[Spoilers] The More Things Change... - Lurker Thread

[Mardoc]

Leaders are OH/Hitru and Rusten. Rusten's reports are more readable but both are probably worth following.

Superdeath/Dark Savant are about to have a war, Superdeath's swords vs Dark Savant's axe + skirmisher defense (although I think DS still doesn't expect it). I'm not sure it's worth reading their whole threads but I expect they'll be fun over the next month.

Pindicator's been pessimistic about his prospects, so he's already being aggressive toward his non-OH neighbors. I expect he'll be interesting in the future. Most likely to be first to have a naval war with the experimental naval rules, since he's been pushing overseas rather than on his land-based neighbors.

Not much is happening with Krill yet, but I do expect him to conquer his continent somewhere around knights.

Finally Commodore is always worth reading even though not much is happening in his part of the world.

[The Black Sword]

OH's latest update is a very good summary of the game position, though he's mistaken in a few assumptions due to lack of information(such as Krill being choked).

[Juri]

It felt odd to see DS saying nobody has researched Alpha, because I felt like a surprising number of players had researched it compared to what I'd expect. Guess he just got unlucky on positioning.

[Mardoc]

Maybe I can just sell him Silk for a small fortune.  I know people complain about this in Civ (especially 3) all the time, but the AI tends to value lux-for-lux trades fairly, in terms of equal happy generated.  Actually trading lux for lux flat-out between a stronger and a weaker partner strongly favors the former.  But people tend to think in terms of "I get a lux and you get a lux, even trade, right?"  No.  No, it is not.

I can see this reasoning in a small game, but I think DS is very much missing out anyway.  Rusten will get more value from the trade, sure, but that's unavoidable really. DS refusing to trade is of the same degree as if he declared war: he's accepting a large cost to himself to cause a small cost to Rusten, which lets the rest of the field catch up.

Two angles on this: first, the important pieces in negotiation really come down to your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA), and in addition a luxury's value is not a constant thing.

From a BATNA angle: the important fact is that it's not yet a zero-sum game.  Helping yourself and one neighbor puts you ahead compared to the rest of the pack, so there is a strong incentive to come to some deal.  It's true that there's probably some wiggle room, but it's limited by how much effort it would take Rusten to find someone else to trade with (or maybe even just by how much he'd rather help DS than the other person he's already found).  Also - luxury for luxury is more positive-sum than gpt for luxury, which makes it easier to negotiate and find a spot beneficial for both sides.

But I think the bigger headache is that the value of a luxury varies not just with the size of empire, but also with the stability of owning it.  An extra luxury has no value on its own: it's an option to invest.  I mean that literally: it gives you the chance to grow population or whip more, but in both cases you have to spend first before you get your benefits.  If the luxury is cancelled, then you have invested but can't get the return and you're negative.  If you keep the luxury long enough, you get a lot of value from it.

Thus, you want to set up the luxury deal in a way you expect to be stable.  Partly this is choice of partner, but an equally important factor is to give something that the trade partner won't want to cancel either - and a luxury is the best fit.  Gpt for luxury gets the incentives wrong: your partner will want to cancel and renegotiate, which increases the value for them and decreases the value for you - although it's still better than other options, like a lump sum for luxury.

DS has both factors leaning against him.  Preferring gpt to a luxury decreases the value of the trade to Rusten (he's got to give up on tech rate, not just extra copies) and it also signals that DS is not thinking of being a long term trade partner.  Which in turn makes Rusten's BATNA much closer: the Negotiated Agreement value is low, which makes the Best Alternative easier to tolerate.  Being in the stronger position, it's more likely he can find an alternative, too: conquest or finding alternative trade partners or religion or happiness buildings are all more feasible when you've got resources to spend.

[darrelljs]

DS was also planning to invade Rusten before he himself was invaded. Feels like he doesn't think he can win, but he can influence the outcome only by hurting a leader.

Darrell

[naufragar]

Did Dark Savant mention his time frame for invading Rusten? He nabbed the Mausoleum recently, right?

If Superdeath can eat a large chunk of DS, it'll give a definite answer to those of us who wondered about Superdeath's early Lighthouse play. No idea how much power each side has on hand, but from DS's last message, it sounds like he might be caught flatfooted.

[Thoth]

Limited wars are great in theory. But they do require your opponent to cooperate. Which is by no means guaranteed. Especially after you raze two of his cities.

"Never do a man a small injury"

[naufragar]

Eh, those two were always going to be unfriendly, right? They are each other's only avenue of land-based expansion. In fact, I'm more of the opinion that Superdeath hasn't gone far enough and needs to hit DS as hard as possible.

But two players' irreconcilably different conceptions of what makes a fair border is a tale as old as time and probably happens in every single game we see. This quote is from the turn before DS founds, when SD sees the settler:

Planting there screws with my settlings plans enough that ive decided to actually use my combo. The city will burn...

...Its not even that great of a plant, he seems to just want to plant a hill city in return? Either way im fine with burning it and then being friends the rest of the game ( that he has to live  )

This pic is from the turn it's founded.


Note that Dark Savant's plant shares an improved food resource with an already established city, while Superdeath's city is far, far away from the rest of his empire and even after popping borders will barely have any connection to his earlier cities. Plus SD's city was founded after DS's Accra and competes for tiles with it. I get that Superdeath doesn't want his dotmapped messed with, but if I were Dark Savant, I'd have no idea that my city, which overlaps its BFC with another city of mine while stealing no resources from my opponent's (very) forward plant, was offensive.

Don't mean to pile on, but that picture has stuck with me.

[Zed-F]

Superdeath talks and plays greedy in his threads. Well greed can be good in Civ. He just never seems to realize that other players have just as much right and incentive to be greedy.

[Coin]

Yep, Superdeath is blind to his own faults. A very human thing to be.
I would be very interested in knowing the distance from their respective capital. That would give an insight into who’s pushing their border furthest.