[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[MindyMcCready]

Have you figured out how big the map is? There are so many players in this game. Is the world so big enough that we won't be bumping heads so early? Or is the map designer compensating for cramped corners though massive resources? With this ridiculous amount of food I'd assume the latter, but we haven't met anyone yet.

We do know for sure that we haven't met anyone yet, right? The whole duck in and out maneouvre,...

[WilliamLP]

I presume that this toggle between Agri & BW won't delay your wet wheat? I'm sure that you've got that all figured with the 3 animal resources,...

Yeah I'm pretty sure the best order to improve is Pig -> Cow -> Sheep -> Wheat. The Cow is a 6 food-hammer tile and is faster to improve because pastures are cheaper than farms and once the worker is over there he might as well pasture the sheep to, and the second worker can help with the wheat. I'd actually like to get BW first to see where the copper is but it turns out that gets Agri one turn too late for this plan!

Ok, this map is just ridiculous. You've got more food resources in one BFC than I've had on an entire small continent/large island in many SP games. Good ridiculous though, especially if it's not completely balanced.

I know that 31 out of 33 settled on turn 0, so I'm sure we weren't "supposed" to have a four food capital. I very nearly scouted west as the first move. If I had I would have seen the wet wheat to the west and settled on the plains hill. It would have been a faster opening but this one might catch up. Purely by accident I settled a more centralized capital (in grass river paradise) which is nice.

I'd guess that this game is largely decided by how quickly you get to HR (and by how many cheap warriors you have on hand). If you've teched Hunting already (I haven't really been paying attention so far) then you might want to think twice about landing BW in such a hurry since you'll lose the cheap MP option. RBmod really kills the cheap MP strategy since hunting is so vital.

Mongol starts with hunting so that's done. I think I'm too far into the bronze path already to delay it, it does give the advantages of unlocking chops and the slavery revolt earlier. I'm conscious of the value of lots of warriors, the constraint will be when we build the road to improved copper. Unless Commodore put it on our capital's river, but I think PB16 taught map-makers not to do that. (It's too potentially unbalancing to allow a bronze rush that doesn't require wheel at all.)

Also, I'd like to hear about your grand strategy. I haven't really been able to get into this game, largely because of time but also partly since you're advertising a passive strategy. I don't really want to be at odds with you the whole game and I do think that to have any chance at this game, you're going to have to initiate attack on somebody at some time. I haven't followed many/any of Mackoti's games (other than some parts of his PB13 thread) but I'm sure that he engages in initiated warefare.

I've been deliberately not thinking about grand strategy yet since it really depends on neighbors. If we're really locked into a corner in the southwest, and have a really green neighbor to the northeast, trying to make out with more than the fair share of land with a Keshik attack (and backfilling later) could make a lot of sense! Keshik's are one of the more unique UUs and even I think it would be a shame not to be able to make some use out of it.

I think PB13 has had plenty of great examples of when a war can be really profitable and when it can be a complete failure.

I hear you on risk taking. Really though (even if it disappoints some) I don't think this is my game to try and play to win. I'm quite happy being competitive and having a good relative standing into the later parts of the game. Whoever wins this needs to be both a very skilled player, and to have a _lot_ of lucky factors go their way. E.g. Scooter already has 3 techs!

I do intend to try hard to make out with more than a fair share of land early though.

I think you alluded to earlier that you were going to try to grow horizontal over the Mackoti vertical? To me that makes more sense if you're primarily interested in defensive warfare. The Mackoti vertical requires you to actively plan to take someone out and commit your economy to it. Vertical without the plan for committed war seems ineffective to me. Also, with this much food I'd guess its a no-brainer that working more high-yield tiles through horizontal growth would be better than growing up.

I also think that the particulars of this map demand to simply grab all the food in sight nearly as fast as possible. And transitioning the capital to work basically only cottages while doing this, to keep up GNP with expansion.

It's tricky because there isn't really a tech path that can be ignored either. Sailing is a big deal because of the whales and cheap lighthouses. There are 3 calendar resources. Monarchy is good because there isn't so much natural happiness. MC, because it's cheaper and for cheap forges. HBR for Ger and Keshiks, obviously. Currency is always a key tech. CoL for cheap courthouses. Alphabet, in order to extort fools for open borders. And tech will be slower than perhaps any PB game ever seen here because of the huge map multipliers.

Something has to give, and I don't know, it might even have to be Monarchy and delaying the religious techs for a while, relying on Ivory, Whales, and faster Calendar for happy.

I've been planning Agri->BW->Pottery->AH. I'm not completely wedded to Pottery before AH. But getting cottages down early might be extremely critical here and I'm going to explore just how much the early granary in the second city adds.

I admire Mackoti's strategy from afar but in this game I might be pretending to be a baby version of SevenSpirits who doesn't know the game as well and isn't as good at math.

Have you figured out how big the map is? There are so many players in this game. Is the world so big enough that we won't be bumping heads so early? Or is the map designer compensating for cramped corners though massive resources? With this ridiculous amount of food I'd assume the latter, but we haven't met anyone yet.

We do know for sure that we haven't met anyone yet, right? The whole duck in and out maneouvre,...

The map is 60x124 cylindrical, with 4706 / 7440 land tiles (63%). There's a lot of water! It only works out to 138 tiles per person and so it's pretty amazing we haven't met anyone yet. Commodore apparently has made a Y-axis wrap map before so I wouldn't rule a curveball like that out. I also know he likes a story, and likes something more like a plausible imaginary world like I do. (Remember his hand-drawn maps from PB8?)

One lesson learned from PB13 is the value of early overseas contacts. (I'd much rather be the guy extorting fools for GPT with alphabet and the lure of overseas routes than be the fool ponying up the GPT for it. )

Anyway, thanks for the input.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 16:




I broke the first commandment of scouting and moved twice onto flat ground. There was only one tile where there could be an animal, and I felt like living on the edge.

The wines are very welcome!

The hut is meta-information that nobody else has scouted here yet. That's great news. It's turn 16 and our only contact is from being lurked by Commodore's invisible unit. This is starting to feel like some kind of twisted social experiment where all 33 of us are actually unknowingly playing a single player game! Spoilers: there's nobody out there.

The worker is getting his hunting techniques ready to spear some pork.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 17:




First contact! And it's Darrell + Ichabod. They beat our scout to the hut. They'll be able to get away from the bear this turn, I'd expect them to move S-S or S-SE. I ended our scout SE on the hill since the bear makes everything awkward. Missing a few turns of scouting is always better than ending next to a bear, the very best you can get with a scout is a coin flip.

I know Darrell is a solid veteran but I don't actually know anything about his play, I only associate him with thread spam. I put him in a similar category as Gaspar, he'll play solidly but not with mathematical perfection or brilliant intuition or mackoti-style mysterious wizardry. I also peg him as generally rational and I don't think he's going to want to press hard with axes or chariots, or make a really audacious forward plant.

They are Joao of HRE. Joao is the king of horizontal expansion and IMP is buffed a little compared to BtS, and workers are even faster. The Rathaus gives them a late game advantage, though it's not that much of a game changer if you're not Organized in my opinion. Still, it's an extra 2gpt or so in every city in the later game when maintenance would be 8gpt without a courthouse.

The Landsknecht is one of my favorite units, not because it's good but because it's unique. I think they can be really good with a large tech advantage but I don't know about their value in MP. Engineering is an awkward place, since it's normally a defensive tech.

So, they are going to have a much faster opening than us with Joao for workers and settlers. They started with Myst though, so that's an issue to get the essential early techs, especially on the huge map.

[MindyMcCready]

Damn them for taking our hut! DOW!

The Landsknecht is pretty fun to play with in SP. With the bonus against mounted + bonus vs melee you can target seige weapons if the stack doesn't have Crossbows.

Can't say that I'm really going to enjoy starting next to them. They'll really outexpand us early on and then be just fine once they get the Rathaus. Of course I see a military solution here given our UU and UB,...pillage or destroy.

[WilliamLP]

They could be annoying if they want to scout-choke our pig. My guess is they are going to want to start friendly though. The Keshik / Ger combination could be a really good deterrent to being provoked. If they're going to pick a fight early, I can't imagine we're the ideal choice.

We could have better neighbors for sure, and also a few worse. (E.g. Jowy, lol.)

I think I like our combo better than theirs overall. This being a huge map increases ORG and decreases IMP. They will get to 4-5 cities much before us but after that they'll be capped by tech and maintenance for quite a while. They'll start growing really fast but starting with Myst instead of the more expensive and useful Wheel is really a setback for them. I don't think they can get Mining + BW + Agri + Wheel until after turn 40. They haven't popped any techs from huts either, thankfully.

Our middle game should be better starting from the point where we can get a Forge + CH in every city - I think this is better than faster markets and grocers. And in the late game just being ORG saves more than the Rathauses will.

We need more info on the big picture, like where their capital is. It would suck if the ivory is closer to them than us. Also, whether there is anyone else next to us, maybe to the E or NE in a triangle. I like us being in the corner though! Maybe they have other neighbors to their north to worry about.

All roads go through rapid expansion into the immediate food, at any rate. I do think that we need a good force of mounted units pretty early, for map presence if nothing else, kind of like the way Krill plays every game he's in.

[MindyMcCready]

Dishonour (dɪsˈɒnə) or dishonor
vb (tr)
1. to treat with disrespect
2. (Banking & Finance) to fail or refuse to pay (a cheque, bill of exchange, etc)
3. to cause the disgrace of (a woman) by seduction or rape

n
4. a lack of honour or respect
5. a state of shame or disgrace
6. a person or thing that causes a loss of honour: he was a dishonour to his family.
7. an insult; affront: we did him a dishonour by not including him.
8. (Banking & Finance) refusal or failure to accept or pay a commercial paper
9. Keshiks for scouting.

[WilliamLP]

B-but they move through hills and forests so quickly!

[WilliamLP]

I haven't been bothering to report scout move turns that reveal nothing new.

Turn 20:




The scout sneaked through the two border-patrol bears to find the location of Darrell's capital! He's 12 tiles from us. (As the crow flies, not via the weird "plotDistance" internal game metric.) The ivory is 5 tiles from him, 7 tiles from us.

I'm not going to settle aggressively early on, honestly not because it couldn't be a good move but just because the kind of early game that can lead to isn't the one I want to play. Or, the time to be aggressive with Mongols isn't during the early city plants.

I want to make every effort to play nice here at first, which means I'm not going to declare war with the scout to see their capital.

I give pretty good odds that there's someone to his SE and our E in a triangle, as well.

The pig is up, cow is next.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 21:




From what I can see, Darrel's land is pretty nice too. For the next scout move there's the rude option of NE-NE, which will see their capital if it's on a hill. Or the scout could passively turn SE. I think I'm going to take the rude option. Of course, there's also the really rude option of N->declare->N but I don't like the tone that sets.




We're dead Last in food. Of course this is because we settled late and so aren't going to grow to size 2 until next turn, probably 1 turn after many others. Also my strange research order is going to have us at the bottom of the scoreboard for a while - not entirely a bad thing.

Darrell is only putting 2 EP on us every turn. I can't understand why, unless he forgot to move EP off the lurker civ after meeting us. If he has two contacts, it should be clearly better to put 4 on one and 0 on the other - this only reveals the info that you have another contact to one of them, and you have a set of graphs earlier.