[LURKERS] Civ 6 PBEM 15: May the Odds be Ever In Your Favor

[Alhambram]

Jester, I think, is probably a fine single player. But in PBEM4 he also maintained inadequate defenses against aggressive neighbors. He lost an early city there, too, and never recovered.

I need to look over PBEM5 again - I paid so little attention to that game that, outside of Alhambram's slow Arabian start, I have no real idea what happened.

I got slow start due food poor starting area, while everyone else got better food starts.

Jester didn't use China's strength to its fullest in PBEM 5, especially worker charge towards wonders.
Krill nabbed Pyramids while I got Stonehenge. But Krill decided to go for expansion instead conquering which did spare Jester from early destruction.
I was another neighbor of Jester but I did keep my gaze fixed upon Japper and later Pindicator much and left Jester alone. So he did survive till end and became too spikey to eat for me or Krill without giving game away towards Pindicator.

[Krill]

Actually Jester horseman rushes me, and managed to get to my iron. I held on, got the GG, pushed north but the attack stalled out. I misplayed the attack compared to vets because of lack of experience. After that I just tried to keep up with Pin and never quite managed it, again due to inexperience and poor district judgement.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I wonder if Jester's catapult is an effort to take advantage of the Ottoman's enhanced siege ability? His reasoning may have been that the enhanced production towards a catapult compensated for the weaker strength - better a catapult you have now than an archer you may never finish.

[williams482]

I wonder if Jester's catapult is an effort to take advantage of the Ottoman's enhanced siege ability? His reasoning may have been that the enhanced production towards a catapult compensated for the weaker strength - better a catapult you have now than an archer you may never finish.

That's as good a guess as anything, but I don't think the reasoning holds. The Ottoman production bonus is the same as the Agoge boost for archers, but cats cost twice as many hammers to start with. For combat strength, Archers are at 25 against units, exactly the same as a cat with the grape shot promotion. 

The Ottomans do get a strength bonus for siege units, but unfortunately for Jester it only works against district defenses.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I wonder if Jester's catapult is an effort to take advantage of the Ottoman's enhanced siege ability? His reasoning may have been that the enhanced production towards a catapult compensated for the weaker strength - better a catapult you have now than an archer you may never finish.

That's as good a guess as anything, but I don't think the reasoning holds. The Ottoman production bonus is the same as the Agoge boost for archers, but cats cost twice as many hammers to start with. For combat strength, Archers are at 25 against units, exactly the same as a cat with the grape shot promotion. 

The Ottomans do get a strength bonus for siege units, but unfortunately for Jester it only works against district defenses.

True, but maybe he got caught out of Agoge. He thought Woden wouldn't attack before building horses, so he may have been running a peacetime government. Or perhaps he misunderstood the Otto strength bonus for siege units, or maybe it's just a panic move. I dunno. Have to wait for Jester to post again to find out what his reasoning was.

More speculation on the Ottoman defense effort, courtesy of Suboptimal's observation:

Turn 81

Looking elsewhere on the map I see this oddity:




Not sure what Jester is trying to do here but I don’t plan on declaring war to capture it.  

Builder's on a stone tile, so perhaps Jester is intending to burn his treasury via tile purchase followed by a stone harvest into more units. He has nothing to upgrade and won't last long enough to do much else with the gold, or the builder. This is probably a more efficient use than just trying to straight purchase a unit, though I haven't done the math to be certain.

[williams482]

More speculation on the Ottoman defense effort, courtesy of Suboptimal's observation:

Turn 81

Looking elsewhere on the map I see this oddity:




Not sure what Jester is trying to do here but I don’t plan on declaring war to capture it.  

Builder's on a stone tile, so perhaps Jester is intending to burn his treasury via tile purchase followed by a stone harvest into more units. He has nothing to upgrade and won't last long enough to do much else with the gold, or the builder. This is probably a more efficient use than just trying to straight purchase a unit, though I haven't done the math to be certain.

Eyeballing chop values for where Jester is on the tree, that's about 2:1 gold to hammers (without Magus or Agoge), which beats the tar out of the 4:1 ratio for outright purchases. He can also use it to rebuild walls if Woden slips up and fails to attack the city for a turn. Good call.

I am puzzled by suboptimal's unwillingness to wait before playing the Eureka Lottery. There's no cost to waiting until he runs out of non-eurecable research to do or he runs up against the end of the era, and waiting could land him boosts he wasn't already guaranteed to land (all Castles needed was a tier 2 government, and he's playing Greece).

[Banzailizard]

So Pin's last post indicated a knight push.  Sub's last post indicated that he thinks this will be a stalemate.  I wonder if both or neither will change course.  

Sub was assuming that Woden would be bogged down with Jester.  That assumption is now gone.  Pin may still want to try to take out Sub but he also risks getting stuck while Woden expands.  

Any bets on who does what?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Good game, Jester. Thanks for being pretty regular with updates.

Critique: I think your big error was delaying expansion too longer. Temple of Artemis is nice to have, but you were last to two cities, and many of your competition was leaping out to 3 or 4 cities by that point. I think MJW is right and waiting for Persia to telegraph an attack was too cute - would have been better to insta-DOW Woden (and I think pin/sub should do the same).

However, your responses upon being attacked seem as solid as one could hope. You did great getting out walls at Edirne, far faster than I expected, and managed to spit out a few units at Istanbul, too, including good creative plays like buying stone to harvest. With the total benefit of hindsight, I wonder if it would have been possible to abandon Edirne to Woden (and, of course, all hope of winning the game), preserving your army, and pulling back to make a more concentrated stand at Istanbul? If you'd had two more archers and two more swords at hte capital, perhaps you could have bogged Persia down and survived as a gadfly?

Banzai: I think Woden's eating of Jester will pull pin and sub away from any hostility towards each other. Pin's a really good player and feels confident in his building abilities, and sub's been on the other side of a 2 vs 1 before. We may see a similar situation to PBEM10 here.

Woden has the advantage of a really defensible gateway at Istanbul. Inca mountain tunnels can mess with that, but it takes builder effort and that still just gets you a 1-tile wide pass to use. It'll be hard for them to attack to break into his area, which means he gets twice the land to build with - and Woden's a really solid builder.

An alternate possibility is that pin decides his only chance is to eat sub, and does his knight thing, but I think that's less likely.

[CFCJesterFool]

Good game, Jester. Thanks for being pretty regular with updates.

Critique: I think your big error was delaying expansion too longer. Temple of Artemis is nice to have, but you were last to two cities, and many of your competition was leaping out to 3 or 4 cities by that point. I think MJW is right and waiting for Persia to telegraph an attack was too cute - would have been better to insta-DOW Woden (and I think pin/sub should do the same). 

The land was pretty terrible (mainly no strategic resources available to settle) so I decided to go tall early. Also, I have a hard time letting go of single player tendencies due to the fact I play Immortal/Deity where you have to defend against the AI warrior rush every game (and then settle more cities). I play SP every day and that makes it hard to switch to MP mindset when I play turns but I'll eventually adjust. Temple of Artemis was a big mistake (fine in SP, unwise in MP) but I had tunnel vision thinking to play the long game. Obviously, not insta-DOWing Woden was a huge blunder, probably the biggest error. The next biggest mistake was choosing Ottomans instead of Nubia.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Everyone seems to be happily building away, but no one seems to have any concrete plan to win the game. 

Pindicator indicated he planned a knight push, which is probably the firmest plan anyone's written down. But he updates sporadically and I haven't seen much from inside the Inca Empire these days. Aggression is probably the right call to capitalize on his science/development lead, but that seems to be rapidly evaporating and neither suboptimal nor Woden is an especially soft target. 

suboptimal has all-but written off his own chances of winning and seems content to play around with micro. I'd love to see him have some kind of plan to correct his disadvantages and maybe take a lead of his own, but I don't see any indications that he's thinking that way. 

Woden played the war with Jester very competently and long-term is probably in the strongest position as his number of cities continues to swell. He has twice the land of the other two, and a defensible position over that long wilderness isthmus. But I was disappointed when his "overall strategy" post was mostly a bunch of build orders - you can see the focus on faith for faith purchases, but what will he purchase? To what end? What victory is he driving for?

All the players are managing their civilizations very well, but I'm a bit distressed over the seeming lack of grand strategy - this game just feels a bit directionless at the moment.