[PB64] Lurking Randomly

[Charriu]

No matter the outcome I think we can agree that Commodore plays a remarkable game.

[Charriu]

If you notice I actually took the peace with Ginger, it certainly wasn't an automatic thing. Had to be crippling war weariness he was suffering at this point

Ginger was suffering WW unhappiness but not crippling. His highest WW score is 81 in T163. This would have resulted in 1 unhappiness in every 13+ pop city. Knowing that Ginger built Odeons already this would increase to 1 unhappiness in every 17+ pop city with an Odeon.

[Krill]

...I don't know how anyone wins this game?

Amica has no cottages so will not progress beyond knights and muskets.

SD needs biology to make his plains productive and lacks the food to truly abuse PS or Rep. And he is in a tech hole.

Ginger is unable to rebuild his army in a timely fashion

Commodore has zero production and needs to upgrade his stack so either falls into a tech hole or can't build many modern units, just needs turns to grow pop.

Nauf just needs to outlast everyone and keep on planting cottages, doesn't matter if its slow it still wins.

This game will not die.

[Zed-F]

Amicola: "I don't want war with Nauf, so I am razing Nauf's best city he recently captured from Gav."

[Psillycyber]

I don't normally watch these Civ4 pitboss games too closely, but this has to be the wildest one I've ever seen! So many different econ strategies, tech routes, and diplo turning points! I'm almost tempted to say it's still anyone's game.

Not gonna lie, I still like Ginger's position in this game. It isn't as dominant as before the recent Commodore invasion fiasco, but Ginger's economy is so strong and consistent that he can get stack-wiped and still be in the running. That stack was not the product of a bunch of hail-mary whips. He can slow-build another one even better than that pretty quickly. His main problem is, his two neighbors, Commodore and Superdeath, seem particularly porcupiney vs. massed knights. Commodore will have pikes and castles. That will be a hard stone to chip away at, and probably not worth the effort. Superdeath has a huge stack of war elephants. Maybe Ginger's best target right now is actually to finish off Gavagai himself? I wouldn't have thought it would be possible earlier, but now that Amica and SD have taken a breather from that war to consolidate their winnings, and Naug has to always keep one eye on Amica and probably won't be able to bust that last Gavagai stack any time soon, maybe Ginger could? Knights could wreck Gav's spears and crossbows. That would be two more cities, which would put Ginger with a respectable number of cities to stay in the race over the long haul, combined with his deity-AI vertical growth in his core.

Amica seems like the next-best favorite, although I feel like Amica is just a bad diplo turn away from the wolves pouncing on his bloated, greedily-settled empire. Nauf's reporting thread can basically be summed up as, "Amica delenda est." So we know that Nauf will always be game for a coalition against Amica, and won't really be looking anywhere else except if a very very opportunistic opening comes up (like with picking off Gav cities). Even if Amica is 1st in power, he can't be everywhere with his stacks at once. If Superdeath, Nauf, and Commodore could coordinate against Amica while Ginger finished off Gav, that would be a path for Amica to lose. The path for Amica to win is if he gets pikes in time before Superdeath is ready to unite with Nauf and pounce. If Ginger pulls the trigger against Gav, or especially against Commodore again, that would be a signal to SD that Ginger is looking elsewhere, and would give SD the green light to take on Amica...although if Ginger goes against Commodore, a selfish play from SD might be to try to scoop up that entire northern continent from Commodore and let Nauf fend for himself against Amica. I don't think SD has the ship capacity for that, though, and the whipped galleys for it would be a dead giveaway to Commodore about what was coming, giving time to prepare, so I think it's more likely SD will team up against Amica. It's only a question of when. The longer Amica has at peace, the better for him (which is why that raze-snipe of Khrushchev against Nauf was so ballsy!) True, the GLH will obsolete at some point, whereas Nauf's econ advantages will only get stronger, but Amica's land quality and quantity outweighs that if Amica can hold onto it.

Nauf's winning chances all depend on assembling an anti-Amica coalition, and Nauf is well aware of this. Amica delenda est.

I feel like Superdeath is in a surprisingly strong position for how tilty his play has seemed so far this game. It's easy to say that SD shouldn't have made mortal enemies of Gav and instead should have raced Commodore to settle the northern continent (or more coastal cities earlier in general), but the way SD has played this game has the advantage that SD's threats all come from one direction: south (and increasingly east now that SD borders Amica). If SD had battled Commodore for the northern continent, SD would have been an even juicier target for Gav, so SD probably needed to play this game the way he did after all. Perhaps the execution was a bit sloppy here or there, and that may end up making the difference. SD has a decent economy finally (although not as strong as it ought to be) and a nice stack, but that stack has no future 20 turns from now. The biggest problem is, it's hard for me to see how SD can come out ahead of Nauf if both of them team up against Amica, even assuming they prevail over Amica decisively and split the conquests roughly 50-50 (and in reality Nauf is in a better position to insist on a bigger slice)...and yet, I don't see another realistic way forward for SD aside from that.

Can Commodore win? No clue. Stranger things have happened this game. If Ginger did something stupid like pick a fight against SD, and Amica vs. Nauf degenerated into a stalematey blood feud, then I could see a path for Commodore to rebuild and get his economy back into the game. But it would depend on some diplo luck.

Gav is soon gone, obviously, but his stubbornness is continuing to pose tricky diplomatic puzzles for the other players, so well done there!

[Psillycyber]

The thing that impresses me about Ginger's position vs. that of Amica's is, nobody is seriously considering invading Ginger anytime soon (nor should they, realistically), whereas the same can't be said for Amica. Amica may have a higher ceiling than Ginger if everything goes right for him, but Amica has a much lower floor. Ginger's lowest floor is basically, "Can't find an opportunity to cost-effectively expand militarily, so I just sit tight, use the stack of knights I have built already as defensive insurance, and build build build my already huge cities, and end up 50 turns later approaching rifles still with a strong, but not overwhelmingly strong (perhaps 2nd/3rd place) position." That's Ginger's WORST CASE scenario. Whereas Amica's worst-case scenario is getting Gavagai'd.

[Charriu]

I think the reason why everyone looks at the "dangerous" Amicalola, is because they perceive him as the strongest just because he has a lot of cities

[Psillycyber]

I think the reason why everyone looks at the "dangerous" Amicalola, is because they perceive him as the strongest just because he has a lot of cities

Yes, that's why I think Ginger is still quietly the stalking horse favorite to win this game.  

I personally think it is more interesting to play without a scoreboard.  Civ players get used to using score and city count as mental heuristics of strength, but technically they can be misleading.  Then again, demographics can be misleading too because they don't reflect land inside one's borders that aren't being worked yet (due to lack of population) but which will likely be workable in the near future.  There really is no single perfect indicator of who is "ahead," which is a lot of what makes the game fun and interesting!  

Actually, in this circumstance, I think score (which Ginger has been leading in) might actually be a better proxy for who is really in the lead, versus city count.  But I think a lot of civ players have gotten too accustomed to prioritizing city count over score because city count takes into account a measure of potential for growth.  I mean, sure, if Amica is eventually allowed time to grow all of his cities to size 16 like Ginger's best cities, then Amica will win the game.  But getting there will be difficult for Amica.  Amica has to balance military production (on land for now, but very soon at sea as well), infrastructure builds, pop growth, and teching to pikes (and eventually rifles).  I think Ginger's path ahead is more straightforward, with fewer variables that can get completely screwed up from a slight miscalculation...as long as Ginger doesn't tilt from his recent setbacks, and instead just takes stock of how strong his position still is, and how he doesn't really need to try anything drastic to still be in a dominant position by the time SOTL and rifles are in play.

[Psillycyber]

Like, I think Ginger might be in the mindset that, since so much mental effort and anxiety was invested in the machinery slingshot with the Oracle (and eventual short hop from there to guilds), it would be a shame to not press for some sort of military payoff from that. And so far, Ginger has nothing to show for that part of his gameplay. That probably creates a sense of urgency to "do something!" with his knight-monopoly window even if it's actually ill-advised or not cost-effective.

But, in fact, Ginger does have something to show for his machinery slingshot and early guilds. It's just more intangible than a couple of conquered cities. It has effectively removed him as a target for serious aggression most of the game (aside from Commodore's vain attempt at a counter-attack), and it allowed (and continues to allow) Ginger to focus on infrastructure, wonders, Great People, and develop his deity super-cities instead of having to whip down his cities for emergency defenders all the time. Ginger shouldn't be afraid to ride on that seemingly modest, but important advantage. Especially considering how the eastern continent is shaping up to be a 3-way cagematch between Amica, Nauf, and SD. Ginger can probably just coast to a dominant position...unless the coming 3-way war ends up giving decisive conquests for one side or the other. Then Ginger would be in trouble.

[Psillycyber]

I love how Gavagai is just like the late Ottoman Empire right now. Individually, any other player could wipe him out, but they would have to devote their main stack to do so, which would leave them vulnerable to others in the meantime and upset the balance of power. So the Sick Man of PB64 lives on....

It is kinda feeling like Nauf's window against Amica is slipping away. Castles+pikes is nasty. Nauf can't conquer Amica slowly because castles take forever to bombard down and Amica will whip reinforcements (plus upgrade existing spears to pikes). Nauf can't really blitz Amica either because the losses will be horrendous and even the redlined knights that survive will be vulnerable to a counter-attack. Nauf is also correct about the geography making it easier for Amica to cover two two fronts, although that's contingent on where the front line ended up. If Nauf had kept Fever Dream, Nauf could have kept an integrated defense. It's not all the map's fault.

Could we see an industrial era showdown between an equally-matched Ginger and Amica? That would be a rare something to behold!