[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[scooter]

Longer than normal write-up for red dot because I named it after a game that deserves a bit more of a write-up.

PB8: Zulu Exodus

Man , this is the game i enjoy the most lurking since i joined Rb.Just awesome.

This game is the worst result I've ever turned in, and despite this it remains my favorite game I've ever played in. I teamed up with pindicator in this game, and after a disastrous opening, we pulled off the most absurd gambit I've ever seen attempted in a PB. The short version is that geography dictated that Commodore attack our Zulu civilization early. Due to a series of poor decisions along with some terrible RNG luck, we were clearly going to die. The resulted in a now-famous half-serious throway post by pindicator:

Crazy proposal :

Whip galleys out of InNOut. Whip cats everywhere else. Load up every military unit we can and try to carve out a new home to the east

My reply:

Anyways, you guys got my wheels turning with your posts, so I've got a proposal based off pindicator's idea. So, we've got a real nice target:



You guys up for an invasion of India? They seem to be pretty isolated here - nobody has their maps yet - and they probably have no real military. Also, it comes with a Hindu holy city.

<snip>
Developed land, Hindu holy city, GLH... Sounds like it's worth a shot right? We can get started right away on galleys:

<snip>

So how do we make this work? Here's my plan outline. Note: there are a TON of things that could go wrong here, and I know that. Still. Here it is:

1) Offer Commodore McDonalds in exchange for 10T of peace. He'll kill us when those 10T are up easily, but that buys us enough time to vacate the premises with our army intact. (maybe whip McDonalds again just so we get full use out of what's there.
2) Try to get India's maps. We can do this 2 ways - repeatedly trading with Azza/Serdoa and hope they manage to get India's maps... Or we could send a galley towards them to make contact and try to swap maps with them. They'll know from watching Civstasts that we're weak and in a war, so they may very well accept out of sheer curiosity. If we can't get the map, this can still work, it just gets harder.
3) All cities build military non-stop until they're dead.
4) Invade India, hope for the best.

Thoughts?

Much to the horror of the lurkers, we agreed on the plan. The lurker thread had some strong opinions.

I can't see how this "invade India" plan has any chance of working. I mean I get that it's something fun to do and a goal to have but it seems more likely to just cause Jester / Nakor some pain, knock THEM out of any chance of winning and net with 0-1 cities

It won't do anything for them. And 10 land units is just nothing. TBH I'd be a bit pissed off with them if I were playing in the game.

The Zulu plan... Um, yeah. Not a good plan.

Desperate I guess to make a mark on the game.

It's a GREAT plan... for Commodore. After Scooter railed about how Commodore's strategy was doomed, he's handing Commodore the best possible result of the war.

Oh, you mean how it'll work out for Zulu? Yeah, I'm not optimisitic.

Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining. <- NOW
Depression.
Acceptance.

Worst thing posible which can do.After commodore take theyr city, lets supose they manage taking over the indian empire, cities will be in revolt with almost no infra, and the comodore builds several galeys and go and takes another empire.

I like all the players on the India [sic] team in this game, really nice group of people, and they've had some bad luck go against them. That said, they've played a very unfocused game with some poor decision-making, and this is only the latest and worst idea that they've come up with.

I'm not cherry-picking replies either, these were all posted within ~24 hours of my post. Most of them were consecutive, all of them written by smart, experienced players. It was basically uninamous.

Anyway, one of the many, many problems in a move like this is that abandoning cities and sending units across the ocean results in crippling costs - meaning losing gold horribly at 0% science. One of my favorite screenshots:



-27 GNP is the current RB record. Actually, I think it was worse at one point, but I couldn't find a screenshot. At this point, we were 11/11 on the scoreboard by a mile. When the game was finally called, we were 6th and very much alive. I won't spoil anything else if you haven't read it yet - I recommend checking it out yourself. Start in our thread on January 25th, and read it from there. It won't be boring.

Er...scooter might win [the invasion]. Somehow.

Somehow indeed.

------

Actual turn report coming next.

[scooter]

Turn 206



Settled Zulu Exodus aka red dot. We finished clearing the jungle and started the plantation, which will complete next turn. We'll pop cultural borders, and this city will be off and racing pretty quickly.



Nothing noteworthy with our explorers. You can see one of them returning home on the left side here. I did look, and Nicolae and RMoG were able to camp their deer on this turn FWIW. We got Nicolae's graphs end of turn, so here those are:

Plako next unless anyone has a good reason to target someone else.



Looks pretty solid. Looks like I'm last up, so I'll play the next turn pretty soon here, and the report for that will come sometime tonight.

[Sullla]

Looking good, no further comments for the moment. Plako seems like a good next choice for graphs, followed by RMOG, and then Alhazard. With our Sacrificial Altars pumping out EP, we'll have them all soon enough.

PB8 comment: it was a silly, stupid idea that had no chance of success against a halfway decent defender. The fact that you guys pulled it off honestly says more about the defender than it did about your attack. But immensely entertaining to watch, and surely ten times as much fun to play. Definitely worthy of a city name here.

[scooter]

Turn 207-208



Plako did settle his 3rd city, and Mackoti settled his 4th to match us and Nicolae. Plako settled his in the general area of our "yellow dot."



A few civic swaps by the Spiritual players. No surprises here. Mackoti on Pacifism is somewhat interesting, but his goals are especially not likely to intersect with ours, so I'm not too concerned.



I noticed RMoG floating a Longbow around here, so I did withdraw into the jungle after taking this shot just in case. I'm curious what exactly that longbow is doing. I wonder if they intend to settle this area next?



Confirmation that this area is indeed ludicrously food-rich. I'll go 1S just to totally confirm that solo tile, and then turn around and defog that stretch up north.



We start another settler next turn in the capital, and the following turn the triple-whip cycle will continue. We also completed our first cottage last turn which gives Lurker Killer an extra tile to regrow on.



We appear to have the population lead right now, and we're growing onto two about-to-be-improved tiles (horse and iron) on this turn. Whips are coming again soon, though.



The demos reflect this population lead pretty obviously. FWIW, Civstats seems to indicate that Alhazard settled two cities this turn, so that's a badly needed boost for him. I'm sure he had the 26F figure in this screenshot.



Speaking of Civstats... This is a 24 hour turn timer. 1 hour later we are 5/6 done. Turn pace was sane this week, but obviously we have a bunch with a very free weekend.

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 205–208: THE BIG THREE

Across the world, more players join the race with their third and fourth city plants, but only after the Aztecs planted their fourth: Zulu Exodus, in tribute to one of the most egregious and amusing campaigns in Realms Beyond Pitboss. The Khmer have finished the first wonder of the game, the Apostolic Palace, in a surprising play for international religious coercion, the likely prelude for a monk economy with buffed, ubiquitous temples, says the C&D. Now the Aztecs are secretly praying that there is some disadvantage with the Khmer's development, for they were the first to four cities and have now nabbed a universally useful wonder—hopefully it is a shortfall in worker labour, for the Aztecs still want to hold the mantle of most populous nation on the Earth. The only other serious impression on the field still remains Byzantium, who have just joined the four-city club. The Dutch, Ottomans, and English have not yet made any intimidations. Will these disparities widen or close with the next expansion phase?

---

I don't mean to belittle Plako, RMoG, or Alhazard. I should be more positive next time, otherwise this will become even more partisan than it is—which is fun but not fair.

[scooter]

Turn 209-210

Yeesh we really blitzed through the turns this weekend. This will finally bring us up-to-date for the next 3 hours or so until we roll onto another turn.



We're still the only team to meet everybody, although the main reason for that is that Mackoti has yet to meet two other players. It seems that he isn't bothering to explore. I sent out a bunch of map trade offers the other day, and I did get this out-of-date map:



Mackoti is the only person to go with this particular configuration, but it's a good one. Basically it shifts both of the cities we got 1SW. Judging from the roads, he must have placed his first city up between whale and corn, which makes sense.



The RMoG team seems to be planning to plant a city up here very soon. I'm assuming that worker is roading up this way. I'll continue checking this tile and ending in the jungle just to watch what they do. Hopefully it'll make them nervous that we're about to plant down here considering we just triple-whipped.



Zulu Exodus is off to a quick start. Next turn the workers will all move onto forests to chop, and on T214 we will 1T a settler out of here with all the chops coming in at once. That'll go just east of here on the "x" you can see in this shot. Until then, we'll take a "free" 1 pop whip on T212 of the Altar where we'll instantly re-grow to size 3 and then immediately up to 4 the following turn where we'll be when we 1T the settler.



I've shuffled our longbows a little to get one down here. One is in Lurker Killer, and the other is up in Pocketbeetle for now where it can slide north or south on the .001% chance a few units wanders in.

We've got two workers on the rice which will begin chopping that jungle next turn allowing us to farm them as soon as we settle that city (T212). Lurker Killer double-whipped that worker on this turn, and it'll overflow into a 1T worker next turn.



Nicolae settled his 5th city last turn to jump into the lead again. He's been 1-pop whipping these cities for (I assume) workers, so I'll watch and see if he does the same thing here again. Anyway, IIRC everyone else except RMoG is at 4 right now, and they're obviously about to settle a new city of their own.



We whipped away 5 population this turn, so this screen reflects that. I'm mostly curious about the 152 GNP figure. Looks like to me the race for the Taj is on and at least one player is running research builds. Likely two of them actually given the rival average. It's not us, and it's most likely not RMoG or Alhazard. I would assume Nicolae is one of the teams racing for it, because it would make a lot of sense for them, and they have the spare hammers to afford it. Mackoti would make some sense too. Plako is sitting on an Engineer, though, so I would count him as one of the favorites. Plako is our scariest competition for the SoL plan. He could very well pull off the exact same plan except quicker if he wants given PHI. I think I'd prefer he not land the Taj.

That about catches us up. Anything you'd like to see that I haven't gotten in awhile?

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 209–210: THE FORKED ROAD

Eight turns until eight glorious Aztec cities light up the horizon with the dignified and stolid silhouettes of their altars and pyramids. The 8/16 Project is starting to roll up the best part of the micro planned S-curve and the Aztecs are reminded of their opponents' savviness: the Khmer are a nose ahead at five cities, while nearly everyone else has caught up with four. Now there are concerns for the the long term, with the burning torch, the fiery standard that will hopefully ignite the Aztec's mid- and lategame with specialists, the Statue of Liberty, not looking so easy a cherry to pick as before. England, currently stroking a prodigal great engineer, is the most likely contest for building it first, as the Ottomans and Dutch vie for the Taj Mahal and its promise of prosperity. Intelligence has arrived on the Byzantines via some circulated ragged scraps of parchment, revealing an interesting settling configuration translated slightly southwest to that of the Aztecs, confirming the worst fears that Byzantium doesn't mess about.

[Krill]

Talking a bit more about PB8...why didn't you build the capital granary?!

[scooter]

Talking a bit more about PB8...why didn't you build the capital granary?!

I can't honestly explain a single decision we made in the first 100 turns of that game. I remember trying to justify some of it at the time, but there's just no point.

[scooter]

I decided to go ahead and write up our next city plant, since there's an outside chance it'll happen later tonight if the recent torrid pace continues today.

PB2: Praetorian Tour

I don't really know what to write about this, because if you're reading this, you've also read PB2. It certainly wasn't the most competitive game, but it made up for it in insanity. PB2 gave us an influx of new users unlike anything RB had ever seen since probably Civ4's release. As it stands, the second and third most-viewed player threads ever here are the aforementioned Pocketbeetle game (200k views) and myself + Pindicator in PB13 (178k views). First place has more views than both of those combined, which Sullla and Speaker's PB2 thread cashing in at a cool 487k views. Half a million times someone checked in on a 2-person team reporting a Pitboss game of Civ4 6 years after release. I remember a climactic moment in that game (when the counter-invasion began I believe) when a war turn report was posted. I was still in college at the time, and class finished for me so I reflexively popped open the forum to see if the new turn report was posted yet. It had been, and there were over 100 active users reading the PB2 forum. I've never seen that before or since then. As I type this, there are just 18 users logged into the site total at approximately the same time of day.

This game included the following:

* A player picked Aggressive Rome, and then promptly disappeared a few turns into the game.
* The replacement Rome player successfully rushed Plako, exiling him to the islands. Plako finished in second place.
* Some poor guy named Mortius who started the signups for the game had his capital walked in on and razed by an enemy warrior. In his despair, he then promptly disappeared from the forums for years before eventually returning for awhile.
* One of the teams predicted to win got rushed and killed early.
* A wild 5-on-1 dogpile that, despite full diplo, failed so spectacularly that it defies words. This featured the famed Praetorian World Tour where nearly all of these teams were gifted a certain mini-stack of Praetorians at one point or another.
* An army was gifted from one player to another, and that player turned around and used it on the original gifter. Words were exchanged. Opinions were had.

A great time was had by all who watched and several who played.