[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[scooter]

My first thought was to keep the Woodsman off the forest if we can... Though Str4 still has favorable odds against a Str2 with 75% defense bonus. And it's not like the chariot is getting defense bonuses. We could theoretically cover all 3 by moving the McDs warrior 1S onto forest and have the two Impis cover the other two closets forests. The other option is to remain hidden behind this nice line of cover we have and hope they move into the trap. Keeping the Impis out of visibility probably is our best bet.

Also, I'd really like it if they don't get to see our horse and copper...

He has not settled his 3rd city yet, so he's definitely sending an aggressive plant forward and these two units are supposed to buy him time I think. I can't think of any other explanation for why he'd send 2 harassing units at us. So the other option is to try to hold with 1 Impi and send the other one out to find his plant.

I'd really like to know what the gameplan here was for Commodore. Let's send a chariot at the team that gets the best spear units in the game and... just hope they don't have copper? Surely he could be at 4 cities right now if he'd just filled out the awesome sites he has nearby him like a sane person.

[scooter]

Chatting with Pindicator a bit, but so we have it in one spot, let's figure something out. Why is he doing this? More specifically, what is he aiming to achieve?

1) He's not trying to burn a city. If he was, he would've put himself in range of McDonalds. The only reason he would not do that is if he thought we had a real unit in there. So he knows he cannot take a city realistically.
2) He could be trying to choke. This makes very little sense though - that chariot just to choke is a big investment against a guy who has awesome spears.
3) He's buying time to get his aggressive plant up and running.

If you can't tell, I think it's #3 . Moving in such a way as to not be near McDonalds ONLY makes sense if you think there's an Impi there, otherwise it's a dumb move. This means he thinks we have an Impi. He knows Impi/chariot is a losing battle, so he'd rather us chase the chariot around for awhile while he plants. So with that in mind, here's my current proposed moves:



McDonalds Impi onto gold, other Impi onto cottage. The gold Impi pretty well traps his chariot and gives him two choices. He can retreat south/southwest into tundra, or he can go right at LJS. The gold impi can hit any other tile he could go to if he turns west. The main benefit of moving onto the gold is it forces him to show his hand. He's either going to have to head straight at LJS, or he'll be forced to retreat southwest. If he's planting for stone, he surely doesn't want to do that.

His most obvious move is NE-NE onto the hill - giving him visibility and forking both cities. The second impi would be perfect placed to whack the chariot, while the other Impi gets a free run heading west.

We would also need to put 2 workers in a position to road the tile 1W of the cottage to help us out defensively.

Oh, one more thing. He has a moderately nasty surprise coming up. We pop borders at EoT . That peak tile will give us a ton of visibility, so it's going to be awfully hard for him to sneak around and all that.

Pindicator took a quick look at these proposed moves and seems mostly on board. NH, any thoughts or objections? I'm heading out in 3 hours or so, so I'll wait to lock in the moves until then.

[scooter]

One less important issue:



I went NW with the scout onto this grass forest. This looks like a little peninsula, whereas the northeast looks more promising. I'm leaning towards moving 1E next turn so we can wheel around and head northeast rather than waste time on this little peninsula. Thoughts?

Also, we could bring this wounded warrior down towards LJS as insurance. He does have that warrior to come with the chariot, so last thing we want is the second Impi getting redlined and his warrior burns us. Not completely necessary, but it's an option we have.

[scooter]

So here's the thing. Pindicator proposed an alternative option: NW-NW in case he's settling for stone. He figured Commodore might smell a trap with an Impi on the gold, and NW-NW gets us closer to the stone spot. The counter-argument to that, though, is this:



1) We don't want to run into that barb warrior. It disappeared this turn, but 2 of the 5 tiles it could have disappeared to are next to the tile we'd move onto...
2) Take a look and tell me where you'd plant that stone city. He's CRE, so he can place it on one of those 3 tiles that reach the crab and the stone. In order of likelihood, I rate them from west to east - the flat plains tile being most likely, and the eastern forest grassland being least likely. That eastern tile is the only one that NW-NW is actually closer to, otherwise gold is the same distance.

So we went ahead and moved onto the gold and... uh...

[scooter]

Ok so we think Commodore's got another unit here. No sign of another chariot, and we don't think he has archery either (though even if he has it, no time to walk one all the way up), so best chance he has is he has another warrior behind the settler. Good chance of that to be honest. In that case, he might settle the city anyways.

Impi on warrior gets 78% odds. That's pretty good for us, but we need to figure out if we want to take that or not. Also, he could suicide his chariot into our Impi to lower the odds a bit (which would be a sign he has something else coming), so we'd be in a dicey situation on whether we want to take the shot or wait for our other Impi (a 2t delay). We thought about trying to get a 3rd Impi, but what if he stuffs it full of warriors and we get a bad dice roll? So here's the thinking:



Thanks to 1h overflow, we can get exactly 5h into an axe this turn, giving us the flexibility to whip next turn if he plants and puts a unit or two in. If he runs away, we just swap back to a worker with the ability to whip an axe at any time. Axe really seems like the right play here. Our fear here is something other than a chariot getting into that city, and an axe will be better against any other possibility. We can get 2 workers over there to speed the axe travel time up by a turn anyways.

Again, this doesn't slow down our 4th city at all which is nice. My main fear right now is investing into killing this city and failing. Failing lets him pop borders and get some archers in which would be disastrous. The city needs to burn or not get settled. So it seems prudent to dump the 5h into the axe.

[pindicator]

Well done

I tend to remember whipping myself to death when bordering Commodore last time, so why play it any different here?

Agree with the scout move. And the axe is a good precaution. As for the rest we'll have to see what he does next turn.

[scooter]

While we're at it, I'd like to play a little game with you all. It's called "Pink Dots: A study in sanity"

So let's go over the options Commodore has to settle for his third city. Keep in mind, we don't see as many of his surrounding tiles as he does, so it's quite possible he has even better options that we can't see! So here we go. Exhibit A:



Solid really - pigs, clams, a couple share-able tiles. Given that B&S gives so much barren terrain, this is a pretty great spot. He could settle here right?

Exhibit B:



A lot of stuff up this way. There's two floodplains, two riverside grasslands, pigs (depending on where you settle), shareable corn, and even gems up that way if you can get yourself to Iron Working. It's not overwhelmingly awesome, but it's some nice cottage stuff on the west side. I also suspect there's some seafood in the fog off the right of the screen, as there isn't any in the surrounding areas, so it's a spot where seafood likely exists. Pushing north and prioritizing IW + Calendar to unlock the fertile north makes sense right?

Exhibit C:



If he's sooooo concerned about us, this is the best of all worlds. This gets him sheep, a lot of grassland, a lot of forests (usual Krillmod reminder about chopping applies), and it gives him a nice spot to settle while he waits for the appropriate techs to get through the northern jungle. Also lets him use the corn while the capital grows cottages.

A and C especially were great - no doubt I would have settled one of those two. However, Commodore isn't interested in any of those "obvious" locations. He prefers hidden gems, like Exhibit D:



Seriously, just look at this. This makes the pink dot location in the Apolyton demogame look like friendly expansion, and that came against the team that opened warrior-warrior-warrior-hydra-NAP and was all-around utterly clueless. This makes the PB2 Byz plant against Athlete look like a minimum distance filler spot. But seriously, anytime you can try to steal a gold 11 tiles from your capital and 5 tiles from the capital of the guy with one of the best rush civs in the game, you just have to do it.

ARGH. This is why I was so unhappy to be next to Commodore. Even the greenest player in this game wouldn't do something this insane. Problem is we now have to stunt our growth just to prevent him from screwing us up so badly. There really was no need for this either - he has the best UU out of anyone in this game, and it's a UU that would seriously give us trouble if he just expanded to the best of his ability, located/trade for ivory, and then gave us trouble. Or he could expand into his dozen+ cities worth of land like a sane person and let other teams stupidly hurt each other which happens in every single pitboss. These games are almost always a 5-horse race by 1AD, and it's usually whatever 5 teams kept their noses clean while building workers and settlers.

And that's moooore than enough whining from me. If one of you would kindly remind him there's 9 other people here trying to win, that would be wonderful.

[NobleHelium]

Death to Commodore.

[scooter]

One note - there's 3 people left to play. It would be nice next turn if we could login and take a screenshot of the situation before Commodore moves, just because we'll have the extra visibility from the border pop and the peak. It probably won't matter, but just something to keep in mind if we're around when the turn rolls. No moving anything though until he ends turn.

Also sent a brief email to Commodore (Pindicator you should have gotten them) confirming the turn split as long a there is war or potential for war (since neither of us have actually declared yet), and he agreed. So we're all set on that front. So nice to sort these things out without a messy conflict.

[pindicator]

Yeah, i think Commodore gets a little too wrapped up in the 1v1 nature of this. Yes, it is the two of us on an island and getting more of the split is advantageous. I suppose he may even think there are other civs east and north of us and we're boxing him out... But really, he's letting that get in the way of good development. Like you said, there are a lot of good options for him to settle... Just like there are good options for us to settle besides bullying him out of our side of the world.

It's a short-term vs. long-term and he's choosing the long-term -- and the long term is only a benefit if he can hold on to it. Very very risky, and i don't think that it's a smart play at all.