[NO PLAYERS] 82nd Airborne Dropping in to Lurk

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, think I would have retreated too. In addition to what you said, just the act of losing cities & whipping pop makes him less of a tall poppy that needs cutting. Then when they do get to the final city and the same situation arises they're less likely to want to be the one to push forward and more likely to take a bribe. Turns ticking away on the Comm-Corn peace treaty would also effect that dilemna in his favour. 

Always a hard place to be though, and the 3 city elimination makes it feel even more hopeless than normal.

[Magic Science]

Cornflakes and Commodore don't have Open Borders with each other. That is why Cornflakes could not see Commodore's stack before the Battle of OlympicMedals.
That is an interesting situation for war allies to be in, though less interesting because the settings don't allow you to capture enemy cities and thereby spread your Culture (which is impassable to your ally).

EDIT: .

[Tarkeel]

First off, sorry for bailing on map-checking, but dipping my toe into dedlurking this one was too tempting. In general, I really liked the map.

Generally, I don't like uneven access to strategic ressources - which includes stone and marble.

True - the game interface says so itself - but neither stone nor marble is required to build any building or unit.  A player without Iron can't build Pikes, Knights, Swords, or X-bows at all.  Without Copper, you need an expensive-at-Classical-game-start tech before you can even find out where a resource is that will let you build the Axes and Spears that others can build as soon as their copper city is down.  Without Coal, you can't effectively industrialize until Plastics and can't build railroads until Fission.  Without Marble ... a small number of buildings that can each be built only once apiece will cost more hammers to build.  I normally like to balance marble, but it's not in the same category as the "real" strat resources to which the players wanted to ensure access here.

FWIW, my approach is to make sure everyone has uncontested stone, becaused of walls. I think everyone knows I like to also gate it behind Sailing by placing it on islands. Marble is a *huge* boost for some key national wonders so it needs to be taken into consideration.

I was hoping they would post a screenshot of the area.




This was a stupid settle spot. Its the "this looks super good" spot. Its also super far forward and not very defensible. Like they can hold it against 1 axe sure, but in the short and medium term its precarious. Especially with super delayed copper. I mean if Yuris just decides to whip a couple axes followed by a couple chariots that is dead.

The correct spot if you wanted to be bold would be the grassland hill NW of the desert (south of worker). You chose creative, make use of it!  Yes it doesn't get corn with THAT city and its weaker, but the culture will basically isolate everything north anyways, so you can pick up later. That spot is two tiles closer to you and two tiles farther from Yuris; also gets settled 1 turn sooner. And mind you even with that spot I would want copper hooked and a spear on the way. He is short on land so I understand the urge to grab, but this seems almost suicidal.

This city was marked at a time we thought Yuris had more land to his east, and as Dreylin said a port would be good to have. But, I think one of our strengths here was reevaluating plans instead of sticking to sunk cost. Mind, this was at a time when the turnpace was still several turns a day.

[yuris125]

Tbf it's still several turns a day

[Tarkeel]

True! I haven't been able to keep track lately, it's moving too fast for my input.

[scooter]

I still don't like that attack out of Scooters. Yes he did damage, but he lost his army and therefore the game. Make them wade through culture. Get more cats. Bring in your knights from the east. Yes the 3rd city is on flatland, but it seems like he knew he would lose the stack on the hill so why not buy more time. There is always a chance both stacks don't advance on your 3rd city.

I probably did not report this clearly enough, but the game was over already at this point. I had no more "knights from the east." There were 3 left over there and they were all redlined, and I had no medics. Everything else in my whole empire was empty, most cities were 3-4 pop with 4-5 whip anger, etc. I was truly pretty tapped out, and they outnumbered me ~2.5 to 1. The issue was once they signed a peace treaty, they both had nothing better to do than to kill me, because they couldn't backstab each other even if they wanted. So the game was over, and all I could really do is follow through on the implicit threat that one attacker would get the bloodier nose.


The other gap that is probably a function of me not reporting well is there was nothing stopping Cornflakes from doing what I was doing to Yuris - which is just run Knights deep into your land and fork cities. When all you've gotta do is find one more raze, the math is super different.

Mind, this was at a time when the turnpace was still several turns a day.

I think this got missed a few times in here. I was playing a turn every couple hours for huge chunks of this game. The advance planning was 0. The culture bomb discussion was amusing because it was obvious you had all thought about it more than me, but by the time you had, 3 more turns were played. I just said "that looks fine" and played my turn. My effort level in this game was like 20% of my usual. That said, that made this a more fun/casual game, so I liked it.

[pindicator]

GG scooter. This format can lead to some pretty epic rise and falls, I hope we see more games like it

[scooter]

GG scooter. This format can lead to some pretty epic rise and falls, I hope we see more games like it

Yeah I don't think I've ever gone from "did I just win the game" to "oh I'm DEAD dead" in approximately four real-life hours before.