[NO 73 PLAYERS] Lurkers Monitoring Variance

[Krill]

Yeah, happiness will be Oxy's issue, and he can only turn food into beakers if he builds libraries (not like they are hard to whip out though) or runs caste, and caste breaks his whips. And he will have to find a way to run up to steel in an impressive time to make it work because cannon, dry docks and SoL are his only hope (forget movement, just put out enough boats that can't be killed and play for naval territory, taking teh hit and then having enough left to win on the counter).

[greenline]

The very island-y setup is a pretty big buff to Civil Service first and a nerf to the military techs. Joao Kremlin whips would be a lot scarier if it's a horse archer horde that can strike directly overland.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, I was wondering why they wanted this map script for this variant. It's already swingy enough with the techs, and the map layout is a whole additional layer of swinginess on top of that based on who you start near, if anyone.

I would indeed like to see a long-term race of Oxy's whips vs Scooter's GLH economy. Although Scooter is probably far enough ahead in naval tech and production that he can start attacking coastal cities before Oxy really ramps up all the way. The wild card there is if Yuris can do enough damage to Scooter to slow him down. (He finally realized that Scooter has elephants for phract defense...)

[Mousey]

It feels like it would have been better to have the start position pick be for relatively balanced (or hidden) starts, but with revealed landmass shape/neighbour access. There probably shouldn't have been a completely isolated player like Oxy's position either.

Still, it's been an entertaining watch anyway!

[Tarkeel]

I think Luddite should be granted this reload, as this is one of the differences between simultaneous and sequential that it's easy to get wrong.

[T-hawk]

I'd agree, particularly since he doesn't need to redo or change anything, just move one additional unit.

[Krill]

If lurkers gave him misinformation and he acted on it, and it is so cheap to fix, it would be worse to keep the mistake. I agree to the reload.

[T-hawk]

It wasn't that. He thought his unmoved unit would heal before his opponent's next turn. This occurs in simultaneous game play (it heals at the turn roll for everyone) but not in sequential (it heals at the start of your own turn.) Since it won't heal, he wanted to move that unit inside a city instead.

[Mjmd]

I like Scooters warrior bait plan.

Now we can see that there is a 2nd axe that can attack into the chariot assuming its moved toward the horse city (which I would have I attacked the warrior), but might not be moved that way / Scooter doesn't know that. Its a high reward play for very little risk. Obviously chance bait isn't taken at all, but still love the play.

[Krill]

He will have a tough time dealing with artillery both as stack defenders and as collateral units. So maybe aim for at least 2-3 when you counter-attack.

I would try to re-plant Dulle Griet as it has good tiles and you want another production queue. It also comes without whip anger and is cheaper as imp. As longs as you can defend it, the slow down in military production is not that big in the medium term. The cost of the settler is half an AT and the granary in the city is another half AT.

So here's the problem. Right now it's only my capital with halfway decent production. That's why I said 1 artillery, it's the one city that could build it anytime soon. If I wait for more than 1 it might be more like 30 turns before any other city can build one. Maybe that's worth it, since the larger numbers will favor the collateral from the arty. But I'm worried he can use those turns to build like 4 musketeers for every 1 unit I build.

Founding Dulle Griet is certainly tempting. The problem is the defense there is a nightmare. He can move from west to east, threatening first Rodman than Dulle Griet, faster than I can shuttle defenders around. I don't see how I can defend that city unless I first have enough units to control the center area north of Big Bertha.

Admittedly it'll be a lot easier to defend once I get an artillery. Maybe it's better to just go turtle mode with artillery and try to defend as long as I can with 5 cities.

Luddite, it's cute that you think the decisions you make now actually matter. They don't.

When you come to do a post mortem, you misplayed from your second and third pick.

You only had to care about tech for your ability to a) build and afford to field AT and Arty outside your territory and b) build a navy.

You knew you were on Big and Small, but you did not know that someone would pick Vikings, only that they could. Just as you had to cover someone picking France and Gunpowder. As nice as fast movers are, Guilds would be the last fast mover tech you would need to research, the rest of the game you were supposed to defend with slowmover stacks. and invincible units rather than sacrifical catapults (which you couldn't build) and flanking.

You should have picked Expansive and something that helped with happiness. Charismatic is bad in base BtS but it opens up easy three pop whips for military which you should have valued highly, or the riskier IMP to try and claim and improve the happy. Silver wasn't enough on its own and unless you wanted to specifically pick start five to be able to last pick on religion first (which you could have done, even though it was the only start choice left to you), Charismatic was always in the discussion. Inca was gone (quite rightly) but Joao or Washington were available and you had the easy choice of Sumeria (ignore CoL, cheap strength 6 units), Egypt (cheap fast 5 strength units and an easy first GA). Washington of Sumeria would probably have been my choice, triple whipping settlers isn't a problem when you know you can grow cities to size 6 without happiness problems.

Fast forward to T21 when you met Cairo and you knew you had to be able to defend a musketeer rush and you should have played for three cities and then prepared to whip an arty and two AT. You needed to consolidate your cities in terms of a front line because he would have equally movement and you can't hold the full front via a zone defense: you give him minimal tiles to fork from, and you ensure that you can obliterate his units if he ever tried to move onto those tiles. Cities for the silver and the dry wheat were the correct choice. I'd have considered a Hunting>Pottery as the tech path for worker>warrior>granary tech path before going to BW and planning to whip the capital hard for two triple whips into settlers after BW landed for slavery.

Simply rushing out to five cities was a foolish choice because you could never hold them.