[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] The Final Clusterfuck: The PB38 Map and Lurker Thread

[masterjason]

I’m curious which side TBS ends up pushing for Astro island wise, looks like he has Commodore pushing hard in the West, and now FinHarry starting to probe to the East.

Elsewhere, there’s almost no competition for the North Central islands, who is even close to Astro? mack?

[Mardoc]

I’m curious which side TBS ends up pushing for Astro island wise, looks like he has Commodore pushing hard in the West, and now FinHarry starting to probe to the East.

I suspect he will push for both. The trouble for Commodore is that TBS can't really switch effort - the ports on the western sea can only support a push for western islands, and the ports in the east can only support a push east, and his bottleneck is likely to be ships rather than anything he *could* redeploy one direction or the other. At least at first; eventually he could redeploy ships. Unless Commodore starts razing ports, TBS will have ships in the sea that might as well be doing something...

Most players might pick one sea just to minimize their time engagement or maximize their focus, but TBS is someone who can honestly work to optimize both.

Elsewhere, there’s almost no competition for the North Central islands, who is even close to Astro? mack?

It might be mack, he doesn't report often enough for us to know where he is techwise. But if not him - well, FinHarry and TBS both have decent access to those islands. Remember that galleons are relatively fast compared to most transit; it's 6-8 turns one way from the contested islands, or a similar distance from FinHarry's core, to the north central islands. That's close enough that it's plausible for one or both of them to start settlement before someone closer gets to Astro. Once they get a foothold, they can use the new cities to spread out and grab more rather than having to ferry in everything.

[Krill]

Galleon chaining will mean the only delay in settling the distant continents is settled production and the initial transport time to get the galleons to the final destination.

Well, then you have to hold it,but that's another issue. Grab frigates.

[superdeath]

And in position Q we have ... superdeath.  So ... he talks so much about being a newb and not knowing how to sandbox and so on that - with a name like that to boot - he's either really, really, really new and expecting to lose, or a smurf who's trolling everybody.  In the former case, that's another early snack for Rusten and Boldly to share between them, this time with up to three other players I haven't looked at yet instead of with mackoti.  I'm honestly not sure whether Q is an easier or harder position for a new player to play out of than say A or Y - I think it depends on the player - but if superdeath is (as he implies) the weakest player in the field, I think I'm glad he's surrounded by the maximum possible number of players, just because an early, easy exit can seriously swing a game - but hopefully less so if there are more vultures among whom to divide the spoils.  I hope that's not the scenario that ends up playing out though; hopefully he puts the rich, lush land around him to good use and has a good showing in spite of his oft-expressed doubts.  I mean, or he's like Speaker or Lord Parkin or somebody smurfing up the place.  I dunno.

So apparently Start R, superdeath's northern neighbor, is dtay, playing Genghis Khan of the Celts.  ...  I'm so, so sorry, superdeath.  I promise we didn't do this on purpose.  Uh.  Who's next?

Start S is Dreylin, and his coastal access isn't bad at all in case he wants to GLH ASAP.  On a related note, when I created that northern delta (with a sea cliff overlooking it that I left in place) I wasn't setting out to create a complicated settling decision for this start's back lines; it just kind of happened that way.

Start T (and superdeath's final neighbor) is ... The Black Sword.  One good thing for superdeath:  I don't think any of his neighbors are actually bloodthirsty.  But they all know what they're doing, and few if any will hesitate to take advantage of weakness.  As for the start itself, when I look at this area, I see an enormous amount of jungle, but GJ's balance tool thinks it's fine, and I'm pretty sure when TBS looks at it, he'll just see a bunch of opportunities - especially with Pericles giving him better settling options than another leader would have, and Impis who laugh heartily at rough terrain.

Looking at the map.. if i had to choose where to be from the start.. a corner start in the future for newer players imo. Clear backlines, minimal neighbors.. ect. Great work on the map! Just wish i had gotten better neighbor luck ( not that there wasn't 400 other things i did wrong but.. )

[Mardoc]

I have to admit I'm pretty impressed with Gavagai's play here, using intimidation instead of raw force.  Pindicator's evolving thought process seems to have been Gav's true target, not anything as simple as units to kill:

I had no idea that Fish for Fish was such a sacred thing:

He emptied the city that Commodore took - note the archer running east on the bottom of the pic - and he's moved all his 2 movers up north so now that plako is running through his south easily grabbing cities.  If he's making a stand at his capital that's one thing.  But coming straight for us feels like it's personal.

So with that in mind, I offered peace.  Even if he doesn't take it now, perhaps it can signal to him that we're not interested in pushing further south?  Regardless, we need to offer him some kind of way out so that if he does want out from our conflict to focus on the other armies that we can give him a way that doesn't involve him losing a lot of his army.  In this game of musical invaders, you don't want to be the last one still at war when the other two parties have peaced out.

Signing peace with Gav is going to send a major ripple through the wars in the area.  It may actually let Gavagai come out of this alive, as now his task gets a lot simpler.

If this turns into a quick exit from the Commodore then we can expect Gavagai to send that army south against plako next.  With enforced peace on 2 borders, a huge army, then I expect him to be able to take back a lot of ground against plako.  I don't think plako will let his army be destroyed, but instead I fear Gav will be able to recapture all of his cities.  Which would put us as the prime target for retaliation once our peace is up in 10 turns.

I could, in fact, see this playing out the way Pindicator outlined.  A lot depends on how stubborn Commodore and plako are willing to be...but it does seem possible that Gav ends up with a similar territory at the end of the dogpile to what he started with.  He'd still be damaged from having half his cities change hands twice, and his neighbors will probably manage to out-tech him, but compared to where I thought he'd be after a 3v1, this is excellent work.

Amazing the effect of targeting player psychology instead of armies.  He didn't even have to talk!  

[Krill]

Don't know if he is going to get that shrine back.

[Mardoc]

Don't know if he is going to get that shrine back.

True.  No matter what happens, he'd have been better off if he could have avoided the dogpile in the first place.  Even if he does manage to recapture everything he loses 2 pop per city and most of the buildings.

I'm just comparing to the narrow counterfactual where Gav defended every front more-or-less evenly.  I think in that case he'd have ended the war by joining us here in the lurker thread.  With his strategy of intimidation, he might live, and maybe even remain relevant for a while.

[Krill]

Depends on knights imo, which will be the best way to break his mounted stacks. Not efficient compared to taking the new world, but that's why I hate the astro bulb.

[Coeurva]

Imo it's not so much intimidation in the sense that Kasparov stares at you from across the board and more him rationally considering the opponents' respective war goals, and that a dogpile (against the #1 power!) arises because inferior or barely-superior armies are expected not to meet concentrated resistance. pindicator and Commodore are less likely to fight to the death in their situations than plako, and I think we'll see Gavagai isolate him very soon. Pin can leverage this GA into an attack on Dreylin or yet another round of Bloodzone Gavagai, Comm has Astronomy and his forward troop contingent can't push anywhere (by design), but plako has his back to the wall of water.

On that note, what Lewwyn's joining the team appears to have done for pindicator is damn beautiful to see in their thread, even aside from the war success.

[masterjason]

On that note, what Lewwyn's joining the team appears to have done for pindicator is damn beautiful to see in their thread, even aside from the war success.

I really wonder how different things would be over there if pin had been that engaged the whole time.

——-

This doesn’t look very good at all for plako now, Gav will have nearly a full ten turns to counter without needing to worry about a dog pile, and as we lurkers know, both Comm and pin have other things they want to focus on.