[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[picklepikkl]

As for Castles, are they ever useful?  They have powerful stats, but require you to go out of your way for them (the infrastructure path wants Liberalism, the military path wants Knights), even before you consider that RB nerfs dedicated Espionage to irrelevance--I wish Krill was willing to accept active espionage as a thing so we can try it in a SMEG game, but that's very off-topic.

Don't you want Engineering in most games? +1 movement on friendly roads and enabling Pikes both seem like crucial things in the Medieval Era. Anyway, I was mostly just teasing scooter about his reaction to his mistake, because nothing says "we're close enough that I feel secure in my ability to give you a hard time" like "we both post on a forum about an eleven-year-old strategy game and you might have used my suggested city name once."

Castles can be a good deterrence when combined with pikes, if your neighbor has a big knight stack looking at your one close border city,

Oh, so that's why Sian came after me and not you!

[Cheater Hater]

I knew you were kidding, I was just honestly curious--it feels like the period between researching Engineering and researching Economics is so short you can't get the number of Castles built to make the non-defense bonuses relevant, and if this game isn't it, I don't know what is.

[Brian Shanahan]

Is it considered acceptable to make strategic decisions using information posted in the Tech Issues thread?

As far as I know from the last time I've played, no. The Tech Issues thread is a public thread, and if players post something they shouldn't in it, well that's their own look out.

I missed this question. Anyway, with accidental spoilers, you can't unring a bell. If I see a player accidentally post his tech thread plans to snipe a city of mine or something, I'm definitely going to reinforce it.

What is this question referring to? I don't know the context.

Just plako's mention that he was delayed in his ability to play, and would be okay with losing a turn if people aren't willing to wait.  That would suggest he's at least slightly checked-out, which would support a plan to attack him once you manage to get SoL.

As scooter has said, that's not something that you can take from Plako's tech thread announcement. Even the most committed player can have a period where their time will be ate by more important matters, and with a PB you can't just simply sit on the save for an extra day like you can with a PBEM (obviously after explaining yourself). You'll only really know if a player is checked out in that way if they miss multiple turns, or play very loosely over a period of time.

[scooter]

Guess away.

[Dp101]

Maybe a game where there were multiple substitutions?  A map with random prebuilt tile improvements? Nothing is coming to mind.

[Jkaen]

PBEM12?

[scooter]

How will I ever survive without castles. Also, hooray for picking a name challenging enough to not get guessed immediately.

So anyway, the gist of the merchant situation is that I had a good idea, and I accidentally executed it correctly. Let's catch up.

Turn 235-236



Mackoti seems to have offered a 30T NAP or something along those lines after we made peace. I went ahead and accepted this because I can map out the rest of his cities now. Anyway, it makes sense. His top concern now is REM, and if I give him grief then this thing will be over absurdly fast.

Actually, Mackoti may be as big a threat as REM. Let's see:



He took nice advantage of Alhazard's expansion allergy to snipe this silver location. I also think he's going to get that gold because, well...



As predicted, he bulbed Astronomy. I don't think that's necessarily a massive deal on this map (if this game was played on the 33 map it would be), but it's still cause for concern.

However, my much bigger concern: he's going to beat Alhazard to Communism isn't he. Yeah, this is happening.



Yes, that's Alhazard currently limping along with a hilariously low GNP. He's been working on Scientific Method for what, like 30T now? I sure hope he's got an Artist lined up for Communism, or else Mackoti is going to win that race. I can't believe that race is even on the table. I regret not going for it ourselves, but I didn't imagine a world in which Alhazard would fail to get there first. Mackoti hasn't sprung a golden age yet, and I believe he's sitting on a great person, so I'm going to go ahead and guess he'll spring a golden age, pop out a couple great people, and bulb his way to Communism. Yikes. That feels worse than forcing someone to conquer the Kremlin.



I've earmarked an upcoming settler for this location in the next few turns so that we can get the bonus for Oxford and Moai online. The city itself is pretty bad, but the hammers saved on those two national wonders alone will make up the difference. I also might be able to get some value out of trading away the stone after I build them if someone hasn't hooked theirs yet.



So to recap, here's what's happened with great people during this golden age. Keep in mind that this is my last turn of golden age free revolts.

* Engineer born in Pocketbeetle. Iced for Statue.
* Scientist born in Masterclass. Bulbed Education to open up Economics so that I could put some beakers into that while I waited for Democracy to be unlocked.
* Merchant born in Pilot. A minor freakout was had before realizing I'm the dumbest moderately smart person to exist. Bulbed Economics to completion and thanked my lucky stars that I put enough beakers in to finish it mid-turn.
* This merchant pops out immediately, which was used to bulb Constitution to completion also mid-turn. Which means on the last turn of my golden age:



Success. The Economics Merchant itself wasn't super beneficial. It's a tech I would want eventually, but it isn't going to give me any immediate benefit. The primary perk here is denial. I think Mackoti or REM would be the most likely players to snipe it if I didn't due to their strong tech pace, so it was nice to deny that. There's one more great person we're waiting on:



Huge dice roll here. Limping over the finish line, but that was the only way to score 4 great people in the same golden age. So we're looking at a roughly 60% chance of a scientist. If we get the scientist, winning the SoL race should be super easy. If we get a second engineer... I'd still like our chances, but we would have a competition on our hands I think. In that case, I'm tempted to just delay the stone for better sites and rush Oxford instead. I'll have to do some math to see whether that's better or worse than hanging onto him for a double SoL rush.

And yes, the 1% chance of a spy would be no good very bad. I decided to take that 1% risk because I'm in a holding pattern until I know if I've got the PP bulb or not, so let's do it. If I get a spy, well I'll cross that bridge if I have to.



The bulb chain vaulted me to the top of the scoreboard as 3 techs puts me in a tie for the lead. I decided to delay Oxford a few turns and set up a series of settler whips first, then University whips. Organized Religion will help with that. Pilot, Pocketbeetle, Lurker Killer, Rage Quit, and Praetorian Tour are my plans for settler whips (Pilot already happened). The first three will be 3-pop, the latter two will be 4-pop. I'm trying to line them up for good overflow into Universities. Masterclass may get one instead of Praetorian, but I also want to get National Epic up and running there soon.

Pilot, Pocketbeetle, Lurker Killer, Zulu Exodus, Masterclass, and Merchant Gank are getting Universities. I'm hoping to have all those complete within about 4T which should be right around the time I settle the stone location.

Civstats was chaotic this turn:



Hopefully that puzzled a few people before they logged in. I jotted down city counts last night on my other machine, but I neglected to save it to my dropbox. I could go by memory, but another city or two has been settled since then, so I'll update that the next time. The gist of it is that REM remains ahead of us by a city, and Mackoti is tied with us for second. Despite my jokes, RMoG and Alhazard settled a couple cities recently to bring them pretty close in raw counts even though they lag behind in other ways. We're nearing the phase where tech rate matters quite a bit more anyway. Speaking of, I checked and hit 350bpt at 100% on the last turn of the golden age. That's fun. Settling Weed Cleanup helped quite a bit as we've now got two 2c trade routes in every city.

[Brian Shanahan]

Guess away.

PB35? :P

[Jkaen]

I can't find it but wasn't their a mirrored always peace 4 player game with nothing but forest

[scooter]

PB35? :P

Oof.

I can't find it but wasn't their a mirrored always peace 4 player game with nothing but forest

No it's not that, but I don't know what game you're talking about? I played in a 4 player always peace mirror game (PBEM22), but it definitely wasn't all forest. Did I miss a very weird game?