[SPOILERS] PB9 Lurker Thread

[Bigger]

oh well. looks like the lurkers did a pretty good job policing the rule. Thanks for that!!

[Qgqqqqq]

I wonder how many times Qgqqqqq has screwed up Cornflakes by now.

Cornflakes is reporting pretty well. Qgqqqqq probably only reads about 20% of the words in a thread.

I don't know whether I'm in favor of a reload or not, but I definitely won't ever be playing a game together with Qgqqqqq, that's for sure.

I love you too Noblehelium

I thought a little bit more about this, especially considering what led to this and I have to say, I don't get why Q even queued up the Courthouse in the first place. That might only be a minor detail, but I have to ask myself - especially considering that Q states all the time that he knew the bug and just forgot about it - what he actually intended there. Obviously they wanted to build Taj so queuing the Courthouse was unnecessary on all levels. For me it looks like he did try to use this exploit to gain a few free hammers into the Courthouse and forgot that 2 forests were already chopped while building culture. And in that case I sure would not grant a reload, simply because he shouldn't use that exploit in the first place.

Q's messing with Cornflakes queues, possibly in order to cheat the culture bug, then backfiring and causing chops to go into a courthouse instead of Taj was rather impressive, even if not on the same scale.

I wasn't trying to exploit it, I'd completely forgotten about it and never even encountered it in a game before. I queued up the courthouse because Taj wasn't available (either another city was working on it for failgold or we hadn't got the tech) and I was going through suggesting economy builds - that was one of a hundred buildings I queued as suggestions, unfortunately we got bit

[Bigger]

im not sure I understand what happenned.. was cornflakes planning on putting the extra hammers from the culture bug into the Taj?

[Cornflakes]

im not sure I understand what happenned.. was cornflakes planning on putting the extra hammers from the culture bug into the Taj?

I pre-chopped a couple 1st ring forests while building culture to pop the borders ASAP. Normally the culture build would finish at the border pop and leave the hammers available for the next build. Border pop and worker pre-chops were all timed perfectly to 1-turn the Taj on the turn we discovered Nationalism ... but the courthouse queued up behind culture "stole" the hammers from the earlier chop in the "free" 2nd production phase after the culture. I'm not exactly sure how the mechanic works, but but it ended up leaving us 2 chops short of completion when those 60 hammers landed in the useless courthouse.

I was no intending to use the culture bug for free hammers, least of all into the Taj because that wasn't even an option since I was planning to 1-turn it as soon as I finished Nationalism.

[Qgqqqqq]

Basically, I queued a build for after Taj because it wasn't in yet, and the bug put the hammers into that instead of the Taj. And then Cornflakes awesomely gifted a city and chopped a bunch of extra forests

[MindyMcCready]

Humbly requesting comments Master Krill.

I will say that I was a little disappointed that you took such a balanced approach to defense. I really wanted to see Cornflakes suffer after that capital raze.

Good move Cornflakes,...but you really should have faced the prospect of holy war after that.

Aren't you tempted to take over mindy? You may be spoiled, but I don't think that can save ATs position... also the war turns are the most fun, even when you're losing...

Surely a doomed heroic death appeals to you?

Glad I was on vacation to not have to consider this.

If Master Krill couldn't hold back the hordes, I certainly would have died a doomed death, heroic or otherwise. However, with much trepidation I'm going to say that I would have played it much differently than Master Krill and I believe that it would have given me better survival chances and achieved more of my personal objectives. Bold words to be sure given Master Krill's track record but here it is regardless.

My personal objectives would be to hurt Cornflakes or to allow him to profit as little as possible from his aggression. Whereas, Master Krill offered Cornflakes a 3 cities peace deal (FBI, CSI, OC) I would have been very uninclined to do the same. Instead I would have retreated and tried to hold those cities at the expense of all else. I could have probably held Chips as well which would mean that BJ & the Bear would be relatively safe for awhile. So I would have had a 5 city 'empire' to whip, draft and build units until the end of time. With the culture from OC + cannons I could have held up many of Cornflakes troops in Walleey/MASH or possibly even made an attack on that city if the opportunity presented itself.

Essentially, that would have given Bigger the entire area West of Lake Blue unless Cornflakes makes some bold moves. Bigger and CF would have 3 disputed fronts to manage at that point; North of Lake Blue, West of Lake Blue and the Azza strip. Those 5 cities would have a border with only Cornflakes and, to a lesser degree, Jowy and Bigger. I would anticipate that the attacks on me would stop as CF and Bigger started slugging it out over the 2 areas around Lake Blue.

Other Pros/Cons
-CSI is on a hill.
-Area has iron.
-Tile 1N or iron would have provided 3-way protection to my last stand area.
-At some point most of AT's troops and cannons were already in that area.
Cons:
-All cities are boatable. Frigates/destroyers would mean my doom.
-Abandon the Heroic Epic city. I think this is the reason that Krill tried to hold this area. Having said that CHIPS has marble so it could possibly have been reconstructed.

Because of this peace deal, CF looks to have gained more from the war than Bigger has. Probably more than anything else avoiding that is what would drive my actions. Opportunism I can forgive; getting greedy over MASH and razing the capital are pretty unforgivable in my opinion (within the scope of this game that is).

Curious what the veterans, especially Master Krill, think of this (potential) play. Not that it would really matter. At best, this play would just drag out an inevitable doom and maybe allow me to play kingmaker.

[Krill]

Defense pretty always has to be balanced, in the context that you have to defend each city equally form a potential attack. Only time you don't have to do that is when you have the units in place to threaten the invaders cities. I suppose that is one of the most basic concepts of CIV warfare you'll find, described in a fairly useless manner...

However, at the point I took over, the first turn I played Bigger had units in position to raze two cities, I had a third city with a bunch of defenders that I could no longer retreat safely, and I had the entire eastern part of the empire defended by 6 units. I'm not joking on that, there were literally 6 units in position to defend against cornflakes.

The first thing I did was consider how much of the empire i could hold onto if everyone walked in their stacks. Realistically, if everyone walked their stacks in at the same time I would probably have last 10 turns max. I just didn't have the units to defend, numbers wise. I didn't have the units in position to defend the east, because Cornflakes had probably 10:1 unit advantage, and I didn't have enough pop in the cities to whip or draft more than maybe 4-6 more units in the cities I gave to Cornflakes in the peace treaty. The units I I couldn't safely retreat got eliminated the turn after I picked up the game, when I did try to retreat them. They would have died either way, just Cornflakes would likely have killed them rather than Bigger, but it wouldn't have cost him any more units (they were mostly medieval age junk to muskets and rifles/cannons).

So basically, what I got out of the peace treaty was a 10 turn enforced peace deal that enabled me to move units from the surrendered cities to the 3 cities I still held. I could also re-position what units I did hold to stop a potential push by Bigger to end the war, for a bunch of cities I was going to lose over the next 10 turns anyway. On the turn I gave the cities away it might have looked like I was giving up too much, but long term that peace treaty is part of what cost Cornflakes the game. The cost to Cornflakes isn't something I can definitively comment on, but he only needed to send a bunch of fast movers to clean out those cities, and he could of moved a stack of units into the remaining cities to try and end the war ASAP with conquest of my cities, so perhaps the real cost of that peace treaty was actually quite high for him.

[Bigger]

I think you're right now, but it was annoying at the time. I think AT was playing similarly to how mindy would have. I expected the whole western peninsula relatively easily before you took over.

[MindyMcCready]

Thanks Master Krill, it makes sense what you've said and as testement to your strategy, you certainly lasted longer than I would have guessed under either proposal.

Hah, no more easy cities for you Bigger! You got enough from Azza!