian Navy were lain down mere weeks after the city’s capture, and much as the city government would like to simply grow on the profits of fishing and fur trade, the focus of the city for the next century will be instead on making ships to spread the flag of Avalon to the uttermost far reaches of the world.


Squad Leader

Once the high capital of the Bingamarovingian Dynasty, Squad Leader is a large city nestled in a surprisingly rural region, only settled by the occasional hamlet. Long-settled farms, carefully-maintained hunting grounds, and some tracts of forests utterly untouched by human hands since time immemorial make Squad Leader a natural focus for the nascent Avalonian tourist industry. The new city planners, with minds of metal and cold calculation, even now make plans for a city of fire and smoke, surrounded by workshops and churning out ships, arms, and armor for the resurgent Avalonian Army.

I’m going to stop here and offer some general critique for the development of this capital. This place could have been amazing. +11 food bonus with native tiles, riverside with seven prime riverside cottage tiles and four flat grass beside, this thing should have been grown to megapolis-size, a prime Bureaucap location with a decent 12 base hammers just enough to build the needed commerce multiplier buildings. If you have unchopped forests on turn 128 (when I captured it), there was definitely something odd with your start. Those things are your snowball-seeds.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to invest the 70 turns to make towns now, so I’m going to go with plan B: Make it a hammer heaven. Allowing the villages to stay, we’re going turn all the grasslands into 1/3 (eventually 1/4 with Caste) workshops. Once we swap into Caste System there’s an easy 40hpt base before chopping the deers…up to 50hpt base once a levee is added. That’s your Ironworks site, I reckon, but more likely the simple answer is Heroic Epic, and invest in making a massive army. Sad about the potential site of peace, but it’ll become an arsenal of war.


Tobruk

Fortress on the hills, overlook of the blood-watered deserts, Tobruk is nothing great, but it is there. Never more than a small outpost, the city would eventually settle as the primary seminary for the Second Taoist Awakening. This is a meh city, but I’m not actually critical of it, fillers gonna filler.


Hexagony

Settled on the single richest vein of silver in the entire Eastern Pangea, Hexagony is a strange place; the silver deposits that would have made the city one of the richest in the world are instead limited by city edict, where careful exploitation of the mines that sit downtown is monitored every day, ensuring no unauthorized mining happens. As a result, the city is mildly richer than otherwise, but is mostly unremarkable. Why? One tile east would have been GREAT…


Storm Over Arnhem

Perched among the last aquifers before the West Desert, the city of Storm Arnhem is, more than any other conquest, relieved. The dry southern villages are self-sufficient, but produce no great surplus of food, while the bountiful floodplains to the city’s east were always commanded by the cultural influence of Midway. Now at peace and finally integrated, the city of Storm Arnhem can just be “normal”, a place with a pleasant mix of commerce and manufacturing.


War at Sea

Victory in the Pacific

Still wracked by paroxysms of violence, the island of the twin cities War at Sea and Victory Pacific is the site of an ongoing guerilla war as Bingamonianalist rebels have taken to the hamlets and mines in the center of the island. The regional governor initially considered ruthlessly razing both cities and just planting a regional capital in the central hills; in the end the infrastructure present in the riotous cities stayed his hand. An old retired general in War at Sea offered his surprising loyalty to the new regime, founding a new naval academy for Avalon. This kind of hurts, one amazing city in the center of this island could have been astonishingly good, while these two are both going to be sub-par. In a world with bad trade connections I can see two cities being worth it, but OB is so plentiful…

[Thoth]

That's a nice infra haul in War at Sea.

What is the wonder in Tonseburg?

[Commodore]

That's a nice infra haul in War at Sea.

What is the wonder in Tonseburg?

Sweaty Pizza (opens up all religious civics)

[Commodore]

Dangit Tarkeel, I'm having fun but you delaying begat Amicalola randomly deciding to not play too. I'm feeling prescient:

The odds of how this ends:

4% -In initial setup.
13% -In the first dozen turns as newbies fail the turnpace.
9% -In the first 80 turns with ragequits due to early warring.
19% -Around turn 150 as higher time requirements makes turn pace lag.
6% -An ill-advised CtH patch breaks things.
31% -Ugly turn order/clock shenanigans drive early concession due to disgust.
17% -Around turn 250 as tired people concede to 1-3 main front runners.
1% -An actual victory condition is met.

That 19% is up to about 91% now.

[Commodore]

Dangit Tarkeel, I'm having fun but you delaying begat Amicalola randomly deciding to not play too. I'm feeling prescient:

The odds of how this ends:

4% -In initial setup.
13% -In the first dozen turns as newbies fail the turnpace.
9% -In the first 80 turns with ragequits due to early warring.
19% -Around turn 150 as higher time requirements makes turn pace lag.
6% -An ill-advised CtH patch breaks things.
31% -Ugly turn order/clock shenanigans drive early concession due to disgust.
17% -Around turn 250 as tired people concede to 1-3 main front runners.
1% -An actual victory condition is met.

That 19% is up to about 91% now.

Is there a way to convert a multiplayer game into single player?

In case you're wondering why I've been logging in so often, I have a game mechanic problem, which is why I wrote to Ramk. More details in my story. In any case, I will unfortunately have to exhaust the timer to at least allow Ramk to reply.
If the problem is due to me as a user, I apologize in advance. You shouldn't make such a turn at 4 o'clock in the morning just because you can't get back to sleep.

I'm interested in further development of this position, it'd be fun to keep playing solo after Plemo MURDERS THIS GAME BY LAG.

[Mjmd]

The game is going slower, but its no where NEAR the turn a week PB66 got to yet! Something to look forward to 

That being said Ramk can send you the save file once any game ends if you wanted to play play against AI.