[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[Zed-F]

Hm, ok. Interesting, Definitely have to hope we can win Colossus and MoM now.

[scooter]

I spy.





I think he’s got another one too, so that’s 3. I’ve got 3 Elephants, so I’m still feeling pretty OK. Curious if these Galleys can pin him down or not. He took the scenic route by Gerri.





He sensibly decided to stay off flat-land. I setup an Axe/Cat on the forest and pulled the Elephant back. If he steps onto the cottage, I think I can kill them, or at least very close, plus I can whip an axe. The axe on the forest has C1, so I don’t think he can really attack the forest. I pulled the Spear away from this area as it’s really not needed here. I’d like to get him out of this conflict still. Now that he sees Galleys heading towards him, I attempted some diplo. I sent 3 offers.

First Offer: straight 10T peace.

Second Offer:




Third Offer: Straight 10T peace.

Can anyone figure out what I’m trying to communicate here? Take a mental guess before opening.

This is an attempt to offer him a 30T NAP. I have demonstrated I have him militarily covered, so this would tell him I won’t just come right back at him when peace expires, and he’s free to try to make something else of his position than suicide into me.

I figure that’s about what I would need to really REX over the waters and fill in a few more land spots while securing important wonders, and then start the march towards Astronomy to try to win the game.

He might have 0 interest in this, hard to say. It may depend on whether or not he views me as the “aggressor” that ruined his game or a rational actor preemptive striking the Phracts that were always coming at me. Yuris is the kind of player that might view it as the latter, which is why I’ve kept some hope here.

Continuing to play zone/vision defense here. I think I’ll hover here in order to get an additional turn of warning.

Side note: I wonder if there’s some logic in grabbing the Music artist and culture bombing the jungle for control. Somewhere around the Chariot would give me more wiggle room on the front, or northwest for Rice/Sugar would allow me to secure another 4-5 “backlines” cities on the west side of the continent that I’m currently hesitant to settle for forking reasons. Just a random thought that crossed my mind. Great People are generally too valuable to use for something like this, but this might be one of those edge cases where it makes sense.


Finally, we got Oxy’s graphs. Let’s take a look at everyone except Cairo.





Dead heat. Almost uncanny, actually. Honestly, this really shows how absurd Bureaucracy is here given that this is Mansa vs Joao. His Hanging Gardens bump actually is visible here, and it’s not nearly as much as I expected honestly.





Unsurprisingly I’ve had a much more tangible lead here on the back of the Bureau hammer bonus, plus improving my capital in a way as to index into it further. However, this gap he’s managed to close quite a bit. This isn’t too shocking, as you’d expect that edge to fade as the game goes on and empires get bigger.





My Elephants lead the pack here, though naturally this is boosted by population. I believe the most recent Yuris spike is 2 more Phracts in addition to 1 Phract a bit before. That’s what makes the most sense to me anyway. Oxy meanwhile is adding token units, but keeping in mind a lot of his power is in population, it’s pretty skeleton. This is the one disadvantage I have right now. I think I could be out to 13 cities right now if I wasn’t dealing with Yuris. This is why I’m eager to get out of it for a bit longer, though I’m skeptical he’ll be willing.





Oxy has improved his tech rate dramatically of late. However, that’s because he turned tech on, while I’ve left mine off. Luddite and Yuris are essentially unable to tech relative to us.






Oh yeah, one more thing. Whipped the Forge in Logan. After pressing end turn.





Man, if only I had a way to get like, roughly 30 more base hammers into Logan next turn. Oh well.

I’m sure nothing unfortunate will happen next turn.

[Zed-F]

Getting a NAP with Yuris would be nice! Unfortunately I don't see what he's going to do other than build up more military. If we could convince him to hit someone else that might be less prepared, that would be cool. But how do we communicate that to him, and would he even see it as sensible to mount a naval expedition? Ultimately I don't see many prospects for him, but what would be the most fun he could have with Phracts, given that there's basically no chance of him doing anything other than trying to wreck someone's game?

If we do get peace, I don't think it means we can turn off our own military spigot, but maybe we can postpone it for a bit to slip in some expansion-oriented builds. We still need to start pressuring Oxy, and peace with Yuris would run out eventually, unless we can get him to refocus elsewhere. If it does come down to a stack clash with Yuris at some point in the future, we will probably need both more WEs and more Cats. I do wonder if Oxy will see our military spike and think he should start paying more attention to defense, or if he will assume we are fully occupied with Yuris --he might be in for a rude shock in the latter case.

Curious what our southern cities are up to, since they haven't been featured much recently. I guess most of our islands are still growing and building basic infrastructure, so probably not much productive coming out of there yet.

Regarding the GNP graph & demos, I don't think Rep beakers show up in them, do they? Oxy has been able to tech consistently better than I would have expected based on demos; I don't really think he is that much behind us overall, apart from not having invested in the religious line. The graph could be a bit deceptive in that sense.

As regards the Colossus build, not much to say that hasn't already been said. The moment of truth is at hand!

[scooter]

Getting a NAP with Yuris would be nice! Unfortunately I don't see what he's going to do other than build up more military. If we could convince him to hit someone else that might be less prepared, that would be cool. But how do we communicate that to him, and would he even see it as sensible to mount a naval expedition? Ultimately I don't see many prospects for him, but what would be the most fun he could have with Phracts, given that there's basically no chance of him doing anything other than trying to wreck someone's game?

Well, if he’s able to build some Galleys, he actually does have a closer neighbor than me.





But that’s probably wishful thinking on my part. That said, Yuris probably has Oxy’s graphs too by now, so it’s not impossible to imagine. But that seems like the kind of shenanigans I would/have tried rather than something Yuris would do. So I’m not getting my hopes up. Honestly I’m mostly just attempting these periodic peace offerings because I want to make clear to him I don’t actually care about wiping him out of the game, and my long-term opponent is Oxy, not him. So he does not need to come at me now because “it’ll only be harder later” because “we both co-exist” is a serious long-term possibility. However, it’s really hard to communicate that, let alone even know if that’s something he would consider if I could talk to him. For all I know he’s wishing me eternal death right now, in which case this is a waste of breath/typing. He just isn’t the mega-grudge type, so I’m going to keep trying. He could send me a spite diplo offer (peace for all my cities or whatever) if he really wanted say “stfu and fight me,” and to this point he hasn’t done that.

Curious what our southern cities are up to, since they haven't been featured much recently. I guess most of our islands are still growing and building basic infrastructure, so probably not much productive coming out of there yet.

Mostly just doing the painful slog that non-Exp/Org island cities do which is grind your way to size 4, whip the Granary, rinse repeat for the Lighthouse. The Yuris conflict has prevented me from sending over worker support much, although there’s really not much by way of useful land tiles for any of these cities anyway. However, I did drop a worker over by Greg. I’m going to have it chop/cottage the Granary/Lighthouse duo there before moving over to help Marcia and potentially whatever city goes north of it for Fish/Stone (not sure if I’ve shown a picture of this yet, my work boat found a Fish in the fog up by the Stone). Realistically all these cities are slow starters which is a weakness they have, but once they have that building duo they’re more or less set to do whatever I’d like.

Regarding the GNP graph & demos, I don't think Rep beakers show up in them, do they? Oxy has been able to tech consistently better than I would have expected based on demos; I don't really think he is that much behind us overall, apart from not having invested in the religious line. The graph could be a bit deceptive in that sense.

I think what’s happened there is he’s been able to ignore all military techs. For example, I know he doesn’t have IW. I’m sure he doesn’t have HBR like I do. Doesn’t have Archery. Surely does not have Construction. Probably skipped all the religious techs. In other words, his isolated start and leader/civ has meant he can be pretty focused on purely economic techs/builds so it’s let him keep pace with me on the economic techs. Even Metal Casting is clever for him because it means he can probably defend his homeland mostly with Triremes and continue skipping real military. So I think I’m probably well ahead of him on raw beakers completed, the lead feels more paper because I’ve teched a bunch of stuff he could reasonably ignore.

[Tarkeel]

Regarding the GNP graph & demos, I don't think Rep beakers show up in them, do they? Oxy has been able to tech consistently better than I would have expected based on demos; I don't really think he is that much behind us overall, apart from not having invested in the religious line. The graph could be a bit deceptive in that sense.

Rep beakers do show up. The only thing that doesn't show is conditional modifiers, like EXP bonus on granary.

[Zed-F]

That’s pretty much what I was thinking for the islands but I was more asking about Roman / Shiv / Tom… albeit Tom is in the same situation as the islands so it’s probably more just the former that could be working on something interesting.

[scooter]

That’s pretty much what I was thinking for the islands but I was more asking about Roman / Shiv / Tom… albeit Tom is in the same situation as the islands so it’s probably more just the former that could be working on something interesting.

Both cities just produced 2 units apiece via whip just now, so I let them regrow for a couple turns, and now they're slow-building a Worker/Settler pair. For Roman it works especially well as the Worker will complete the turn before Galley production decay kicks in, and then it can piddle a couple hammers/turn on the Galley for a few turns, then double whip it when the whip anger drops and overflow into a utility unit. Shiv pretty much just happens to be a place with the foodhammers on hand to slow build a settler in a reasonable time span while letting whip anger decay, plus it's positionally close to the east islands already. This will necessitate the second Galley coming home in a few turns, but that's fine. Tom is like the islands, but with two hooked seafoods it's coming up to speed much faster.

[scooter]

RIP in pieces.





I did get eyes on that city in the fog. There is a consolation prize at least.





More hammers, and Calendar in next turn. I generated some overflow too, so I may store it in a 1T wealth build and then dump it into MoM. Saved the forest as well in case it feels necessary. I'll tweak the tile assignments to grow when I actually play the upcoming turn (this is after pressing enter), and then go back to a hammer config for MoM. I may need to retake the Deer from Roman to really balloon the growth here in an effort to take advantage of my growing happy cap. It's size 11 now, size 12 next turn when Calendar comes in, and then size 13 a few turns after that when the whip anger drops off. Will figure it out later.





One of the Phracts that were on that hill tile disappeared, so I'm guessing it's headed my way too.





I'm prepared. 2 elephants and a spear in the area, and the elephant by Gerri is going to move to a more central location starting next turn when I have the 3rd unit over there. That should allow me to pull the Catapult back too. I'll consider whether to take a shot at those units then.

[scooter]

Couple more things since they were asked.





This is a good demonstration of the Oxy tech situation. The Archery is not him. I think it's Luddite, but I don't remember honestly. Meditation is Luddite, and Iron Working is Yuris. However, his tech rate is now quite legit. Most importantly, because he does not have to defend himself, he can just keep expanding and wonder chasing. This is unfortunate for me. Pyramids/Colossus/HG is quite a good trio, but there are two relevant prizes left in Great Library and MoM. The latter would be the worse of the two for him to land, so my priority is to get that, and then I'll have a decision point.

Worth noting that long-term he will experience a tech fall-off. This map demands Astro, but losing Colossus will be really painful for him, and Pyramids will eventually fall off a bit too. So, keep playing the long game here, basically.





Calendar in next turn, and then a quick 1T detour for Archer, as I want my island cities to all put 1T into archers so they can 1 pop whip them at any time. They're all about to get Stonehenge-powered border pops, which will also help. After that, the big question is whether now is the time or not to make the run at Machinery to smash various heads, or if I want to keep on this awkward half defense half economy path, especially given my belief in my long-term prospects as I just mentioned. I had envisioned using religion/OR more heavily this game, but it's been hard to find the spare hammers for missionaries thus far given the Byzantine situation, plus I keep getting spreads of the wrong religion.


In other foreign news, Luddite kept asking for insane money for OB, so I stopped replying, but lately he's been asking for a luxury in return. So I might offer him the Silk next turn when it comes online. He's been wanting the Gold, but I have the doubler for that, which surely he does not, and I couldn't afford to part with it just yet with various whip angers happening. Well, technically I could right now just fine, but I was worried about committing to 10T without it, not knowing if suddenly I'd have to whip more. But if he'll do Silk-for-OB, that might be a better trade for me while being functionally identical for him. (Plus, I have a second one if I can get it hooked while Yuris hovers around Gerri.)

[Zed-F]

Wow, that’s unfortunate timing! Hopefully he’s not hot on the trail of MoM as well, though I have to think our odds are better there. Definitely seems like we need to find a way to pin Oxy’s ears back and Machinery is on deck… we want to be able to start building an expeditionary force before we look again at the top of the tree.

The problem is it’s going to be hard to do all that and build settlers to attempt to keep up with Oxy in expansion. I guess we’ll figure out where the balance is but it does feel right now like stopping his unfettered snowballing has to be part of the answer.

EDIT: crossposted with this:

After that, the big question is whether now is the time or not to make the run at Machinery to smash various heads, or if I want to keep on this awkward half defense half economy path, especially given my belief in my long-term prospects as I just mentioned.

I think the answer here might partly depend on how Oxy reacts to our power build up as we deal with Yuris and prepare Viking raiders. If he doesn’t react, that suggests we need to hit him harder sooner to punish him for that. If he does slow down to build substantive defenses, then we play the long game.

Right now we think he doesn’t have military techs so it might not take a lot of units on our part to really hurt him. One approach might be to use our mobility to hit him where he isn’t amassing naval defenses, keep harassing him with minimal investment on our part, but forcing him to try to defend everywhere. Another approach might be to try and land a surprise knockout blow to his core cities. The most expensive approach would be to attempt to overwhelm him, so I tend to think that’s something we’d have to work toward over time, since we have a lot of other priorities as well.