September 29th, 2018, 16:30
Posts: 1,778
Threads: 12
Joined: Jun 2013
Good question - generically Mackoti is extremely good at the macro game, realizing when to cash in advantages he has and roll the dice on a big play. That seems to have played out this game with him quickly killing a weak neighbor. Part of that comes to neighbor luck, you have to have the opportunity to take. But part of that is realizing the opportunity is there and choosing to prioritize that over other gains.
Putting literally keeping up with Mack aside (in no game can you guarantee getting 1st if other players are good) I'm not positive what I could have done differently this game to be in the top tier so to speak.
Honestly, if you hadn't been Pro NA (which gives dog warriors as a great counter to my UU and high promo archers for defense) I probably would have been very tempted to rush iron working + masonry and try to kill the "newbie" with gallics, though given how much military you built in general // your resilient defense not sure that would have been profitably even without the bonii you had.
I also suspect there was a (high vol) opportunity to try to attack Dreylin in there sometime after your death, with the hopes that TBS would smell blood and split him with me, but I didn't take it and opted to consolidate. at that point Mackoti was already beginning to run away though if I recall,
Rushing astro appears to have yielded dividends on this map for the 2-5th place player batch if I've been reading civstats right, so I could've gone that route. I bet on the vague "conquering/optimizing the main continent" as the better play, which didn't work out (didn't do much conquering for one and then just sort of went on auto-buildering to pass the time).
So I suppose the general corrective would have been playing higher vol and risking a quagmire to kill one more neighbor basically, which the above are examples of.
Fear cuts deeper than swords.