[spoilers] Commodore is strategic in Pitboss 74

[Commodore]

Alert: Should the Barbarians start with Archery?

Otherwise...

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Expansion is looking good! How’s Bing looking? Tasty snack or prickly cactus?

(I don’t get the naming scheme is midway a video game?)

[Zed-F]

I think he's using Avalon Hill boardgames....

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Oh is that where Civilization came from?

[Commodore]

Oh is that where Civilization came from?

Yep, it was originally an Avalon Hill board game. Sid Meier was not...precisely...unauthorized when he made the original computer game, but it's murky. 

Midway is a gimmie name because that tile is exactly midway between us and Bing, who is definitely going a little slow. I have eyes on his copper, so I'm going to keep watching for the hookup.

[Commodore]

Bing is scoping out Midway, putting hammers into a holkan just in case.


Big news is that Tarkeel captured AND KEPT a city off of Dreylin, and the score looks like it was HIS CAPITAL. Ouch.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Man Midway is such a dirty city, totally locks Bing out of the western floodplains and makes any plants he has to the north vulnerable to 2-movers. I definitely would be vigilant about a pair of chopped out axes coming our way in the next 5-10 turns. Of course the good news is that as long as the city holds, Midway becomes a great staging ground for a future invasion.

[Commodore]

Graphs in for Bing and Pin.




Bing's got his copper hooked and that appears to be a Real Unit. I'm going to dump Civilization's granary overflow into an axe to make it a little more solid. Tactics will be in charge of the next settler, either for horsefish or for that forward claim city.

Man Midway is such a dirty city, totally locks Bing out of the western floodplains and makes any plants he has to the north vulnerable to 2-movers. I definitely would be vigilant about a pair of chopped out axes coming our way in the next 5-10 turns. Of course the good news is that as long as the city holds, Midway becomes a great staging ground for a future invasion.

It's probably unacceptable, but it might be accepted anyway. This land is just amazing.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Midway pretty much locks in an early conflict with Bing, but there are worse opponents to go up against in the early game (like me, for example )

Horse archer swarm is tempting to grab the land sooner to have more time to snowball it. OTOH, it may be worth playing to Darius's advantage to tech towards a pivotal military tech before going all in on an invasion. I feel like if we beeline guilds we can get it ~t100 at which point unless we're up against longbows it should be an easy romp. Now the counter to this is Bing imo is likely to force a war before t100, at which point we'll have to max out military production anyway so might as well grab the first strike advantage.

I'm leaning towards aiming to conquer him with cats + HA + swords (they're upgraded in this mod, right?) and trying to go in ~25 turns from now. I haven't logged in to see the map so I could be wrong that Bing and us are destined to war. Also I will admit that my first instinct when faced with a prisoner's dilemma in Civ4 is always to defect as hard as possible, which probably isn't _always_ optimal (tho it is always the most fun )

Your thoughts?

[Commodore]

Midway pretty much locks in an early conflict with Bing, but there are worse opponents to go up against in the early game (like me, for example )

Horse archer swarm is tempting to grab the land sooner to have more time to snowball it. OTOH, it may be worth playing to Darius's advantage to tech towards a pivotal military tech before going all in on an invasion. I feel like if we beeline guilds we can get it ~t100 at which point unless we're up against longbows it should be an easy romp. Now the counter to this is Bing imo is likely to force a war before t100, at which point we'll have to max out military production anyway so might as well grab the first strike advantage.

I'm leaning towards aiming to conquer him with cats + HA + swords (they're upgraded in this mod, right?) and trying to go in ~25 turns from now. I haven't logged in to see the map so I could be wrong that Bing and us are destined to war. Also I will admit that my first instinct when faced with a prisoner's dilemma in Civ4 is always to defect as hard as possible, which probably isn't _always_ optimal (tho it is always the most fun )

Your thoughts?

Unfortunately I think that timeline is a little more aggressive than we can manage; Darius being the usual Darius means the economy ramp-up is kinda slow here. I do think the next techs being Archery->Fishing->HBR makes a lot of sense, then the debate is between Sailing or trying to go Masonry->Monotheism for another swing at religion. I'll take some pictures of the explored areas for long-term planning help this afternoon.