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The map is fantastic, really clever design. The difficulty is a bit of a dampener. Huayna was a better pick, I underestimated the costs.
That said, I messed up. I got a city razed. I also lost a worker for no reason due to not understanding a mechanic correctly (I even tested it, but clearly I made a mistake somewhere!). The guy is nigh unwinnable already, but that's where the game format comes in. This is just round 1 with another PBEM to follow. I just need to sneak into second place here then I can another chance in the next one.
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I hear you got the coveted marble hill fortress... Congrats! Gonna use it for anything interesting?
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(May 29th, 2016, 12:12)ReallyEvilMuffin Wrote: I hear you got the coveted marble hill fortress... Congrats! Gonna use it for anything interesting?
[substantial pause for dramatic effect]
To try and come second! That's the aim anyway. I made some major, major errors at the start of this game which led me to being in a disastrous position. I was last in every single demographic (food, mfg, gnp, population and army) by quite a margin. I lost stonehenge and oracle- both by a turn.The geography has not been fortunate (I feel it was easier for my neighbours to secure the gems than I) but let's not apportion blame anywhere where it has not been due. I am at fault for this clusterfuck of an empire and the map on the whole has been great.
At that point (last), I sat back and decided to try and invoke the RB spirit and see what could be done with this mess. Step one was to grab the entire middle and hold it, as well as both of my potential islands. I had neither gems location so this was a requirement to not fall even further behind. Well, thanks to an early push to sailing and a large military, I achieved both of these goals. Since then, I have turtled up and worked on my economy- which is now rather decent. El Grillo has this game won. It is not in doubt at all. 100%. Done. But this game involves the top two progressing and if I can sneak second, that will do for this game. Adrien was a LONG way ahead of me utilising both the Great Lighthouse and Collosus to good effect. Due to being behind on tech, my IND trait was entirely useless for a very long time. I miss having SPI so much! I have now caught up and overtaken Adrien in economy. I'll never catch El Grillo but that can't be helped. Regrettably, the other two leaders have Gingereagle as a neighbour and can gobble him up for more land. I have to attack into one of those. I can't sit and turtle forever as they'll grow bigger thanks to the additional land.
Me and El Grillo have a volatile border, but I have tried to indicate (via aggressive troop movements then withdrawing, alongside declaring war and offering insta-peace) that I want peace now. He must know he has this in the bag. So, I attack Adrien with everything I have. My borders with El Grillo will be, as a consequence, weaker and he has the choice whether to take advantage or let his two closest competitors slug it out. My hope is he'll be happy to sit back with all his new land and huge lead and just get further ahead, getting all the 'first-to' bonuses to guarantee first place. That can't be stopped and, to be honest, if I get to a position where Adrien acknowledges that I am ahead of him and that won't change, i'll concede the game to El Grillo. I just lost the Taj by a turn to a great engineer which was unfortunate but i'm going full speed for drafted rifles and will draft en masse and present them to Adrien and see what happens.
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(June 27th, 2016, 03:56)Khan Wrote: (May 29th, 2016, 12:12)ReallyEvilMuffin Wrote: I hear you got the coveted marble hill fortress... Congrats! Gonna use it for anything interesting?
[substantial pause for dramatic effect]
To try and come second! That's the aim anyway. I made some major, major errors at the start of this game which led me to being in a disastrous position. I was last in every single demographic (food, mfg, gnp, population and army) by quite a margin. I lost stonehenge and oracle- both by a turn.The geography has not been fortunate (I feel it was easier for my neighbours to secure the gems than I) but let's not apportion blame anywhere where it has not been due. I am at fault for this clusterfuck of an empire and the map on the whole has been great.
At that point (last), I sat back and decided to try and invoke the RB spirit and see what could be done with this mess. Step one was to grab the entire middle and hold it, as well as both of my potential islands. I had neither gems location so this was a requirement to not fall even further behind. Well, thanks to an early push to sailing and a large military, I achieved both of these goals. Since then, I have turtled up and worked on my economy- which is now rather decent. El Grillo has this game won. It is not in doubt at all. 100%. Done. But this game involves the top two progressing and if I can sneak second, that will do for this game. Adrien was a LONG way ahead of me utilising both the Great Lighthouse and Collosus to good effect. Due to being behind on tech, my IND trait was entirely useless for a very long time. I miss having SPI so much! I have now caught up and overtaken Adrien in economy. I'll never catch El Grillo but that can't be helped. Regrettably, the other two leaders have Gingereagle as a neighbour and can gobble him up for more land. I have to attack into one of those. I can't sit and turtle forever as they'll grow bigger thanks to the additional land.
Me and El Grillo have a volatile border, but I have tried to indicate (via aggressive troop movements then withdrawing, alongside declaring war and offering insta-peace) that I want peace now. He must know he has this in the bag. So, I attack Adrien with everything I have. My borders with El Grillo will be, as a consequence, weaker and he has the choice whether to take advantage or let his two closest competitors slug it out. My hope is he'll be happy to sit back with all his new land and huge lead and just get further ahead, getting all the 'first-to' bonuses to guarantee first place. That can't be stopped and, to be honest, if I get to a position where Adrien acknowledges that I am ahead of him and that won't change, i'll concede the game to El Grillo. I just lost the Taj by a turn to a great engineer which was unfortunate but i'm going full speed for drafted rifles and will draft en masse and present them to Adrien and see what happens.
I'd be interested in your thoughts on the balance. I tried to make it as fair as possible, although there were a few areas where I fell short for sure. I didn't think I had with the gems though. Good luck!
Should I make it clear about concessions though? Really for a concession to work here a winner and a runner up both effectively need to be conceded to.
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Hey REM, I think overall the map is fantastic. If I was being picky, then my only critiques are that who your neighbours are can make a big difference. If me and Adrien had swapped places, this game would have gone very differently. This is a harsh criticism as most 4 player maps are designed this way.
As for the gems, I think both of my neighbours had easy places to settle which controlled both gems, whilst my options were more limited. I would be interested to see how the other game panned out for the guy in my position and whether they got any gems. I think if you're counting tiles, perhaps the gems are equidistant but mine are often diagonal, rather than on a straight line and I think the natural resource layout caused both opponents to head towards them early. The map really has been great overall though.
As for concessions, I agree. The only way a concession happens is if people agree that x is 1st and y is 2nd and all are unanimous. 1st is El Grillo confirmed already. Talking of which, he just got liberalism. I lost out by 1 turn AGAIN. (had bulb for education with some beakers invested and enough overflow to 1 turn liberalism). Getting set back so much in the early game has had quite the knock on effect. We're not at a concession stage currently, although my economy is now much better than Adriens. Basically El Grillo decides what happens next. I'm going to attack Adrien and hopefully cripple him. If left alone, I feel confident I will be successful. If El Grillo takes advantage and attacks me whilst im attacking Adrien, then I have to cancel the attack and defend myself and Adrien's land advantage could be significant. Gingereagle is a dead man walking regrettably. The trick is to somehow attack Adrien without El Grillo perceiving me as a threat for first place. As such, this will be a raze/salt the earth attack. I don't want the land, I just want Adrien hurt enough that he doesn't think he can catch up. Technically, he has the biggest army in the world right now, but it's just a massive ball of knights and skirmishers. I have an even bigger ball of catapults, macemen and pikemen with cuirassiers being produced in two turns.
June 28th, 2016, 06:46
(This post was last modified: June 28th, 2016, 06:55 by ReallyEvilMuffin.)
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(June 28th, 2016, 05:01)Khan Wrote: Hey REM, I think overall the map is fantastic. If I was being picky, then my only critiques are that who your neighbours are can make a big difference. If me and Adrien had swapped places, this game would have gone very differently. This is a harsh criticism as most 4 player maps are designed this way.
As for the gems, I think both of my neighbours had easy places to settle which controlled both gems, whilst my options were more limited. I would be interested to see how the other game panned out for the guy in my position and whether they got any gems. I think if you're counting tiles, perhaps the gems are equidistant but mine are often diagonal, rather than on a straight line and I think the natural resource layout caused both opponents to head towards them early. The map really has been great overall though.
As for concessions, I agree. The only way a concession happens is if people agree that x is 1st and y is 2nd and all are unanimous. 1st is El Grillo confirmed already. Talking of which, he just got liberalism. I lost out by 1 turn AGAIN. (had bulb for education with some beakers invested and enough overflow to 1 turn liberalism). Getting set back so much in the early game has had quite the knock on effect. We're not at a concession stage currently, although my economy is now much better than Adriens. Basically El Grillo decides what happens next. I'm going to attack Adrien and hopefully cripple him. If left alone, I feel confident I will be successful. If El Grillo takes advantage and attacks me whilst im attacking Adrien, then I have to cancel the attack and defend myself and Adrien's land advantage could be significant. Gingereagle is a dead man walking regrettably. The trick is to somehow attack Adrien without El Grillo perceiving me as a threat for first place. As such, this will be a raze/salt the earth attack. I don't want the land, I just want Adrien hurt enough that he doesn't think he can catch up. Technically, he has the biggest army in the world right now, but it's just a massive ball of knights and skirmishers. I have an even bigger ball of catapults, macemen and pikemen with cuirassiers being produced in two turns.
Neighbours are definitely big here. Hence trying to make the games tiered. I couldn't make a flat map without at least 1 set of players being isolated from the others.
I did place the gems by counting cap tiles, and reasoned at that distance being diagonals or straights made limited differences. Greenline is your counterpart. There might have been slightly different settle options, although I feel if El Grillo hadn't razed and pressed you you could have got the gems by planting a tile further forward than you did. But snagging the island I would say is almost as good as grabbing the gems. The gems is also heavily dependent on which way you choose to push out settling, if 2 people clash then it leaves the other option open. I perhaps should have factored hill settles in more for the gems...
Should have saved the bulb for liberalism! No one ever sees that :P
After the game I will relook at the map. I think who owns the gems went the same way in both games. The middle has gone differently though.
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Please do understand that I have been really impressed with the map and I think it has been really fun to play out. The little bits I have pointed out are only my opinion anyhow. It just felt like I had limited chance with either despite playing a significant REX game (I was always ahead on city count until the late game- granted, losing a city hurt).
As for the bulb- the plan was to bulb education and then research liberalism all in one turn. It was achievable, but regrettably, El Grillo manually researched Liberalism on his turn. My tech rate is very fast right now. I've just researched a bunch of older techs (monarchy, feudalism etc) at 0% all in one turn each and can now research guilds, banking, gunpowder and replaceable parts at 100% (again, all one turn each). Perhaps those numbers will be effected by forces leaving my borders and my long golden age ends eventually (taj would have helped a lot!).
This game has rubbed in my face my mistakes a fair bit. I messed up early and have had to catch up since. At one point I was at half of adrien's food, mfg and my GNP was laughable. His war with GE seems to have slowed which is nice. GE has, to his credit, made himself a very prickly opponent. Walls are up everywhere and he is whipping longbows. I am pleased as Adrien is only now bringing along a catapult or two. It just shows that even with GE being far behind and knights being awesome, siege is still important. I suspect the biggest mistake here though was Adrien's speed with which he built knights. It seems he wanted to preserve his economy (which is still respectable) and slow built them everywhere, which is fine, but it gave a window to get longbows and they are proving their worth.
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Are you willing to take a concession at this stage?
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(July 8th, 2016, 10:56)ReallyEvilMuffin Wrote: Are you willing to take a concession at this stage?
Absolutely. Second will do me just fine.
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Nicely played, Khan, and I wish you well in the wars to come 
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