[spoilers] Pindicator Steals the Mapmakers Naming Theme

[scooter]

Oh wait, seeing that post get tacked on the end of the thread made me notice the recent posts. I am limited a little bit on how much detail I can go into here I think. However, it does seem like I should loosely address this now.

This game is over.

I've got Scooter demanding I declare war on Thoth while he lets Commodore take his cities unopposed.  I can't tell if he just doesn't have enough to defend or if he's throwing to Comm.

I responded by demanding scooter's gold.

Happy to sim city this out and then throw against the first one of the two to attack me. Playing for second place I guess ha

Can lurkers ask scooter if he is really trying to defend or if he's just so jaded against Thoth that he's letting Commodore take all his stuff for free?  Because it really looks like the second one is happening.  And it really makes me want to quit playing.

So somebody needs to assure me that I shouldn't be posting in the tech thread right now asking WTF is going on.

So, serious question: what would you have had me do differently from what you saw happen? I can't tell how much visibility you had on all of this, so I have to be careful what I say here. When you get 2v1'd by two players who both have much better armies than you, you only have so many choices, and resulting splits are rarely even. But I'm not sure how much more to explain because I can't quite tell from these posts how much you actually saw.


It is correct to say I was more unhappy with one player than another which influenced decisions. It is not correct to say I was trying to "give" everything to one player at all. I can assure that much I think. Of course, I recognize there's a lot of space between those two statements, so that might not ease all your concerns.

[scooter]

071

After my attack I saw Commodore whip frantically on his half of the turn.  Then I opened up t70 to find a peace offer.




I hadn't really thought about giving him peace, but I wasn't really in any position to attack him seriously.  Then I started thinking about all the things I could do with 10 turns of enforced peace.  5 turns of serfdom laying down more cottages and windmills, followed up by 5 turns of caste & pacifism .... yeah, that is really starting to appeal to me.  Add in the sweetener of seeing Commodore's world map, and I decided to take the easy win.

Did you give any serious thought to trying to 2v1 him with me, or not really? I was crushed when you immediately peaced out. I thought I had him in real trouble, and I was pretty convinced a third party would have cracked him. Or at least that's how it looked to me from my POV at the time.

[pindicator]

So, serious question: what would you have had me do differently from what you saw happen? I can't tell how much visibility you had on all of this, so I have to be careful what I say here. When you get 2v1'd by two players who both have much better armies than you, you only have so many choices, and resulting splits are rarely even. But I'm not sure how much more to explain because I can't quite tell from these posts how much you actually saw.

I honestly don't have enough information to judge, which is why I called out to lurkers. But my feeling on the game is that it's been hopeless for a long time - my Astronomy bulb line excluded. Even now I feel like it's lost, and that frustration has been bubbling out in my posting here lately. My only hope is to get an era ahead in technology which means I need Nationalism & Rifling. Liberalism > Physics would help a lot as well.

Now that you're here, did you have any plans to just Philo-bulb all the way to Physics? I think PHI would have let you. I'm at the point where the next Great Person just costs a little too much, but with PHI ... oh man, why didn't i pick Gandhi?

[pindicator]

Did you give any serious thought to trying to 2v1 him with me, or not really? I was crushed when you immediately peaced out. I thought I had him in real trouble, and I was pretty convinced a third party would have cracked him. Or at least that's how it looked to me from my POV at the time.

I was so worried about Thoth just wiping out Yuri and then continuing along with his army. I severely misjudged how long Yuri would hold out and thought he would just crumble after his capital fell, but my fear was Thoth realizing that I had everything against Commodore and then just continuing around the circle to my army.

I was also playing poorly in that stretch, if I recall right.

Final reason was I wanted the enforced peace to pull off my Pacifism switch.

[scooter]

Now that you're here, did you have any plans to just Philo-bulb all the way to Physics? I think PHI would have let you. I'm at the point where the next Great Person just costs a little too much, but with PHI ... oh man, why didn't i pick Gandhi?

Early in my theory-crafting it definitely crossed my mind. My original plan was to build GLib quite early, which along with PHI and America UB would have meant a steady stream of Scientists with very little effort. Plus the original capital was food rich, so it could support science specialists on top of that. In fact, when the capital was razed, I already had the UB in it generating GPP, and I was going to try to pop a guaranteed Engineer to rush GLib. Instead I had to switch to survival mode for more or less the remainder of the game. So at that point pre-raze that was on my radar as an option, but I was mostly concerned with getting Astro and/or Liberalism and then seeing where that left me. I never felt like I had the luxury of thinking that longterm.


As for more recent plans, my GP generated in my Golden Age were geared towards Chemistry which I think I was on track to get to first. It just felt like the most attainable power spike on the board, as I was economically quite weak other than the Great People. Then Thoth attacked again, so I had to shelve that too despite getting most of the way there. In general the downside of teching Civil Service is it put a bunch of less interesting techs in the way of my Scientist bulbs, so I actively tried to get Merchants during my Golden Age as they were more flexible and just let me tech what I wanted/needed.

[pindicator]

Well I've been thinking on it more and I don't think I'll be trying to lib Physics. It would be very fun to pull off and airships would be valuable, but I think I lose control of the sea if I don't go Chemistry. This means I'll be attempting to pick up Steel and leveraging the xp from the citadel. Then head to Nationalism and Mil Trad.

[Krill]

Except I'm talking about the middle ages / rennaissance eras where small numbers of units are not an issue.

Krill, I'm not sure working third ring tiles would be palatable as a mod change. I get that it's meant to solve the decreased overall production of units from having fewer cities, but I think there still is some space to have maps that nudge players towards this behavior. Though if we could ... I think I'd want to gate working the third ring behind some kind of tech. Maybe Engineering since that is the tech that shrinks the size of the map with 3-move roads. I think movement compared to map & empire size in the early ages is in a good spot.

Civ6 is actually awful in this regard. Having 4- and 5- move land units really moves the problem earlier than it is in Civ4 ... I get that they are balancing around a 2-movememt melee unit, but it still makes the world feel smaller with less room. It's been some time since I played a civ 6 game, however, so perhaps my memory is wildly off

Sorry for not replying earlier, I didn't want to ruin the flow of the thread.

There are only two choices. Expand the size of the cities, or decrease the distances units can travel. The problem is not land unit travel distances, it's naval. The mod used for PB46 was an attempt to resolve that. It appears it was universally hated. I agree that most players would hate the changes to city spacing and size (I would be among them, in general).

Therefore, I think that the RB player base can, in general terms, stop complaining or go fuck itself. Maybe that's a bit harsh, but the general sentiment is there.

[pindicator]

I think the Navigation promotions are a mistake and should be eliminated, or at least gated behind technologies.

People can agree naval movement is problematic without being able to agree on a solution.

[Krill]

I think the Navigation promotions are a mistake and should be eliminated, or at least gated behind technologies.

People can agree naval movement is problematic without being able to agree on a solution.

Gating Nav 1 behind Rep Parts or later, and Nav 2 behind something like Electricity would feel reasonable to me.

I still like the idea of ocean tiles costing 2 movement points though. Mobility becomes worthwhile then, and it's trivial to open that up to naval class units.

[pindicator]

119

Economics is done.




Next turn I'll look at revolting into Free Market, but more importantly: do I risk the galleon chain to get my merchant over to Thoth's capital? Or maybe it's just better to take the "safe" size 15 city from Commodore on our border.