Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Ichabod]

I also enjoyed seeing my archenemy Gaius Marius fall at the tail end of the fight. Seven-time consul my ass, he never won the grass crown.

I wonder what Chandragupta Maurya was doing in this particular take of parallel history.

[Mardoc]

Wait...Apolyton's average city size is only 6.5? I have a new theory for why they're not drafting super heavy! They must have only 10 or so cities even eligible!

And CivPlayers' cities are even smaller? We're not far from having as much pop as the two of them combined, given the way the ex-Incan cities are about to be growing!

[Gold Ergo Sum]

That NAP with CFC is everything. If we get it, I am super confident we can hold out against Poly and CP. And while doing that, once all those German cities reach size 6, we can literally draft around 40 units every 10 turns without ever drafting AO, HF or ED, and only ever double drafting Starfall. That's pretty sick, and if we can reach the era of rifle drafting with all our lands still in tact, we have probably won.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

waterbat, time to change your avatar.

[darrelljs]

Darrell is always a pessimist.

This is true . But you have to admit, if we have a blind spot as a team, its the espionage system. Its not just the civics swap mission we have to worry about. We've already been hit by the tech steal mission. One Great Spy was worth about four Great Scientist bulbs. During war the city revolt mission removes all defensive bonuses in one turn AND wounds the units in the city. We've had lots of great discussion on military, diplomatic, city management and C&D aspects, and the facts you posted show the results. There is no discussion of substance on espionage, and how could there be since we rarely use it in our games?

Darrell

[kjn]

Wait...Apolyton's average city size is only 6.5? I have a new theory for why they're not drafting super heavy! They must have only 10 or so cities even eligible!

And CivPlayers' cities are even smaller? We're not far from having as much pop as the two of them combined, given the way the ex-Incan cities are about to be growing!

Probably a bit more pop for both of them - I haven't updated all the team city sizes all turns, and for this turn none of them.

For CivPlayers we don't know the sizes for two of their old core cities (we know the size of their capital from the top cities screen) and some of their newest, and for Apolyton we still lack visibility of four relatively recent cities.

But yes, once we get the old German cities up to speed we will start expanding and growing very quickly, especially when Denial of Nile, Beyaz Peynir, and Summer Breeze starts working all the mature villages and towns.

[Zargon]

Interestingly enough, game theory dictates that the larger our lead, the more pessimistic we should become.

Consider: CP has to play this game through wildly optimistic lenses. They have to prepare an attack on the largest military in the world by a factor of 2. They have to have this attack not just be successful, but hugely successful. They can't afford to spend one second worrying about what if CivFr backstabs them, or what if Apolyton doesn't hold up their end of the bargain, or what if RB defends against them and Apolyton equally instead of mostly against Apolyton. They just have to assume everything will work out perfectly. And that's correct play for them because that's the only way they win, so they have to play assuming all that will happen. If things don't go perfectly, they don't win regardless of anything, so the possibility that things won't work out perfectly is ignored.

We, on the other hand, have a massive lead, and so have the luxury of preparing for all sorts of what-if scenarios while maintaining our winning position. Now lets say we get our NAP with CFC to turn 200. Our lead grows, but that then means we have the luxury of preparing for even more far-fetched what-if scenarios. Maybe we turn our attention towards mitigating the possibility of a CP nationalism revolt, for example. So as our lead grows, so does our apparent pessimism. I don't think anybody here thinks our chances of winning are not very good. But that just means the types of threats we should prepare for become less and less likely.

That's why I'm leaning back towards playing this game on the assumption that we're going to have a 3 way dogpile on turn 175, with CP revolting us out of nationalism. It's about the worst possible scenario, but even so, if we prepare for it, we can deflect it. Is it likely? No. I'd rate the chance at less than 10%.

But I think our chances of winning this game are currently somewhere around 95%, and most of the remaining 5% are scenarios where we have more stuff thrown at us in the next 20 turns than we were expecting and we get crippled. I think we should assume we won't make it to rifling before we're attacked, even if we go heavy on the wealth builds, and plan our defense around that. I think this generally argues against building wealth, in favor of either long term economy, or cats for the musket/cat defense.

Now, maybe that turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe that means that as LP has mentioned a few times, we'll lose a boatload of hammers unnecessarily because we had to defend with cats/muskets for a few turns longer before getting rifles. To which I say "so what", because the important part is "defend successfully", not "be hammer efficient". If we defend successfully, whether it's by rifles or muskets or diplo or religious prayer, we eliminate a lot of scenarios in which we lose this game.

TL;DR: Let's build an invincible defense with muskets and cats instead of pushing for rifling asap with wealth builds, because we might not make it in time and we might get revolted out of nationalism even if we do.

[scooter]

(expanding on these comments from a diplomatic perspective)

As usual I'll be the one reminding you all that the chances of Apolyton attacking without CFC's involvement I think is about 5%. It would be suicide. They don't have the pop to support such an attack, nor are they even drafting that hard right now. CivPlayers is even less of a threat really. It's just not happening. They will not declare war on T170, I'm pretty confident of that much.

So everything revolves around CFC. The one scenario that makes me sweat is:
* CFC doesn't take NAP, the three teams declare simultaneously on T175
* Regardless of if/when the Apolyton EP deal goes through, CivPlayers or CFC are free to keep us out of Nationalism during the war


That is literally the only realistic scenario that should scare us right now, anything else we can probably handle OR is so unlikely that it isn't worth putting too much mental energy towards. So all diplo efforts right now are working towards solving those two things. If we can tie both of those up, we are going to be extremely hard to beat.

[darrelljs]

That is literally the only realistic scenario that should scare us right now

I just checked Vegas, and that's the odds on favorite scenario going off at 5-2 .

Darrell

[Mardoc]

Darrell is always a pessimist.

This is true . But you have to admit, if we have a blind spot as a team, its the espionage system. Its not just the civics swap mission we have to worry about. We've already been hit by the tech steal mission. One Great Spy was worth about four Great Scientist bulbs. During war the city revolt mission removes all defensive bonuses in one turn AND wounds the units in the city. We've had lots of great discussion on military, diplomatic, city management and C&D aspects, and the facts you posted show the results. There is no discussion of substance on espionage, and how could there be since we rarely use it in our games?

Darrell

Maybe someone should step up, do some research, write up a nice summary and analysis of the system, and make some recommendations? Perhaps we could start a new thread for that? It wouldn't have to be someone with a lot of experience in the standard RB methods of winning a game, since this is out of that path. Instead what we need is someone who likes to post, has some time to burn, and a desire to contribute.

I see someone like that in my mirror every morning. I'm sure I can do more good understanding espionage than trying to outmicro novice and Sullla, or argue diplomacy with the whole team. Guess I've got a new project . (dang!)

Not sure how long it'll take, but the current turn pace should give me plenty of time before it becomes relevant.

I've started googling around, and found a couple articles on CFC; anyone who wants to help research or just pass on some recommended reading would be welcome. I'll hold off making a thread until I think I've got a decent understanding.