Medieval Start PitBoss

[Krill]

What's there to say except Thoth demonstrated that targeted violence was the right answer?

Re-reading after posting, this comes across as a knock on Thoth's game which is REALLY not intended at all. The execution of all of it was really great. I think a lot of sharp decisions were made that nobody else wised up to - such as recognizing the barb cities were slightly bait and leaving them for ages, for example. The heavy emphasis on vertical growth rather than whipping was interesting too and I think really was paying off in the late-game. Ignoring the outer sea to such an extent that he more or less didn't settle cities out there until late was a great choice as well, as I explored attack angles out there to avoid his navy, and I found that there really weren't any.

...And that's the answer. All civ games are violent at some point or another, and 5 player games are some of the worst culprits. Thoth simply rolled with it (more precisely, he made everyone react to him and never really gave up the initiative.) Thoth made his plays at the time when his power spikes occurred and he created his own opportunities and that's what I mean by "targeted violence". This wasn't some random, thuggish brawl, even if it looked like it at times, it was controlled.

FWIW, I think the counter argument, that Commodore and Pindicator didn't react in a manner disadvantegous to Thoth is unreasonable: prima facie each player is out for their own victory and have to play to win, not to make someone else lose. Each played to try an win through different strategies (Pindicator aiming for the tech edge and to win a timing attack with better units, but Boudicca with a production base is immune to that) and Commodore tried to go as wide as possible for maximum units, and Boudicca with a production base doesn't care about that either. Bouddica with a production base is a win condition in and of itself). One other way to look at it, (speaking directly to scooter and Yuri here) is to question how you altered your strategies to manage the unconventional Boudicca pick, and the immediate threat from Vikings? It feels like you went into teh game with a plan and that plan would be executed whether it was right or wrong, once the facts on the ground were known.

[scooter]

One other way to look at it, (speaking directly to scooter and Yuri here) is to question how you altered your strategies to manage the unconventional Boudicca pick, and the immediate threat from Vikings? It feels like you went into teh game with a plan and that plan would be executed whether it was right or wrong, once the facts on the ground were known.

I think I lost from T0 by being between the two players with aggressive early units, one of which had a civ that clearly should have been banned on this map. There is no strategy to win a game where you get 2v1'd in under 40 turns.


This is a bit of an over-simplification as I've gone into much more detail in my own thread, but the above is essentially accurate.

[Krill]

I doubt anyone on this forum would expect to win, being 2v1'd from two different sides. OTOH, and I know this is a simplistic way to look at it, the average player might hope to not lose the capital to a single galley invasion. Would it have been reasonable to have played the start differently (and probably still have lost, I grant you that)? The GA was a cute play, but would something more...proactive? Have been a viable choice? It's not like Boudicca is a fast starter.

[scooter]

I doubt anyone on this forum would expect to win, being 2v1'd from two different sides. OTOH, and I know this is a simplistic way to look at it, the average player might hope to not lose the capital to a single galley invasion. Would it have been reasonable to have played the start differently (and probably still have lost, I grant you that)? The GA was a cute play, but would something more...proactive? Have been a viable choice? It's not like Boudicca is a fast starter.

Yeah for sure there were ways to do better. If you look back in my thread, I actually was building units to cover a Thoth snipe. He got there 1T too fast for me, but I fully believed it was coming. He arrives 1T later, and I wouldn't have lost anything. I definitely could have covered it 1T faster had I played marginally better, is what it is. Sometimes you get punished maximally for a minor issue. The GA bomb I also discussed quite a bit, and I agree it was likely not worth the risk in hindsight. But it's also worth noting that I lost that city on the vagaries of sequential turn order, barb turn execution, and flip mechanics all colliding in a way that was pretty novel and had some of our sharpest mechanics minds uncertain until I tested it in a hotseat game. Had my spot in the turn order been flipped, I would have kept the city and had it plenty well-defended, which probably would have been a huge coup given how inexpensive an acquisition it was? Not totally certain given it changes neighbor behavior. And even after all that went wrong, I still had like a ~30% chance of holding the city if I'm remembering right, which did not pan out obviously.


Despite all of this - losing 2 cities in the first 40T including a capital, then fending off a Knight rush - I eventually regained the overall city lead and I believe I was on track to be first to Frigates, which I think proves the upside of my plan was enormous in a world where those massive and slightly unlucky setbacks did not happen. Even from the jump I had a 50/50 chance of being reachable by Vikings, and it came up Tails. I'm pretty OK with my process here, I guess is what I'm saying, even if there are small details that could have been done better and the results were not the best.

[Krill]

I doubt anyone on this forum would expect to win, being 2v1'd from two different sides. OTOH, and I know this is a simplistic way to look at it, the average player might hope to not lose the capital to a single galley invasion. Would it have been reasonable to have played the start differently (and probably still have lost, I grant you that)? The GA was a cute play, but would something more...proactive? Have been a viable choice? It's not like Boudicca is a fast starter.

Yeah for sure there were ways to do better. If you look back in my thread, I actually was building units to cover a Thoth snipe. He got there 1T too fast for me, but I fully believed it was coming. He arrives 1T later, and I wouldn't have lost anything. I definitely could have covered it 1T faster had I played marginally better, is what it is. Sometimes you get punished maximally for a minor issue. The GA bomb I also discussed quite a bit, and I agree it was likely not worth the risk in hindsight. But it's also worth noting that I lost that city on the vagaries of sequential turn order, barb turn execution, and flip mechanics all colliding in a way that was pretty novel and had some of our sharpest mechanics minds uncertain until I tested it in a hotseat game. Had my spot in the turn order been flipped, I would have kept the city and had it plenty well-defended, which probably would have been a huge coup given how inexpensive an acquisition it was? Not totally certain given it changes neighbor behavior. And even after all that went wrong, I still had like a ~30% chance of holding the city if I'm remembering right, which did not pan out obviously.


Despite all of this - losing 2 cities in the first 40T including a capital, then fending off a Knight rush - I eventually regained the overall city lead and I believe I was on track to be first to Frigates, which I think proves the upside of my plan was enormous in a world where those massive and slightly unlucky setbacks did not happen. Even from the jump I had a 50/50 chance of being reachable by Vikings, and it came up Tails. I'm pretty OK with my process here, I guess is what I'm saying, even if there are small details that could have been done better and the results were not the best.

This is the point I'm trying to make, but flip those paragraphs: remove the players from the situation, focus on the leaders and civs. If Sulieman is played more defensively (not just tighter micro, but intentionally played slower at the start) then that later power spike is still attainable. Everything in the first paragraph is true, but begs the question (in the same tone as Ngel Tufnell saying "...but these go to 11) "But why not build units earlier?" Yes, so many things went wrong with the GA plan (so, so many...) but the general plan seemed solid, just feels it got pushed...a little to far at the start.

And following on from that, and not to detract from how Thoth played, it feels like this result was not a forgone conclusion on T0.

[scooter]

I doubt anyone on this forum would expect to win, being 2v1'd from two different sides. OTOH, and I know this is a simplistic way to look at it, the average player might hope to not lose the capital to a single galley invasion. Would it have been reasonable to have played the start differently (and probably still have lost, I grant you that)? The GA was a cute play, but would something more...proactive? Have been a viable choice? It's not like Boudicca is a fast starter.

Yeah for sure there were ways to do better. If you look back in my thread, I actually was building units to cover a Thoth snipe. He got there 1T too fast for me, but I fully believed it was coming. He arrives 1T later, and I wouldn't have lost anything. I definitely could have covered it 1T faster had I played marginally better, is what it is. Sometimes you get punished maximally for a minor issue. The GA bomb I also discussed quite a bit, and I agree it was likely not worth the risk in hindsight. But it's also worth noting that I lost that city on the vagaries of sequential turn order, barb turn execution, and flip mechanics all colliding in a way that was pretty novel and had some of our sharpest mechanics minds uncertain until I tested it in a hotseat game. Had my spot in the turn order been flipped, I would have kept the city and had it plenty well-defended, which probably would have been a huge coup given how inexpensive an acquisition it was? Not totally certain given it changes neighbor behavior. And even after all that went wrong, I still had like a ~30% chance of holding the city if I'm remembering right, which did not pan out obviously.


Despite all of this - losing 2 cities in the first 40T including a capital, then fending off a Knight rush - I eventually regained the overall city lead and I believe I was on track to be first to Frigates, which I think proves the upside of my plan was enormous in a world where those massive and slightly unlucky setbacks did not happen. Even from the jump I had a 50/50 chance of being reachable by Vikings, and it came up Tails. I'm pretty OK with my process here, I guess is what I'm saying, even if there are small details that could have been done better and the results were not the best.

This is the point I'm trying to make, but flip those paragraphs: remove the players from the situation, focus on the leaders and civs. If Sulieman is played more defensively (not just tighter micro, but intentionally played slower at the start) then that later power spike is still attainable. Everything in the first paragraph is true, but begs the question (in the same tone as Ngel Tufnell saying "...but these go to 11) "But why not build units earlier?" Yes, so many things went wrong with the GA plan (so, so many...) but the general plan seemed solid, just feels it got pushed...a little to far at the start.

Oh yeah, agreed with this. I (intentionally) played a very greedy start, and it increased the chances of Things Go Boom, and Boom they went.

And following on from that, and not to detract from how Thoth played, it feels like this result was not a forgone conclusion on T0.

Oh yeah, strong agree. If you had showed me the full map and player placements on T0, I would have bet on Pindicator to win, actually. In fact, when I said this:

This is part of why I was hoping for thoughts, because did he really? My read on what happened was that more or less everything Commodore/Pindicator did or didn't do in the first ~100 turns directly benefitted Thoth, and then they still had a chance to 2v1 him at the end, but they did not really coordinate at all, and their morale was significantly lower.

I also felt that basically everything went right for Pindicator early on too, and it was both my opinion and, from his thread, Commodore’s opinion after ~70T that Pindicator had it in the bag. Possible that was a misread of long-term potential, but I definitely don’t think it was ever really foregone. Extremely earned win. 1v2 at sea is brutal, Vikings or no Vikings.

[pindicator]

I never felt like I had an advantage. When I picked up Astronomy and went to attack Commodore, I was debating between him and Thoth. Commodore had already stabbed me once - why would I want to attack Thoth and leave the door wide open for Commodore to stab me again? I also did not correctly judge the state of Commodore's economy. There was only one point in the game where I though "wow, if this stalemate goes on for 100 more turns, I might have a chance" - and then Thoth ended that hope rather quickly.

Maybe if I had teched in a different manner and invested more into trebs - but my production was always an issue due to the reliance on pushing tech.

[Thoth]

I've got a whole pile of thoughts about the game running around in my head but I'm having a hard time getting them organized right now.


A few random items....

My opening moves: I saw a lot of high yield tiles that I wanted to be working ASAP and constantly so early Slavery was out in favour of Serfdom to get tiles improved fast enough. 3 workers wasn't quite enough to keep up with the vertical growth rate and I did wind up working some coast tiles in the capital for a few turns before the swap to Vassalage/Slavery and whipping the capital. My second city of Bec de Corbin had Pigs, Sheep, Ivory, and iron as food/hammer specials plus two dye tiles so I wanted this city to be at least size 6 as a minimum. It would have been counter productive to whip Bec so it never got a single crack of the whip. Capital I whipped a few times as the large food surplus there meant I quickly outgrew my land tiles and was working/whipping coast while working my cottages and lumbermills.


Cottages: I think Commodore was incorrect on the value of cottages (both in this game and in general). Having an economy that can support it's self on commerce is very useful. Hammer economies are ok but they can only do one thing at a time: either turn hammers into commerce via wealth/research or turn hammers into military units (as Commodre discovered this game as he fell too far behind in the production race after he was forced to tech Mil Sci instead of building units).

I wound up building a total of 3 banks plus a library (in the capital). That was it for my commerce multipliers. But I produced enough commerce that I was able to tech adequately when I needed to, plus have commerce to spend on 2 turns of Espionage to get Commodore and Pindicator's graphs early (the information I gained was well worth 2t of gold. It told me that Commodore wasn't about to wtfpwn Scooter with a horde of Keshiks like I had been expecting....). I also spent a lot of gold on unit upgrades of swordsmen and galleys as well as having great fun upgrading C33/Amphibious/C1++ Berzerkers into death dealing Grenadiers that were getting >99% odds vs Commodore's flatland central island city garrison. I could have gotten to Steel a lot faster if I hadn't turned all that commerce into hammers but I never regretted a cent of the gold I spent on intel and hammers. Well worth every penny. Spending on anything other than tech is something that the RB meta tends to frown on but there are things one can get with commerce that aren't tech and are also very valuable.


I was never quite sure where Pindicator's cash and beakers were coming from. I thought it was a lot of wealth/research builds because I didn't notice much in the way of cottages.


(more later once the squirrels start behaving better)

[pindicator]

I think Serfdom is the answer to your question on my research. Due to the food situation I had to run windmills & farms, and found whenever I wasn't in Serfdom my research cratered. Feel free to jump in and look if you like, my password is castles. (Or maybe not plural? Try without the ending 's' if that doesn't work.)

[yuris125]

One other way to look at it, (speaking directly to scooter and Yuri here) is to question how you altered your strategies to manage the unconventional Boudicca pick, and the immediate threat from Vikings? It feels like you went into teh game with a plan and that plan would be executed whether it was right or wrong, once the facts on the ground were known.

I missed this discussion, but also I think I covered this in my thread? I definitely was thinking if I had to do change my play once I established that Thoth was next door, but also his attack came significantly earlier than I anticipated, and I should've realised his intentions much sooner, once I saw he wasn't expanding past 3 cities