[PB48] TBW

[TBW]

T131:


Had a talk with GKC and showed him this shot of the aftermath of Superdeath's attack on Gavagai, and he agreed that we're probably screwed here. Gavagai just didn't have the tech to defend against knights effectively, and I don't think I'll be able to stop a 2v1 of Raskol and SD when Gavagai is finally crushed. At best I'll be able to stonewall in a city or two with CG3 longbows but that's just delaying the inevitable, I won't be able to pump out enough knights to counter that kind of army. I'm not going to lie down and surrender here but I don't have a realistic path to victory at this point that doesn't involve at least two people both having strokes and accidentally hitting the Convert to AI button.

[TBW]

T134:


I decided it would be better to push for Engineering than to try to squeeze out Theology, though with these kinds of numbers it seems doubtful that I'll hit either before it goes down. There's just not a lot I can do about this stack at this point when he decides to attack, I'll be able to take a chunk out of it and I'm building some knights of my own that I can counterattack with but I don't think I can overcome his Police State advantage here without something miraculous happening.

[Borsche]

Finally read this thread - it sucks to say this when everybody (included me) beats the drum regularly that early aggression never pays off but the settling of DoW was so fucking egregious that the one right play is to beeline HBR, whip/chop 10-15 HAs and dump them all on that plains hill 1E of the mountain. Its not so much 'would the attack succeed' as much as it is 'giving up that much territory loses you the game'

[Borsche]

I really am starting to think that the player has too much information regarding other civs in this game. Settling land is always cheaper than capturing land, and this is always going to be the biggest reason why early warfare just sinks both players, but I do wonder if a players ability to track power and builds so closely and just whip/chop defensive units (going hand in hand with the defenders bonus of culture/fortify/roads/etc) just makes all of this useless. The no score mod is a smart idea but a no graphs mod is even better. If you want graphs maybe have the game creator/lurkers have a suvivor style observer civ and let them track the game.

[TBW]

Finally read this thread - it sucks to say this when everybody (included me) beats the drum regularly that early aggression never pays off but the settling of DoW was so fucking egregious that the one right play is to beeline HBR, whip/chop 10-15 HAs and dump them all on that plains hill 1E of the mountain. Its not so much 'would the attack succeed' as much as it is 'giving up that much territory loses you the game'

I just felt like I couldn't get far enough ahead of him to make an attack succeed when he beelined Stonehenge on the stone hill, by the time I could have marched up enough axes he would have had third ring borders and if he'd seen my power start skyrocketing from 10 HAs he could have just put 10 cheaper spears in the city. I'm not going to say I lost at civ select and I'm not mad at the mapmaker or anything but starting next to an IND guy with a stone hill like that definitely sucked. A no score/no graphs mod would definitely be interesting, I wouldn't mind making espionage totally superfluous in multiplayer.

[Borsche]

Finally read this thread - it sucks to say this when everybody (included me) beats the drum regularly that early aggression never pays off but the settling of DoW was so fucking egregious that the one right play is to beeline HBR, whip/chop 10-15 HAs and dump them all on that plains hill 1E of the mountain. Its not so much 'would the attack succeed' as much as it is 'giving up that much territory loses you the game'

I just felt like I couldn't get far enough ahead of him to make an attack succeed when he beelined Stonehenge on the stone hill, by the time I could have marched up enough axes he would have had third ring borders and if he'd seen my power start skyrocketing from 10 HAs he could have just put 10 cheaper spears in the city. I'm not going to say I lost at civ select and I'm not mad at the mapmaker or anything but starting next to an IND guy with a stone hill like that definitely sucked. A no score/no graphs mod would definitely be interesting, I wouldn't mind making espionage totally superfluous in multiplayer.

It BGPB13 juri has dumped around 200+ EP into me and its one of those eye rolling things. As on board as I am with the closer to home mod, Espionage is one of those mechanical elements that feels a lot better when you eliminate it entirely - ala corporations, religious diplo, events etc. Rebalance or remove the jail/intelligence agency/security bureau if you need to. The whole system is ridiculous.

I mean the graph system as it exists now just sort of relies on people being 'fair' regarding 'oh im only going for graphs!' but then you get guys with early UB courthouses, great wall, or they're just an asshole and dumps 4 EP/turn into you the second they meet you (for lurkers, i am nowhere near juri in bgpb13 and there's no reason for him to put this many EPs. and also yes they are intentional). May as well have graphs enabled or disabled.

[TBW]

Finally read this thread - it sucks to say this when everybody (included me) beats the drum regularly that early aggression never pays off but the settling of DoW was so fucking egregious that the one right play is to beeline HBR, whip/chop 10-15 HAs and dump them all on that plains hill 1E of the mountain. Its not so much 'would the attack succeed' as much as it is 'giving up that much territory loses you the game'

I just felt like I couldn't get far enough ahead of him to make an attack succeed when he beelined Stonehenge on the stone hill, by the time I could have marched up enough axes he would have had third ring borders and if he'd seen my power start skyrocketing from 10 HAs he could have just put 10 cheaper spears in the city. I'm not going to say I lost at civ select and I'm not mad at the mapmaker or anything but starting next to an IND guy with a stone hill like that definitely sucked. A no score/no graphs mod would definitely be interesting, I wouldn't mind making espionage totally superfluous in multiplayer.

It BGPB13 juri has dumped around 200+ EP into me and its one of those eye rolling things. As on board as I am with the closer to home mod, Espionage is one of those mechanical elements that feels a lot better when you eliminate it entirely - ala corporations, religious diplo, events etc. Rebalance or remove the jail/intelligence agency/security bureau if you need to. The whole system is ridiculous.

I mean the graph system as it exists now just sort of relies on people being 'fair' regarding 'oh im only going for graphs!' but then you get guys with early UB courthouses, great wall, or they're just an asshole and dumps 4 EP/turn into you the second they meet you (for lurkers, i am nowhere near juri in bgpb13 and there's no reason for him to put this many EPs. and also yes they are intentional). May as well have graphs enabled or disabled.

Like with me and Aztec in BGPB13 and the way espionage works, there's nothing reasonable anybody can do to catch up to me because of total espionage points making missions cheaper for me/more expensive for everybody else, so I can pretty much box everybody out of ever getting research visibility. There's no strategy or any kind of counterplay, you can spend gold on espionage points but that's just putting the guy with more espionage further ahead. If there was some strategic tradeoff that had to be made for espionage I could get behind that, like if you had to build spies and keep them hidden in someone's territory to get information and they could be actively defended against that would be meaningful gameplay instead of bucket filling. Maybe even do something like base game privateers, enabling spy units at some medieval/renaissance tech, giving them hidden nationality, and having security bureaus/intelligence agencies as buildings that would reveal them in some area around the city. I feel like some kind of stealthy reconnaissance unit has a place in this kind of game but the espionage bucket is dumb.

[TBW]

T136:
Gavagai sent me gold that I used to upgrade units, Raskol closed borders, I'm piling everything I can into my Heroic Epic city and whipping everything else into the ground to try to chew up defenders from the two way attack that's surely coming. Hopefully GKC's got some kind of master plan up his sleeve.

[Borsche]

Finally read this thread - it sucks to say this when everybody (included me) beats the drum regularly that early aggression never pays off but the settling of DoW was so fucking egregious that the one right play is to beeline HBR, whip/chop 10-15 HAs and dump them all on that plains hill 1E of the mountain. Its not so much 'would the attack succeed' as much as it is 'giving up that much territory loses you the game'

I just felt like I couldn't get far enough ahead of him to make an attack succeed when he beelined Stonehenge on the stone hill, by the time I could have marched up enough axes he would have had third ring borders and if he'd seen my power start skyrocketing from 10 HAs he could have just put 10 cheaper spears in the city. I'm not going to say I lost at civ select and I'm not mad at the mapmaker or anything but starting next to an IND guy with a stone hill like that definitely sucked. A no score/no graphs mod would definitely be interesting, I wouldn't mind making espionage totally superfluous in multiplayer.

It BGPB13 juri has dumped around 200+ EP into me and its one of those eye rolling things. As on board as I am with the closer to home mod, Espionage is one of those mechanical elements that feels a lot better when you eliminate it entirely - ala corporations, religious diplo, events etc. Rebalance or remove the jail/intelligence agency/security bureau if you need to. The whole system is ridiculous.

I mean the graph system as it exists now just sort of relies on people being 'fair' regarding 'oh im only going for graphs!' but then you get guys with early UB courthouses, great wall, or they're just an asshole and dumps 4 EP/turn into you the second they meet you (for lurkers, i am nowhere near juri in bgpb13 and there's no reason for him to put this many EPs. and also yes they are intentional). May as well have graphs enabled or disabled.

Like with me and Aztec in BGPB13 and the way espionage works, there's nothing reasonable anybody can do to catch up to me because of total espionage points making missions cheaper for me/more expensive for everybody else, so I can pretty much box everybody out of ever getting research visibility. There's no strategy or any kind of counterplay, you can spend gold on espionage points but that's just putting the guy with more espionage further ahead. If there was some strategic tradeoff that had to be made for espionage I could get behind that, like if you had to build spies and keep them hidden in someone's territory to get information and they could be actively defended against that would be meaningful gameplay instead of bucket filling. Maybe even do something like base game privateers, enabling spy units at some medieval/renaissance tech, giving them hidden nationality, and having security bureaus/intelligence agencies as buildings that would reveal them in some area around the city. I feel like some kind of stealthy reconnaissance unit has a place in this kind of game but the espionage bucket is dumb.

Sumeria is even worse lol. I think in BGPB12 or 11 I actually ended up getting city vis on Juri for a couple turns. Let alone the graphs, why are city vis or research vis still in the game? And the lack of counter play, as you mentioned, is is truly wasteful. I agree that there can probably some sort of place for this espionage, but I think that it just needs to be removed in total and then reintroduced in a newer form.

[TBW]

Finally read this thread - it sucks to say this when everybody (included me) beats the drum regularly that early aggression never pays off but the settling of DoW was so fucking egregious that the one right play is to beeline HBR, whip/chop 10-15 HAs and dump them all on that plains hill 1E of the mountain. Its not so much 'would the attack succeed' as much as it is 'giving up that much territory loses you the game'

I just felt like I couldn't get far enough ahead of him to make an attack succeed when he beelined Stonehenge on the stone hill, by the time I could have marched up enough axes he would have had third ring borders and if he'd seen my power start skyrocketing from 10 HAs he could have just put 10 cheaper spears in the city. I'm not going to say I lost at civ select and I'm not mad at the mapmaker or anything but starting next to an IND guy with a stone hill like that definitely sucked. A no score/no graphs mod would definitely be interesting, I wouldn't mind making espionage totally superfluous in multiplayer.

It BGPB13 juri has dumped around 200+ EP into me and its one of those eye rolling things. As on board as I am with the closer to home mod, Espionage is one of those mechanical elements that feels a lot better when you eliminate it entirely - ala corporations, religious diplo, events etc. Rebalance or remove the jail/intelligence agency/security bureau if you need to. The whole system is ridiculous.

I mean the graph system as it exists now just sort of relies on people being 'fair' regarding 'oh im only going for graphs!' but then you get guys with early UB courthouses, great wall, or they're just an asshole and dumps 4 EP/turn into you the second they meet you (for lurkers, i am nowhere near juri in bgpb13 and there's no reason for him to put this many EPs. and also yes they are intentional). May as well have graphs enabled or disabled.

Like with me and Aztec in BGPB13 and the way espionage works, there's nothing reasonable anybody can do to catch up to me because of total espionage points making missions cheaper for me/more expensive for everybody else, so I can pretty much box everybody out of ever getting research visibility. There's no strategy or any kind of counterplay, you can spend gold on espionage points but that's just putting the guy with more espionage further ahead. If there was some strategic tradeoff that had to be made for espionage I could get behind that, like if you had to build spies and keep them hidden in someone's territory to get information and they could be actively defended against that would be meaningful gameplay instead of bucket filling. Maybe even do something like base game privateers, enabling spy units at some medieval/renaissance tech, giving them hidden nationality, and having security bureaus/intelligence agencies as buildings that would reveal them in some area around the city. I feel like some kind of stealthy reconnaissance unit has a place in this kind of game but the espionage bucket is dumb.

Sumeria is even worse lol. I think in BGPB12 or 11 I actually ended up getting city vis on Juri for a couple turns. Let alone the graphs, why are city vis or research vis still in the game? And the lack of counter play, as you mentioned, is is truly wasteful. I agree that there can probably some sort of place for this espionage, but I think that it just needs to be removed in total and then reintroduced in a newer form.

Aztecs get courthouses at Monotheism in whatever RtR version we're playing, it's even more insane than Sumeria.