[PB74] Tarkeel and civacs Game of the Year

[Tarkeel]

Indeed, that was a helpful catch-up. Congrats on being the sole survivor of Triangle Murderbowl!

That area was just brutal, but going by the map it looks like Gav and Xist had it even worse (although they were just two). Only 9 tiles between capitals, and although Xist moved his, I think he went inland (2E). I'm actually not even sure where Greenline started, but that would also be close to Gav (but screened from Xist).

Conversely, the smaller continent seems to have sufficient distances between players and room to expand into (Except Hubabl getting stuck in the middle) which made it harder to exploit.

E: Another thing worth noting is that Gav has four civs worth of land (more or less) but only slightly more than double the cities of plemo (35 vs 15).

[Amicalola]

You have been getting the most horrible starts lately, Amicalola. Must have been something heinous in a former life pitboss. 

I got some very good ones in the games before that. It's just my luck evening out, I suppose.

Or maybe it's those ancient burial grounds I went dancing on last year...


On a serious note, it was not just me in this game. There were some ridiculous winners and losers here. I'm not even sure mine is the worst, which is astonishing given how bad it is. Gav, you, me, scooter, Greenline all very rough. Probably more I missed. Contrasted with some very silly strong starts relatively speaking, and this map had some pretty big balance problems.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 177 (1170 AD)
With open borders comes the opportunity to spy on your neighbors:


Those forces are most likely zone defense, and seems a bit light for that duty. Also visible is our latest city of Pandemic Legacy in the wasteland of ruins.


Pandemic Legacy is as the name implies the Legacy version of the popular co-op game Pandemic. The original game sees the players take on roles to stop the spread of four viruses before they go out of control (which can happen in several ways). Legacy was a brand new concept introduced in Risk Legacy that allowed the game to evolve as you played by using secret boxes and stickers.

Pandemic Legacy builds on this formula masterfully, altering the gameplay as you progress through the 12 scheduled campaign sessions. My main criticism of the base game is that as long as the outbreak-timer doesn't hit 8 (resulting in a loss) you can safely ignore some outbreaks if it meant deploying the cure to win the game, but in the Legacy version every city keeps track of how outbreaks it has suffered, and will eventually succumb into chaos if ignored. This is a good way of increasing the difficulty without resorting to increasing the randomness.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 178 (1180 AD)
We finally research Guilds to charge up those workshops. Meanwhile, Commodore triggers a golden age using the free spy from Communism.


Yeah, we're trailing ever so slightly on tech. Current goal is to hard-tech Gunpowder while Kingdom Builder pushes out a scientist, and then use that to bulb most of Chemistry, before researching Col and ORG-powered courthouses. We don't want to unlock Philosophy in the bulb-path, so they have to wait.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 180 (1200 AD)
Last turn, Plemo used our open borders to sneak a GG galleon through to burn one of Commodore's cities:


This turn, both Commodore and Pindi wants us to attack plemo. We thought hard about it, but Commodore signals his intentions by stacking his knights with out northern stack, which I take to mean he wants them to invade together. That might actually work, so we start shuffling northwards while we think of something to signal back. Our chariot takes a look at the defenses:

[Tarkeel]

Turn 190 (1300 AD)
Commodore has been signaling for us to join him in a war against plemo for the last 10 turns, and we haven't exactly been hard to persuade. He even threw in this deal sweetener:


Pindi has been similarly enthusiastic about our adventure. We had to wait for T190 for Commodore's peace treaty to expire though, but in we went in the end:


We hope that we can keep the northern coast cities, but let's see how this pans out. We're also just a few turns away from being able to bulb Chemistry if needed, but we're aiming to hard-tech it and save the scientist for a future golden age. It looks like we might live long enough for that to pan out.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 192 (1320 AD)
Last turn our forces held position to let some straggling pikes catch up, so I delayed reporting until after the decisive battle, which didn't happen.


Plemo's forces are still in the same spot but slightly diminished, and our forces are one tile closer and slightly larger. Commodore also captured Aarhus, and is moving in on Oslo on the south coast. I think this will be plemo's last stand; those troops can wipe one of our stacks but not both, and Commodore has higher quality troops (cannons now) coming in. More concerning is that Pindi also declared war on plemo this turn and is moving his knights into galleons on the north shore.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 193 (1330 AD)
Again, apologies for holding the turn an extra day. Plemo still didn't attack, and instead scrounged up even more forces, presenting us with this:


That's too much for Vodka, swe had to set up a manual sim and test it out. Looks like even with good luck on his side we will prevail on the counter attack, so we decided to move up to the tile S of Lødøse. That marks Haithabu safe for another turn, but also ensures his forces don't get defensive bonuses if they want to attack us. The reinforcements move to 2W of Pandemic and is joined by some forces from Catan which can join with the stack once Lødøse falls. We also did promote some units after screenshots were taken; the pikes got C2 and some elephants got pinch.

Let's roll some dice and bathe in blood.

[Krill]

Tell us more about those sims...

[Tarkeel]

Turn 194 (1340 AD)
Plemo didn't attack, and instead offered Lødøse for peace. All of his forces are initially disappeared, but out sentry spots some of them hiding in Haithabu and the worker spots some more.


Most of the forces can strike at us if we take Lødøse by force, so we bombard the city defenses and capture the city with knights:

C2 Knight vs CG2 Musket, 24.1%: Loss,
C1 Pinch Knight vs CG2 Musket (7.5), 51.0%: Loss
C2 Knight vs CG2 Musket (4.1), 96.9%: Win! City comes with 73g and no buildings, so we burn it.

There's a loose pike south of our stack, which one of the reinforcing axes deal with:
C1 Axe vs C1 Pike (4.9), 95.4%: Flawless win

Tell us more about those sims...

Talk dirty to me? So I know that you know this Krill, but when a situation gets too complicated for mental calculations, you can try to recreate the situation in an offline game. Civac has painstakingly recreated the units involved, guessing at how much XP plemo has available to promote them. We then both took some attempts at playing plemo's side and attacking our forces as best as we could, but try as we might we could wipe his stack in return even without healing with promotions. That was our cue that this was survivable.