[SPOILERS] Lurkers Rooting for More Destruction

[Thoth]

@Scooter

I got the sense in PB76 that you didn't like the preplaced uber barbarian cities. And while I think most people expected pre placed barbarian cities here, the double gold with seafood barb citeis in this game are certainly very good. Would be curious on thoughts.

Yeah for sure. Was planning to discuss this a bit, so now seems like a good time. I think the hangup I had about the barb cities in 76 was that they were much stronger cities than anything else available and very quickly available. Also being at the midpoint between players locked people into very zero-sum relationships with neighbors over the sites. I thought the idea was actually fun and liked it to an extent, but I thought this was a calibration issue rather than a fundamental problem.

There were 4 wars fought over the barb cities in 76 so if their purpose was to serve as flashpoints for conflict they worked perfectly.  

2) I raised the cost of capturing them significantly. In order to capture one you have to build a city on the coast, build a Galley, build a bunch of units (+1 Sword compared to 76 - the most cost-efficient base unit there), and then spend a half dozen turns ferrying all those units over 2-by-2. Also hope you do it quickly enough before they pop borders and pick up 20% defenses, likely raising the unit cost again. In 76 all you had to do was build a half dozen swords and walk them over to it on roads. 3 cities fell in under 50T, and the other 2 only lived because Thoth intentionally ignored them. (Worth noting he went on to win the game!)

The barb cities were cheaper for me to take than for anyone else.   C1/CR2 Swords got 21.4ish% odds against the barb Longbow so my expected cost was around 2 swords, 3 on a bad day, 1 on a good day and ~4% of the time it would cost me 0 swords.   In the actual game it wound up costing me 3 swords to take my northern barb city.

 I delayed taking the city on Yuris border as I estimated (correctly) that it would be cheaper to grab his holy city than the barb city and that I had a pretty good shot at his capital in the initial phase of the war. 

I delayed attacking the barb city on our border because I needed a lot of units to take Yuris capital and couldn't spare the units until after I'd broken his defenses.   And then you burnt it down the turn before I was going to take it.

[scooter]

Yeah my point in mentioning you was to point out that I'm not sure the rest of us who actually prioritized them pretty hard really got that much value out of them, while you got a lot of value by simply doing other things with your resources first, trusting those cities weren't going anywhere. They felt like traps to me in retrospect, at least in the early game. I sort of feel they're similarly a little trap-y early on given the valuable things elsewhere on the map. But I guess we'll see.



Also, this group is way too nice to accept a week+ delay over a single turn of misplaced tech.

[Tarkeel]

I think the summer has a lot to do with that acceptance.

[Tarkeel]

Based on where that inca warrior is... Soon. If he goes DIRECTLY for settling that city, i think i can hit it with 2+ chariots by t42/43? (havent mathed it out quite yet) If i whip hard. I still feel like eliminating him with chariots along that road might be the way to go? If his copper is in a awkward spot like mine, he might not have it up and running by the time i got a few chariots to his capital.. Now, i dont WANT to be a rushy butthead this game, but if i spy a settler...

Very slight spoilers from early in PB74:

Even if Superdeath is unable to read the PB74 reports, he should have an inkling of what happened there and know that Dreylin has personal experience defending against a chariot rush. Let's see if Nauf managed to temper that rush somewhat.

[scooter]

I'm moderately surprised to see almost nobody settling for Copper first against Raging Barbs, even if they're a bit dulled here. Obviously some of this is players rather overtly prioritizing snowball and/or barb flip locations, so I do get it.


I'm a little skeptical players will be able to flip the barb cities without a holy city. The barb cities are strong enough that they will build Monuments faster than expected. In my sims I saw a few Monuments built as early as ~T60, though some barb cities can do it faster than others. Once their borders pop, it's going to be nearly impossible to flip them for a very long time, so you're really on the clock to get them flipped.

[Tarkeel]

Dealing with barbarian archers is tough enough with axes, so this could get interesting.

[scooter]

The barbarians are entering player territory with real units a bit earlier than I saw in my sims. I saw almost none prior to T40 and many players untouched until T60. I did suspect it might be different with humans, and it seems like the answer is yes. I think the players that did not settle for a strategic resource will regret it greatly. The tile pillaging that's happening really hurts your early growth curve.

[civac2]

Dog soldiers suck in this setup.

But losing a city in a 7.5% fight is horrible luck.

[scooter]

Let's see if I have this right. Thrawn had:

* An 87% attack that lost
* A 100% defense that resulted in 5 hits against in a row which knocked him below 50hp
* A 92.5% defense that lost

IN A ROW. I think this is the worst barb RNG I've ever seen when you account for impact (loss of capital). Absolutely brutal. It's a shame the Deterministic Barb Combat option in CtH is broken.



In general though I'm extremely amused that every single player saw the first 30T and assumed barbs would be nothing at all, and now nearly everyone is dealing with issues. 3 out of 5 players have already lost an improvement, and one of those 3 lost their capital. A 4th is sitting pretty largely because he has THE early unit to deal with barb Archers.


I did make a conscious choice to not remove Archery from the Barbarians. I know it's somewhat common to remove it. When I saw the random barbs muted by the pre-placed barbs, I decided to allow the Archery tech to stick as is default as a way to ensure they were at least challenging to deal with. I did not expect them to score a capital. They definitely have still been much milder than Raging Barbs usually are. I really think most players have forgotten what Raging Barbs is like.

[scooter]

Dog soldiers suck in this setup.

This is true generally, but they were actually very useful for him here. Keep in mind there is not a single player in the game with Copper hooked right now, so them being resourceless was actually helpful. However, they may have tricked him into attacking out to begin with, so maybe it hurt some.