[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[kalin]

Noble, I saw some mention of you and Commodore having had some issues in the past but never got to see what. What's up that you seem to be so much against the guy?

Kalin

[scooter]

Also, the Lewwyn algorithm has capacity for learning while the Commodore algorithm does not.

FWIW, you repeatedly saying things like this is why I pretty much tried to ignore your Commodore-related opinions. You've got a personal thing with him, so it's difficult to take your opinions on Commodore without a ton of salt. Taking things personally is a major weakness in a game like this. Sure you were right, but I will always default towards assuming my neighbor will behave rationally, especially if that neighbor is generally pretty good at civ. You hurt your credibility by hurling personal insults so frequently.

edit: I don't think you'll take any, but no offense intended in this paragraph.

----------


Ok, here's something I know I've talked about with pindicator, but I haven't really explained here.

I don't think Commodore was necessarily crazy to fight us. I do think he was crazy to not play the hand he was dealt. He has marble and a ton of forests in his capital's BFC, and instead he elected to build archers. Archers do not get boosted by marble. In a random map game, having stone/marble is a MUCH bigger deal than in a normal game, and that's because they are not balanced in this game. He very likely is the only person in this game with marble in his capital's BFC. And yet, last I saw it wasn't even hooked! That's a major asset he ignored in order to chariot rush the team with Impis. He also saw he had ivory and a ton of forests. He also has a ton of really nice land to the north once he clears the jungle. To me, he has two blindingly obvious choices that would have been stronger. Both of them involve Oracle.

1) Oracle IW. Get an easily defensible front against us (where he settled Hidden Valley, not where he aimed his first settler), then use his nice early game traits and nice northern land to get a leg up on everyone. Surely there's islands out there too. Then re-evaluate things around T100.

2) Oracle something like Maths on a Construction beeline while expanding, then chop/whip a bunch of jumbos and crush us. If he had pulled this off, he could have had 10 or so elephants in our land before we would have gotten Construction. Most important part here - do NOT trade maps with Azza. Keep us in the dark on elephants. This makes it look like he's trying the co-existence route, and once he starts chop/whipping elephants it's too late for us. This would have sucked for us obviously, but I would've applauded this.

#2 would've been very good in all seriousness, better than #1 probably and better than archer invasion definitely. Due to the way he played, he will not get elephants in our land before we have catapults. He may still be able to beat us soon-ish regardless due to the generally bad bounces we've had (consider how lucky he is to even have elephants right next to his capital on an unbalanced map!), but it's going to be tougher for him than it would have been otherwise.


This is entirely debatable. I don't think this is black & white. If you remove the ivory from his land (betting that he does not have ivory in the very few tiles we did not unfog would have been a pretty sane bet too) though, I think his play has been crazy. Therefore, us expecting him to play that way and reacting accordingly is not rational.

[pindicator]

I disagree with that assessment. He's posted at the start if PB9 that

(Obviously a spoiler)

he recognises a need to change. Its just going to take time especially since he's naturally an aggressive player.

Edit: major xpost. That was directed at Noble

[kalin]

Scooter: you seem like the kind of guy I'd like to play a game with
Kalin

[NobleHelium]

Also, the Lewwyn algorithm has capacity for learning while the Commodore algorithm does not.

FWIW, you repeatedly saying things like this is why I pretty much tried to ignore your Commodore-related opinions. You've got a personal thing with him, so it's difficult to take your opinions on Commodore without a ton of salt. Taking things personally is a major weakness in a game like this. Sure you were right, but I will always default towards assuming my neighbor will behave rationally, especially if that neighbor is generally pretty good at civ. You hurt your credibility by hurling personal insults so frequently.

edit: I don't think you'll take any, but no offense intended in this paragraph.

Sure, I agree. I don't fault you for not listening to me. But I do fault you for not coming to the same conclusions as me. I don't think the personal thing really matters because I will never play another game with Commodore in it. I want nothing to do with Commodore in general, if that isn't evident enough. (I don't think my assessment in that sentence is incorrect, personal insult or not. I've given support for that argument - remember the screenshot of PBEM 24 I showed you? That was so long ago, and yet no change.)

[MindyMcCready]

I feel a little like I'm overstepping my newb status, but since you asked.

We have the advantage of omnipotence, but this was known by all:
-You have a known warmonger in a corner.
-You had copper, known warmanger didn't.
-You had mobility, known warmonger didnt.
-At least for some part of the game, you believed that you were stuck on an island together.

I don't know what to say guys. I have zero multiplayer experience but this was pretty easy to call. No offense, but I don't think that I've seen anyone swarmed by archers before.

My observations regarding the Noble-rest of team exchange: Scooter wanted to believe that a builder game was possible. The more Noble spoke of conflict with Commodore, the more the rest of the team 'leaned against the wind',...to their detriment.

Enough of the eulogy,....you're not buried yet. Get out there and cause him some pain,...just not to Mindy's company.

[Hesmyrr]

I think he meant post the opinions on lurker thread so he can read them later, but I guess most of what you said was covered by NobleHelium and scooter already..

[scooter]

Scooter: you seem like the kind of guy I'd like to play a game with
Kalin

Thanks! Maybe in a future game we can drag you out of lurker land back into a full game.

But I do fault you for not coming to the same conclusions as me. I don't think the personal thing really matters because I will never play another game with Commodore in it. I want nothing to do with Commodore in general, if that isn't evident enough. (I don't think my assessment in that sentence is incorrect, personal insult or not. I've given support for that argument - remember the screenshot of PBEM 24 I showed you? That was so long ago, and yet no change.)

I guess I just disagree with your assumptions of how he would play for the reasons I've stated. Not sure we'll ever convince each other here.

I feel a little like I'm overstepping my newb status, but since you asked.

We have the advantage of omnipotence, but this was known by all:
-You have a known warmonger in a corner.
-You had copper, known warmanger didn't.
-You had mobility, known warmonger didnt.
-At least for some part of the game, you believed that you were stuck on an island together.

I don't know what to say guys. I have zero multiplayer experience but this was pretty easy to call. No offense, but I don't think that I've seen anyone swarmed by archers before.

My observations regarding the Noble-rest of team exchange: Scooter wanted to believe that a builder game was possible. The more Noble spoke of conflict with Commodore, the more the rest of the team 'leaned against the wind',...to their detriment.

Enough of the eulogy,....you're not buried yet. Get out there and cause him some pain,...just not to Mindy's company.

Totally fair comments, thanks for sharing them. However, consider a couple things:

-You had copper, known warmanger didn't.
-You had mobility, known warmonger didnt.

To me, these are reasons for him to leave us alone.

-At least for some part of the game, you believed that you were stuck on an island together.

I actually firmly believed we were on the main continent long before we had confirmation and argued as much with Pindicator. The give-away was the "Salt Lake" - islands just don't have those. Commodore has pretty good knowledge of map scripts too, so I assumed he would piece that together too. Maybe he did, no idea.

[pindicator]

No, that's exactly what i was lookjng for Mindy. But please put it in the lurker thread (witg more detail if you like) so we can use it as a post mortum. As you said, now its time to cause Comm some pain.

Scooter, how do you want to play this post-Construction? Do we whip up a stack of two movers and go after the iron? Or galleys on the coast and cats to punish him when he enters our territory?

[scooter]

I think he meant post the opinions on lurker thread so he can read them later, but I guess most of what you said was covered by NobleHelium and scooter already..

I can't speak for pindicator's intent, but I don't mind the discussion here at all. Turn just rolled though, so it's about time for us to move on to see if Commodore is going to burn Zaxby's or not. (answer: probably)

fake-edit: I see Pindicator's post. Ok yeah, probably best to move some of the post-mortem type stuff to the lurker thread which we can read later. I'm ready to resume trying to make something out of this mess of ours. I do think our end is inevitable, but maybe we can prolong it for awhile.