[SPOILERS] scooter's PB53

[scooter]

What of Commodore then?  Did you figure out what his whips were for?

I've got a scout in his center island city that's moving towards his core, so I should know soon. I think that city was sporting a new Horse Archer. If so, that's a nice relief to me, because it means no Guilds. Worth noting those whips were merely his first turn out of a Golden Age, so it may have just been pent-up whip demand. No noticeable power spike yet, but I'll see next turn when the charts update.

[scooter]

I should say, I'd be surprised if he managed to get Guilds already. He's done quite a few tech detours I haven't (Code of Laws, Theology), and so I'll be pretty concerned if he managed to do that and get to Guilds within 1T of me. My feeling was that I was at least 4-5T ahead of him on that front.

[scooter]

Well I can see on PBSpy that AT played without recapturing. Seems like good news for me.

[scooter]

Turn 87





Best news imaginable right there. AT does not have Horseback Riding, and so he's been spending his whips on Archers en masse as a response to my CKNs. Understandable, but it undercuts his Aggressive trait, and they aren't terribly useful against my incoming Knights. To be fair, he likely had no idea I had Knights until he saw one in the combat log last turn. I'm looking at capturing either T90 or T91, depending on how things shake out. I would like T90, but a lot of my units in Pillage are wounded and couldn't heal this turn. Also note that he has a settler parked in here. Maybe he really is planning to settle that northern island to last longer? Either that or he was about to settle something when this war started, so he's pulled it back. Curious if it disappears soon.





I believe these are effectively on a 2T delay, so we aren't showing last turn's combat on here yet. If he's reading, Noble will surely correct that if I'm wrong. That said, it does look like Commodore's mass-whips were not anything especially scary. His power isn't really going up much, and it does not appear that he has Guilds after all. I think he should still be a few turns away from that at least.





Here's what he's got in his border with a single HA sitting behind it. Yakima just has some generic defenders in it as well. My power spike earlier seemingly prompted him to stock up on defenders, but he hasn't really added anything that's scary offensively.





Turned research back on. I'm still debating slightly between ending this Golden Age in Organized Religion or Theocracy. I'm staying in Vassalage, so I'm already getting Drill3 on every CKN built in a Barracks city as-is, so Theocracy really just helps me towards the 3rd Knight promo. That said, I think my tech, production, and Knight/CKN combo should be plenty to defend myself for quite awhile, so maybe that affords me some time in OR due to my desperate need for infrastructure. I have like 3 Libraries built for example, which is insane on this map. We'll see. I'm building up a ton of beaker overflow over these next two turns, so I'll have options.

[NobleHelium]

I do believe Simultaneous Pitboss graphs are delayed an additional turn compared to PBEM, yes.

[scooter]

Haven't posted FIN/PRO in awhile, but I've been keeping track. Here's the recent progress. Financial has overtaken Protective, and will continue to zoom away until I start landing stuff that power up Protective. I would expect Financial to be stronger at this point, especially with the water, so this isn't really surprising. I annotated a couple fluctuations there, but overall I'm getting a ton of value out of my traits right now.

[Hitru]

Has this changed how you feel about PRO vs FIN?

[scooter]

Has this changed how you feel about PRO vs FIN?

Not really. For starters comparing FIN, Cornflakes bulbed Engineering recently, which in terms of beakers is worth almost the exact same as how much each trait has given me, and I expect him to do more bulbing very soon. I think he's getting more value out of GLH/Pyramids right now than I am out of either trait. Might be a good idea to ask him about that for comparison purposes. Most of my strong early expansion was purely due to getting the advanced start right and not getting two cities razed by neighbors. Now of course, it's better to get that commerce early, but if we're purely comparing raw beakers, that's not even Cornflakes' only bulb, so he's gotten more raw commerce out of PHI than I have out of either trait. Industrious is harder to gauge because it still required him to make some hammer investments, but as he adds cheap forges everywhere in a whip-heavy world, he's going to make that investment back pretty quickly I think.


Protective's front-loaded commerce was undeniably hugely helpful. It got a deserved nerf, but I also think the advanced start overstated it dramatically because I got the benefits on T0 with no effort. Financial is unquestionably good right now, but the map has something to do with that. I think I got great traits no doubt, but the map setup powered them up a bit in a way they wouldn't on most other maps. I wish we had a comparison point with Expansive, but TBS' various bad events this game have hampered that, but the fact that he was keeping expansion pace despite two early city losses should provide a hint at what was possible there. Protective is his other trait after all, so it would have been an interesting comparison.

[scooter]

To add to the Cornflakes comparison, I think he got the advanced start wrong, and he had the worst neighbor luck. Take one of those factors away, and he might be leading right now or really close.

[Hitru]

I was mostly asking regarding balance between PRO and FIN, as I got the impression that you were initially heavily favoring PRO here. Now that FIN is starting to be much more valuable sooner than you thought (again, by my vague recollection and partly due to the map) do you think they are in balance with respect to each other?