[NO PLAYERS] PB25 Lurker Thread - Then Happy I, That Lurk and am Belurked

[Mr. Cairo]

Clearly turtling in your cities is not a winning strategy vs knights. But using your knights to pillage lands and pick off poorly defended filler cities is not an efficient way of using knights when faced with a giant stack of maces and cats, which is the scenario I was discussing. Knights have value greater than their hammer cost, so if you use them aggressively when faced with an attack from a larger civ, they'll just hemorrhage away, one or two knights at a time to unlucky dice rolls, getting caught out in vulnerable positions or being mobbed by lesser units. If a tech advantage in knights is the only advantage you have on the battlefield again a much larger opponent, then they need to be used to their maximum effect, which in this case is wiping out the enemy stack outside your cities. Knights can continue to threaten enemy cities and units and improvements as long as they're able to get involved in the main battle. A larger civ can afford to lose some improvements and cities if it takes the knights out of the equation for their push on the smaller civ's cities. I would argue that pre-rifling, a slight tech advantage is not enough to beat a production advantage, especially the sort of production advantage HAK would gain by taking out Grimace and settling just some some of his lands.

I will again say that I doubt that HAK actually will fall behind in tech for long, since this map is so lush, it'll take a lot less for each city to become profitable.

I agree with the difficulty in defending along a broad front. I do not, however, think this should discourage them from making the attempt, unless they feel that whoever neighbors Grimace on the other side (is this Commotay?) would get half the land for free. That would be a recipe for disaster, but possibly not for HAK/Mindy, just for the rest of the field. In Commotay's position, I would likely seek to fill the vacuum created by Grimace's demise (does geography support this? I don't remember) and be happy for HAK/Mindy to take the other half, being confident that our two civs could separate from the pack and then Commotay would be able to manage the HAK problem later. This is still not a reason for HAK to avoid the attack. Finishing second (?) is better than what HAK may otherwise be facing.

This axe rush should in no way allow Grimace's other neighbors free access to settle half his lands. At this point in the game, each player/team is still settling their "own" lands, and simply wont have the capability to settle into Grimace's lands. HAK, however, will quite quickly have a city in the middle of Grimace's lands that's capable of producing settlers itself. It shouldn't take much for HAK to take the lion's share of Grimace's land and keep out the other neighbors. However, that line of lakes/peaks would neatly bisect HAK's new empire, making it difficult to defend on multiple fronts should they get dogpiled.

[Krill]

The baseline for comparison to compare an axe rush is what you could do if you expanded as quickly as possible (well, allowing for minimal unit builds so you don't have bare settlers running around etc). For hte axe rush to be worthwhile, it has to give you a significant advantage compared to the basic expansion, in a time frame that is defined by the number of turns until you have to wage your next war to defend your territory.

In other words, if an axe rush puts you in a position to be counter rushed immediately afterwards, you should focus on holding what you have and playing safe. This applies at all stages of hte game, not just at the beginning. This is why you don't randomly attack one person that you tunnel vision on and ignore the fact that your units will be out of position and could be attacked by a third party.

[Krill]

Actually, I'd have to say this: I probably wouldn't axe rush because HAK has a beautiful position from which to play a very safe game and grab quite a bit of land.




He only needs to settle a city north around the small isthmus between the ocean and hte 3 tile lake, and then he can push forward really far against Grimace to claim as much land as possible. Preferably he pushes against Grimace first, then settles north to ensure a solid definsive city, and then pushes as far west as he can do to claim land. He's IMP so that strategy plays out a lot better than focusing on building axes.

[BRickAstley]

And it's easier cause grimace just hosed himself

[Elum]

And it's easier cause grimace just hosed himself

Poor guy. Twice in a row is too brutal to be funny.

[Mr. Cairo]

well, Mindy has decided to call off the axe rush, thus avoiding adding insult to Grimace's injury (or maybe it would be adding injury to insult in this case).

The baseline for comparison to compare an axe rush is what you could do if you expanded as quickly as possible (well, allowing for minimal unit builds so you don't have bare settlers running around etc). For the axe rush to be worthwhile, it has to give you a significant advantage compared to the basic expansion, in a time frame that is defined by the number of turns until you have to wage your next war to defend your territory.

I would prefer to compare an axe rush not to regular peaceful expansion, but aggressive pink-dot style expansion, designed to claim land from your neighbor and negatively impact their own expansion. Both are aggressive tactics in which you benefit from the negative impact it has on the target of your aggression. Personally, I prefer an axe rush or something similar to aggressive settling, because the consequences of failure are not as devastating.

Of course, no matter what you do, if it works, then it was worth it. An axe rush or an aggressive city plant or a military-less farmer's gambit, if you pull it off, then it was a brilliant move, if it fails then you're a fool for even trying.

[Dreylin]

Wait, did retep lose a Settler to a Bear as well?

[Krill]

I would prefer to compare an axe rush not to regular peaceful expansion, but aggressive pink-dot style expansion, designed to claim land from your neighbor and negatively impact their own expansion. Both are aggressive tactics in which you benefit from the negative impact it has on the target of your aggression. Personally, I prefer an axe rush or something similar to aggressive settling, because the consequences of failure are not as devastating.

This is one style of expansion, yes, but it's not the only one and it is also a very easy method of ensuring a long term enemy that ahtes you and forces you to focus on military to defend said pink dot. Not saying that this isn't possible, nor that it's a bad idea, just that there are consequences that need to be taken into account.

In this instance, pink doting is hte right move against Grimace because of how he has played out his start by focusing on religion. HAK only has those two choke points to deal with, and grabbing as much southern land as possible is how I'd play it out given his traits.

I think that you'll find that in MP that axe rushing usually has one of the worst outcomes for early game strategies in most instances, with the best possible outcome not being amazing except on maps where the person you remove from the game has land that no one else is able to settle due to the map layout. PB16 is an example of an early rush that was enough to win the game with no further gambles. Beyond that, I'm not sure there are many games where it can be said that an early rush worked out in the long run. PB19 the rush worked but most of the land that was opened was settled by Joao that built Henge.

Throwing out cities though generally has a decent spread of outcomes that are beneficial to that civ ie don't lead to death by knights.

[Mr. Cairo]

Yeah, aggressively settling what should be "Grimace's" land is preferable to rushing, since there's no way for Grimace to really do anything about it. I was more speaking hypothetically: if you knew nothing about what your neighbor is doing, but still want to be aggressive towards them this early, then from a pure theoretical standpoint, an axe rush isn't as risky as pink dotting. Obviously circumstances dictate action, and with the amount that people use the demos and score changes to keep track of everyone here, it doesn't look like anyone makes decisions based on pure theoretical risk/reward calculations.

[Krill]

Obviously circumstances dictate action, and with the amount that people use the demos and score changes to keep track of everyone here, it doesn't look like anyone makes decisions based on pure theoretical risk/reward calculations.

Most of our understanding comes against playing competent opponents that use the available information to guide their decisions. Thery is based off the observed outcomes from games numbering over 90 now.

An axe rush is riskier, because for it to succeed you have to attack an opponents city and win, with unknown odds. Defending a pink dot should give you better odds because you get fortification and culture bonus (and potentially a hill defense bonus). The main issue is one of travel time: axes being 1 move are going to take longer to reach a point beyond a pink dot city, and give something like 4 turns minimum to whip defenders to counter a rush.

Due to the path to Archery being more important as Hunting gives pastures in RtR, Archers are often available for the whips so you need minimum of 2 axes per archer that could be whipped, and additional to cover the other units that could be present. The cost of producing those units starts to equate to multiple settlers, which then means that opponents have multiple cities from which they can whip. So axe rushes have a really tight timeline, a cruel clock, against which they are measured if they are to be successful. A successful pink dot essentially forces your opponent to play against that clock to remove your city from the map, or to focus on alternate settling and expansion strategies if they want to cede an area. An unsuccessful pink dot can still give you a well defined border, but the unsuccessful axe rush gives you a depressed economy that is undeveloped compared to third party opponents and no investment that is currently repaying you.

The comparison starts to break down when you consider the usage of units that are built to screen and area from an opponent, so that you can settle it and stop them settling towards you etc. That's why definitions of rush is important: a successful rush is usually defined in terms of taking an opponents cities, or just their core in terms of an attack with HA or knights. Pink dot is usually defined in terms of settling a city more than half way towards an opponent, but that's not a great definition because depending on the map such a city can be very defensive in nature