[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[Ceiliazul]

PB13 Players/Teams as College Football Teams

Yes I actually did this. I went in order of their position on the in-game scoreboard.

Lewwyn - Oregon. Okay I was hiiiighly attempted to say Arkansas (Razorbacks = pigs = bacon lololol), but I think this works better. Lewwyn played a flashy opening - like everything Oregon does. He started faster than anyone, but as the game's gone on he's fizzled a tad.

...

Azza - Oregon State. I never know if Azza is any good or not, because he seems simultaneously quite good and quite not depending on the opponent. All that matters is he sometimes tends to play bitter rival Lewwyn (Oregon) a whole lot tighter than would reasonably be expected.

Perfect!

The whole thing was great, but those two are the best. Also, Duke, and UGA, and the optimism involved in picking HarryFin as Auburn. Nice job!

[pindicator]

Well done scooter!  

I was going to cause a stink about Ohio State being all that is evil and leaving Oregon out of that conversation, but I like what you did by putting them with Lewwyn.  And wow, Azza at Oregon State is spot on.  I mean, it seems like every pitboss/season I'm excited early on at how improved they are and how well they're playing, how they look so much better than last year.  Early enough things look really good, they're leading the field in crop yield or passing or some other stat, and then somewhere around the midway point there starts to get to be a few bumps in the road.  Like they can't quite get over the hump, can't quite win the big game, and the whole season goes downhill, the quarterback starts throwing picks, the defense has mental lapses that last a whole game, and next thing you know they're just floundering around in the middle of the pack and everybody who expected so much from them early on is just piling on the hate saying how it's time to Fire Riley and Fire Banker and how they're never going to be any better than this if they don't make some changes.  That we're always going to blow big games and make bone-headed late game decisions and always be in the shadow of the sexier team to the south.

I'm sorry, what player was Oregon State again?  Oh yeah, Azza, right.

[pindicator]

When I jumped in to pause the game, a couple things caught my eye.

First, WilliamLP offered a deal



Sure, whatever. Let's be friends until we land zerkers on your shores.

And then I decided, "might as well check events"



Please please please do well Fintourist

[NobleHelium]

One worker was captured from Nakor.

[antisocialmunky]

Lol Scooter, that was great. You should do another one as the game develops further

I'd be worried about Comm swiping a city of opportunity if you are eating Nakorea. I kinda hope he actually goes for Wovlerines because Red Dawn references.

[pindicator]

Some notes from the new turn:

• Mackoti and Fintourist are now at peace. So thank goodness it was just a little excursion. Fintourist also revolted into vassalage & HR. If that's an indicator that he just got to Feudalism, we are way ahead of him in tech right now.
  
• We are now #5 in Crop Yield. Probably means other civs were hiring a lot of specialists or going for more of a mfg approach.
  

[pindicator]

Turn 135

Somebody wanted a picture of the islands?



The galley by NFC North is headed towards the Clam/Iron island spot, and a workboat is in tow behind it. Um, no worker support. I put Valiants on Worker duty and Boilermakers on barracks (for future units). Turns out Boilermakers has 3 more population of growth before it hits the happy cap, so we're going to stick with growing for now.

Scooter, what do you think of swapping to Vassalage at the end of the GA? It'd be nice to have all those knights be 2-promo. Or is Bureaucracy too good to move out of? I'm honestly a little torn on the subject.



This really hasn't been retep's game. That's okay, I know how that feels too.



And here I notice we have a problem. This galley needs to go back home so we can get all of our zerkers loaded and onto galleys for the nakor war. If the galley goes straight home then it will mean declaring on Nakor on t137 and offering peace again on t138, meaning that we can't declare war again until t148. If we try to offer a cease fire then it'll look suspicious. We could just not offer peace, but I figure we'd only have a turn or two before that starts to look suspicious as well. So I figure two options: 1) head back through Black Sword's lands and then come through Commodore. 2) Hang out where he is now and then only declare to move through when we're 2 or 3 turns shy of our attack. That way we can exit Nakor's territory, load up the zerkers on the turn before we attack, and when he offers us the peace deal that we didn't the next turn we'll move in and take cities. Well, it sounded good in my head.

[NobleHelium]

If you're upgrading HAs that Vassalage isn't going to do anything for you. And yeah, I'd say Bureaucracy is too good to lose.

[pindicator]

Turn 136

With all the talk in the IT thread, it seems rough on slowcheetah lately. Really sucks to lose a computer to a drink spill. And in-game his luck hasn't gone much better:



Pretty sure he's just down to 2 cities, but every time I tried to open the diplo screen someone else was trying to join, so I just didn't bother.

One of those people to join was Ichabod, and I gave him a little tongue-in-cheek ribbing for it:




So I'm wandering around with our scouting galley up north and I spot something that makes me think we're not as alone in the islands as I wish we were:



I guess there's a passageway up there. That sucks, but scooter says it's a good thing. This way Commodore has land to settle and doesn't feel boxed in. I guess it also means a longer border for us to sneak-attack later on with 7-move galleons.

Speaking of the north, a couple of forest chops give us two granaries up there. We really need more workers, though. I think we chop the two forests at Valiants into more workers there.



Lions is working an artist specialist this turn which will pop borders; it needs to be fired at end of turn.

So worker action are about the only thing exciting left. We're still pumping units everywhere, and after we land Guilds at end of turn we are going to want to start saving gold for upgrading our 6 HAs and 1 Chariot.



In the northwest, our stack of 3 workers finished the 2nd watermill between Bills and Pirates. I think 1 worker needs to go to the forests east of Bills and chop out that knight and then another worker. The other two workers in that stack can watermill and farm pirates as marked. If that doesn't seem like a good tile assignment feel free to criticize.



In the south we have 3 workers as well. I moved the one by Gators to the jungled hill; we'll have it chop and mine that next. Maybe road it first so the other two can help out? I'm not sure there. Of the other workers, one started a grassland farm and the other will move to help it, but first take a turn to farm the plains riverside tile, sort of like a stepping stone to the grass tile. After that gets farmed I think we want to either chop jungle and mine hills or chop jungle and workshop tiles. This is the part I'm least sure of.

Guilds next turn! I put some cities on HAs already, anticipating the knight auto-upgrade

[scooter]

And here I notice we have a problem. This galley needs to go back home so we can get all of our zerkers loaded and onto galleys for the nakor war. If the galley goes straight home then it will mean declaring on Nakor on t137 and offering peace again on t138, meaning that we can't declare war again until t148. If we try to offer a cease fire then it'll look suspicious. We could just not offer peace, but I figure we'd only have a turn or two before that starts to look suspicious as well. So I figure two options: 1) head back through Black Sword's lands and then come through Commodore. 2) Hang out where he is now and then only declare to move through when we're 2 or 3 turns shy of our attack. That way we can exit Nakor's territory, load up the zerkers on the turn before we attack, and when he offers us the peace deal that we didn't the next turn we'll move in and take cities. Well, it sounded good in my head.

I know we chatted a bit about where things are, but I think we missed this. Did you make a decision on this? I'm ok either way actually. Looping around the north would be ideal, but I'm not sure if that would make in on time - I'd have to count tiles. Waiting and then going through Nakor might be nice because it would also give us an excuse to take a look at his defenses.

I guess there's a passageway up there. That sucks, but scooter says it's a good thing. This way Commodore has land to settle and doesn't feel boxed in. I guess it also means a longer border for us to sneak-attack later on with 7-move galleons.

Oh don't undersell my opinion here, I think it's a great thing . This means he'll leave us alone for a good while longer, and then later in the game it significantly disincentives him from messing with us when half his empire is on islands while we have super-ships. It does mean a little bit less in terms of northern islands for us, but it does also mean some later Black Sword Hindu Shrine conquesting could potentially be back on the table. We'll see, overall I'm pretty happy about that.