Perpy's Puzzling Poets (Northstar1989 and Old Lion of the Balseraphs)

[Northstar1989]

Why is it compromised for good? It's not like anybody's broadcast it over the internet- yet... My main concern is that the security risk of it being compromised multiplies with each additional computer it's on, and it's currently on at least 2 other computers (yours and Kragroth's), maybe more...


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

OK, sent the save on just now (I tried to send it last night, but for some reason it didn't work..)

I'm PMing you the new password Old Lion, in case it becomes necessary for you to step in for me in the future.

Please delete ALL traces you have of the previous password, just in case. I used it for far too many things to be able to remember to change it for all of them right away- and technically it hasn't been compromised *yet* as nnobody's sent it in plain text via e-mail?


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Old Lion,

You REALLY need to tell me if you played a turn for me. I understand you received the hacked password, but you never told me you played Turn 20 for me- and I just now found out when I loaded up turn 21 earlier tonight and uncovered some MAJOR mistakes that were played in on Turn 20 that I never made...

First of all, I/we discovered Calendar and you never swapped into Agrarianism! (whereas on the turn 20 I played I did so immediately!)

Second, you moved the Scout to the SOUTH after I already told you a Griffon was lurking that way! The CORRECT direction to explore would have been west (considering I already had a scout to the east- who in both versions ended up getting eaten by a Tiger- although I am not clear it was on the same tile this occurred in both cases...) Now I would have to wast a turn moving the Scout back to the western border to reach the Forest/Hill tile I had intended to move him onto earlier...


And perhaps the WORST of all- you left the capital working a Hills/Forest/Plain tile instead of swapping him to the Cows or a Forest/Grassland tile last turn- thus delaying the next two city growth by at least a turn each...


None of this is acceptable. You need to play more carefully than this if you're going to play one of my turns for me. And most of all, you need to TELL me when you play a turn for me...


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Also, here are screenshots of Turn 19 (the last turn before my password was cracked) which I didn't bother to post before...










As you'll notice, I grew a new population at the end of this turn. Old Lion *should* have assigned it to work a 2 food/turn tile, so that the capital could have grown again in two more turns. *Instead* he left the citizen on a 3 hammers/turn tile producing no food- leading to an additional turn until the capital grows to both sizes 6 (Charismatic makes the happy-cap 6) and 7 (Wine allows a capital size of 7)...


Regards,
Northstar

[Old_Lion]

Hello Northstar,

Sorry for not putting you in copy of the save I sent.
I assumed wrongly you were somewhere aware of my sending the save to the tracker.

Also, I have to admit the worker optimised assignation is beyond my current skill. Thank you for helping me improve.

[Northstar1989]

Old Lion,

I just saw the Turn 22 today based on the Turn 21 you apparently played last night (and once again didn't tell me about- despite everything I wrote here...)

What exactly are you thinking? You STILL haven't revolted into Agrarianism- and you CONTINUED to move the Scout to the South despite my telling you there is a hungry Griffon lurking in that direction waiting to eat him... (you're lucky he's not dead already) And, I didn't check, but it looked at first glance (from the turns to growth visible on the map view without clicking on the city...) like you still had a citizen working the Forest/Hills/Plains instead of the Cows or Forest/Grassland like I told you about before.

Are you paying any attention at all to what I tell you are mistakes and need to be fixed?


You leave me no choice but to demand TWO turns be replayed by the other players (Turn 21 AND 22) when you go about playing the save when I told everybody to stop with that branch and go about playing the one I played myself. And you continue to compound mistakes upon mistakes and reduce the likelihood of them being fixed in doing so. Please stop playing any additional turns, and let the other players know you are doing so, in order to actually place some pressure upon them to go back and use the branch that *I* played for Turn 20 (the Turn 21 save I sent on...)


Regards,
Northstar

[Old_Lion]

As answered in private message :

I had the time to play 2 turns before you came to complain.
I have not done a think regarding this game since I know you are not happy.

[Northstar1989]

As answered in private message :

I had the time to play 2 turns before you came to complain.
I have not done a think regarding this game since I know you are not happy.

Hi Old Lion,

Thanks for respecting my wishes about that. I didn't realize precisely what the timeline had looked like before (that you had already played 2 turns before I raised an objection) when I was upset about things before...


I wanted to give you some analysis on the micro-management implications of the choices you made so you can understand precisely what you did wrong on the turns, and hopefully how to avoid such mistakes again in the future (either playing turns for me, or in your other games- such as PBEM 39 which I have for the forseeable future handed you...) I hope you don't mind...


OK, so on Turn 20, you had a citizen work a Hills/Forest/Grassland and did not swap into Agrarianism even though you got the message we had just discovered Calendar. This led to the completion of a Warrior for 2 more hammers with 5 hammers overflow, which you then placed into a Settler on Turn 21. On Turn 22 a Worker completed the Cow Pasture, providing a 3 food/ 3 hammers tile and allowing the Settler to be completed in 8 more turns...


Had you instead swapped into Agrarianism, and put the Warrior on hold to start on a Settler immediately (generally a good idea at this point in the game), you would have lost 7 hammers production for one turn at that time- which meant 5 hammers overflow into the Settler. However, over the next 8 turns while the capital was working the Settler, it would have produced 8 additional foodhammers/turn from the Flood Plains Agrofarm, and completed the Settler at the same point in time- with 4 hammers overflow instead of the expected 1. It then would cost 7 foodhammers due to Anarchy to swap into Agrarianism after completion of the Settler- for a total cost of 8 foodhammers after accounting for the lost production on the Warrior. Swapping into Agrarianism now, while working on the Settler, would cost us a turn on founding the city and not make sense in the long run, as it would delay every single growth-threshold by a single turn...


However, it gets worse than that- because there was an even better option for Turn 20 that I didn't initially see (you cost 9 foodhammers vs. what I did when I played Turn 20- but what I did was also suboptimal). There was no logical reason to complete the Warrior before the Settler- Barbarian units that can enter our borders don't spawn this early in the game, and our surviving Scout (the one you have now placed in grave danger by moving him towards where the Griffon lurks) could have easily protected the Settler for the one turn before he could found a city and expand our borders to protect himself...

City tiles produce 3 foodhammers/turn, and the citizen we get with a new city could produce 1 surplus foodhammer and 1 suplus commerce (which would have just gone to maintenance) right off the bat just by working an unimproved Flood Plains. Beyond that, though, founding the 2nd city one turn later (by swapping into Agrarianism instead of immediately starting on a Settler after the capital reached size 5) delayed every single additional growth by 1 turn. With the Wines, the 2nd city can reach base 5 happy-cap without any additional techs, and 6 if we don't lose Charismatic to insanity. There are enough highly-productive tiles around the 2nd city that every single citizen could produce a minimum of 1 surplus foodhammer- so the extra turn earlier settling would have net us 6 foodhammers vs the 8 we lose by not swapping into Agrarianism for 8 more turns. However, the 2nd city also would have produced at least 6 more commerce beyond increased maintenance costs during this time (the 3rd tile to work would have been the Wines on the Grassland Hill after a vineyard could be founded...) so we would have traded off 2 foodhammers for 6 commerce and 2.2 culture (from Creative and Values=Religion)- which would have been a net advantage.

I didn't see the second option either, and would have just swapped into Agrarianism, so you only ended up costing us 9 foodhammers instead of 7 foodhammers and 6 commerce/2.2 culture. But choices like these are things to think about when deciding when to swap civics or found cities- generally you want to think at least 10 turns ahead (if not more) at any given point in the game...


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Umm, I forgot that we had TWO farms to benefit from Agrarianism. All my calculations were off as a result by two food production over the past two turns...

However, it gets worse than that. If we had gone Agrarianism --> Settler, we could have produced the Settler in just 8 turns thanks to this. However, the best we can do now is 9 TURNS- as if I swap into Agrarianism IMMEDIATELY, we will lose a turn to Anarchy as well as 7 more turns to complete the Settler (with at least 4 turns working the Winery the Worker will build next), in addition to the turn already invested in the Settler. This is due to food being stored away in the granaries of the city on Turn 20 (which won't improve the time to city growth by even a single turn- after the completion of the Settler we still could have grown in just two more turns due to having a 10 food/turn surplus with the Winery and two Agrofarms...) instead of all food for the last 2 turns going either to Anarchy or the Settler...

So, we end up with useless extra food in the city granaries (it will only accelerate the city reaching size 7 by a single turn- which may not even be desirable if we have lost Charismatic by then, and will still leave us with 4-5 extra food stored even after that...), a turn's delay on the Settler (the ENORMOUS snowball effects of which I already explained), and a loss of a turn on the Scout (I found an alternate route back to the west which only results in losing 1 turn...)

We lost at least 10 foodhammers, and a turn on the Scout. This could very well cost us any real chance at victory if we don't get lucky later on, despite our current fragile lead in the game...


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

OK, Old Lion, at some point I hope I'll hear from you again- I hope I didn't scare you off by all my post-turn analysis of precisely what went wrong... Trust me when I say I also do it to myself (although I don't always post the results here on Realms Beyond) and it has led to a *rapid* improvement in my strategic decision-making over my time on this forum...


Anways, here is the latest turn. And would anyone like to see screenshots of the turn that never happened? (Turn 20 as *I* played it) I still have screenshots of it, and would be more than happy to post them here if anybody is interested, and you don't think it would just serve to beat a dead horse Old Lion...




OK, so the first thing our glorious clowns did was to refocus the economy around farming!



We should have done this two turns ago, obviously (and then immediately started on a Settler rather than wasting food storing it up in the city growth-bar where it won't actually do any good...) but it's better late than never. We don't get the Settler even a single turn later thanks to the extra food production speeding up the Settler by 1 turn, and every turn further we wait only throws away more food/turn...



It's 128 foodhammers to the Settler is done- slightly more than 7 turns at 18 foodhammers/turn- but that will increase to 19/turn with a Winery soon enough to speed it up to 7 turns more total...


Our fair Scout, meanwhile is re-rerouting to the west. I took a chance on a route that leaves hims somewhat exposed to the Griffon (which lies to the south) to get there, but luckily no Griffon showed up... (so we only lost a single Scout-turn on exploration from your turns before moving him south...)


Here are the Demographics:



Here are the Top 5 Cities:



If we had swapped to Agrarianism immediately after discovering Calendar (as is almost *ALWAYS* optimal- for future reference) and then begun right off on the Settler, we would have been able to maintain a stable lead in Demographics over even the Calabim (the vampires as the Demographic-leaders is a scary thing, by the way... They can do a LOT with very little thanks to the Breedings Pits, the Moroi, and their vampires' ability to feast on their own population to get unit experience...) But as it stands now, I expect the vampires and orcs to soon catch up to and overtake us in economic-growth... I don't think you realize how much damage that lost turn on the Settler (and the lost hammers from completing it earlier and with more overflow) will do us in the long run Old Lion...


OK, dead horse beat. Let's try to figure out a way to turn things around from here. We're going to have to grow at BREAKNECK speed to keep up with the orcs in particular- that means skimping on Warriors, favoring Workers over military units, and taking some risks with Settlers to get new cities founded ASAP!


Regards,
Northstar

P.S. I admire your spirit and resiliency, Old Lion. I hope I haven't managed to dent it with any of this. It's always a pleasure interacting with you- let's try and learn from this whole expereience of a botched turn instead of having it come between us...