[PB65] Pinch-Hitting Pindicator

[pindicator]

177

Cornflakes offered us 100gpt for peace. Of course he gets Rifling in 11 for it's hard to take that deal.

So we advanced.




What you see here is everything Mjmd committed to his advance. Noticeably one turn behind us, he is once again trying to game the situation to come "ahead" when we are all about to lose. Lesson of this game: Never get into a prisoner's dilemma with this guy.

I have to imagine Cornflakes' camel archers are within striking range but out of shot. If Mjmd would have attacked with his forces in the north, perhaps they would have been tied down and we would only be facing what we see here. But then again, I know Superdeath did attack in and so perhaps that is enough? We will have to hope.

Mjmd's uncommitted northern forces:




I wonder what Superdeath thinks of that. He moved in last turn and likely expected Mjmd to join.

In any case, what I said before stands and it's looking more and more likely that I will attack Mjmd. However, I do have an idea that might just work, though it would take our knights and likely leave us unable to attack Mjmd.




Assumption is my initial attack here gets repelled, and Mjmd moves in a turn behind to clean up with his, trying to take Morey. My idea is to wait another turn after Cornflakes commits his pikes and knights, and then attempt to slip through with my knights to the south, in an attempt to burn Control. This only works if Superdeath's camel archers are tied up in the north though, so if Mjmd does not advance those northern forces of his into Superdeath's lands then I don't know if it will work.

Finished Literature, just to give myself the option of building some Epics. However, I think now i need to go for either Chemistry > Mil Sci, or take the economic route of Paper > Education.

[pindicator]

178

So I lost it all, predictably




Cornflakes had a GE ready for Taj. Great planning by him there; now he has Rifling in 3. Drafting Rifles after this golden age, I think.

Cornflakes lost 3 camel archers and 11 catapults in attacking my stack of cats and trash. Special shout out to the only minuteman I had there. Promoted to Drill 2, Guerilla 2 it killed 7 catapults and a Camel Archer before dying. Pity I couldn't get a good stack of them going this game.

Also, I will bet you Mjmd retreats his units here. Or just takes peace with Cornflakes straight up to teleport them back into his land. I am 95% confident he does not advance here. Why? Because he didn't advance in the north. He moved his knights towards me.




These knights are possibly not going to attack me. They were brought west and seem to be put in a spot just west enough to cover his southern cities. He's scared I'm going to attack him so he doesn't join the dogpile? Well, guess why I'm going to attack him: because he didn't attack Cornflakes. Yet again. I'm wondering when Mjmd decided Cornflakes was going to get a free pass this game; or maybe he decided to throw for Cornflakes to win before I decided to throw for Mjmd not to win. Which happened first?

Despite all that, I still looked at the situation in my east long and hard trying to find a way for my knights to slip through. I had a single minutemen that I could move with the knights, using the hills and forests. But really, without Mjmd committing anything in the north and only following cowardly behind me in the south, there are too many units too close to that southern city for my knights to do any good. They'd be cut off at best and then chased down by the pikes after 2 turns.

So I brought the north. We're going to go with the original plan. I don't have as many minutemen as I want but I think I'll be able to make do.


The big fight is happening in the Cornflakes-Superdeath front:




It was a good try Superdeath.

In any case, I'm going to attack Mjmd now because there is no way I'm going to late him try to weasel his way out on top here.

[pindicator]

180

So Mjmd did advance the stack to him, kudos for at least doing that. And it was enough to make me think "well, maybe I should send my knights back and try again on Control". Which I did. You think I would have learned my lesson about Mjmd playing ball this game, but I guess I still have a soft spot for redemption arcs.

Only to find this turn Mjmd has started spending through his gold reserves: by dumping the EP slider on me. So much for thinking he was going to be a team player, even when it was too late. My only objective left is to end this game. I offered Cornflakes peace and set myself up as best I could to attack next turn. Oh, and I also dumped as much of the EP slider on him as I could possibly afford. No more tech this game, it needs to be over anyway

[pindicator]

Oh good, I didn't have to invade him for the concession to happen

[Mjmd]

Why didn't you send more forces with me? And just so I don't have to read the entire 47 pages, what do you mean MY redemption arc. Remind me who gave open borders to Cornflakes and then backstabbed me despite a recent fish for fish during my key GA? Cornflakes sent me open borders and attack Pin messages. I didn't fall for them.........

[pindicator]

A quick post-mortem:

I feel like there were two main stories to this game from my point of view. First was an inability to properly grasp and the plan for the significance of maintenance costs on this map, and the second was a complete inability to handle diplomacy with my neighbors when it became obvious that Cornflakes was going to be front runner that needed to be caught. Perhaps I could have overcome one of those but combined they were too much. On the other hand, credit must be given to Cornflakes for his ability to successfully navigate both of these better than we did: he smartly kept his military expansion small and measured, and he used those small measured wars to inflame tensions between his opponents.

There were a couple things I felt we did well. When the Pyramids were lost to Cornflakes - and I'm really eager to read his thread to see if he really did bulb Math with his great scientist to chop them out ahead of me - I was really pleased with my plan to pivot to Oracle and bulb Monarchy. Combined with leveraging an early golden age for Currency and swaping into growth civics I think this was the one point in the game where I could have gone on to win if I had made better strategic choices. But the easy conquest of Bing turned out to be a pyrrhic victory and I never recovered economically until the game was decided for Cornflakes. (Again, great job by Cornflakes to put the pressure on me right after the conquest so that I could not get the necessary time to build infrastructure and consolidate those gains.)

In hindsight my early game choices of trying to befriend Mjmd and attack Superdeath were completely the opposite of what I ended up needing to do this game. I wonder how things would have played out if I had used my early catapults to instead attack Mjmd or Superdeath instead of Bing. I'm still perplexed as to what exactly I did to make Mjmd throw for Cornflakes and attack me despite Cornflakes being the threat to win, but it is easy to say now that choosing him to be a friendly border was a poor strategic decision. At the time I can only say that I put myself into a mental corner a little too soon in declaring Mjmd a friendly border that I couldn't expand into. Later on, that obviously had to be changed and perhaps that contributed to some of the distrust between us.

The razing of his city was also a mistake. I should have been patient and let Cornflakes handle that or just let it not happen at all. Although I was already starting to be upset at how he was demanding things from us at that point, so I do not believe that was the infection point of our strained border. Still, I do not think I should have made that move.

Despite all this I think the map was a breath of fresh air for the change in maintenance costs. It's great having an experience to shake up expectations and I will strive to better adapt to those in the future. My one big quibble was having no islands whatsover. There was never any reason to tech down the Optics/Astronomy line. I would have liked to have a little more dynamism that way. But apart from that it was a good map.

I am really eager to read the threads for a couple of things: how Cornflakes swiped the Mids out from under me and how much of the wars that played us against each other were intentional and how much were luck; and secondly, what the source of Mjmd's distrust of me stemmed from.

[pindicator]

Why didn't you send more forces with me? And just so I don't have to read the entire 47 pages, what do you mean MY redemption arc. Remind me who gave open borders to Cornflakes and then backstabbed me despite a recent fish for fish during my key GA?  Cornflakes sent me open borders and attack Pin messages. I didn't fall for them.........

This was beautiful diplo work by Cornflakes. He came up with the slow-moving army on our eastern borders by Money, and a stack of chariots up against Gloomhaven., on my border with Superdeath, and demanded Open Borders from me. The implication was very clear: give me open borders or I attack you.

On the other hand, I felt very offended that you would think it is my duty to defend your cities. Leaving undefended cities on a border is just asking for them to be razed, fish or no fish. And then to infer that I had to defend them against other players as well? I felt like you were treating me like i was an AI in a single player game more than a human player; a couple times i referred to you in my thread as "bullying" and this felt like another.

I didn't blame Superdeath for letting Cornflakes move those chariots through his lands to attack me. I don't see why you should blame me for your lack of defenses either.

[Mjmd]

I was treating you as a trusted ally as I believed that was the only way to keep my borders with Cornflakes safe and to have pressure there. My development was horrible slowed by lack of early happy and I was playing catch up most of the game.

Edit: that also doesn't explain your attack on me and then stealing my spots after. Shockingly I didn't take that well when there was a clear game leader.

[Mjmd]

As far as bullying, a lot of my "demands" were pure begging. My empire was in a bad way for a while and I needed happy and stone for Moai.

[pindicator]

"Trusted ally" but you settle up on my cities to steal their food with your culture? And then you expect me to defend those same cities that stole my food tiles from Cornflakes? How arrogant! I'm not some AI; I notice these things!

Meanwhile I'm trying to get you to join in an attack on the leader all game long but you always have an excuse otherwise. You'll go fight someone weak while I can kill Cornflakes. Well, we saw how poor my avenues of attack were. Then when Cornflakes does attack you and burns several cities including a rather significant one in your core, you give him a pass to attack me.

Is that really what made you decide to throw for him or was there something earlier?