PB5 Postgame Thread, or where we bitch at Krill

[Krill]

This is all much easier said than done. I don't think you understand the total lack of production I had all game long compared to everyone else. I was literally dead last in land for 80% of the game even when I had more cities than most people. I didn't even build Oxford because I didn't have enough cities capable of building Universities. Production is also king in this mod, so I was even more screwed at that level. I ended up with a ton of Rifles, but I built exactly 1 of them all game long. I upgraded nearly 60 of them from Berserkers. This is because in this dumb mod commerce is utterly pointless in the late game. I also strongly disagree that this position is winnable. Three reasons: 1) This mod makes this start far weaker than it would be in vanilla because of whip nerfing, 2) I had zero luxuries whatsoever which crushed my ability to go vertical like this mod says we should and 3) we played with stupid tech trading. Fix 2.5 of those things and it's a winnable start.

This was the most fun game I've ever played at RB. I really think the randomness and unfairness of it all made it surprisingly fun. However, I think it succeeded in spite of the mod and not because of it. I think the late-game is utterly broken with tech trading. The known tech increase + massive tech costs are just doing way too much. They're both decent ideas, but the two together just broke the game. I quit teching completely in this game. I had 8k gold banked and about that same amount I spent upgrading military. What was the point in sinking 4-6k gold into researching a tech that would then get sold to the guy lagging behind for a fraction of that cost? It made the game a joke. I was tech leader and I purposely quit teching - all I was doing was helping out Krill and Regopin, so it was better for me to stop teching, bankroll gold, then buy or tech at massive discounts and use the excess gold to make up for my horrible production. This actually was working pretty well for me all things considered.

I also just despise the slavery change. It then requires all these re-design changes to take it into account, and it's just so artificial. Chopping becomes king in a world where slavery is nerfed, as does all things hammer-related. I suspect Egypt's really slow start was because of a lack of forests right? Workshop economy is the Only Right Choice here, and sorry, sucks for you if you have no land with which to workshop like me. So basically, after a full game with it, I don't like the mod. I think it tries to do way too much. I love about 1/3rd of the changes, but the extra bloat seems geared towards building a new metagame rather than balancing things. Perhaps I'm biased because literally everything about the mod made my start position even worse than it already was, but yeah, just not a fan.

Gripes about the mod aside, thanks all for a REALLY fun game. I really dunno why, but I had a blast. Also, you all made this by FAR the most sportsmanlike Pitboss here. Thanks for restoring my faith that it's possible for a Pitboss game to not suck. We had more wars than all the other non-AW PB games I believe, and despite that we never had a conflict. I had wars of varying seriousness with 3 of you, and everyone was always super flexible with splitting the turn and everything. This game is the gold standard for how a Pitboss should be run.

scooter, in all honesty I thought you played a really good game before I opened the the players threads, but after reading your thread I'm not so sure, from the point of view of the first 50 turns and capital location.

Our starts were very similar, if you consider my capital location to be a start and that SPI cancelled out the two turns moving (which isn't true for the first 50 turns but whatever). Both had grass pigs, both started with Hunting, but you had Fishing and a crab, and a clam that you reached from a viable second city location, I had a plains cow and dry wheat. When you consider you got copper as well, the output values at size 5, they are identical but you got it front loaded from the plains hill. You had 8 forests, I had 11. You got 2 plains hills, I got 2 plains hills and a grass hill. I had a longer river, but no tiles that would be used before size 8 were on it beyond the two flood plains, which you also had. I had Myst, so we both needed to research to Pottery and BW, so we basically had exactly the same tech costs facing us.

The differences that really shaped our decisions were based off our traits and the land, and this is where I think the problems really starts.

scooty T53 - 1 turn from Mids, 4 pop

Krill T53 - Third city, 10 pop

You blew every single forest on the Mids. You had tiles improved but not worked. You had 4 workers and only 4 pop, and no third city in sight. A lot of yours complaints about lacking land are down to not expanding. From this point on you are playing catch up, but with the Mids, you have a happy cap that is slightly better than mine. Add in a spread religion and it's better than most people had, even considering resources.

What you proceeded to do, to rack up the Oracle, GLH and Collosus was because of the IND trait; the stone didn't affect any of these builds, it just helped alleviate your happy concerns for a short while.

I think this is the point where I need to cut to the chase. From this position, you had city sites that you could use that were viable cities. You could grow pop and make it work, even if you lost 10 hammers on every double whip (and we'll ignore the forges from Oracle>MC). You had food. You had Rep so you could always research. It didn't matter if you had problems settling for nearby happy res that didn't exist - that's the point about settling the distant cities, interdicting the mainland continent coast would have opened up a bunch of happy res to you.

Getting that far shoudn't have been that difficult. If you had settled the eastern tile on Holmes, and popped borders, that city would have been a little over 20 tiles from your capital, and you could have sent galleys over the ocean because it was within your culture, so there was no reason to go around the Wrekin to reach the main continent.

The problem is that you were lacking in population because you slowed your start down getting the Mids, when I think you should not have tried to build it until you had a size 5 capital and that would have given you time to get your second city up and running so it could have contributed more hammers to the empire, instead of sticking to size 1 until T54. That put you behind the growth curve even if you could steam ahead in tech, and I don't think you would have lost any wonders because you would actually get more hammers in the long run from being size 5 and working the plains hills. I actually think you would have been quicker to the GLH and Oracle.

[Krill]

I also disagree that this game was winnable from the start that we had. I understand Krill's point and with hindsight, yes, it would have been possible to do that in theory. But that assumes a lot! Not only do I agree with scooter that production on the islands was simply not able to keep up competitively, but it compounds because that same lack of production prevented conflicting priorities like settling more islands more quickly. We could have skipped those early wonders but I don't think our economy would have been strong enough to expand aggressively without them. AND without a tech advantage, our low production again would have made it very hard to defend effectively.

That said, it was fun for the time that I was actively involved. Thanks to all for playing!

I think the simplest point is that I think your position was winnable if I had played it, same as the start position I got for real. I think I could have won PB5 from any of these starts (except possibly plako's because of the manner of that loss), but that is because I have faith in my ability to grind them out to a winnable position. I also agree with the idea that it would only be winnable because of unequal skill between the players - if I had 9 clones and I played every side in the game, I'm not sure I'd class it as winnable excepting something completely unexpected happening.

EDIT: That said, if I had 9 clones playing the same game I doubt the game would ever get past the arguing over game settings.

[scooter]

Thanks for the comments Krill. We did push Pyramids very early, probably much earlier than we needed to. There's no question we would've been better off if we had waited a little longer, but I didn't want to risk losing it to one of the IND players. At the time we looked at our opponents and saw we had the Regopin team (strong players, good micro skills) with IND and the Ceil/Nakor team with IND (also strong players with good micro skills, and extra land with Plako dead), and that's all we knew. Yes we had stone, but stone was unbalanced. We figured if one of them got stone, they would no doubt push for Pyramids too. We felt we had to assume that we were in a race for Pyramids, and therefore with the lack of appealing land around us, we had to push for it early.

I don't really regret that decision. I haven't read much by way of threads yet so I don't actually know if we were in a race, but seeing as Egypt ended up having stone nearby, I think our decision to push for it early was worthwhile.

Also, you overestimate our ability to get population. Rep helped in the early game, but you quickly got to a size 15 or so capital while we couldn't push past the Rep limit, and it was even lower in our non-Rep boosted cities. I'm not sure how you think we could've gotten to happy resources exactly? We pretty much had to just live without them and try to trade for them as best as we could.

The other issue is the late-game. Even if we had expanded much quicker and gotten all the islands..... so what? How do you win? There's not enough land tiles to support a spaceship win, and I don't believe that's debatable. Culture win is out because 1) we generated so many GP that weren't artists and 2) legendary cities would be super vulnerable by boat - much more than a land-locked city. The only way is to somehow fight onto one of the main continents and hope you can build it up quick enough to not fall too far behind whoever is leading.

I could have easily invaded Nakor's mainland and taken a bunch of cities, no doubt. I suffered very few casualties here, and he wasn't really whipping/drafting that much. I checked out his coastal cities and I could've blitzed all those too. The problem was you were right behind him. Invading your continent would've been futile because you're sitting there with dozens of workshopped cities and 8X my production. No way to keep up with the raw land. This mod makes land matter even more than it did in vanilla civ. Island cities suck because whipping is much weaker and commerce is devalued. Anyways, point being invading Nakor's mainland was a death sentence to me, so that was out. I probably could have taken that island from you temporarily, but it would not be long for all your workshopped coastal cities to start pumping Frigates so fast that it would have been a temporary win, and you would've grinded out a win in the long haul no doubt.

My other option was the west continent. It's the same story except slightly softer, but I still probably had 1/6th of Regopin's production at best (just estimating, didn't have their graphs). That's not a winning formula. I could've taken the islands I think, but not the mainland. So what, I go and try to take Commodore's horrible land? Nah. The point is land is power here, and anything involving me fighting my way into a continent was going to end badly for me. I was able to own the islands with just an OK force because of the enormous tactical advantages I had, but on land I need numbers and I was never going to have those. Regopin's conquest of Yuri would seem to be a counter-example I suppose, but a few factors there. 1) They still at least had more land there so it wasn't a full-out naval invasion like it would be for me (much less distance to travel), 2) that war should NOT have been that easy, that was insane how easy they blitzed and how little I saw Yuris whipping, 3) They didn't need galleons for that war, I needed Galleons to get onto one of the main continents which meant losing Colossus.

Oh, one more thing. My plan all along was to get Rifles much earlier than everyone. I would've gotten them (and started my Nakor war) MUCH sooner except... I lost a great merchant. Just a fluke thing - Krill had a horse archer on that random Nakor island and it killed my galley that had the merchant on it. Total oversight, but in my defense the last thing I expected on that island was for there to be a Krill horse archer on it. So yes, my window should've been bigger there. I actually ran probably 4 trade missions this game, but losing that first one really slowed me down. That and people whoring around techs. The tech lead was virtually worthless, that's why I quit teching and let other people take the lead... Figured it was more efficient to just "draft" by following people around.

[Krill]

I also just despise the slavery change. It then requires all these re-design changes to take it into account, and it's just so artificial. Chopping becomes king in a world where slavery is nerfed, as does all things hammer-related. I suspect Egypt's really slow start was because of a lack of forests right? Workshop economy is the Only Right Choice here, and sorry, sucks for you if you have no land with which to workshop like me. So basically, after a full game with it, I don't like the mod. I think it tries to do way too much. I love about 1/3rd of the changes, but the extra bloat seems geared towards building a new metagame rather than balancing things. Perhaps I'm biased because literally everything about the mod made my start position even worse than it already was, but yeah, just not a fan.

A point about slavery: as a mechanic, slavery is what turns high food starts into juggernauts. Combined with the change to AH, Hunting and pastures, it is what makes most starts viable. Without that alteration, the rest doesn't matter at all: you still cottage everything and slave away pop for production, the tech pace is still fast and wars aren't as viable. I noted in your thread that you liked the slower pace of the game, allowing more wars and other choices, but that's because of the slavery nerf. You can't have it both ways.

The point about the metagame is salient: we've experimented with a lot of approaches to the game, and refined it down quite well. Maybe you remember when TMIT got a bit shirty and said that "we" were wrong, and that working more specialists was the best thing to do in the early game, because of the power of bulbs? Plako handed him his head after being invaded by AGG preats. It's a metagame that works well. But the metagame changes are down purely to the change to slavery, to make more starts (read: low food starts) viable.

Egypt had a slow start for a couple of reasons: nothing better than a 4F tile, lots of flood plains, and two clams without Fishing. They did have 5 forests, so were down 3 forests compared to you, but can get away with not chopping as many tiles, so save worker turns there. OTOH, they had an ivory, and three grass hills, so at size 6 could make 13hpt and 2fpt, so were not far behind my capital of 11hpt and 7fpt at size 5, but were behind. It's a start that has to grow to size 6 ASAP to work well, and really would work well with settling for the gold/cow above it, with overlap on some flood plains and the rice to get to size 7.

[scooter]

I also just despise the slavery change. It then requires all these re-design changes to take it into account, and it's just so artificial. Chopping becomes king in a world where slavery is nerfed, as does all things hammer-related. I suspect Egypt's really slow start was because of a lack of forests right? Workshop economy is the Only Right Choice here, and sorry, sucks for you if you have no land with which to workshop like me. So basically, after a full game with it, I don't like the mod. I think it tries to do way too much. I love about 1/3rd of the changes, but the extra bloat seems geared towards building a new metagame rather than balancing things. Perhaps I'm biased because literally everything about the mod made my start position even worse than it already was, but yeah, just not a fan.

A point about slavery: as a mechanic, slavery is what turns high food starts into juggernauts. Combined with the change to AH, Hunting and pastures, it is what makes most starts viable. Without that alteration, the rest doesn't matter at all: you still cottage everything and slave away pop for production, the tech pace is still fast and wars aren't as viable. I noted in your thread that you liked the slower pace of the game, allowing more wars and other choices, but that's because of the slavery nerf. You can't have it both ways.

The point about the metagame is salient: we've experimented with a lot of approaches to the game, and refined it down quite well. Maybe you remember when TMIT got a bit shirty and said that "we" were wrong, and that working more specialists was the best thing to do in the early game, because of the power of bulbs? Plako handed him his head after being invaded by AGG preats. It's a metagame that works well. But the metagame changes are down purely to the change to slavery, to make more starts (read: low food starts) viable.

Egypt had a slow start for a couple of reasons: nothing better than a 4F tile, lots of flood plains, and two clams without Fishing. They did have 5 forests, so were down 3 forests compared to you, but can get away with not chopping as many tiles, so save worker turns there. OTOH, they had an ivory, and three grass hills, so at size 6 could make 13hpt and 2fpt, so were not far behind my capital of 11hpt and 7fpt at size 5, but were behind. It's a start that has to grow to size 6 ASAP to work well, and really would work well with settling for the gold/cow above it, with overlap on some flood plains and the rice to get to size 7.

The slower pace definitely had some to do with slavery, but I think a much bigger factor was that all the starts sucked compared to the usual generous hand-crafted stuff we see. I feel the slower pace was 2/3rds land quality and 1/3rd slavery nerf. That varies from start to start though - mine was more influenced by slavery nerf than probably anyone else's since I had food and little else.

But yes, slavery makes lower-food starts more viable at the cost of making low-land starts nonviable. In vanilla, a seafood-powered person like myself would be able to keep pace with the land-heavy folks by whipping early and often. That just wasn't true in this game. The slavery change makes water tiles just terrible. Also, it makes cottages terrible in the mid/late game. I do think a workshop economy can already keep pace with cottages just fine in vanilla, and I have very little doubt it's the One Right Choice with this mod. That's probably my main complaint. At least there's a valid choice in vanilla... And these problems stem from the slavery change - slavery change impacted the workshop & mines changes and all that.

[Krill]

As to invading the main continent, I think you would have been able to start interdicting cities by around the time I invaded Nakor, so around T150, if you had stonewalled Brick and focussed on settling in that direction (or to pre-emptively rephrase that, I think I would have been in that position). As I doubt any one would have played out my start how I did, I do think that a good section of the main continent would have been open to settlement and conquest.

Oh, one more thing. My plan all along was to get Rifles much earlier than everyone. I would've gotten them (and started my Nakor war) MUCH sooner except... I lost a great merchant. Just a fluke thing - Krill had a horse archer on that random Nakor island and it killed my galley that had the merchant on it. Total oversight, but in my defense the last thing I expected on that island was for there to be a Krill horse archer on it. So yes, my window should've been bigger there. I actually ran probably 4 trade missions this game, but losing that first one really slowed me down. That and people whoring around techs. The tech lead was virtually worthless, that's why I quit teching and let other people take the lead... Figured it was more efficient to just "draft" by following people around.

Er, that HA...that was the HA that razed your city. I didn't keep the galleys in range to pick it up because I was scared of your caravels, so the turn I razed the city, I put everything back on the boats and retreated. The HA I planned on picking up on a slower galley from the west of that island, which is why I kept on moving it around as a scout for a few turns and spotted your galley.

http://killerkrill.wordpress.com/2012/08...ing-fruit/

http://killerkrill.wordpress.com/2012/09...-195-blah/

[scooter]

Logistically, I just disagree on the main continent invasions. Even with 4-movers like I had, it still takes galleys ages to get up there, and that's with only 2 units/galley. That's just not sustainable really. I remember thinking it would be like you're thinking now, but when I tried to actually plan it out I just couldn't get that far.

As for the HA, just wow. That was a brutal turn, hah. I remember logging in and just being shocked, it hadn't even occurred to me the merchant might be in danger. So yes, you probably had no idea what was on that galley or the kind of damage you did there, that hurt me pretty significantly as my plan revolved around that trade mission.

[Krill]

The slower pace definitely had some to do with slavery, but I think a much bigger factor was that all the starts sucked compared to the usual generous hand-crafted stuff we see. I feel the slower pace was 2/3rds land quality and 1/3rd slavery nerf. That varies from start to start though - mine was more influenced by slavery nerf than probably anyone else's since I had food and little else.

Some starts were faster at times though, Ethiopia with EXP and a bunch of work boats needed, for instance, a pig and starting with Hunting. It does vary.

But yes, slavery makes lower-food starts more viable at the cost of making low-land starts nonviable.

Perhaps this shows a difference in expectation, but I never envisaged this mod being used in a game like this. I designed it to function on a balanced map, with leaders and civs chosen by players, for all tech trading type games. A Big and Small map, with full tech trading, and completely random leader/civ combinations has to up there with the most unbalanced game settings you can find. I actually think the mod did better than expected, because a vanilla game would have been over by T0.

In vanilla, a seafood-powered person like myself would be able to keep pace with the land-heavy folks by whipping early and often. That just wasn't true in this game. The slavery change makes water tiles just terrible. Also, it makes cottages terrible in the mid/late game. I do think a workshop economy can already keep pace with cottages just fine in vanilla, and I have very little doubt it's the One Right Choice with this mod.

If we had played this game on vanilla BtS, and I'd have had your start, I would be severely disappointed if I lost. No one would have kept up with that start.

Workshop economies do not keep up with cottage economies, just check out PBEM17 to see Dave blow everything. I cottaged several cities, to the extent that it would not be true to say that I ran massed workshops: in fact, if you read my reports, I didn't start making workshops after T185. By the time I started using workshops they would have been 1/3 tiles anyway with Guilds (I was 2 turns away and would have had Guilds well before then if I wanted it) and Caste, which I was able to run at that point. I basically only started to work cottages just as I started to power up for the final war on azza: getting to that point was done with cottages and mines and a lot of capture gold.

That's probably my main complaint. At least there's a valid choice in vanilla... And these problems stem from the slavery change - slavery change impacted the workshop & mines changes and all that.

When was the last time that someone used a mass workshop strategy at Guilds and face rolled?

[scooter]

I'm not sure citing PBEM17 is a real good example - you're using the example of the least-experienced player in that game getting beat. I don't think that was economic choice, I think that was lack of experience. Mackoti did it just fine in that PBEM that had the barbarian subs I think - whatever one it was that Commodore nearly got a culture win.

[pindicator]

With slavery in RBMod...

The issue is that we don't want it to be too strong for a high food early game start, but we need to give island cities something to be competitive with land cities.

So could we do something like how Mathematics affects Chops? Have slavery start in its nerfed state but get enhanced to normal 30 per pop by a later civic? That way it isn't such a clear choice to pick caste workshops over slaving at a lesser amount and island cities have some chance at keeping up production wise.

Rego and I were running tons of workshops once we hit guilds - at that point our grass tiles were 1f4h, and slavery couldn't really keep up. They were better than our hill tiles. (Although slavery did save our butts early on, when we pratically whipped our empire to the ground just to ward off Commodore...)