(December 19th, 2022, 00:57)Amicalola Wrote: Will we get an opponent analysis from you? I'm very curious to see how you perceive the traits/civ here, and also the players actually.
Yes, you will. However, I did not expect the game to actually start this fast, so I am very disorganized at the moment, and it will be a short while before Magic Science's Pitboss 69 Opponent Analysis will be ready. I will aim to have it ready before 2023 or before I actually need it to guide my interactions with any opponents, whichever comes first. (no nearby death rush neighbor please ).
Turn 0 and Turn 1 – 4000 BC and 3960 BC Brainstorm ramble rant stream slush thing blah.
On Tiny “Standard” maps, the southernmost Arctic snowy forest is 6 tiles from the northern edge. Therefore, my starting Scout and Settler started either 7 tiles or 8 tiles from the northern edge. The visible land to the north has a narrow shape. These two facts suggest that the land to the north is probably inaccessible by anyone other than me until someone conquers me or researches Optics. I used the flying camera to check this idea; the flying camera supports it. However, I am unfamiliar with the exact appearance of Ice tiles and world edges in the dark fog to the flying camera because neither of those features are in Pitboss 66, so I might be wrong.
I moved my Scout southwest, which revealed nothing interesting, then settled in place, which revealed another Sheep and a Tribal Village. That hut is probably totally secure, so it is not worth moving my Scout back northeast to pop it. Maybe I can wait until Turn 51 to pop it with my capital’s culture. My greedy dream is for there to be another 1 or 2 huts in my private northern land that are so secure they can be considered in dotmapping like a resource. Of the three ways to pop a hut, popping a hut with culture has the highest average research prize, and waiting has the advantage of making some more expensive technologies available (Writing, Iron Working, even Mathematics and Construction!), so it might be worth it. But I am daydreaming; there might not be any more in the north, and it might be better to cash in the prize sooner.
The Scout then moved farther southwest and revealed Gold. His next task is obviously to find food for that Gold.
I do not know what opening moves I should make; I wanted more time. Researching Agriculture then Animal Husbandry sacrifices 2 food for 15 commerce. Worthwhile? Researching Fishing immediately for 1 Crab with little production is probably a bad idea. I guess I should research Bronze Working after Agriculture and Animal Husbandry? And I should build another Scout soon for the north; 1 Scout may be all I need to discover and secure it. I must adjust my expectations for a random natural map. The pace will be slower.
I MUST THINK AND THINK AND THINK AND DETERMINE THE BEST OPENING.
I have no naming theme, sorry. My naming theme should have some clever relationship to the default naming theme (ex. Greek cities Greek deities), because that is cool, but I do not know enough about the Khmer Empire to think of anything. However, I checked out some library books, so I hope that will change by 2023.
Hello! . This is a very long post. Much of it was extracted raw from my Word documents for this Pitboss and others, so it might be a bit ugly and messy. I hope you enjoy it.
EDIT: If you are allowed to do it, and if you have the stomach for multiple long Magic Science posts in a row (perfectly reasonable if not), then you should check the two big posts on page 3 of my PB66 thread. I did an opponent analysis of sorts there too, and this is building on my ideas from there.
PITBOSS 69 OPPONENT ANALYSIS:
Player/Leader/Civilization Combinations:
The Combinations: 1. superdeath: Mansa Musa (FIN/SPI) of Sumeria (Vulture/Ziggurat, The Wheel/Agriculture) 2. pindicator: Pacal II (EXP/FIN) of Mali (Skirmisher/Mint, The Wheel/Mining) 3. BING_XI_LAO + civac2 [???]: Victoria (FIN/IMP) of Carthage (Numidian Cavalry/Cothon, Fishing/Mining) [wow, even random combos has a favored meta, I guess] 4. Gavagai: De Gaulle (CHM/IND) of Rome (Praetorian/Forum, Fishing/Mining) [favorite combo] 5. Magic Science [ME]: Tokugawa (AGG/PRO) of Khmer (Ballista Elephant/Baray, Hunting/Mining) [cool also] 6. Commodore: Saladin (PRO/SPI) of Germany (Assembly Plant/Riesengarde, Hunting/Mining) 7. Naufragar: Montezuma (AGG/SPI) of Spain (Conquistador/Citadel, Fishing/Mysticism) [YOUR HEAD WOULD LOOK GOOD ON THE END OF A POLE] 8. Ginger + Miguelito [Gin-guelito]: Joao II (EXP/IMP) of Celtia (Gallic Swordsman/Dun, Hunting/Mysticism) [is this some kind of ironic punishment?]
Aggregate Data:
Traits: FIN: 3 SPI: 3 AGG: 2 EXP: 2 IMP: 2 PRO:2 CHA: 1 IND: 1 [CHA and IND are both only from Gavagai] CRE: 0 ORG: 0 PHI: 0 [very interesting how 3 whole traits are absent in an 8-player game!]
"Starting Era": "Ancient" = 1-38, "Classical" = 39-51, "Medieval" = 52-present. Just a fun little thing. "Culture", "Survivor", and "Victor": should be obvious. "Conqueror": this is vaguer. It does not mean rather or not you have ever captured a city or even eliminated a player. Basically, it means rather or not you have ever used your power to overrun a wide swathe of the map and paint it a new color of culture. Not just skirmishing and nibbling a bit, and not just piling on. Are you a mover and a shaker that really changes the political geography of the game? I hope you see what I mean and see the value of this category as a simple test characteristic of players, especially once you see which players are labelled "Yes" or "No". This is an important category. "Pick Phase" is mostly empty because it would be a waste of time to think about it for this hyper-random game, and the pick phase has been over for weeks anyway, and I am in a hurry.
Player Profiles: Them
superdeath Superdeath, SD History
Past RB PBs: 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67.
Total: 26 (record!)
Starting Era: Classical
Culture: Realms Beyonder
…
Survivor: Yes
Conqueror: No (surprising! Questionable. I think rushes do not quite count.)
Victor: Yes (Pitboss 48, full diplomacy game)
Notes Pick Phase
• (MORE). Main Phase
• He plays in too many Pitbosses at once. He spreads his attention too thin.
• Morale: Mediocre. However, it seems like it almost doesn’t matter to his performance?
• Mediocre builder. Usually, you can count on him to fall behind for no particular reason, eventually. Eventually.
• Competent warrior, but no more.
• Hugely favors building Stonehenge and making war in the early turns.
• Favors attacking the apparent leader in the later turns.
• Overall, highly aggressive. • [He will not win this game] Tier
Tier: 4/7
Notes Pick Phase
• (MORE). Main Phase
• Ultra-veteran.
• Morale: Poor. Declines almost by default over time. When he is demoralized, he is passive. Much better with a teammate. [no teammate this game] Tier
Tier: 6/7
Notes Pick Phase
• (MORE). Main Phase
• Mediocre builder, so you can count of him to fall behind for no particular reason eventually.
• Mediocre warrior, and not very aggressive.
• [dedlurked by civac2 this game. civac has already logged in several times] Tier
Tier: 2/7
Notes Pick Phase
• (MORE). Main Phase
• Ultra-veteran. Perennial contender.
• Morale: uncertain, since he rarely reports no matter what.
• Very untrustworthy dogpile ally.
• Long-standing rivalry with Commodore.
• Favors building about one of the flagship Wonders (ex. Mids, MoM).
• Highly aggressive. Tier
Tier: 6/7
Notes Pick Phase
• (MORE). Main Phase
•Commodore, I am sorry, but for some reason I am struggling to think of much to say about you. Ultra-veteran. Highly aggressive. Cool guy. . Tier
Tier: 6/7
naufragar
(nauf) History
Past RB PBs: 38, 41 (with dedlurkers), 45 (with teammate), 54, 59, 62, 64
Total: 7
Starting Era: Classical
Culture: Realms Beyonder
…
Survivor: Yes.
Conqueror: Yes.
Victor: No (draw with Amicalola in PB64).
Notes Pick Phase
• He likes to pick leader/civilization combinations that have some zany plan built-in for him to try in-game (ex., Alexander of Japan in RtR, Pericles of Dutch in CtH) [it is unclear if this behavior will exist in this game given the random "pick" method. It is also unclear what zany built-in plan Montezuma of Spain has anyway].
• (MORE). Main Phase
• Morale: Excellent!
• Highly aggressive. High aggression attributable chiefly to two reasons: One, if geopolitics indicates that someone will be his natural enemy later, he will attack them sooner. Two, if geopolitics indicates that his long-term position is bad, he will not bide his time and hope for good luck to help him, he will attack someone.
• On the rare occasions he is either at a loss for what to do or has decided that serious peaceful development is the thing to do, he likes chasing first-to bonuses of all types.
• He edits his reports to be nicer to his opponents. Tier
Tier: 5/7
Ginger* Ginger(), Ginger History
Past RB PBs: 63, 64, 67
Total: 3
Starting Era: Medieval
Culture: Realms Beyonder
…
Survivor: Yes
Conqueror: No (questionable)
Victor: Yes (Pitboss 63)
Notes Pick Phase
• (MORE). Main Phase
• Morale: Good.
• Excellent builder, even if his land is strange and difficult, particularly by way of Great People and Wonders.
• Mediocre warrior, but still reasonably aggressive. He will declare plenty of wars; he just might not win them.
•[Has an unclear team relationship with Miguelito this game, as in PB66. Miguelito has already logged in several times. Miguelito is an excellent player, maybe even Tier 7, so how much he is involved is a big deal] Tier
Tier: 5/7
Player Profiles: Me
Magic Science Magic, MS History Past RB PBs: 40, 45, 66. Total: 3. Culture: Realms Beyonder Starting Era: Classical … Survivor: Yes Conqueror: No Victor: No
Notes Pick Phase • (MORE). Main Phase • Somehow simultaneously green and rusty. • Morale: Excellent! Weak relationship with actual in-game events. • Mediocre warrior, but has never launched a real big offensive campaign, so is partially untested. • Viciously aggressive on the water; always beware of amphibious surprise attacks. • Favors surviving as long as possible, even if that means being in a weak or boring position for a long time. He will play a losing position oddly in service of this goal of having a good long last stand. Tier Tier: 3/7
THOUGHTS
This game is a sequel to PB64. PB64 was a great game and it was characterized by two things. One, it was “hyper-random”: huts, events, randomly selected combinations, and a random natural map. Two, it had a certain player composition: all the players were close enough in skill that no one was food-tier relative to anyone else. No skill gap was large enough for the better player to just do the RB typical thing and develop to Horse Archers / Catapults / Knights / Galleons / Whatever normally before overrunning the worse player mostly on their own. That is crazy! Normally that happens all the time in every game. If you don’t “eat a noob” on schedule then you are screwed unless you can manage something special. “Eating a noob” is like the prerequisite to be a part of the Cool Contender’s Club. I am rambling.
Anyway, in PB64 the usual pattern did not hold. Instead, players focused on conquering and getting ahead in 3 other ways.
One, grinding, shifting, coalition warfare. If you cannot win any of the available 1 vs. 1 conquests, then try to recruit allies and overwhelm them with numbers. But your “allies” are untrustworthy, greedy, short-sighted, and opportunistic wretches and your target is at least as strong as you individually (because again, the skill gap is small so the development level is about even), so this will be tricky. It will take multiples rounds of limited war, and a long time. The target may shift. You may have to weather a round where you are the target before getting the upper hand again. This was the dynamic of the Gavagai vs. Amicalola vs. Naufragar trio (+others around them). Gavagai was eventually defeated by coalition warfare, the complicated combined efforts of 4 players over 100s of turns. An incredible story for the only elimination of the game!
Two, gambit mismatch. The random map contributed to this. Commodore’s land (ha!) led him to try a Colossus colonization Farmer’s Gambit thing, meanwhile Ginger’s land led him to Oracle Machinery for ridiculously early Crossbows. They might not have been that far apart in strength overall, eventually, holistically, but at the moment Ginger had a comparative military advantage, and he COULD HAVE used it to successfully attack Commodore. Ginger made a mistake and offered peace, but I think the example and my point stands.
Three, luck of the land and leader/civ. What is your start like? What is the geography like? How much land is in your reach? How good is the land? Do you have expansion traits to secure more land? Do you have economy traits to do more with less land? If no one ever profited in conquest in coalition warfare or a gambit mismatch, then someone will still win by default, and that person is the one with best starting luck of this kind. However, someone certainly will eventually, so instead the lucky ones just don’t need to profit as much to keep up. They have more leeway, more room for error. However, it still will not be easy for them, because I trust Mjmd and co. to select a good map (though that coinflip thing worries me… . What does it mean???), and I trust my fellow players to dogpile a leader if necessary. For PB64’s players at least, “Player X is strong and frightening” is a reason to ATTACK Player X .
…
But that was all about PB64, and this is PB69, right? . Yes, but again, this is the sequel and the settings are almost exactly the same, so all those ideas still apply. The difference is… the player composition.
Amicalola left, and pindicator joined. They are both skilled players, proven victors, even sharing the same unfortunate problem with morale, so I doubt this switch will change much at all.
However, BING joined, and I did too, and that could be a significant change, because we are clearly worse players than everyone else in this game. We might be worse enough that we are food-tier relative to them, and can be conquered in the RB typical way I described earlier (that exact fate happened to both of use in our most recent game, 65 66), and that would cause all the previous section of analysis to fall apart and not be true. I hope not, because PB64 was a great game, and there is reason to think it could be different for the two of us this time. BING requested a dedlurker, and he got civac, and civac is an excellent player and has already logged in a few times. Also, Realms Beyonders are people too, and people are complicated and can grow and change and improve. For my part, I like to think that I learned a lot from PB66 and have now shaken off the rust of my absence. I doubt I will win, but I think I can survive and avoid being pathetic easy food that warps the whole game around my corpse. . I want to be a significant participant who must ponder those 3 issues/ways I spent all that time considering above.
…
Alright, now for a last “quick”() word on traits. It is tradition to talk about traits at the same time as players, but I think that tradition is arbitrary (though good fun). Traits are just another set game mechanic, and there is no more need to reconsider them at the start of every game along with the players than there is to reevaluate every Wonder or technology or whatever (which is to say, reevaluation could be good because it is good to learn and grow on these topics over time). Just make sure you know by heart which player has which combo (which I do, and you can too if you want), and that is good enough. Especially the tradition of predicting a game-plan based on combo is silly, because the specifics of this map and this game will determine what happens. Says the guy who was conquered by Tokugawa of Rome with Praetorians like 2 months ago . Who could have expected such a thing from that combo choice? The point of this kind of analysis is to inform future predictions, not make any now with so little information. And I do hope that my famous fellow players wrote something pithy about me in this style, because I am vain like that.
But I will still say a word about traits in this context of a hyper-random game with, I hope, no food-tier players. On a natural map, I favor FIN, CHM, and IND. FIN because, much like in real life, water has a temperate, moderating effect. No matter how grim the land is, water will still be there for you to work (), and FIN is great for that (ORG nice too, but secondary). CHM for happiness when you are not guaranteed a good distribution of luxuries, of course. Also for cheap monuments to solve the dotmapping woes inflicted on you by cruel chance. For that reason I previously favored CRE the most, but now in CtH you might as well just be CHM instead and get culture AND happiness. Lastly, IND for terrain-dictated Wonder gambits. Does your harsh natural situation scream for a specific Wonder like the Colossus (see: Commodore PB64), or the Great Lighthouse, or the Pyramids? With IND, you have a much better chance of getting what you need.
In this context, you should think about players’ traits as part of figuring out who has the most luck, who has the most room for error because of that. Who is the Amicalola of PB69? Ginger’s EXP/IMP will be cashed in (visible in the demographics easily) for having more land. Superdeath’s FIN (and SPI) will mean he can have more room for error with less land of worse quality. I really like Gavagai’s CHM/IND (and again, how odd that he is the only one with either trait!), but again, it will be easily visible if IND does anything for him. A bit differently, naufragar’s AGG (and SPI, whatever) will help him in the long, difficult turns of coalition warfare.
I realize now I have said little about my own combination, Tokugawa of Khmer. . I will circle back and deal with that later. I have thought about it some, but it could use more thought, and this post is long enough. Overall, I am perfectly content with it, though. RefSteel be praised!
Holy shit. That was long. It is done. THE END. Thanks for reading.
Now I need to go play my turn and make a very important decision based on my ideas here, which I will report soon. My reports for this game should have a better schedule from here on.
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![[Image: kkIyf2D.png]](https://i.imgur.com/kkIyf2D.png)
).
. This is a very long post. Much of it was extracted raw from my Word documents for this Pitboss and others, so it might be a bit ugly and messy. I hope you enjoy it.
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. What does it mean???), and I trust my fellow players to dogpile a leader if necessary. For PB64’s players at least, “Player X is strong and frightening” is a reason to ATTACK Player X 
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. Yes, but again, this is the sequel and the settings are almost exactly the same, so all those ideas still apply. The difference is… the player composition.
) word on traits. It is tradition to talk about traits at the same time as players, but I think that tradition is arbitrary (though good fun). Traits are just another set game mechanic, and there is no more need to reconsider them at the start of every game along with the players than there is to reevaluate every Wonder or technology or whatever (which is to say, reevaluation could be good because it is good to learn and grow on these topics over time). Just make sure you know by heart which player has which combo (which I do, and you can too if you want), and that is good enough. Especially the tradition of predicting a game-plan based on combo is silly, because the specifics of this map and this game will determine what happens. 
), and FIN is great for that (ORG nice too, but secondary). CHM for happiness when you are not guaranteed a good distribution of luxuries, of course. Also for cheap monuments to solve the dotmapping woes inflicted on you by cruel chance. For that reason I previously favored CRE the most, but now in CtH you might as well just be CHM instead and get culture AND happiness. Lastly, IND for terrain-dictated Wonder gambits. Does your harsh natural situation scream for a specific Wonder like the Colossus (see: Commodore PB64), or the Great Lighthouse, or the Pyramids? With IND, you have a much better chance of getting what you need.