[SPOILERS] scooter Reruns Bluey

[scooter]

I've honestly been more engaged in this game than I would have expected, so here's a report made out of the few pictures I have taken over the past week or so.





This war has been very much hot with middling gains. Commodore though is generating a Merchant for Guilds - or at least that feels the most likely. Then it will get really dicey.





Yeah I can see why there was a last-minute push to ban Vikings from the mapmaker. The inner sea shenanigans are a headache that will only get worse as the game goes on. This sign is only accurate for my Mongolian neighbor, of course. (Don't fret, this picture is quite old. Copycat is better protected now.)





One of my only mitigation strategies here is to settle cities away from my neighbors. This city is as far away from all of them as is possible. It's opposite Commodore, and it's on the outer sea rather than inner for Viking reasons. The city kind of sucks, but this trio of Creek/Grandad and newly minted Granny Mobile can make do by farming this river valley and eking out some food surplus that way to be converted into unit whips. Like I said, I need whip queues more than anything. It was really painful settling this city when there were 3-4 more enticing locations, but the only way I can hope to be relevant in this game is to fly under the radar for another 15-20 turns. And by relevant I really only mean "capable of putting a thumb on the scale" rather than actual contending, which would require much longer than 15-20T. It's not much, but it's something. In a bleakly funny sort of way my culture bomb has created a hugely barren DMZ border with Commodore which has stabilized things. Speaking of, I elected not to DOW at all, neither to warpeace nor to fire up a hot war. Ultimately I think it's in my best interest to keep my options open. I think. I don't really know, honestly.


As for the city name:







The events have been very kind to me. It's as if they're trying to win me over.

[Ginger*]

I appreciate your engagement and the continued reporting
With this game having devolved into early chaos, do you believe you have a clear picture of who will benefit most?

[scooter]

I appreciate your engagement and the continued reporting
With this game having devolved into early chaos, do you believe you have a clear picture of who will benefit most?

This is really hard to answer because this game is still really swingy. I think 3 players could win right now. I think my chances are > 0% but < 5%, so maybe you could lump me in, but it would require a LOT of things breaking my way. I do think I'll be able to have some say in who wins, though. The swinginess is because either war could peace out right now and change the game massively, OR one of the defenders could crack.


In general I actually still believe Pindicator is in the best position. He would probably be shocked by me saying that though, as he's had some stuff go wrong for him, and he's a bit prone to premature despondency. (I can relate!) This might shock lurkers too due to his lack of momentum, so I owe an explanation.


Basically, if we just look at the facts here... The largest uncontested stretch of land in the game right now is still the land between him and Yuris. He's the furthest player away from the Viking boats, and he should be able to beat Thoth to Astronomy easily, so I don't think Vikings will concern him TOO much. Commodore right now is limiting his upside, but the second Commodore gets bored and switches targets to me - which make no mistake, will happen - he'll have a massive opening to boom in peace and start cleaning up some of the big first-to bonuses coming his way.


The other thing he's got going for him is just a generally higher ceiling empire. Thoth is probably going to win against Yuris, but his tech looks like it's worse than mine right now, and I have easier bulb access to offset. Commodore looks like he's using all his GP priority on Guilds. That's a good choice, but if Pindicator can fend it off, the seas could part for him in a big way to burst to other big targets. That's a big if, but it's true. Basically I see two paths to a win for him - Commodore changes targets, or he can successfully defend against him for long enough that Commodore's short-term edge dissipates.


That said, if none of those things happen... I guess then I'd like Thoth's position the best? I think he's gonna crack Yuris shortly. If he does it quickly enough, he'll just turn around and swing on me next, and I'm not totally sure if I can get to Guilds myself quickly enough to stop it. I have half a mind to go try to help Yuris in order to flip off Thoth, but I trust Commodore as far as I can throw him, so I'm not sure I can afford to do so. How can I go get some revenge if Commodore is just gonna say thank you very much and slam into me right after. I've spent a couple turns debating declaring on Commodore and offering peace in return for me declaring on Thoth. I keep not doing it because I want to know Pindicator could hold out during that time, and right now I don't know that. Also I'm not sure 10T is long enough to feel great about.


I don't really know if I answered the question well, but there's my rambling attempt at it. Current victory estimates.


Pindicator: 35%
Thoth: 30%
Commodore: 25%
Scooter: 5%
Yuris: 0%


If Pindicator is mentally checking out though, take away 15% from him and give 10% to Commodore and 5% to Thoth.

[scooter]

One important thing that I should state. Of the Big Three in this game, I'd prefer Pindicator to win by a mile. However, actually helping him is not exactly straightforward. I could try to 2v1 Commodore with him right now, but the problem is my army is meh enough that the net effect would just be throwing the game to Thoth, I think. I THINK. I would not be able to make serious gains, I don't think.


And that's important because my Win Preference goes something like Pindicator >>>>> Commodore >> Thoth. So I'm in this very awkward limbo where it feels like the best way to actually "help" Pindicator win is to do everything I can to regain relevancy into the midgame, which is why I'm settling new cities and prioritizing the safest cities possible. But also it feels like I'm missing out on the best opportunity right now if I let Yuris die, because if the game devolved into a 2v2, we'd likely lose. It's tough, but interesting.


I think if this was full diplo the 3 of us would unite, coordinate, and win out. But it's not.

[scooter]

Speaking of my cockroach-like gameplay.






It's a good episode, but also I thought the name fit my current game strategy. The city is, again, quite bad, but it's defensible and the Spice will mean the city pays for itself economically. Also it bridges the gap to a west coast crab city, which I felt somewhat uncomfortable settling yet.





Here's my core. I have 7 cities matching the leaders, but my cities are small and under-developed. Part of this is during my Commodore peace I put a premium on getting Barracks/Stables in every city, so cities contributed to growth snowball much more slowly than ideal. Just trying to make chicken salad.





My tremendous run of events continues. Events are Good Actually, says famous Events Hater.





It's pretty rough. The gaps were quite a bit worse 10T ago, though. So there's that.

[Qgqqqqq]

You spoke around it a lot, but I'd be curious how you arrive at Commodore's win %.

Also, interested in how you evaluate payoff times of settlers in Medieval, given higher cost vs. starting buildings. Intuitively, it feels like a disadvantage to any cities off the coast as they pay for infrastructure they can't use.

[scooter]

You spoke around it a lot, but I'd be curious how you arrive at Commodore's win %.

For Commodore, I guess the best path to winning is convincing one of his neighbors to leave him alone while he conquests the other with 3-4 promo Knights. The bad news is he's pissed both of them off. The good news is one might check out and the other might be too far behind to do much about it. It's a tight needle to thread, but it's certainly not impossible. Basically I think he's well equipped to win a duel, and I think it's up to both players to not allow it to become a duel.

Also, interested in how you evaluate payoff times of settlers in Medieval, given higher cost vs. starting buildings. Intuitively, it feels like a disadvantage to any cities off the coast as they pay for infrastructure they can't use.

Well, the one bright spot of being IMP here is the opportunity cost of building a settler is lowered for me, which is what has allowed me to do it. It was really hard to justify slipping one into the queue given my defense needs, but I've been able to find windows to do it. I also did a lot of deforesting, mostly in the interest of defensive mobility, so that helped.


As for the actual cost of the settlers - it's really not high for what you get. Even for an inland city, 148h is better than 100h settler + 60h Granary just on raw hammers. It gets better when you get to run those 148h through IMP, and it's even better when you get to spend those hammers from a bigger city that can more easily produce them. The net effect is cities pay for themselves way more quickly when the Granary is there already. It's really hard to get 60h into a new city, you either gotta "spend" 72f grinding your way up to size 4 to double whip, or you gotta deposit a chop into it (4 total worker turns usually) + 22f just to whip it down to size 1 and start all over. It feels really good to cut all of that out and just be ready to go, so much so that even a city that takes a minute to get food online will be moving faster.


TL;DR: settlers are way better than normal on Medieval and are IMO underpriced if anything, and that's even ignoring the Lighthouse, which you definitely should not ignore.


As for the coast thing, yeah, ideally I'd be on the coast a lot more right now because the included Lighthouse makes coastal cities straight-up better than inland cities in a lot of cases. The problem is basically Vikings. (Also there's a weird patch of totally absent food that my neighbors don't have west of my capital on the inner ring, which has been a source of frustration I haven't really talked about.) I'm not playing the most efficient game right now in the name of self-preservation.

[scooter]

but the second Commodore gets bored and switches targets to me - which make no mistake, will happen

Aged beautifully. Roughly 2 hours later.





The same turn he bulbed Guilds. Knights are coming my way shortly. I'll be as ready as I can be. I did say this game was swingy, right?



As for my predictions earlier, Pindicator's win rests entirely on how well I can hold up. Fend him off, and it's GG. Get run over and Commodore is the favorite. Anywhere in between, fuzzy. Game on?

[Zed-F]

No pressure! And, good luck!

[scooter]

How to handle Commodore? Well, it's gonna have to be Elephants, obviously. I'm not going to get to Engineering on time. Elephants trade fine enough into Knights - better than anything else I've got. I also will have enough production to sort of hang around with Commodore. He'll have a bit more for sure, but I'll have defender's advantage, so that part is manageable. The problem is going to be the promotions. Specifically, he's going to be able to get Formation on those Knights pretty effortlessly, which matters a great deal. 4 promos won't be hard really, but Formation is the one that matters most. I won't have the same access as he's going to get to me before Theo/Vassalage, so 5xp is only halfway there to Formation. I'm going to have to consider the idea of revolting to Vassalage, but ultimately it probably won't make sense as going 5xp -> 7xp doesn't do much, and also the anarchy + losing Bureau whip bonus doesn't seem worth it. (There's a case for doing it to give me more options for the plan I'm about to explain, FWIW.)

However, there is one thing I can do. Spawn a Great General that can get four 5XP Elephants up to 10XP apiece. I would need a way of getting a Grea-





So ok, I declared war on Thoth. I did it just to finally kill off this axe on the island. Fortunately I won the initial fight, which spawned my GG. I then offered Thoth peace and hoped he understood that 1) I'm literally just saving him some army maintenance and 2) He needs me as upright as possible to deal with Commodore. Whether or not I'll have enough, who knows, but scoring 20 additional XP was a big coup.


He accepted. One funny thing is his greed got the best of him. I don't have a before picture, but the barb city between us - which he has still not captured - has been exposing a worker. He used his woodsmen 2 Sword that was annoying me to capture the worker last turn. He seemingly didn't anticipate/see that they had an Axe?





And the Axe killed his Sword. I think that's what happened anyway? To be fair, I don't know where that Axe came from either. But it was satisfying to see that Sword finally dead as it was a headache to have to account for it constantly.