Duel R - pindicator does it gangnam style

[pindicator]

Hmmm, photobucket is not letting me upload right now, so we'll have to do this all-text for now.

Played turns 12 - 20 today. And I suck at scouting. Rego found me turn 15; I'm guessing he went northwest and came across me. My warrior has found a long isthmus and spent the entire set running down said isthmus. I think I know how to get to Rego from here, but he's entrenched his warrior on a forest hill. Which is a small annoyance - it lets him have sight but he's not in a great spot to harass my worker, which is what I'm really worried about.

Tech path went Bronze Working -> Wheel -> Pottery. Remember how I said BW was a mistake and I should have done AH instead? Well turns out there is NO visible bronze. Hopefully there's one in the nearby fog, but we'll tech AH after Pottery and try to get a fast chariot out now that I know there is no easy bronze to grab.

Build order went warrior -> warrior -> settler. 2nd warrior also finished right in time with growth to size 3. Built a 2nd warrior because I wanted to scout around the capital a bit before the settler finished. And I found crap. There really isnt' much to even suggest a 2nd city location will be a good idea. Right now I'm thinking about a sub-par crab spot, simply because it will be able to share cottage tiles with the capital.

After the settler finishes I'll get a quick granary in. Probably will revolt to slavery after I finish building the settler. I want to whip that first chariot, or 1-turn it with overflow. Want to send it to Rego ASAP - especially now that I know there isn't Bronze nearby.

[BRickAstley]

If you wanted to for at least temporary images, i use imgur.com, it works well and fast.

[pindicator]

Pictures!

Turn 15 - Rego makes contact from the SE. Warrior #2 had just finished and I was going to scout in that direction. Rego moved to the forested hill and I scouted around the area south of the capital.



Turn 20 - Red circle is Rego's warrior; blue circle is my worker. I'm thinking about settling on the plains hill to the south but what I really need to do is get more scouting in.




A shot of the overall scouting done. My initial plan was to send the warrior in a Northeast direction but I've run down an isthmus running from NW to SE. So that's why my scouting as sucked - just some bad luck.

[pindicator]

This is actually even more relevant in duels. Kzin "scream and leap" offense in the standard ffa forces a reaction from the victim, but it's pretty high-risk, given that third parties just sail onward for great profit, and if you fail you're materially worse off relative to them. In a duel, though? So what if I lost my attack force, he's on the defensive. I actually tend to nail this in my own duels, but it's harder to perfect in a ffa.

All right! Zucchini bread is baking in the oven, so while that's going it's time to talk about this. Seizing initiative with military is something rarely seen in most of our pbem games because it requires going on the assault early. (Early meaning up to early classic era, I would say.) You don't see this much in pbems for precisely the reason Commodore said: it's high-risk because people who spending hammers on settlers & libraries are safely expanding, while you are banking on being able to transfer your advantage of military into an advantage of multiple cities (which means staging a successful war).

So like Commodore said, say you send an attacking force and your opponent repells it. In a multiplayer pbem that would be a fail. You invested a lot of hammers into an attack and gained nothing for it, meanwhile people not even involved in the sortee have caught up by that many hammers.

In a two-player game, your opponent had to react to your attack. They had to build more troops, potentially delaying builds. (I'm going to assume you at least caused some casualties with your attack; if you attack with a force and it gets wiped out with the troops your opponent had on hand without incurring losses, there ain't no way to sugar coat that: you just lost the exchange in that case.) The idea being if you invest hammers into military to attack, your opponent needs to invest hammers to defend.

I think the trick is causing them to invest more than you, especially early on. And this is where initiative plays in. If i have a chariot in my base, sitting around on defense, Rego doesn't need to do anything. He is under no threat, he can sit back and develop as he planned to, whether that be build up a rush of his own, expand like crazy, or whatever. But if I have a chariot and I send it to his base, he has to react to it. He has to hook up copper and build a spear. If he has a worker trying to improve tiles then he either has to be extra careful with that worker or spend more hammers on defending it as well. (Also: sometimes just threatening an attack is a success; you don't always have to attack to win.)

In our game, Rego has the advantage with military initiative. He has a warrior fortified in a slightly obnoxious location. Simply because he scouted me before I scouted him, he already has the following advantages:

• I cannot improve the tiles around his warrior.
  
• I must keep a warrior in my base instead of scouting around for city locations
  
• he has sight on every unit I produce out of my capital (so he'll have warning when that first chariot, axe, etc. comes out
  
• If i want to eliminate his warrior it will likely mean bringing 3 of mine to force him off

I need to retake the initiative. I know of no nearby copper so the easy solution of an axe is out of the question. Since he's just sitting there with his warrior I think the best thing to do is ignore it until I'm in a position to take it out. Hopefully I can do that before the first chariot comes out - I don't want him to know that I'm goign to try to pressure him early.

Also, I need to find him...

[AutomatedTeller]

so, they just did a skit on this on SNL.

I know how how my parents felt when they saw... well, anything on MTV...

[pindicator]

I conceded on t48

[scooter]

This is why mirrored of some sort is pretty much essential for duels. Assuming two competent players, dumb luck usually decides this kind of game.

[pindicator]

Rather pissed at myself, I was on the backfoot sure, but the last few turns I just blundered the game away. I think the faster pace had soemthing to do with it, and perhaps I let my bad mood IRL get into the game? Frustrating.

[pindicator]

This is a mirrored map.

I scouted the wrong way and never found the copper until it was too late. Then tried to do a bare-minimum defense so I could possibly win out on economy.

I need to slow down my turn playing, a lot of things probably wouldn't have been done if I would have thought about them.

Just frustrated

[BRickAstley]

Oy, that's no good. What happened?