[NO PLAYERS] PB25 Lurker Thread - Then Happy I, That Lurk and am Belurked

[Krill]

Donovan, for the love of god you settle for the gems/plains sheep; pretty much wherever you plant you also get either furs or gold in teh BFC as well. Just go look for the second food in the area.

[Old Harry]

meh, can't trust novice's tool that much.

Also this - I don't think the tool takes overseas land into account.

[ipecac]

Adrien and Jojo are neighbours again?

[BRickAstley]

Novices tool is best for getting a good overview of where mainland borders should go, not counting pink dots, to try and make sure that people have roughly similar amounts of land.

It is not what you use to solely judge relative land quality, or anything involving overseas land.

[Dreylin]

So, time to take bets on whether Elkad or Grimace is the first to fall?

[Krill]

Depends on which neighbour is smart enough to let a third party throw themselves at a seemingly easy lunch.

Gotta say OH, I'm happy with the increase in food resources. lush maps always give the most interesting dotmap decisions and the impact on how this game plays out is pretty wide ranging atm.

[Krill]

Joey is wrong, Elkad's copper is auto-connected, he doesn't need Sailing for trade routes across water that is within his culture.

This might be a stalemate...or not. We'll see.

[Old Harry]

Gotta say OH, I'm happy with the increase in food resources. lush maps always give the most interesting dotmap decisions and the impact on how this game plays out is pretty wide ranging atm.

I keep looking at Comotay's thread and worrying that I made their start too lush, but gotta remember they are all pretty good.

If joey spends resources choking elkad do you think donovan and Adrian will be smart enough to take advantage? I feel like they should benefit more, but I'm not convinced they will.

Also, has joey got to the point of complaining about whether copper is on a river or not?

[Krill]

I don't think that DZ or Adrien would take advantage of hte situation as well as they coul or should do but I'm not reading there thread so I could be completely wrong on that.

Joey seems to be complaining that he has an advantage because he doesn't understand that Elkad has copper (if he has BW, hich we are not certain that Elkad has that tech).

[Mr. Cairo]

Hello, fairly recent lurker here (despite my sign-up date I have only been stopping by regularly in the last month or so). Anyway, I just want to jump into some strategy discussion by offering my thoughts regarding HAK/Mindy's proposed axe rush against Grimace. So... jumping right in.

When they discuss the downside of a successful axe rush they bring up two things: 1) the diplomatic impact. 2) the cost to their teching due to increased maintenance costs. It is this second point I want to discuss first.

It seems to me, that in a map as lush and small as this, getting a production edge over everyone else is a surer route to victory than to try and outtech everyone else. Even putting yourself in a slight tech disadvantage must be worth it to gain that production edge. A successful axe rush vs Grimace will gain them 1 to 2 cities, that will have had up to 50-60 turns of work put into them already, at the hammer cost of a few axes. They can then leverage that production edge into a medieval era domination victory, before their lack of techs really matters on the battlefield.
My experience of warfare in the medieval era show that production is key, since longbows are so good defensively. Successfully persecuting a war before cuirassiers and Rifling requires a massive production edge over your opponent(s). As long as HAK doesn't get attacked with maces when they only have axes and archers, they'll be fine. An opponent who tries to beeline towards curs and Rifling will have to sacrifice production and should get overrun by maces and cats before their tech edge actually matters.

Falling behind in tech due to a successful early game rush might be crippling on a much larger map, but in this one, I can't see the game lasting much beyond the medieval era, so comparative tech level wont matter as much. Also related (to the map), conflict between neighbors seems inevitable on a map this crowded, so getting a leg up on everyone else by conquering a neighbor this early looks to me like an obvious game-winning move. Final map-related point: this map is so very lush that I doubt the increased maintenance costs will keep them behind in tech for very long at all, it wont take long for Grimace's land to turn profitable, and then they should easily catch up and beyond in tech, while enjoying a lead in food and hammers.

Basically, what I'm saying is I do not see any compelling reason not to go for this axe rush, it looks guaranteed to succeed, and would put them into a game-winning position. Failing would suck, but not as much as an unsuccessful aggressive city-plant would.

Now, I haven't been here long, so I don't know very much about the players here, but I will try to discuss the diplomatic fallout of such a move. Basically, the way that I see the other players characterising HAK (and Mindy) actually gives them (HAK/Mindy) a significant advantage. They're viewed as competent enough that to immediately gun for them following their conquest of Grimace wouldn't be a good idea, but not competent enough to scare everyone into dogpiling them out of fear of them winning. If Commodore/Dtay pulled something like this off, then it's a different story, they're already favourites to win, gobbling up a neighbor in the first 50 turns will make every other player focus all their efforts to stopping them.

If I were in HAK's position, I would 100% go for this axe rush, expand voraciously and aggressively, attack when the opportunity presents itself, beelining to maces, longbows and cats and just try and conquer everyone with armies 2-3 times larger than everyone elses.

But I could be completely wrong, and if I am, I would love to hear why.

(I really hope that this first post wont paint me as an aggressive psychopath for any future PBs I hope to play )