[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[pindicator]

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.

I like to think of the first 100 turns as being what set up the wild ride that followed

In all seriousness though, I remember we had 3 different ideas of what we should be doing (NobleHelium was also in the mix), and we were pretty awful about melding those ideas into one coherent plan. We were trying to rush wonders, spam settlers, and rush Commodore all at once.

[scooter]

Turn 211

Alhazard finally pops a great person a few turns before we do the same thing.



The prophet is likely for a partial-bulb of Liberalism. I can't imagine all the sacrifices they're making for this is worthwhile, but that's why we play and all that.



Pocketbeetle is about to hit size 6. We'll get a chop of the forest 2E of here and a triple whip, and that'll provide our yellow dot settler. Speaking of a settler.



1T settler coming up in a few turns.



Plako settled his 4th city this turn to draw even with us for the moment. It looks like the settler went down where Lurker Killer went for us judging by the road on the deer tile down there.



Praetorian Tour coming up here next turn. We also got Plako's graphs. Here they are:

Plako is probably a half-step behind us, but if he lands the Taj, that may not be true for long. Nicolae is definitely running some research builds, though, so I'm not sure about his chances.



Pretty happy overall with where things stand.

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 211: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

The Aztecs' settler is right in position to score that fifth city next turn, situated south with double rice and a most convenient river for spawning oodles of cottages in the future. Their previous cities have whips poised for new round of settlers and Christian missionaries, as demanded by the competition. The Khmer's lead must fall short by T218. The name for this pampered location: Praetorian Tour, after the famed Praetorian legion of PB2 which travelled far and wide in search of the good fight, quickly defecting to a life of mercenary work, before finally missing in action—a fitting end for the duplicitous force. Away from home, the Ottomans join the club of nations with great people, expecting to burn their great prophet on a push for liberalism while the Khmer run their research builds to rush for nationalism. Now the question is who will land the Taj Mahal and its glories? England? Byzantium? The Khmer? Should a neighbour score it the Aztecs will find their hard-earned advantages very much at risk.

[Zalson]

The plan you pursued in the Zulu Exodus was hilarious. Thanks for sharing!

[scooter]

Turn 212

I settled Praetorian Tour as planned.



The rice will be farmed next turn. This brings us to 5 cities. RMoG finally settled their 4th on this turn too. Using the date they settled their most recent city as a tie-breaker, that brings the city count to this:

Nicolae: 5
Us: 5
Mackoti: 4
Alhazard: 4
Plako: 4
RMoG: 4


Surprising seeing the other two IMPs at the bottom of the list. I do wonder occasionally if I over-estimated IMP a tad here? FWIW, Mackoti hasn't triple-whipped anything in quite awhile, so unless he's chopping one out, I don't expect him to settle his 5th in the next few turns.



I finished de-fogging our western land bridge. Notice anything missing?



The lake clams is missing on our west land bridge sadly. I looked around, and it looks like one of the southern hemisphere bridges has the same problem. Considering it's just 1 of 3, I wonder if this was a mapmaker oops? Otherwise things are pretty evenly mirrored as far as I can tell. It does put disproportionate weight on the eastern bridge, which is unfortunate considering I'm not especially eager to settle up on Mackoti for obvious reasons.



4 cities growing next turn, although I'll be triple-whipping both Pilot and Pocketbeetle fairly soon. The engineer pops out in just a few turns, although I'm about 10-12T away from firing the golden age I think.



I expect Taj to fall any turn now. What is done with that golden age will have a huge impact on the game. Watching with great interest.

Here's something to think about. We'll finish out our demo-set pretty soon, and the next question is who do we most want to get research visibility on? We'll have all demos very soon, so it's worth considering. I was thinking about this, and the answer isn't actually all that obvious. The possibilities:

* Nicolae is an obvious candidate because I think they're in the best position, especially if they land the Taj (~70% chance of that I think). The downside is we likely have different priorities which maybe makes us care a little less.

* Plako is a good option too, though, because I think he's our top competition for the Statue if we continue down that route.

* Mackoti is another option because if he does something threatening like tech Astro, I'd really like to know about that ASAP.

I don't think the other two are good candidates because of 1) different priorities and 2) lack of proximity. Any thoughts? I've got around a half dozen turns before I need to make the decision. I'm leaning very slightly towards Plako.

[Brian Shanahan]

I think mackoti, simply because of the danger he presents. As you say yourselves and Nicolae probably have somewhat different priorities, and I think (from what we see here) Plako's start hasn't been as strong as it could be. So that leaves mackoti as the logical choice in my view.

[Epoxy]

I reckon Plako. If they were to divert away from SoL in their tech path then we can justifiably choose to modify our own efforts for the SoL. Research visibility on Plako lets us pace ourselves.

[Cheater Hater]

I think part of the answer depends on the timing--who is going to be the biggest threat when we would get research visibility? I don't know when we would get it (mostly because I don't know the timing of Sacrificial Altars), and I also don't know whether it would be worth fighting someone if they start putting espionage into us.

[Nekira Sudacne]

I have never really played around with espionage much--it's just not a facet of the game that much interests me. I get that having graphs is good, but how long would it take to get them on everyone just by leaving it evenly divided amoung everyone? with Courthouse/Sacraficial alter spamming, there should be enough EP to go around to everyone except someone putting theirs dedicated to us, as courthouses this eairly are just not worth it to anyone not Organized Aztecs, and then we can make the call if we want to fight them or not.

also I realize it's a bit eairly, but when people get to a Pink Dot city on the micro plan, can we pllleaase name it Pink Dot after the infamous RB1 Land Grab?

[Elkad]

I have never really played around with espionage much--it's just not a facet of the game that much interests me. I get that having graphs is good, but how long would it take to get them on everyone just by leaving it evenly divided amoung everyone?

The problem there is you have to wait a long time with graphs on nobody. If you direct it, you can get visibility on key opponents first. And then move the output off them, which encourages them to do the same, so you both can stay at the 43EP mutual graphs threshold.

It's a part of the game I really like. Sure, some of it is broken (the insanely low cost of change civics missions is the big one), but the other stuff is fun. Even the passive stuff like City Visibility is very powerful.