RBP2 Lurker Discussion Thread - No Players!

[novice]

MP veterans correct me if I'm wrong but isn't red significantly better than blue, so as to avoid having to attack Cuzco over the river?

Either way you're going to spend a turn on flatland, so from that perspective they're equal

I'm not an MP veteran but yes, red is better if the intent is to attack. If the intent is to tie up Incan forces, blue may be safer.

[Jabah]

Blue is also much better to intercept any force trying to recapture Bespin

[T-hawk]

Blue helps avoid any counterattacks. The turn that the stack is exposed on flatland is two tiles away from the city, not one. Any 1-mover counterattacks against blue on flatland will leave the counterattacking unit exposed for a kill, while a counterattack against red on flatland leaves the counterattacker safe in the city.

[WilliamLP]

Will be interesting to see why Dantski decided to betray us. Haven't yet figured out even a single thing he's gained out of that move. If he didn't betray us, he'd have half of India's land under his control, he'd have good relations with all his neighbours, he'd be a powerhouse, he would have eliminated the single biggest threat to win this game..

Does anyone else think Jowy has a good point here? All that Dantski gained by backing out was to become clear second last in the game. It was looking like India was going to successfully defend everything at that point, but then it seems to me the rational thing for everyone would have been for the CoW to admit it lost the battle because of lack of coordination, and then organize an even bigger push a little while later. (Of course then maybe this allows Slaze to become too powerful.)

Also, I suppose from the POV of Whosit, Kathlete and perhaps Nakor, the attack had already succeeded in that it appeared India was no longer a great economic power, so they no longer had the incentive to keep pressing at the expense of their home economies?

It would have been something else if Dantski had been able to turn it into an immediate attack against Nakor, so perhaps these thoughts are all with the benefit of seeing the big picture, and with hindsight?

Right now, I don't see alarm bells going off for Whosit/Kathlete/Nakor that India is clearly running away with this game again. I think they should be.

Anyway, the large scale strategic moves in this game are fascinating to watch! I'm guessing this game will be practically resignable by about turn 180 but I'd love to be wrong. (Jowy's absolutely toast, and Spulla will have expanded to that beautiful island to the NW, and their econ will still be perfectly managed, probably with a GNP twice that of any other team, with a massive army of maces and knights...)

[Axiis]

Dantski's move would have been perfectly rational IF he had turned around and declared on Nakor when he had the chance. His insistence on being honorably neutral after bowing out of the war cost him the only benefit he would have had from making a seperate piece - now no one really trusts him and he's essentially little more than a buffer state for Spullla.

Though I have to disagree with the assessment that he'd own half of Spullla's land. Between the cats and Whosit's misclick, the attack was pretty much doomed. Spullla would certainly be in worse shape than they are now, but I don't think much more progress could have been made on that front.

[Beamup]

I'd question whether Dantski's a "clear second last" at this point (though I'd agree with it immediately after the Indian War). One could make a case for him being as high as fifth place, ahead of slaze and maybe even Whosit. The former looks quite likely to soon be more badly crippled than Jowy was. The latter has wrecked his economy fighting too many wars; he has almost zero chance of remaining relevant once crossbows and maces render the Praets obsolete.

I'd rank his options at the flip as so:

Best: Hit HRE immediately and work closely with India. Absorbing HRE territory would turn him into a major power, and he'd be very well positioned for a second-place finish as India's primary ally.

Average: Switch sides, but don't hit HRE and don't make any attempt to work with India. Results in him being an also-ran whose best hope to improve his finish from sixth is that the stronger civs will continue to have higher-priority targets than him. This is, of course, what he ended up doing.

Worst: Stick with the CoW. Some added damage would have been done to India, but in the end he'd likely have gotten it worse than they did.

[timmy827]

Fine, we'll build the trireme at Shiloh, since Speaker compromised on a couple of my builds earlier (like the Colossus, the Jewish missionary out of Gettysburg, etc.) But then we've got to get some culture in there!

Anyone else find this cultural fixation odd? (as a reminder, Dantski's city is directly 3S of Shiloh). With the inner ring getting an extra 20 cpt once the first border pops, it's basically impossible at this point in the game for either city to hold the tiles in its 2nd ring that are in the other's 1st ring. This seems like something you'd worry about if there was a key tile at equal distance from both your cities (either from tactical viewpoint, or an important resource) but seems a bit of a waste here; with financial + colossus my inclination would just be to grow the city up to size 10 with no whipping after the trireme.

[T-hawk]

With the inner ring getting an extra 20 cpt once the first border pops, it's basically impossible at this point in the game for either city to hold the tiles in its 2nd ring that are in the other's 1st ring.

What's to watch out for is if either city gets a ring ahead of the other - if either city passes 100 while the other hasn't, the first matches the extra 20cpt and can pull ahead by putting out more base culture. That will eventually happen to one side if the other neglects culture entirely. Also, the sooner you get to 100, the sooner you start to put up some defense against a culture bomb in the opposing city. You're probably right that it should be lower priority right now, though.

Also, Sullla surely remembers there was a big swing in the RB-Imperio war over a single tile of cultural control, which would have made the difference between a 1-turn attack or 2-turn attack on our critical border city with the Heroic Epic.

[Axiis]

What do you guys think about Jowy gifting his cities to someone (presumably Kathlete) when Spullla declares? I can't really see why anyone would accept them to be honest given that it would probably drag them into a war with India and would send their maintenence costs through the roof.

[Krill]

One apppreciates the irony of attacking with longbows...