[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[scooter]

Oh side note, I did make one mistake with the Luddite Copper gift. Namely, I was building a warrior in Kendall and had put 6h into it before pausing it to swap builds with plans to return to it. However, I hooked Copper and due to sequential, I had it for a full end-of-turn sequence before Luddite could accept my gift. As a result, the warrior upgraded to a Spear with 6h, and then Luddite accepted my Copper which caused the Spear to drop from the queue. So, 6h lit entirely on fire. Oops. I know it's still there and I may even return to it before it's fully decayed, but just a slightly amusing mistake.

[Zed-F]

This is one situation where a PYFT war might not work out so well...

[scooter]

This is one situation where a PYFT war might not work out so well...

Not sure what this is referring to? We've been getting a fairly steady 1T/day.


No pictures right now, but I will settle Silk city tomorrow. Luddite has not lost anymore cities somewhat surprisingly. I also hook horses tomorrow, so I am able to queue chariots shortly. I also have eyes on Yuris, so I should have tons of warning if he decides to do something when peace expires.

Most importantly though, on Thursday I played my turns for both this game and 70 while on an airplane. I realize there's a decent chance that I'm the first person to ever play a Civ4 PB turn on a plane, let alone two of them. Anyone else lay claim to that before me? Latency was a bit shaky, but overall it worked fine.

[Zed-F]

Not sure what this is referring to? We've been getting a fairly steady 1T/day.

Cairo is keeping the turns at 1T a day even on weekends when you'd think people might be able to play more, but it's also a reference to people being on other landmasses and having super units.

Otherwise good to hear things are going according to schedule and being on a plane / traveling hasn't been much of an issue! Hope you're enjoying your trip.

[scooter]

Cairo is keeping the turns at 1T a day even on weekends when you'd think people might be able to play more, but it's also a reference to people being on other landmasses and having super units.

Oh yeah. The PYFT scale this game is interesting. Yuris and I are elite PYFTers. In the 50 simultaneous turns, I don’t think either of us ever played last. Luddite and Oxy are pretty average. They have a normal window, but can occasionally play outside of it. Then Cairo is pretty tightly limited to a narrow window as far as I can tell. That said, there’s two caveats. One, Cairo is directly after Yuris and me, which frequently results in the turn getting to him like 12-18 hours before his actual window, so the turn probably unluckily sits with him way more than expected. Second, the action started much earlier here, so rather than playing SimCity he’s in an actual hot war, so it’s not like these turns are 5 minutes to play.

So I really don’t mind. The 1T/day is steady, so I’ll definitely take it.

[Qgqqqqq]

I think I've played PBEM turns on a plane before, but certainly never a Pitboss.

[scooter]

Been a few days, time for an update.




Circumnavigation is mine. And with that, I already have a 4-move Galley. Also, note that Oxy got the Pyramids as I projected. Definitely a little earlier than was probably necessary, but I wonder if he was afraid of me competing with him given my Stone. He has not settled his 6th city yet, so clearly he invested resources into getting this completed on time.

Also in foreign affairs, Cairo has yet to make any more progress against Luddite. More on that in a bit. But Cairo did settle his 4th city in the midst of all this, so seems more like he's just choking with his Musketeers while expanding behind them.





I'm using the Galley to take a peek at the southwest island to confirm/deny whether the spot I've picked out works or not. I mostly like it because Fish/Oasis means it needs no workers for a little longer, so the instant 2c routes are incredibly valuable. Meanwhile, Connor is sticking a turn or two into Oracle so that two chops will 1T it here shortly. I'm debating between taking Construction and being able to build War Elephants in like 4 turns versus the greedier play of getting Currency and using that to further tech snowball me to Construction. Will figure that out this week. If I don't land it, it's fine, I'll just head straight to Construction. This firmly falls under the "it's too cheap to ignore" with Marble coming online this coming turn.





Yuris still has not landed IW or HBR, so that make me feel pretty good as I think either one would likely be a 12+ turn tech for him, so I think I've still got a little time. Speaking of, our enforced peace comes up next turn. You saw him floating around Connor, but if he moves in, the warrior will get popped thanks to a freshly completed Chariot.





I also have really good vision on whatever might be coming. My scout spied the axe/worker/settler trio marked by sign, but I retreated to avoid an opportunistic snipe by him.





Things looking strong again. I'm really not sure how the tech-first folks keep up with myself and Oxy as you can see how far behind the "average" is versus Oxy himself who is keeping pace pretty well. This is pretty much why I was so skeptical of the military techs pregame. I also picked up graphs on Luddite.

Some rapid-fire takeaways.


1) The fact that Luddite and Yuris are dead even in expansion numbers (and miles behind me) despite one of them fending off a rush really shows how slow the Byzantium start is here. Byzantine early game is already rough in Vanilla BtS, but it was magnified by not really being compatible with this start and up against some blazing starts.


2) Luddite appears to have completed an Artillery. I think it's the second spike - first one seems not quite big enough, so likely something else. I'm guessing that is why Cairo has been unable to score more city kills.


3) My Chariot + Galley combo was enough to vault me ahead of Yuris in power and into 3rd in soldiers. Oxy seems very likely to be the lowest. He must be isolated at this point. It's the only reasonable explanation. What a coup for him that would be if true.

[Qgqqqqq]

How long is Construction once you get Currency? I would generally say 100% get Currency, but given you have GLH the relative effect is more minor. Is Metal Casting worth it, actually?

If you get Construction before he gets 'phracts, are you ever planning to be aggressive with them? If so, could be worth going early and trying to choke out his strategics. If not, seems no point until he has one of IW or HBR - unless you want to flash them and hope he decides he can't attack you.

Feels very much between you and Oxy. Do we know where they are yet?

[scooter]

How long is Construction once you get Currency? I would generally say 100% get Currency, but given you have GLH the relative effect is more minor. Is Metal Casting worth it, actually?

If you get Construction before he gets 'phracts, are you ever planning to be aggressive with them? If so, could be worth going early and trying to choke out his strategics. If not, seems no point until he has one of IW or HBR - unless you want to flash them and hope he decides he can't attack you.

Feels very much between you and Oxy. Do we know where they are yet?

Let's answer the last question first.





This is The World - all of it. Oxy is almost certainly roughly where I've placed him. We know he's near the north pole, and we know Cairo is north of Luddite. The placement may be a bit high, but it's generally about where he's at. Answering the other questions requires thinking about this a little bit. It's really a question of how aggressive to get with Yuris. I've discussed this a little before, but there's basically two paths.


1) Use War Elephants and better production to basically stiff-arm Yuris and REX over the islands like mad.

2) Full zero sum with Yuris - duel mode.


I'd prefer #1 because, well, I believe settlers are cheaper than militaries. I'm generally of the opinion it's bad to invade someone when you have claimable land. Commodore used to write up these "rules" that were basically good common-sense advice like how land wars against equal neighbors rarely works out. Mine would be something like "it's cheaper to get a city with a settler than with a military." The other thing is look at the above screenshot. I don't know what the exact deal is with central islands and Oxy, but it sure looks like there's a ton of islands here, and I have the perfect leader/civ/bonuses to dominate them. Therefore it seems really good to get a jump start on them. It also hurts a little to potentially get caught in some fighting while Oxy is untouched. That's pretty much the easiest way to lose this game.


That said.





To Yuris, there is no choice. This is a duel. He is going to hook those Horses in a few turns, and then like 10ish turns after that he's going to start whipping Phracts as fast as possible and send them at me because conquering this whole continent is his only win-con. So that makes it really hard to justify route #1. There is sort of a middle ground here I think - that of attempting to kneecap him and then come back later to finish the job. That would involve burning 1-2 front cities, denying horse, and then keeping him as a rump state. That may be possible, and it also may be possible to do it without huge investment.


I don't know if I really answered the questions here, but if I had to pick now, I'd likely take Construction. But I'm going to do the math this week and try to approximate how much of a delay exactly Currency would be.

[scooter]

An addendum, my instinct here would definitely be to take Currency first. My consideration of prioritizing Construction over it basically boils down to trying to course correct some of my tendencies. I've been burned before trying to wish away an inevitable conflict. It's overly easy to think "well it would be convenient to wait to really commit to this conflict when I'm completely built up and an era ahead, and I'm sure this player will oblige my wishes."