February 23rd, 2018, 12:48
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Capitals can auto-raze.
fnord
February 24th, 2018, 07:56
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Honestly, I have no idea what Aretas is doing. As mackoti pointed out after Aretas grew, Rival Best crop yield shows 8fpt, which with no improved tiles yet can only be Aretas working two 3f tiles plus his city center. (Dark Savant didn't grow to size 2 until the turn after mack made that observation, and we know from Savant's reports that his crop yield has never been above 7.) This means that - far from getting an archer already - Aretas has no more than 26h in military units, at least 10 of which must be in a warrior (or a barracks or - heaven help him - a monument). If he started on an archer ASAP and continues at this rate, he would grow again on T14 and would produce the archer no sooner than T15. There are various other gambits he could be trying too, but each of them seems worse than the last. (Stonehenge before Worker?? As Agg/Fin HRE??? While working exclusively 0-hammer tiles????) Hopefully he has a deep and clever plan here that I'm somehow missing, but it's looking like mackoti, Rusten, and Boldly (and Dark Savant, Xenu, and 2metra for other reasons) are winning the neighbor-land lottery.
February 24th, 2018, 19:37
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Occam's Razor would suggest he's just not very good.
Darrell
February 26th, 2018, 14:06
(This post was last modified: February 26th, 2018, 14:17 by JR4.)
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Um, what is Donovan doing here? Sending his Worker to the eastern Pigs looks to have cost him an extra turn. Also, working a 0/2/2 Incense for a couple of turns can`t possibly be a good idea at this stage of the game. It turns out that building on that Flood Plains deprived him of a 3 food tile in his bfc and he really can`t afford any delays on growth. Working a 2/1/1 tile on those two turns would give him an extra 4 food instead of 2 hammers and 2 commerce .
Donovan is talking about a second city on t37-40. Compare that to the sim of TBS, with 4 cities, 4 Workers AND 3 Granaries on t50 and you`ll see how far behind Donovan is going to be. I`d say Donovan and Aretas are already out of the running.
It`s funny how Dark Savant and Rusten made a run for a religion without any competition. Is a coin flip drama too much to ask?
February 27th, 2018, 01:12
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(February 26th, 2018, 14:06)JR4 Wrote: Um, what is Donovan doing here? Sending his Worker to the eastern Pigs looks to have cost him an extra turn. Also, working a 0/2/2 Incense for a couple of turns can`t possibly be a good idea at this stage of the game.
I think both of these are for the same reason: Early on, he changed his mind twice about which tech to research, four turns apart, with the result that (since he moved to the floodplain and had just 1c in the city center) he couldn't complete Hunting before T14, and could only get it that soon by working the incense for a turn or two to get an extra beaker over the pigs (or two beakers over a forest hill). So it doesn't matter where his worker went on T12 as long as it got to some pig by T13 and could move to its next destination efficiently from the second pig it improved. Unfortunately, Donovan is also talking about mining the incense hill before pasturing the second pig, building three(!) workers before his first Settler in a capital with only two strong tiles, and building (multiple!) scouts on purpose when he could be building warriors instead. He dug himself a pretty deep hole on T0, but that might have been recoverable had he remembered the first rule of escaping holes: Stop digging!
Quote:Compare that to the sim of TBS, with 4 cities, 4 Workers AND 3 Granaries on t50 and you`ll see how far behind Donovan is going to be. I`d say Donovan and Aretas are already out of the running.
To be fair to Donovan, nobody's going to look good in comparison to TBS. I'd be surprised if anyone on the planet is better than TBS at planning the Civ4 opening. (Spoiler alert: He's incredibly good at the rest of the game too.) DZ has Exp to help him, but as he said himself, his mistake on T0 (especially compounded by his tech indecision later) already cost him that entire advantage and then some. To look in the opposite direction, I'll bet even with all his missteps, Donovan will be doing better than Aretas by T50.
A better comparison might be with Donovan's northern neighbor. Dark Savant will eventually get a powerful shrine out of his opening gambit, and has the right traits to climb out of his hole, but in terms of the opening itself, his snowball is actually starting far behind Donovan's: He's down Hunting, Mining, and most of a Worker, with basically just a Warrior (and a holy city!) to show for it. Given the openings they're both planning though, I have a suspicion that of the two, Dark Savant is going to have more cities and more population working better tiles by turn 50, with equal or better infrastructure in his cities.
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A number of teams are eyeing a CV from T0. This should be interesting.
March 3rd, 2018, 02:30
(This post was last modified: March 3rd, 2018, 02:31 by ipecac.)
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Tier list of tier lists:
1. Commodore's - pictures seal the deal
2. BGN - detailed, good stuff
3-4 Joey - equations are a new approach
Team Hydra - standard stuff
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(February 13th, 2018, 16:52)Mardoc Wrote: (February 13th, 2018, 16:16)Cornflakes Wrote: What is the history between Pindicator and Commodore?
In one of the early games (PB5, I think?) they ended up sharing some marginal land with very little choice but to fight (scooter was Pindicator's partner in that game, IIRC). It didn't help that at the time Commodore had a reputation as a bit of a wolverine, nor did it help that Pindicator kicked off the war from a superior position but didn't invest quite enough into units. Pindicator ended up evacuating his empire and taking over a neighbor lock-stock-and-barrel - which of course meant that Commodore ended up with the conquest. That was an epic story, by the way, I strongly recommend reading about their migration.]
What - I stop posting for a couple of years and I get written out of history?!?!!? 
(It was me and pindicator in PB5 and several other games with Commo-drama)
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Once you've gone 3 years without a game all your accomplishments are handed over to team mates and ded lurkers.
Current games (All): RtR: PB80 Civ 6: PBEM23
Ended games (Selection): BTS games: PB1, PB3, PBEM2, PBEM4, PBEM5B, PBEM50. RB mod games: PB5, PB15, PB27, PB37, PB42, PB46, PB71. FFH games: PBEMVII, PBEMXII. Civ 6: PBEM22 Games ded lurked: PB18
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I like how Dark Savant sniffed out the production weakness of his neighbour (size1; no plains hill due to vision rules) and figures he's likely about to walk into an empty capital... good thing that Donovan had decided to work a 0f2h tile over 3f0h!
That said, Savant probably shouldn't seek to auto-raze a capital if he went warrior first, rather than letting Donovan develop from a flawed start and attacking him later, lest all of Donovan's other neighbours are just as well going to ask themselves, "What shall we do with the empty spaces where waves of hunger roar?"
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