[PB63] Lurking the night away

[Krill]

And my whole point has been that playing a map where I had to rush BW and rush copper just to survive past turn 50 was not a map I wanted to play.

I'm going to be really obnoxious now and apologise for missing something, and for the copper city location. If the second city was placed on copper, and the decision to play safe was made on T35, then this is what would have happened if SD still decided to rush (note he actually made the decision to rush before we settled 1N on T38).

It would have been possible to land a chop on T38, and then move the first worker. Setting on copper would have allowed a axe build to start on T37 and finish eot40, overflow 1 hammer with growth eot41 and a second copper unit whip T42. The earliest SD could have attacked the city would have been T44. This would have left Worker 2 and all the settler micro to be kept in place.

I think it's really important to keep this in mind, because I think this highlights that everyone who critiqued the Greece pick has no justification based off start techs.

I'll also point out that if Pin had sent the holkans north he would also have eliminated Jack:




Look Ma, no copper (units).

And please note: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid801544

In terms of defence against a holkan rush, SD could get Hunting eot6 and BW eot22, then a holkan could queue upgrade plus a chop for either eot22 or eot23, and just walking one tile per turn could reach the capital T35. Note that this would mean no food techs researched so this is absurd, but I think the only defence is 2, ideally three warriors in the capital and there is no way to defend both the pig and the wheat.

Enjoying the thread.

In terms of defence against a holkan rush, SD could get Hunting eot6 and BW eot22, then a holkan could queue upgrade.

Warriors don't queue-upgrade into Holkans unless the city has access to copper.

Beautiful, thank you. I think this would buy 2 turns?

In otherwords, if SD wanted to rush someone, he could had had a holkan at any players capital by no later than T39.

[Krill]

I've thought about responding to specific posts, but I don't see much point.

For everyone that questioned why a second scout? What use is a warrior against a holkan or a WC?

For everyone questioning Greece? The above post shows that the starting techs were fine, but it was picked in the knowledge that there would be spaced to not get warrior rushed. Turns out that knowledge was wrong.

Sullla, to answer your implied question specifically though: No one else played to defend against the rush. I count 3 improved food resources and 22 worker turns worth of improvements for Mjmd, 18bpt and -5gpt making 28fhpt. We had 3 improved food resources, 22 worker turns worth of improvements, 17bpt and -3gpt making 19fhpt. The difference was the city tiles, which were indefensible in a rush, costing gold.

This is outlandish. What gives lurkers the right to kick someone out of a game in the name of their own good? Are we psychiatrists? (Of course not, because then we'd know diagnosis occurs in therapy and not through extracting meaning through forum posts.) Pind's mental health is his responsibility, and we act arrogantly if we prescribe treatment for internet strangers based on our own feelings.

Pretty sure that I'm the only health professional on the forum with experience in this area.

[Krill]

@pindicator: I definitely missed some things in looking over the map. Was too casual about it. If you do something do it right. Still I found your play somewhat baffling. You were rightly concerned about a war chariot rush but then did not do anything to reduce your exposure to it. Not the tiniest concession. I also kinda doubt that early BW with lower pop settlers/workers would have reduced your growth curve over working such mediocre tile as the sea food.

I think you missed some of our discussion on that very topic.  We changed our plan to delay to size 6 and delay the starting settler specifically because of that chariot rush?  Why delay the settler?  Because we had to settle on copper with city #2.  We had to know where copper was otherwise then we were waiting on a 3rd settler for the copper and ending up even slower.  So it made sense to me to delay the settler to ensure that we were founding city 2 on copper (it's funny that not settling on copper becomes the main criticism later) because that would have been the only way to ensure it was upgraded.

I honestly thought that SD was not going to rush, and I think we discussed that his decision to rush occured before we settled (he did not dry whip holkans). If I thought we were going to be rushed I'd have just saiid settle on copper, turn off tech, and I should have seen the forest chop into axe but I missed it. I've always had to work through all the options and dedicate significant time to a game and I just can't do that now because of work. I know I will always miss stuff now, not much I can do about that.

I think a fair criticism that was never brought up was that we had no plan on how we were going to accumulate 85g to upgrade our warrior into a spear.  Turned out to be a pretty important detail later on.

I don't think it's that fair, the option was always to turn off tech but we had to evaluate everything on T35: who were the threats, where was the copper, how quickly did we need the copper unit. When we made the decision to play how we did around T7-T10, we had no idea where any of the resources were. We had ultimate flexibility, which I think lurkers completely miss the point of. What if the copper had been SE next to the fish? or the horse and copper locations were swapped? We could respond how we needed to. Turns out we made a misjudgement on T35 regarding SD.

Now you can argue this was a bad choice, but don't say that all we did was complain and not do anything about it.  I think those posts were the most frustrating to read in this thread because they clearly were missing the effort that was going in to trying to figure this position out.

I think every lurker that posted here would have died to a holkan rush unless they settled on copper (regardless of the tech path taken), but I would be interested in seeing how poor the demographics would be for settling the second city on copper around T30 with no clam or pig hooked. And if not settling on copper, the tech rate would have been too slow to reach Wheel before SD meanders up with a holkan.

Honestly, I wish I would have followed my gut on turn 7 and just quit the game right there.  Once I saw just how different the map was from my expectation (all the people criticizing Greece seem to be doing so with the benefit of full map details which I did not have), once I saw that first Cornflakes scout so early I should have just bailed and saved everyone the grief.

Tarkeel, I did figure out the map shape around turn 35, thanks to having 2 scouts out.  It's a nice solution to spacing out 9 players, it's just not what I thought I was signing up for.

I don't even think the Greece pick is that unreasonable. I think that this is another example of how poorly balanced the starting techs are: Wheel/Agri have always been too strong, and we value China (I'll just drop this blast form the past to highlight previous thinking: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...1#pid74611 ) With Wheel at 60 base beakers it is something like 15 turns working the oasis just to make up the beaker differential. Yes, we could have picked Egypt, but we thought we had space to not get rushed, and the phalanx rates until knights.

Ever since PB37 though, I've always been critical of triple food tech starts. I have not changed my position. Add in Emperor, and the resourceless holkan is a nightmare to play against because of the number of turns it takes to get a defence in place is extended due to tech cost. But that is a mod issue, not a map issue. Re-roll the starting location and some other poor bastard has to deal with it.

[pindicator]

This is outlandish. What gives lurkers the right to kick someone out of a game in the name of their own good? Are we psychiatrists? (Of course not, because then we'd know diagnosis occurs in therapy and not through extracting meaning through forum posts.) Pind's mental health is his responsibility, and we act arrogantly if we prescribe treatment for internet strangers based on our own feelings.

Pretty sure that I'm the only health professional on the forum with experience in this area.

I have good news on that front: my symptoms have finally gone away and not returned the next day (they would keep getting better and then come back with new ones) and I came up negative on the rapid test I took today.

I still feel light headed if I walk around for more than a couple minutes, but I'm feeling good enough to take my dog back. My parents had taken him for the past week since he was tearing things up in the house with me not walking him.

[Krill]

This is outlandish. What gives lurkers the right to kick someone out of a game in the name of their own good? Are we psychiatrists? (Of course not, because then we'd know diagnosis occurs in therapy and not through extracting meaning through forum posts.) Pind's mental health is his responsibility, and we act arrogantly if we prescribe treatment for internet strangers based on our own feelings.

Pretty sure that I'm the only health professional on the forum with experience in this area.

I have good news on that front: my symptoms have finally gone away and not returned the next day (they would keep getting better and then come back with new ones) and I came up negative on the rapid test I took today.

I still feel light headed if I walk around for more than a couple minutes, but I'm feeling good enough to take my dog back. My parents had taken him for the past week since he was tearing things up in the house with me not walking him.

Good to hear you are doing better, some people are taking a while to fight the infection off. My sister is in the same position as you right now. It was naff when I had Covid in May 2020 and it is still naff today. Working on stamina for some summer hikes in the near future?

[pindicator]

2 weeks was long enough! Especially with isolating. I feel for the people who have to go through it longer.

I want to get back my stamina and get back to running. I was saying that (and being lazy) before I got sick.

[Krill]

I'm just glad your OK and have your dog back. I see lots of walks in your future

[Charriu]

2 weeks was long enough! Especially with isolating. I feel for the people who have to go through it longer.

I want to get back my stamina and get back to running. I was saying that (and being lazy) before I got sick.

Good to hear that you recovered. I too went through the 2 weeks with symptoms. But just think about it that way, it could have been even worse. Even worse then more then 2 weeks.

[Thoth]

2 weeks was long enough! Especially with isolating. I feel for the people who have to go through it longer.

I want to get back my stamina and get back to running. I was saying that (and being lazy) before I got sick.

I hope you recover quickly.

I was out for over 4 weeks back in April 2020. I've still got breathing issues and everything is more tiring than it used to be even now.

[RefSteel]

Wow - I'm really sorry to hear that, Thoth.  I've heard a lot of stories about the long-lasting health effects some people suffer after getting the disease, and they sound awful; I hope you're at least on some kind of slope toward recovery, even if it's been painfully slow....

And pindicator, I'm glad the symptoms have finally gone away for more than a day (and hopefully for good this time)!  Especially since I work with the public, I feel like I've been really lucky so far to avoid this thing (partly lucky just to have an opportunity of getting vaccinated literally the day after I became eligible, and then getting my booster at what turned out in hindsight to be almost the ideal time to help carry me through the Omicron spike) - a lot of people I know have gotten sick in the past few weeks.

On the game:  If I'm remembering correctly, the full map settings (Emperor/Huge!) weren't known until picks had already been made.  The extreme tech costs, plus the first-ring banana forest (a tile you're going to have to work ~constantly to avoid falling behind in the snowball, but that provides no commerce at all) exacerbate the tech cost issues; normally, suboptimal starting techs are something you sometimes accept for something else you love about your civ, but in this case, the costs make it extremely difficult to dig out of a starting tech hole.  I kind of regard San Martin of Greece to be variant territory with this start and these settings ... but first of all, some of the settings (including distance to opposing capitals) weren't known when the pick was made, and second of all, what's wrong with variant play?  This is the Realms Beyond!  I had a lot of fun doing mental sims of this start before I realized how pricey all the techs were, and then had some fun scrapping all of them and starting over again.  Being able to play with it at my leisure without the turn-by-turn time pressure of the game makes it way easier, of course. It's a very awkward start for Greece, though there are some options. For instance, I think Alhazard is right that Workboat first is playable in spite of the fact that your only seafood is second-ring clams! (This is again because of that forest banana:  In effect, growing to 2 on a workboat is like working a 5/1/2 tile from T10!)  I wouldn't have actually done that, because it commits you to a pure farmer's gambit on T0, when you know nothing about your neighbors, and that's a stretch even when you believe the starts are a lot farther apart than they were.