PBEM 31, pushing comfort zones.

[gingereagle1969]

Everyone- you realize spoilers are shown when you get thread updates to your email right?

I was just about to mention that

I had played & updated my thread accordingly with a "state of the nation" address too, no idea if Kyan's going to bother

if Nic can still handle the stress; I'd be happy for his guidance for another game ... and if the mysterious retep also wants to join my team, that'll be cool.

[Ceiliazul]

All the best mate. I'm going to enjoy reading your thread. Mine is, different...

I've been watching your views-per-post in total awe. I can't wait to read it!

[timski]

Kyan - Agreed we were lucky (beyond combat rolls) in that both our neighbours initially moved away from us - and hence we got to build our economy in relative peace. C&D also meant we were tracking (I hope) every Warrior built and lost, and roughly where those units were - so we could leave our homeland undefended for large parts of the game.

In contrast, both your neighbours decided to take a shot at your homeland, Dazed apparently with considerable enthusiasm. Not just player skill, but the fact that you'd picked Aggressive ahead of a more economic trait choice, which rather implied you were planning to war early. I presume everyone asessed you as more threatening than anyone else, and thus you were continually target #1. I certainly spent much the game sure you were planning to rush someone, just unsure who...

Your only slightly curious play was what looked like indecision on Granaries and Oracle. Maybe that will make more sense in context.

Dazed - What I derived as an early failed Warrior rush set your economy back by 10 turns. Even Imperial wasn't enough to recover that, with Kyan landing the initial third city at least 4 turns before you. Knowing your gamble had failed made it much easier to relax our Stonehenge build, before we'd even met you. I guess you were also unlucky on missing a religion.

GingerEagle - We hoped you would get more annoyed with Dazed than us, and that seemed to be the case. To echo Ceiliazul, your anti-choking technique was magnificant. Don't be let high population cities fool you in the early game: The whip is very powerful, and having half your population working unimproved tiles adds almost nothing to your economy.

You (and indirectly Commodore) may have done better by trying to choke your neighbours. I was surprised how effective the technique can be. That said, I'm not sure why you sent Vince (your "top scorer") to be slaughtered on our borders, knowing that our power had recently jumped from 22 to 51, and that surely meant a lot of Axes (I felt sure you'd see our graphs and fall back).

Your placement of Selhurst Park was a major "WTF moment": We thought you had a decent defensive position on the hill, and then you moved...

Commodore - I'm hoping that when I get to read your thread, your moves will make more sense. Be warned, some of my commentary is brutal, but you genuinely did confuse me.

There's far more to it than just bad rolls. Bad rolls alone wouldn't have lost the game: I summarised the approach as lacking (1) Contingency - relying on luck (or more specifically, lack of unluck) in situations where your entire game is at stake, and (2) Archery - not appreciating when you are threatened and changing plan accordingly.

Ceiliazul - I think my main contribution was to push you harder. Most of the best micro came from you improving on something I'd suggested. Often something I couldn't do myself. I learnt a lot from the combination. And you are far better at deploying military. Commodore would still be alive if I were playing alone. I would like to see you in a serious veterans' game.

I will put the idea of a game of my own on the back burner for now. It's been fun, but obsessively and time-consumingly so. I'm not sure I either can, or should, commit.

Thanks all. It has been short, but enjoyable. And now I'm rather looking forward to checking all that demo analysis...

[Kyan]

Kyan
Your only slightly curious play was what looked like indecision on Granaries and Oracle. Maybe that will make more sense in context.

No indecidision by me. I was going to build Oracle but realised Commodore was doomed and that it would take something obscene to get back into the game. So, I shelved that plan and was teching Code of Laws. The plan was to time Oracle so I got Civil Service. Risky but I figured I was so far behind you already. I was building granaries the entire time but was forced to whip axes to deal with Dazed.

Dazed - What I derived as an early failed Warrior rush set your economy back by 10 turns. Even Imperial wasn't enough to recover that, with Kyan landing the initial third city at least 4 turns before you. Knowing your gamble had failed made it much easier to relax our Stonehenge build, before we'd even met you. I guess you were also unlucky on missing a religion.

Dazed only sent 1 warrior at me initially and it definitely hurt me more than him! The other incursions are all far more recent and put a stop on my plan to defend Commodore's land from you.

[Ceiliazul]

No indecidision by me. I was going to build Oracle but realised Commodore was doomed and that it would take something obscene to get back into the game. So, I shelved that plan and was teching Code of Laws. The plan was to time Oracle so I got Civil Service. Risky but I figured I was so far behind you already. I was building granaries the entire time but was forced to whip axes to deal with Dazed.

You'd need math for that too...

[timski]

Kyan, you were the bane of my C&D analysis... and that is a complement. I knew you were switching techs, just not all of them, continually!

I got slightly confused by your early growth to size 2, assuming it to be something like Fishing (I wasn't paying enough attention to the full set of demos). And I did think Dazed made more of a concerted attempt to rush you. But we got the general gist of your situation, military strength, and totality of techs. Good enough to guide our decisions accurately.

Delaying the Oracle made perfect sense, given the shifting sands in the land of Bears. Shame there isn't a more recent turn report - I saw both Dazed and yourself build Axes, but didn't translate that into further strife, since I didn't see deaths. That hostility helps explain why you thought you couldn't win, when we thought you still had a chance.

I'm sorry to see your game end in this way, because you not only played well, but put a lot of time into the telling. As you observed early on, you had the misfortune to have both neighbours choking you, which de facto meant that everyone else was getting less choked.

[Commodore]

Wow, thread explodes while I step out. fwiw, sorry you feel cheated Kyan. I know the feeling...thanks to your sarcastic gg I was imagining how hard it would be to win with Dazed gaining a second capital amazingly early. Taking a ~75% shot, while losing would have lost you the game and probably ended it right then and there? Who would do that?

Oh, right, that's what I did, except I figured it was better than 85% (due to the weed of forgetting Mr. Chm Ogg could get a second promotion). After losing two workers and a settler, I lost the game, no chance that I could win between the two most competent and militaristic enemies.

Perhaps I should have rage-quit then and there, deleting the warrior and allowing whoever to knock out the capital, or given the reins to someone with more free time and spite to tech up archery and play Sian for another sixty turns. Still, spite wars irritate me on the receiving end, as it's not really playing to win. I had some low-odds shot (like, 1%), perhaps, if Ceil had noticed the Oracle run, decided it was more valuable to deny it to you than to keep me alive, and then I could have run an engineer for a 58% chance at 'mids or Machinery and an actual game. Ceil, probably wisely, doesn't think like that though.

My opinions on the map are fairly obvious, I think. Thanks to Plako for trying something new and making a very pretty map for us, but close-in games just don't seem to work. Or, more like, close-in games tend to end very quickly. (Good luck, 33 greens!)

As a final note, please don't hate poor Rammer. He's an awesome leader who deserves better than 28 or 31. Japan...is probably better than Russia if you want a red civ.

[dazedroyalty]

In contrast, both your neighbours decided to take a shot at your homeland, Dazed apparently with considerable enthusiasm. Not just player skill, but the fact that you'd picked Aggressive ahead of a more economic trait choice, which rather implied you were planning to war early. I presume everyone asessed you as more threatening than anyone else, and thus you were continually target #1. I certainly spent much the game sure you were planning to rush someone, just unsure who...

Your only slightly curious play was what looked like indecision on Granaries and Oracle. Maybe that will make more sense in context.

Dazed - What I derived as an early failed Warrior rush set your economy back by 10 turns. Even Imperial wasn't enough to recover that, with Kyan landing the initial third city at least 4 turns before you. Knowing your gamble had failed made it much easier to relax our Stonehenge build, before we'd even met you. I guess you were also unlucky on missing a religion

I found this interesting because I think you misread my play. As Kyan pointed out I didn't warrior rush him, it was just the initial warrior. I was planning to send it at someone regardless when the game started. When I discovered I was next to Kyan and GE, I chose Kyan. Perhaps it wasn't the best reason, but I thought he could handle it better. Technically, i might have been better off going at GE and slowing him down but that's impossible to say for sure.

It never happened but my axe in Kyan's land was actually not planning to progress any further/more aggressively. I was gonna sit it on a forest and make sure I had heads up if he tried to come my way since the mountains were in his control. The two warriors I had sent were going to return to the homeland and scout the remainder of the map in my area. I just used them to see if he had copper hooked up already.

[Ceiliazul]

I found this interesting because I think you misread my play.

Timski, your demo analysis gets an A for effort and a B for accuracy. Definitely added value to our team. And we were a team, I've asked T-Hawk to change the thread title and I'll edit the PBEM list next time I'm there.

[dazedroyalty]

Timski, your demo analysis gets an A for effort and a B for accuracy. Definitely added value to our team. And we were a team, I've asked T-Hawk to change the thread title and I'll edit the PBEM list next time I'm there.

To be fair, I was also saving gold for WAY longer than necessary to run binary science. I had sorta already checked out of this one and so I think it was literally about 5 turns in a row that I forgot to change it. I usually remembered RIGHT after hitting End Turn!