[SPOILERS] yuris125 praying to RNGesus

[yuris125]

This is one of my last turns, and I have a bit of time, so as good opportunity as any to write some final thoughts

The map
Totestra was brought up as a potential script to use whenever we discussed playing on a random map. After this game, think I can confidently say, Totestra isn't it. It creates some fun maps to play in single player. For MP, it's miserable

My start




A small island of green surrounded by desert

Pindicator's start




A small belt of green, but nothing but plains and desert to the south

Thoth's start




Jut as bad, but at least he had some islands to expand to

Krill's start




Not amazing, although if you look at the minimap, you can see how much land he was able to claim uncontested NW of the start

Commodore's start




Remember almost all of this riverside grassland was forested as well. Basically, once Commodore defended the keshik rush and established the border with me, it was his game to lose, with Krill realistically the only player who could be in contention

That said, my hyperfocus of expanding south while ignoring my west was probably a mistake. If I claimed that peninsula I ended up fighting Pindicator for, I also would've been able to claim northern islands, and would've been in contention. But if I did that, Pindicator would've been boxed in, and would've had no option but to send keshiks somewhere. Which probably would've been my way. And I never managed to build up good enough force to stop that - partly because of having a hugely spread out empire with potentially dangerous border with Commodore in the south

I would say the main mistake was not doing any early sea scouting. If I knew that peninsula led to so many settlable islands, I would not have given it up as easily. I could've stopped my southern expansion around Nuremberg / Vienna area, thus having a chokepoke as the border with Commodore, and focused on figuring out how to settle the peninsula and the islands in a manner which left me safe from keshiks

The other point I complained about throughout the game is horses. Once Pindicator settled his 3rd city (now known as Caribbean Stud), there were no horses I could claim on the mainland. If we want to be able to play on random maps with absolutely no balancing, we have to figure out a solution, because being locked out of 2-movers in MP is a huge disadvantage

Start acceleration
Strong as Commodore's start was, I think it was helped even more by us playing with advanced start. In a snowball game, accelerated start allows to get the snowball rolling sooner and get ahead sooner, and the more ahead you are, the harder it makes for others to stop you. I think we have to choose between totally random maps and accelerated starts, we can't do both

Naval changes
Overall, I like them. Ocean tiles costing 2 moves makes it a lot more difficult to fork cities - but in the base game, where you can park a naval stack on an ocean tile and fork 4 cities even in the frigates era, it's just unreasonable. It does take getting used to, but I do think it's an improvement for MP. I think Nav 1 being locked behind Education is good as well; I'm not sure if MilTrad is the right place for Nav 2, but since I didn't get there, I'll let others to comment on that. I also do like having the option of using Caravels as inefficient transport if you don't want to research Astro for some reason, and think they're in a good place in RtR (I certainly hate how in base game / CtH they can be used to scout rival's territory, and them having no option to stop it without declaring war). I like privateers countering SotL as well (in fact it made so much sense, I thought it was the case in the base game as well, and was suprised to find it wasn't and there was no SotL counter there). All in all, apart from minor things, I think navy play much better in this version of RtR than in the base game / CtH

My biggest annoyance was workboats not being able to improve ocean seafood the turn borders allowed it to enter the tile - not only is ocean seafood weaker than coastal one, you also have to waste a turn before improving it. I think the simple solution giving workboats mobility would help with this and wouldn't break anything

If there's anything else you would like me to comment on, I'd be happy to

[xist10]

Thanks for reporting.
You had a very difficult stand on the map.

I do have a few questions about your war against Commodore:
Why did you declare ? Did you see a chance for you to win as you declared ?


For me, I saw no chance for you to "win" this and as such, the war would be (an attempt, sadly) at king making.

I don't have something against king making, but in the discussion about gold gifting the argument against that boils down to king making, so I do want to ask.

[yuris125]

Well, technically it was him who declared on me although it probably would not have happened if I reciprocated friendly diplo he was sending, so it was a conscious decision for me to invite this war

The way I saw the situation:
* Commodore the runaway leader. He's at war with the other two contenders, but they don't seem to be making progress
* Thoth, who seemed to be more engaged than Krill (just judging by how long he spent in the game), and who presumably knew my tech situation, sent diplo inviting me to join the war several turns prior
* Commodore's collapse was extremely unlikely, but if there was even a miniscule chance for me to become relevant, Commodore's collapse had to happen
* Forcing Commodore to send forces to attack me could be the catalyst for his collapse

So in summary, opting for the war with Commodore gave me something like 0.01% chance of becoming relevant again, which, while almost non-existent, was better than what I had if I stayed at peace

That was my reasoning

[xist10]

Right, Commodore declared. I forgot that.
This changed the situation a bit.

Anyway, thanks for your reasons.

[Qgqqqqq]

Well played Yuri! You certainly had the toughest start and I agree that Totestra ain't it.

Can I ask if you have any second thoughts on the Pin dogpile? From the outside, it looks like the eventual dominance of Commodore on your continent is a natural consequence of helping him then - acknowledging how he already had a lear before then.

[yuris125]

By the time I had Rifling, I was too far behind Commodore in tech, and Pindicator even further behind. I not longer saw a path to make progress against Commodore, even if we attacked him together - I had no answer to cannons, and didn't think I could tech to cavs fast enough with my land. The only way forward I saw was to get more land, and the only way to get it was from Pindicator

The main reason it didn't work out because I didn't realise how strong Pindicator's fleet was, which meant I couldn't cross the strait and attack his islands

That said, even though I now see that Commodore was still worried about Pindicator and me attacking him together, I think it was more of a worry along the lines of "what can go wrong" than actually being worried about us taking a significant portion of the land from him

If my soul purpose in the game was to stop Commodore's victory, then yes, attacking Pindicator was a mistake. But if I hoped to have even a remote chance of winning myself, I think attacking Pindicator was necessary

[Jabah]

just in case you have not read Krill's thread, he didn't start where his capital is now (for your post comparing starts).

[yuris125]

Yeah I saw the discussion of starts in the lurker thread. Means his start was worse than I thought, I remember thinking when I was scouting him that he did have a lot of land (although it wasn't as uncontested as I thought, there was some competition from Thoth), but man, the quality was so much lower than Commodore's

[Qgqqqqq]

Well, an alternative could be to try to benefit from a dogpile on Comm (perhaps waiting for a third player first).

I don't think your play was clearly incorrect, but it did seem the two moves - hitting Pin, and then being ready to hit Comm - didn't align perfectly. That is the way things can go in a long game though.

[yuris125]

I couldn't afford to wait. Due to lack of horses I didn't have an opening to attack pre-Rifling. By the time I had Rifling, I was already falling way behind everyone except Pindicator in tech, so taking over Pindicator's land as soon as possible was the only way for me to come back to the point where I could at least keep up with Thoth/Krill. Then I could think about joining them in an attack on Commodore

I know now that Commodore was worried about Pindicator and me ganging up on him, but from my perspective, I had no answer to cannons, and Pindicator was even farther behind in tech. I was fairly certain that with cannons Commodore would be able to defend on two fronts. Attacking him would maybe slow him down to the point where Thoth/Krill would catch up to him, but for my own chances of winning, it wouldn't do any good

You say that the two moves didn't align, this is because the motivation behind them was very different, and the latter was a natural consequence of being unsuccessful in the former

* Attack on Pindicator - I'm attacking a neighbour who is behind me in tech, and I see it as the best chance of bringing my city count to a respectable level
* War with Commodore - my position is hopeless, and if I have any chance at all, it is to increase the number of fronts Commodore has to fight on and hope he messes up the multi-front war