[NO PLAYERS] The Kibitzer Klub: PB13 Map & Lurkers

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I'd like to note that this whole burning down the coastal cirrus you can't hold asks then invade later strategy was exactly what I wanted to do to Commodore. Scooter kept vetoing that because he was afraid Commodore would quickly whip an army of rifles and invade overland. Just seems relevant now for some reason...

Sorry for the sour grapes

Not as an after the fact "I told you so" but rather as an at-the-time-counterfactual scenario, what was your preferred path going forward at the time that scooter decided upon war with Lew?

[Ceiliazul]

<boldly> ...and in continuance, whereupon the adjunct signitory to the contingency of northern aggression failed to meet the commitment desired by the primary signitory, </boldly> was the "attack Commodore" plan actually going to work against his tech/econ levels?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

<boldly> ...and in continuance, whereupon the adjunct signitory to the contingency of northern aggression failed to meet the commitment desired by the primary signitory, </boldly> was the "attack Commodore" plan actually going to work against his tech/econ levels?

Hitherto and forevermore,

[Ceiliazul]

poor Lew, he has no idea at all what Scooter can bring to bear in the theater. Thats a bad place to be when you're already fully committed to an attack. Now Lew plans to split off his knights in a fork, which will allow them to be killed with little risk of reprisal.

Also, his Knights end up being so far down in the priority list in terms of defending that he'll certainly have some left, and by that point it's very difficult to prevent him from using the leftover Knights from, say, razing Gators.

Lewwyn would be solving scooters speed problem if he splits his knights. then Lewwyn's slow stack has no chance to get more than 1 city.

I do think Mackoti messed up here. if he wasnt sure about joining he shouldnt have sent the 13g offer a while back. The results for Lewwyn would have been far better 10 turns ago,and Mack still could have joined once scooter's forces were committed in the Southeast. a rare mistep from Mack.

[pindicator]

Not as an after the fact "I told you so" but rather as an at-the-time-counterfactual scenario, what was your preferred path going forward at the time that scooter decided upon war with Lew?

I really thought (and still do think) our country is way too spread out. Too many neighbors, too long of borders, too much distance between one end of the Empire to the other, making defense near impossible if we were to be attacked in earnest on multiple fronts. I wanted to take out Commodore because that would have given us a secure backline in the north, and because Commodore's power was abysmally low. I still don't get how scooter could think attacking our strongest neighbor was going to be easier than attacking or weakest.

But at the time I quit, Mackoti had just declared and I strongly wanted to take the war to him. If I had realized just how unmotivated he was for a war against us, I would have pushed even harder for it.

I do think Mackoti messed up here. if he wasnt sure about joining he shouldnt have sent the 13g offer a while back. The results for Lewwyn would have been far better 10 turns ago,and Mack still could have joined once scooter's forces were committed in the Southeast. a rare mistep from Mack.

Really agree with this. I think Mackoti has miss played the naval war a lot by not realizing he has had the advantage most of the time. The extra 2 movement has scared him when it really shouldn't. He's had the production advantage most of the game yet when he put boats in the water against us he promoted them to Nav-1 instead of combat-2. In asymmetrical combat you want to make your advantages count more than your opponent ' s. He could have used his tech and promotion and production advantages to push us to defend our shores, but instead he let the threat of zerkers put him on the defensive.

[Krill]

This post is in reply top Bob's post from a couple of fays ago.

I have never used RB Mod myself, so I can't comment from personal experience, but given that both mack and scooter have voiced identical complaints regarding tech costs, perhaps something should be changed? I guess things are working well enough if the intention is to keep games competitive longer, but it seems like that might be wearing on people in a normal-speed game with many teams.

It's a fair point, and really it's a been a running theme throughout the development of the mod. Tech pace on RB (and throughout other game types) usually hit a peak in the Renaissance era, culminating in multiple instances of players 1 turning techs, sucking up all the first to bonuses and then coming out an era ahead, fielding MG and infantry and cannons and cav against players that are barely able to field muskets. Now I do feel that player skill has improved to the extent that the tech differential between leading players is not often that bad any more, but the tech pace itself has, if anything, gotten even faster.

Tech pace is affected by a variety of factors, namely the output of each player through tile improvements (including specialists, as spec slots are just another type of tile improvement), tech costs which are affected by map size and "difficulty" level, and tech trading. Tech pace is critical for being able to effectively intervene against other players in one specific area: war. Tech pace dictates the amount of turn between players being able to build one unit and its counter, the quicker the tech pace, the less time to build units, move them into theatre, attack, and perhaps most importantly of all, heal after that first attack. There are other relevant factors such as unit cost, road and unit movement upon them, cultural borders, medic 3 units, naval/land warfare (which Commodore explained better than I could), but ultimately if there are not enough turns to build units and get them into position, everything else becomes much less significant.

I feel that it is generally accepted that tech costs need to be increased from base BtS levels, otherwise we end up with some really weird effects like whole eras becoming place holders and it is much more difficult to interact with other people (ie stop them from running away in tech). What is much more debateable is how much those tech costs should be increased. The system used in this game is that tech costs basically double from the Ind era onwards, and they scale up by 25% per tech row from Education/PP/Nat/Gunpowder, it's also the one in use in PB18.

The other system in place, which is basically the opposite side of the same coin, is the known tech bonus. The system is straight forward to understand, it's there to help people that fall behind in tech to catch up, but it doesn't really do that in base BtS. The per player bonus in a 10 player game is 3% per tech that someone has but you don't. In an 18 player game it's closer to 0.5%. But the differences in breakeven bpt between players is can often be on the order of 1000 of base beakers per turn, or in percentage terms the leader can make 50% or more beakers than a middling player, sp it's obvious that this mechanic is not functional. The system in place in PB13 is actually being altered for future games, but I'll explain it anyway. The known tech bonus is changed from 30 to 25, but is turned on by different techs and maxes out at 150, so really on there is no real change, but late game it is possible for someone in Plako's position could get a 20% increase in beakers just from researching techs that mackoti and scooter already have.

This is actually also intentional, but it's being toned down. This post explains the changes and the vales a bit, but basically the system becomes much more functional for both PBEM and PB games, but I still don't see 5 player PBEMs going past the Ren era, but that is because of the smaller maps and fewer players rather than a tech cost issue.

Ultimately, the metagame issue is that "Tech uber alles" isn't true by itself, Gaspar's point in reply to Commodore's post last night explains it quite well. A tech lead and a lead in breakeven bpt is not, and shouldn't be, all that is necessary to win a game or force a concession. Other aspects of the game such as the overall economic ability of a civ including MFG and population, the number of GP popped and used are relevant. If a player has a tech lead, they should use that in some manner to improve their position that isn't simply "Get more tech". That pretty much means settling more land or taking it from someone else is necessary: this can be defined as interacting with another player. If tech costs are increased to some extent, that's possible to do. Changes to the known tech bonus help enforce that point. It's important to note that changes in tile yields also carry this through to the micro in game, along with city specialization. Deciding the amount of cottages versus workshops, and the civics used dovetails with the tech systems so that p[layers are not limited by their land into how it is improved and the tech paths that are necessary. The known tech bonus is also necessary because of the potential effects of tech trading, and I will not simply ignore NTB and TT game modes.

(Someone will come along now and state something along the lines that this makes it better to go horizontal and not vertical. I don't even see that as anywhere close to true, it's always a balance between the two, focussing on tech is still relevant in terms of first to bonuses and in getting effective military units, never mind the improvements in output from tile yields, city improvements and civics. If someone were to play out a game like I did in PB1 or PBEM5B were the aim was to get as close to bankrupt as possible then they are still at risk at losing come cities to other players and losing some of the investments. Someone else may say that it means it's better to ignore tech and use these bonuses to catch up quickly, spending fewer beakers and hence able to get more hammers or just do other stuff. You can do that, but it is not a straightforward choice. You give up those first to bonuses, you force yourself to have less time to get better military units and potentially be attacked by them, and as a result you should have more hammers/food. You have to then figure out the best way to get those benefits to work for you, because simply building a few more military units is not good unless you actually attack someone).

I'm not saying that this system is perfect, but I'd say that it's generally working along the right lines and if any changes are needed then they are probably value based. I have a couple of potential changes on the drawing board, but more experience is needed from this game and others before they could be introduced.

[Krill]

Also, yeah, mackoti's actions after Suttree died are good examples of someone just trying to improve their tech lead and not being proactive in using their tech lead. I'm hoping he gets DD in the water soon though, but if he doesn't he may just not be able to deal with scooter. Personally think he should have pressed scooter more, or maybe he needed to attack Plako through the islands if he was going to stick to peace with scooter. If he does that, then Plako can't go and steamroll Bacchus without potentially losing his core.

[Gavagai]

Tech pace on RB (and throughout other game types) usually hit a peak in the Renaissance era, culminating in multiple instances of players 1 turning techs, sucking up all the first to bonuses and then coming out an era ahead, fielding MG and infantry and cannons and cav against players that are barely able to field muskets. Now I do feel that player skill has improved to the extent that the tech differential between leading players is not often that bad any more, but the tech pace itself has, if anything, gotten even faster.

I think at has a lot to do with the fact that land on this hand-made maps is typically much better than BTS map generator usually gives. In SP most of cities I was able to settle in PB16 would be just outstanding but on that map they were meh cities.

[Gavagai]

On topic - it's interesting how Lewwyn's two spies just narrowly missed Scooter's megastack.

[Krill]

PB5 used a random map that had a single tile changed, and the tech pace was similar to hand made maps IIRC.