[SPOILERS] Muffin's spoiler thread of delicious baked goodness and half baked ideas

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Whaaaa? Turn 150+, working on RepParts, and...Pyramids? Wow. Still, Police State would be a great fit I guess...

Oh and that ICTR island was super annoying commodore :P it definitely makes the war less profitable, I had some issues juggling around MP units from the fronts with the unhappy that stayed for ages not being able to eliminate the war weary.

[spacetyrantxenu]

That's absurd. How did retep or cornflakes leave HG to you this late in the game knowing you have so many cities? It would have been with building just for denial, for either of them.

No mids built yet either, kind of a strange game. What other wonders remain unbuilt?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

That's absurd. How did retep or cornflakes leave HG to you this late in the game knowing you have so many cities? It would have been with building just for denial, for either of them.

No mids built yet either, kind of a strange game. What other wonders remain unbuilt?

Yeah definitely. Retep was first in score until I got the hanging gardens, I just checked and it was turn 150 I got them, the turn before I planted the 2 new cities and just before the golden age start.

I guess it has been strange as I as the expected wonder builder have been engaged in war continuously basically since about turn 90, and when Retep/flakes should have been thinking about denial they were having a bit of a bash on each other. Once bob was finished I went straight for it, I got 25-30 pop from it which is mental. I have 31 cities now and I think at the time 28-29.

I haven't actually looked too much at wonders this game tbf, I wasn't really in contention for a lot of them. Notre Dame is still unbuilt which will probably be my next build with the cap actually as I can't think anywhere else could be faster, except maybe moai city. Probably should have had a thought about that earlier I could have pushed it there straight after the moai, although I am going all out on maximising the commerce there. First it needed an MP, then I built a library. I think post GA it will be quicker to build it in the cap (which was my original plan). The parthenon, chicken pizza and shwedegon pagoya are the only others left that I can build.

Flakes seemed to go a bit wonder crazy actually, he even went for the ToA. Although the HG seems one of the good wonders left until just recently. Perhaps noone wanted to bother with the aquaduct first? Although he would have got a decent hamman from that too!

[GermanJoey]

Great report REM, thanks for writing that up, it must have taken forever. Regarding Byzantium, I think you definitely proved your point that they are truly a civ to be feared. Why did many of us write them off as a bad pick? Hmmm... that is a very good question, as you were right and the rest of us (including myself) lurkers were wrong. I thought about this a bit and I think that we were making general assumptions that didn't apply to this specific situation.

1.) The terrible starting techs make Byzantium's start very slow, such that they'll end up giving up on first-to bonuses and land-grabbing compared to your neighbors de-facto. Here, it looked like you read that you could navigate around this setback without too much difficulty. That's not a simple thing - it takes skill to fully take advantage of the civs with amazing specials but crappy starting techs. (e.g. Byzantium, Inca, RtR India)

2.) The smaller game size plays into Byzantium's favor here; whipping down like you did, to go ham unbelievable with your knights, I think is only OK as long as you can be sure that you'll be able to later hold against rifles and cavs, after your initial conquest was done, via shear numbers. In SP Deity games it is ok to do this because there are techniques (tech trading, vassal control, and EP economy) to stay competitive from behind. In ladder-style MP games its OK because they're typically head-to-head games and the other guy is also doing the same thing. However, in a pitboss game, with more players and a bigger map, putting yourself behind so much early could mean it is super difficult to catch back up with your new neighbors that didn't sacrifice development so much. The map being bigger means that the travel-time is larger and that there are more cities you need to conquer, and thus conquest is much slower. PB22 is a good example here, where you whipped down but travel distance and the existance of a strong choke point meant that every whip was just more economic damage you were inflicting on yourselves. (that the whip is nerfed a bit in that mod did not do you any favors either). Likewise, when I counter-attacked after successfully defending, it took so long to heal, gather whatever remaining troops I had left, and march them a tile at a time up to MCG meant that you were able to put together a defense that I was unable to penetrate. In this game, though, you again read that you would not relatively stagnate too much compared to others - and were right. We were basing our assumptions on a model that's different from the actual setup for PBEM61. It's kinda like thinking the Dutch are crappy until you see what the East Indiaman does on a very watery map and you're like, holy shit, how is this unit even supposed to be balanced, what were they thinking.

3.) Jowy, your obvious first target to both of you, gambled that he didn't need to stunt his development by rushing Engineering if he could cut off your iron. He did succeed in his gambit and would have been fine... but then a certain someone resupplied you with iron anyways... I don't think Jowy's gamble was a bad one to make and I would have probably also ragequit after what happened, but you did get a little lucky there. If this were an AW instead of AI-Diplo, you might have been screwed. That said, all is fair and love and war and everybody gets some kind of good luck (whether its luck in what they want it in or not) in these long games, such that overall it tends to even itself out. So, a matter of "luck" shouldn't take anything away from you. For example, that your only iron would be on a contested island is extremely unusual for these games, usually you'll have at least one (if not more) within 3-4 tiles of your starting settler. So, you got unlucky there but then lucky later with the diplo, in net effect canceling each other out to simply mean that you had access to the same strategic resources you should assume that you'll have access to.

At any rate, the game isn't over yet and I shouldn't say anything more.

By the way, If you find a chance to read my PB22 thread and have time to respond, I'm interested in hearing what you think. (that said, I was very frustrated with you guys for much of that game, so please take some of my comments with a grain of salt. )

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I completely agree. This game is by no means over at all. I think I now have the upper hand but it here is certainly all to play for. As I said I think it is a 60 - 40 split re winner, but before the GA I think Retep had the better chance. I still firmly believe that he could have killed me off and taken a lot of land if he had attacked me over flakes (I had already moved my guys to move on bob, he attacked flakes the turn before I hit bob). I also think that the longer he gives me to consolidate my land and grow the harder it will be for him.

To the game - big development last turn. In the inter turn, Retep got the pyramids. Or, more specifically he whipped the pyramids. 7 pop in his beuro cap for it. Was it worth it? Time will tell. Depends what he does with it really. If he uses it to switch to rep then not at all. If he goes police state it could well be. This late for denial I don't think it is worth it. (I guess he must have seen the esp mission cost on my cap and guessed I was going for it).

This will change my strategy a fair bit. I had a long think about things and I don't need to do anything as such here. The onus is on Retep to move against me. So I am going to move for democracy and the SoL. That will give me 2 free specialists per city and pick up the ability to run rep with it. I can defend quite easily with rifles, and that tech line gives me the option to go for the draft and cavalry if needed.

The other option is to push for an oxford cap, and free religion/economics. But I think at my city number and running merc anyway the above plan would be better here.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So I read from that GJ the lurker assumption was that I would fall flat? Before I even reached phracts or be hoovered up by someone more advanced I wonder? Yes it did take a fair time to write up too (I actually didn't get around to a few turns because of this :/)

I am at work and there is now stuff to do but I will answer your points shortly. I mostly agree with you, though these are the sort of games you could bash out in a couple of hours on game spy so I think there are a few things that are more SP based that you are thinking.

[Commodore]

Congrats! Good game!

[Cornflakes]

All those improvements around your former Bob's cities were because I didn't have anything else to do. I had dreams of potentially founding a filler city in the area. Also for the last 10 or so turns my workers has been automated (but I think even when automated they wouldn't improve outside my cities' BFC, right?). I had an abundance of workers that I'm pretty sure were gifted me by a combination of HAK and Bob? I wasn't keeping real close attention on my workforce, so I don't know exactly when and where they were gifted but I'm fairly certain that at least 3-4 were gifted to me. Anyway, all the tiles in my core had been improved and I had nothing better for my workers to do.