Gavagai's spoiler thread

[WilliamLP]

Holding onto grudges and striking back would only be rational if you indeed think that spiteful retaliation at the cost of winning prospects would somehow dissuade people from attacking you in the future. But there's actually no rational reason to think so

I'll put aside the question of the "cost of winning prospects", since it's subjective, and in this game the circumstances are exceptional for what you'd need to consider yourself in contention to win.

If you have two neighbours, and one of them has a history of never retaliating for early aggression, and another has a history of always doing it, is this not going to influence your decision for how much you might look to snipe each one? It will influence my behavior.

I'm sure this matters, and that indeed, spiteful retaliation will be a disincentive in future games. Especially when combined with a history of being a good neighbour in peace. How people would behave toward, say, Commodore, differs from how they'd behave toward, say, Nakor. And the differences will favor the chances of the former.

(Also to Gavagai, I have no read on whether you like masturbatory theoretical discussion in your thread of if it annoys you. I'm happy to get out of here. )

[Bacchus]

If you have two neighbours, and one of them has a history of never retaliating for early aggression, and another has a history of always doing it, is this not going to influence your decision for how much you might look to snipe each one? It will influence my behavior.

What you do in this scenario is assume that someone has an external commitment to a strategy which he will follow regardless of the fruits it would bring him in a particular situation and then take a standpoint of a locally rational agent, who would of course work around the commitment to the best effect, i.e. not attack. That's fine, but begs the question of why would anyone have such an external commitment to retaliation. It could be a psychological quirk, and that's also fine, but renders the discussion pointless -- someone could just as well have a psychological quirk for opportunism. The point you made earlier was that commitment to retaliation was actually rational in the long run as a win-maximizing strategy, due to deterrence. But if we are playing that game, then a commitment to opportunism also becomes rational. Exactly because against a committed opportunist retaliation has no long run value, his chosen strategy precludes deterrence and thus actually makes it rational to play around an opportunist attack, rather than punish it; much like a commitment to retaliation makes it rational to avoid opportunist attacks, even where the committed retaliator presents a clear possibility for them, such as by parading workers in front of you.

And yeah, sure, being a committed pursuer of this or that strategy is a matter of reputation, a commitment that no-one knows about is worthless. My point is just that there is no case from pure reason, a priori, why a commitment to retaliation is rational. It can be, but only within specific meta, namely in a meta of local-optimisers who would avoid opportunism for the fear of your promised retaliation. In a meta of committed opportunists, on the other hand, a commitment to retaliation is irrational. It's all about the field.

[Zed-F]

I don't think early opportunism is an incorrect play, but it should be expected that if that opportunism contributes to a feeling on the defender's part that he can't win (regardless of whether said opportunism is a decisive factor in that judgement,) then spiteful retaliation should be expected. If the defender can't win and chooses to go down fighting, who better to fight?

[Lewwyn]

but Industrious + early forges + expansive + Pyramids + very high skilled team is a considerable collection of trumps.

They are not that skilled.

[Gavagai]

but Industrious + early forges + expansive + Pyramids + very high skilled team is a considerable collection of trumps.

They are not that skilled.

They are pretty good relative to the field (excluding Seven/Krill team but there are few players who could compete with them on equal grounds.) And in this game they were doing really good up to this point.

[Gavagai]

My demos at relative apex of my civ. They are already worse than could be because I have just whipped two strong tiles into a horse archer. I want to leave it for history that I clearly was in a leading group.
Observe power. I'm second and Gaspar is the first. This is the same thing I ran into in PB12 where me and my neighbor were two top powers for the most of early game. I have a feeling that I'm doing something wrong...



Farewell screenshot. The only reason I don't whip more is that I can barely finish Construction in two turns.

[Gavagai]

This axe to the west of Plame Affair is interesting. I bet it was freshly produced and is now being moved to the front. I'm pretty sure that Gaspar has Construction but I'm not as sure about HBR: he has no stables in any of the cities I can see. Would he bother with axes if he could build HAs? I don't think so.

EDIT: on the other hand, this axe was already given a promotion, so it is most possibly an old unit.

[Gavagai]

I really wonder what Gaspar hopes to achieve with this stack. It is not nearly enough to do anything.
(Though it is a really bad news that he has HAs available.)

[Gavagai]

OK, I'm worried enough to actually make some calculations. I got this:

Gaspar's total power (from demos, he is clearly the first one): 199 000
Gaspar's total visible power: 111 000
Gaspar's power unaccounted: 88 000

Breakdown of visible power:

Units:

4 skirmishers = 16000
3 axes = 18000
2 spears = 8000
1 chariot = 4000
1 horse archer = 6000

Visible units overall = 52000

Pop

18 pop = 9000

Techs (confirmed)

Hunting = 2000
Mining = 2000
Animal Husbandry = 2000
The Wheel = 4000
Metal Casting = 4000
Archery = 6000
Bronze Working = 8000
Horseback Riding = 10000

Techs overall = 38000

Buildings:

2 Forges = 4000
2 Barracks = 8000

Buildings overall = 12000

Well, 88000 is a lot. Basically, he most likely has one more stack of about equal number of units.

Why I'm worried? Well, because this akward army looks very much like an attempt to distract me. It has too few hitters, too many cointers and too big for a pillaging stack. It can't really take any cities but would require me to concentrate a sizable force to kill it safely. And look here:



Beryllium is pretty vulnerable in a sense that you can travel all the way up to it along defensive terrain. So, it is a much more promising target for a real attack.

[Gavagai]

Situation before Gaspar made his moves. I moved several units away from the city to lure him into a trap. If he moves on corn this turn, I'll be able to hit him with units marked plus barrage catapult plus two more HAs.