[spoilers] - pindicator is excited for the next Realms Beyond league mechanics

[darrelljs]

To be completely honest, a part of me - the part of me that was checked out after the war with Mouseferatu was done - just wants to walk away from this game.  Not because it's not possible to beat Gavagai back, but because I just don't want to put in the mental energy to do so day after day.  That's probably the same part that I let convince me to just build infrastructure and not care what my neighbors were doing.  After 200 turns, it just gets exhausting.

You are not the first game leader to express this, I want to make sure you really mean it. So, specific question: are you ready for the game to end immediately?

Darrell

[pindicator]

Yeah....

I mean, just in my own head I'm thinking "what if I beat back his forces?" And the answer is then I push into his land, and that doesn't sound exciting to me - that sounds like a slog.

Maybe let it go to 200 just for a nice round number though?

[pindicator]

One last parting stitch

55 cities at the end. 57 at the height before Perandus and Fall of Oriath fell. I think it took half an hour just to run through every city and make sure they weren't working some stupid tile or running the wrong specialist.

I liked this game. Part of me is going to miss it. I had no chance to win, and I made some big mistakes late in the game as my resolve waned, after the Mouseferatu/BaII war ended. Maybe I'll take some time to do a more in-depth postmortem.

[pindicator]

Found this gem in Krill's thread:

Pindicator: Pacal [EXP/FIN] (9th pick) of Arabia (24th pick)

Pin was the first player to break the trend of civ first. No idea why he made that decision, but I think he got a great choice. It's a very similar pick to what we have, but he will be faster to expand and will need to find happy resources. Theoretically he could go religion first if he has a grain resource, but I think he picked Arabia as the last civ because he can use Madrassa to pop borders and just accepts the UU for whatever value it turns out to be.

Pins entire plan seems to be based around just picking for economy, but he was the first player to pick FIN, and with EXP he is just planning to not be slow and leave early opportunities. There is one weird little point though: he somewhat wants OR for when he builds forges and courthouses, but beyond that, does he really care for OR? Barracks will go down when he needs them, Stables in a few cities, but he won't build colosseums. He gets 40 hammer harbours, 50-ish hammer libraries, 65 hammer markets(?!), OR would help with granary chops...but he has Madrassa. Pin could build some weird little bulb plan based around bulbing Theology (17 turns for the GP), shrining Christianity (a further 17 turns if he runs two cities on two priests from the same time) and then using the 300 point GP for a golden age (which can take as little as a further 9 turns beyond the second GP generated because Pin could run 4 specs in the city that generated hte first GP). Pin could just sit in Theocracy for most of the game if he wanted (maybe use the GA and OR to shove down what he wanted in his cities). Combine this sort of plan with FIN and it's easy to see how the Arabia pick has the opportunity to give him a later game boost to his economy when there are so many FIN leaders picked.

The main problem Pin has, looking at the later leader picks, is that he is actually caught in the middle. There are some players that will expand a hell of a lot faster than he can. There are others that have a better late game economically, there are those that will be able to get in his face and fight him with better units. This is probably a downside in terms of hedging with his leader pick and not going for something slightly...stronger late game like Mansa (but then, Mansa would get eaten alive without a good civ and I'm not sure what decent civs were left that fit Mansa). Maybe he shouldn't have gone leader first, and picked something like India that would have enabled the Mansa (or Darius, Hannibal or Ragnar) picks. Maybe he should have given up on Arabia and just gone for Russia? In this respect Arabia is starting to look a bit poorer, but if he uses the Madrassa to eke out and edge and then cut someone up with that edge, more power to him. Some of the FIN leaders are going to fall down as well.

My concern, if I were playing Pacal of Arabia, is that Aztecs exist and probably run all the way to Monotheism before I could get there. So I might go for T0 religion, but I don't know if I'd want to do that if I think I can take Theology and I like that plan (or I could just keep open the option of an Academy). But grab an early religion that did not require a bulb, and I know I could get both the Shrine and Academy, and I would wonder how greedy I would want to be, with 7 EXP leaders and only Rusten the other EXP leader with Myst (Going through the list: OH and HItru have Inca so will not rush religion. GCK has Aztecs so wants Monotheism, he will not rush it. BeardBeard is an unknown but has PRO/IMP and might go mad and rush religion, and that's it. So maybe early religion is actually Pin's reason for picking Arabia?)

All in all, a decent pick for a big game, but he will need to win through applying pressure at the right time.

Fucking Nostradamus over there pretty much called my entire 200 turn game right there.

[Commodore]

Lot of people got screwed by the absolute loon move of Beardbeard going Meditation->Polytheism.

[BaII]

That's probably the same part that I let convince me to just build infrastructure and not care what my neighbors were doing.  After 200 turns, it just gets exhausting.

Don't worry I also experienced this atleast you're not alone!

[Old Harry]

Good game and great thread neighbour!

We were a bit envious of your green and pleasant south, but that start was just horrible.

I feel like we both set up a nice tension-free border (thank you for not settling on the border plains hill that you easily could have) that then allowed both of us to concentrate on other people.   We did go back and forth about attacking you or Elkad with knights, but after you paid us off I don't think we seriously discussed hitting you again (well, we thought that Gav might make it a possibility, but didn't expend any energy planning anything). Which brings me to this:

So I guess I forgot to do part 2.  I was going to recap tech situation, get into global politics, etc.

Turns out that would have all been for naught because I open up turn 189 and find this:




I help him take down Rusten and he helps me with the rest of the world.  No rest for the wicked in this game.

More accurately:  I help him take out Rusten, he helps me take out one or two neighbors, and then he wins by culture or space or stabs me in the back.  But this is pretty much a play for 2nd place.  There's no guarantee it will work:  Rusten is doing fantastic since his conquests wrapped up and he may be able to out-tech us both.

Actually this was supposed to say that you should feel free to attack whoever you wanted while we took care of Rusten, we just wanted a peaceful border so we could go after the game leader.   It would have been amazing if you'd helped us out and pretty bad if you'd stabbed us in the back.

It's also incredibly boring:  either it succeeds and we take out Rusten and then #1 and #2 in the game are in an alliance - yawn; or it fails and Rusten runs away with the game - yawn.

I think my reasonable avenues for expansion are either through OH or Gavagai.

I think my odds of winning this game are 1% at this point:  it only happens if Rusten and OH bog each other down and I'm also able to either surpass them with tech or backstab the winner at the opportune moment.  I'd put Rusten at 65%, OH at 33%, and the rest of the field combined is the other 1%.  So it makes sense to take this on, right?  It keeps my 1% alive.

There's also a little bit of an anarchist in me that wants to hit Offer Trade.  If I understand things right, that would make OH and I declare on the world right now.  That would probably hurt me more than him, however.

I think I'm going to go for this.  I'll decline this trade and send him a Fish for Fish to signal my agreement.  Not sure how we proceed from here, but I don't see how this worsens my chances.  And if successful it means I get #2 instead of #3 ... or eaten.

Except if he wants me to declare on Rusten now then we may have some issues...

If you'd accepted that trade to tip our hand and found yourself at war with the world that would have been hilarious.  

[BaII]

Also Pindicator I was wondering why you a bit nervous about my navy after you got frigates. Tbh I was never so sure of what to do with them in this case since I didn't have enough ships to stop you from doing anything since you can just maneuver around my ships by going through the ocean since I don't think either of us had enough ships to really clear a major stack off a coastal tile.