[SPOILERS]yuris125 looking for inspiration in Pitboss 73

[yuris125]

Yeah when I travel I have to find a monitor to attach to laptop, don't know how we used to live with PCs with just one screen

[yuris125]

Another peace treaty offer from Scooter, which I duly declined for now




Construction confirmed, but you know what.... looks like Scooter hasn't had time to coordinate defences yet. Maybe there's still an opportunity. The axe/spear pair can march towards undefended Gerri, force him put some defenders in there, while next turn I whip two more phracts, who will go to the Connor area, as per the original plan. Maybe it will accomplish something, maybe it won't.... not like I have the ships to send them over to Oxy yet anyway, might as well test Scooter's defences

[yuris125]

Here we see two Scooter's galleys, sailing towards me




Whatever it is on them, whatever his plan with them is, it's bad news. Even if he doesn't disembark, I can't just take my cataphract stack and send to his land - I need to be prepared for whatever he lands. I can't lose another city. But of course, I cannot force him to land, Metal Casting and triremes are many many turns away. And even if he's sailing to Oxy's lands, that's not good news for me, since I want those lands for myself. Although how I would be able to hold overseas land while constantly worrying about Scooter's 4-move galleys, I have no idea

How dares Scooter play well and have plans of his own instead of letting me have my fun with phracts

My current plan is to build 6 phracts, poke around Scooter's land, see if I can accomplish anything, but main priority is not to lose them. Then build 3 galleys, sign peace with Scooter if he's still willing, and see if I can take some of Oxy's holdings. However, looks like this plan is about to be disrupted again, putting me on defensive

At Gerri, my stack encountered a catapult




We'll see what Scooter does here - these units I don't mind losing. I did give the spear Woodsman to increase the chances if it does get attacked

[yuris125]

Still thinking if I want to save up and upgrade the chariot to a phract, or research Metal Casting. On one hand, an extra phract could make the difference. On the other, I definitely need triremes sooner rather than later - Scooter's galleys are so dangerous, and Oxy also has Metal Casting - if I'm attacking him, I need means to protect my boats

[yuris125]

Got 3 peace treaty offers from Scooter upon opening the turn. Something tells me Scooter might be getting annoyed with me not taking it. However, I do believe that at this point, peace would benefit him way more than me. It would give him 10 turns of safety from cataphracts, maybe a possiblity to chase wonders, maybe an opening to himself go after Oxy with his uber-galleys. It would give me.... nothing? An opportunity to resettle cities Scooter razed?

I said before that I don't think there's any way for me to get back into the game peacefully. I have to make gains through war, and Scooter is a natural target. Even if he put a lot of effort into being an unattractive target, I cannot afford to close the option of attacking him for 10 turns

So if he's venting in his thread about me not taking peace.... this is why. It's not revenge and it's not me ruining my own game - I genuinely don't see how peace at this stage would benefit me

[yuris125]

One thing I wish we didn't do is varied start strengths. I feel like that's skewing the game more than the opening tech we picked. The downside of taking an econ-oriented opening tech was supposed to be being vulnerable to people with strong military tech, but Luddite and (to a lesser extent) myself got bogged down by our relatively weak start, which allowed Oxy and (to a lesser extent) Scooter ride their strong starts and get to the point where they can counter our strong units with having a lot more build queues

Of course, start isn't everything, as evident from Mr. Cairo being barely stronger than me despite picking 2nd start and (unlike me) not being held back by starting techs. But I think the power of the start was too game-defining here

Also, I can't help but wonder how many of my issues are caused by relatively weak start (which I couldn't do anything about after getting last pick), how many are due to weak starting techs, and how many are a skill issue (as noted before, I made clear mistakes in letting Scooter slow me down)

[Commodore]

Byzantium's start techs really are brutal. Unfortunately, the only other Guilds civ, Arabia, has techs just as bad.

[Qgqqqqq]

I've said so elsewhere, but as fun as they were at the time, I think the start picking was a real mistake.

[Krill]

Start picking isn't a problem, but I think in hindsight we can all agree the starts should have been far closer in quality, and pehaps other information should have been available (perhaps different information for each start ie one start could know who it neighboured, but only after it was picked).

[Tarkeel]

Honestly start quality sounded like a good idea at the time, but I think we've proven that the tech tree is balanced enough that it wasn't needed.