rbd23 - b

[Sirian]

Great job, Sullla! Rushing that cathedral in the first town you captured, after the temple, along with NOT vetoing the cathedral way down south I rushed on my last turn... those put us over the top and saved at least one turn, maybe more.

Congratulations, Team B! Job well done. Whether or not we "win", overall I had a lot of fun here and enjoyed playing with each of you, and would be happy to play on a team with any of you again another time. At this point, I'm rather glad we didn't get One More Bad Roll on my first turn and get wiped out. But that was the nature of the scenerio.


I've now read the other threads, and all three teams reached the same general conclusions about the Germans pretty quickly. Yet only we charged straight into battle with almost immediate war. That certainly put us at more risk, as neither A nor C came as close to disaster as we did. But "Let's Roll" seems to have characterized our team more than theirs, not only on the paths chosen by the team anchors in the first turn, also in terms of the pace of playing the turns, and how much discussion was done.

That's the funniest thing of all to me! I'm getting teased a goodly bit for the length of my posts, but the team I'm on rolls into action zip-zip-zip and we're done with the game, while the others are only halfway through, and BOTH the other teams did more talk talk talk than we did!

Team A seems to be picking up speed. They had a lot of procedural talk, and seemed the least engrossed. That could change as they go, though. I think their group was a little more laid back about the time limits.

Team C... is debating everything at great length! What a hoot, they have repeatedly referred to our post count, but in fact, chronologically, Team A is AHEAD OF them in the game, and we were also at any given point -- and they are wondering over there in C about US, here on Team B, "inflating our post count".



Now that's irony.

I wonder how our completion is going to impact them psychologically. They're over there assuming we're chatting MORE THAN them when nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, sure, we coordinated well, had a couple dot maps, a couple handing-off of objectives player to player on each round, and a couple disagreements or post-turn analysis, but we worked all of that out pretty quickly, while they seem to be running a bit more "by committee" on their overall game plans.

Team C conquered Germany before either A or us, however I think something may have gone differently for them. Did their Germans get a free city out of the goody hut? I'm not sure. Either way, they took Berlin much earlier than we did.

Team A's dotmap looks closer to ours than C's does.

Yet both of them are heading right at the Zulu's and Aztecs. What a fateful turn for our game when the Aztecs paid me 80 gold for 20 turns of peace, then another 106 for Right of Passage, and I instead attacked Russia. We kind of spun our wheels against Russia, but that was more bad luck than anything. With better luck, especially that one big stack that crashed (Sullla's turn?), we might have had a much different game.

Team C is still at 50AD and they got lucky with an early leader, but they are in war with the Zulus much MUCH earlier, and at peace with the Russians. Russia actually has a settler about to settle on their home continent, and they seem intent on building their FP in the Zulu area. It will be curious to see how that goes for them. If they don't get their FP online by 500ish AD, I don't think they'll ever catch up to us. They have opted to skip the Nara location (which LK originally deemed WEED but was persuaded of the wisdom of it later on). Neither of their teams is going to build the FP on the home continent, so we'll see how that goes. Both teams also have waited too late to seize control of the Isle down south. Lots of fascinating little differences. That Isle was never productive for us, but it scored quite a bit and we didn't have to conquer it later. Team C's game may turn on their leader luck. They are taking the most warlike path, yet got a leader SO early they didn't deem an army worthwhile. Will that come back to haunt them? And how much benefit will they get out of Colossus?

I was shocked to look into Team C's thread and find out they're just entering AD times, at the same post count at which we were almost done with the game, in the 1200's. I'm now of the opinion that Team A will finish before them. The C guys are debating everything.

Team C liked the Yokohama spot, too! Amazing what things are similar, and which are completely divergent.

We spent the years 0-1000 building up, then made a final push from 1000 to 1500, winning in 1485. There's a lot of time left for the other teams, in which they could beat us. However, my estimation of how long it would take US to win, right after we finished of Germany, was about 1000-1200, and that turned out to be too optimistic. I was thinking a conquest win would be the best, but the reality of our homelands was that our production was just not good enough -- and this with the FP online rather early for us. If the other teams wait and wait for their FP's, they'll need a leader to rush them, and that's iffy. Heck, it was only spending 2500 cash to pick up about ten extra cav units at the start of my final turn that allowed me to set up the final blows for us, and that was with our FP and all. (GREAT idea, that cav purchase, btw!) As turned out, Nara probably shaved thirty turns off our victory compared to where we would have been without its marvelous trade income. Maybe now I can end all debate in future RBD games about building close to the capital, regardless of how pathetic the land is. "Remember Nara!"

I don't know about you guys, but I'm actually disappointed Team C is not as far along as their post count (relative to ours) led me to believe! We've got to wait on them before we can do another one of these team competition jobbers!


Remember, no posting of anything in the other threads until their games are over. But feel free to talk about them over here in our thread. Ah, the privileges of getting down to business! The slower teams now have to wonder WHAT the heck we did, while we get to watch the rest of their games unfold!


- Sirian

 

[LKendter]

Actually - The massive amount of money we could spend was a big key.

I had never play the tech trailing game like this before.
However, for a small map it worked well. Now on a standard / large map - who knows?

I did learn a lot on how RADICALLY map size effects game play.
Way to use to standard (60% water) / large.

I know I also bought quite a few military units over the game, particulary in the former Zululand - How many muskets did buy my last round?


Consider this - If we didn't have such SUCK luck versus Russia early on - or started infastructure sooner...
Would the game ended even sooner?

 

[Sirian]

Remarkably, "a" and "c" are both at the same point in the game although "c" spends a ton of time discussing everything and never actually playing turns.

Yep, that's a fair description, I think. And people say I'm the verbose one!

"a" keeps trying to research things themselves

That's almost a surprise, with Toecheese3 in there. Anybody who's got Deity experience on the current patch knows the ins and outs of the tech brokering and tech deflation games. Maybe they will change that over soon. I think A is the sleeper team, but don't discount them. They are getting down to some business, finally, after sitting around waiting on one another to figure out who's up the first two weeks.

and "c" has had absurdly good luck - they took out the Germans with ARCHERS? Ummm, yeah, we did NOT have that kind of luck.

No we did not. Definitely not. They also got a leader, while we got two different players in a row spend their whole offensive output banging their heads against some mad Russian's town walls. Oh wait, there weren't any walls! And we STILL LOST!

But them's the breaks. That's why I was ranting and raving about the map from the start of my first turn. All in all, though, I don't think Team C has ended up further ahead, since they have skipped Nara (and seem intent to continue to do so) and also made only one useful city out of the land where we got both Osaka and Tokyo -- AND their second city is landlocked, so it's going to be stuck without commerce boosts from extra coastal tiles, like we had at our first two cities. With smaller economic power at the home capital, and forgoing the FP, their cash situation is not going to compare to what ours became, I don't think, and we rather rushed our way to glory on the back of a strong sea-based economy. We not only had Nara, but Son of Frank was the same, too. A LOT is going to depend on how quickly C gets an FP going in Zululand.

And they used a great leader on the Great Library when only some 5-6 techs remained until Education (?). We seem to be the only ones who really tried to develop the main island, with our FP built manually in former Germany.

Zed is enamored with wonder-building, but I don't think it has sunk in to him yet that the current patch flies along much faster through the tech tree. And Arathorn still values the Great Library more than I do. I liked it for 1.16, but it sucks in both 1.07 and 1.17. It has REALLY helped in LOTR2 (and I was the one to go after it there), but that's literally the only situation I can imagine where it's of large benefit: a no-trade variant. We were buying techs for less than the net income from a single turn, by waiting for last-civ prices, from about 10AD onward.

It will be interesting to see if the excessive whipping and early fighting of "c" at the cost of city infrastructure will produce an earlier conquest/domination win than our game of building until 1000AD, then blitzing with samurai across the whole world.

Indeed.

Arathorn admitted that he took some chances, though. But that is his style, and it works out well. Sometimes. He's of the opinion that ancient warfare under Deity can pay off, while I try that and get results like fortified units in the mountains being slain, stacks (ala the stack attacking Russia) that fail, and my capital almost being taken over.

Next one of these we do, the scenerio should be a less packed so that the odds of the game turning on a few early luck rolls are much lower.


- Sirian

 

[Sirian]

Actually - The massive amount of money we could spend was a big key.

I had never play the tech trailing game like this before.
However, for a small map it worked well. Now on a standard / large map - who knows?

It's not the map size, LK. It's the difficulty level. You are used to playing on Regent, where the AI's have no bonuses and play under the exact same rules as the player.

On Monarch and Emperor, the AI's only need 80% of the resources as the player to achieve the same results. To build a spearman? 20 shields for us, 16 for them. Marketplaces, 100 for us, 80 for them. Tech... X for us, 0.8X for them. Plus they start with free units.

On Deity it's just insane, only 0.6 for them vs 1.0 for the human player. You can't do anything BUT trail them all game long, playing catch up.

The late-civ purchase prices work best in the current patch. They always have worked, but used to be that running first, and brokering the tech around for cash or gpt, worked better. NO LONGER. With the new "Screw You" 1 for 3 trade penalty, it no longer pays to do anything BUT trail the AI's and bide your time until you're ready to make a move.

It works the same on a large map. Check out LOTR1 thread for a screenshot from my single player large map Deity game. That is a game now almost over, with me about to win by conquest, and I dealt with the massive AI advantages by buying into the tech after everyone else had it first, for most of the game.

That strat would NOT work in a Regent game, the AI's would be too slow and sorry to pull far enough ahead to make it worth your while to wait for them. But then... you're so far ahead of them anyway, who cares. It's time for you try to an Emperor contest. You can do it. Yes, some of the things you recommended didn't fit the map size, but some was just getting settled into playing the Regent AI instead of higher levels. You've literally done everything you can on Regent, so maybe time to graduate to Monarch as your standard level, and TRY an Emperor game or two in there somewhere? Just a thought.


Now what I really want to know is... did you also adjust to the ten turn deal by the end? Or was that still chafing at you?


- Sirian

 

[LKendter]

Well the thought of playing just 10 in the BC time frame


20 moves back them feels like a blink.

As for Monarchy games - I have start playing some like this one.

 

[Sirian]

10 turns back then is a blink. Our usual is to have the first player play 30 turns. Sometimes 40 or even 50, in some situations, where we are trying to figure out if the random map we got will fit with our scenerio. Second player usually plays 20, unless the first played 40+.

After the first 50-60 turns, though, the game starts really moving, and even though 10 turns is short, it allows everyone on the team SOME influence in and participation in setting the course the game will take. The first couple rounds ARE quick, but most of us are also playing in several games at once.

I guess your answer is: "It was kinda-sorta OK later on, but I still think it sucks in the early game." Did I read that accurately?


Again, I say this also comes down to difficulty factor. Deity games are IN THE INDUSTRIAL AGE at the start of AD years. The games move faster, and if the first player plays 40 and everyone else plays 20 turns, the last guy in a six-man roster would be handed a game ON HIS FIRST TURN that is in the heart of the midieval age, with the AI's building Copernicus and Magellan!

20 turns works out well for Regent, and not too bad for Monarch, but Emperor and Deity it's really too much, IMHO. The game goes by more quickly, and Emperor is now just about "standard" difficulty for most RBD SG's, so we are geared to that mindset.


- Sirian

 

[Sirian]

Getting back to RBD23B stuff for a moment...

There's a shot of our minimap after the Replay.

 

[Sullla]

The consensus from the group seems to agree with my take on the other games. "c" is on pace to finish the game around the beginning of May with 300-400 posts We might want to consider discussing various moves in the other games here periodically just to keep game on the first page of the forum. The "c" players seem a bit obsessed with the post count in each game and I know it will be killing them wondering what we're discussing

I agree that "a" is the sleeper game to look out for. Their players are less talkative and more down to business - if they get a great leader somewhere along the lines I wouldn't be surprised to see them lay the smack down pretty quickly and have us all wondering how they came out of nowhere. In any case, both games will be fun to watch. That's part of the reason why I play GOTM competitions, so I can see what others did with the same game. I'd encourage those of you who don't compete to try, but understand that for various reasons of time (and in Sirian's case game philosophy) it's not for everyone.

And another thing: when this current crop of games end soon, I want a shot at playing Jaffa's monkey cult game! Let me break out the percentile dice from my days of pen and paper RPGs and let's roll!

EDIT: And kudos for the mention on the cathedral rush - I knew we were close and figured we've got cash, let's speed up the cultural expansion by one turn.

 

[LKendter]

"I also notice that we are only beating Germany in terms of Score"

Boy, that says a lot about "A" currently at 450AD - doesn't it.
Of course, "A" is interesting as they have a tech lead!

@Sirian - You just said the big key -
I agree Emprorer / Diety just would not cut it with 20 turns.
Plus at that level there is ZERO room for mistakes / slop of any kind.

If I need to review every city for potential disorder, swap tiles to get a settler 1 turns early, etc (required I think at emprorer) - 10 turns could be to MUCH!

I don't know if I could play that intense - outside of future GOTM games.

 

[Sirian]

Team A didn't settle the Edo spot. As such, they have scored less territory in the early rounds. They also didn't settle the Isle, like we did, or plant roots early on the big continent, like C did. So yeah, they are lagging in score a bit, and this also means they have to BEAT OUR TIME by a goodly bit, to get enough bonus to overcome our score, which was boosted by stronger score per turn.

Sullla's right, we did focus the most on improving the homeland. It goes beyond the FP. We whipped temples, plus we did capture Berlin... ours is the only game with a second Berlin, and we got that in the BC era and quickly filled in all the land on our continent and grabbed the Isle too, while the other teams turned attention immediately to more opponents, rather than consolidating all their gains from Germany. In fact, we actually Germany whipped decently early, too, just that we gave them 20 more turns of clinging to life in exchange for some techs -- and Team A is doing that, but a bit behind us on the timing of it.

Judging by territory, team C, for all their early conquest of Berlin and their leader, may also be behind us, comparatively, on their territorial and population scoring. Which means they too would not have to just beat our date, but beat it by quite a few turns, to outscore us. They still have a lot of time, though, and boldness + luck vs the Zulus might carry them a long way.


- Sirian


EDIT: One other point. My very early attack of the settler nabbed us two slave workers before 2500BC. My attack vs Russia netted four more slave workers, and I trained a worker almost first thing out of Osaka. We also razed Berlin and Leipzig and got workers from them, and judging by all I've read, I think this is a lot more workers than the other teams had. Our lands were remarkably well developed, if you recall me commenting on that. That's a factor that doesn't show up on the replays: taking out settlers before they settle! Capturing wines now should help Team A. We did about the same thing at the same time in Russia, but could not ship the furs home until Astronomy, which was 1050AD!

 

[Sullla]

I downloaded the "a" game and took a look at it. While they appear to be doing well superficially (conquering the Aztecs for example), they're going to run into some major problems shortly. To put it bluntly, their infrastructure STINKS. It positively reeks. They will NOT be keeping their tech lead much longer, I tell you. Here's a screenie detailing the problem:

Notice something here? NONE OF THESE CITIES HAVE TEMPLES!!! That goes beyond an infrastructure problem into flat-out neglect. In fact, none of these in the picture have any improvements whatsoever in them! They may be able to produce 20 shield spears and archers, but 80 shield samurai? And it's not just these; only the capital and one other city have ANY improvements beyond a barracks and a temple. No libraries, no colosseums, no cathedrals, 1 aqueduct in capitol (and they're still trying to do research?). This game is not going to be blitzing anyone. Sorry team A, I know you'll read this eventually, but you're going to find over the next week that things are going to be getting harder and harder until you pull your economy together. You're at -1 per turn with only 12 in the bank; probably should go back to despotism.

It would be OK if this had been done to gain a military edge over others (well not OK, but understandable) but the military advisor says that they are average compared to Persians and Russians, and WEAK compared to the Zulus. Oh, boy.

Team B has nothing to fear about losing to the "a" team. They pretty much HAVE to get a leader for the FP soon, or their game is going to drag well into the industrial age. But regardless, they're not my sleeper game anymore

 

[Sirian]

That explains the low score, then. Temples expanding pulls in all those scoring coastal and sea tiles. Yet... at that point in the game, I didn't know about those, didn't think they were scoring anything. I urged temples for other reasons. Still... Team B might have had a whole lot less infrastructure but for me whipping a lot of it up. Even got into a debate with LK about the value of whipping granaries or building all coastal towns. I won him over on the latter point, but the former? We agreed on the goals, but not the methods of getting there. I set up the courthouse in Satsuma (and nobody vetoed) then vetoed a market there to set up the FP. We had talked about the FP there, but nobody acted on it. I just got lucky to inherit a lot of shields built up there on one turn and persuade the team to let the FP finish, since by then it had become clear that we weren't going to be rolling over Russia or any other useful second core land regions any time soon.

Team A with just two temples in 450AD with a religious civ? Those guys must not even be pondering the domination option, or building up score along the way, but either thinking fastest-conquest (at any cost) or else... not sure what to do. We'll see how it pans out for them.

That gets back to the age old Sirianism...

"I Urge You To Think Long Term" (TM)

At what point does postponing immediate objectives in favor of growth become a better option than pushing everything you have at the enemy? The whole game is a neverending series of choices between competing priorities. One of the strengths of my own gameplay is the ability to keep several priorities in mind all at once and not neglect any of them. If something has to be put on backburner, it's done because I value it less or think the benefits will be or MAY be better if different priorities are given the resources.

Lonestar did a great job with this on his last turn, where he recognized that the overall victory would come sooner if he dedicated only as much to the Russian front as needed, and started shifting to the Atzec front. That was enormously valuable to saving us ten or more turns, at least. The team on round one (forget who at this moment. Sullla? LK? Steve?) took time out to settle Tokyo and Edo even though we were in the war. That surely delayed our progress against Germany, but long term it was a great move. LK executed settling the Isle even though he thought it was a bit weedy at the time, even as he pressed the attack on Russia. All the way down the line, we did a good job of juggling competing priorities. Overall, we put the most in of the three teams into civ growth: infrastructure, settlers, etc. We also completely skipped the wonder building, until almost the end when we built Newton's. One more point of note: we were the only civ not to trade techs with Germany at the start. That was my doing, as the 3-for-1 bias in there now makes early trades costly, too costly if buying at 2nd-civ prices (only having contact with one neighbor). That's what drove my civ into the ground in my first game on the current patch, on Emperor. There's just NO solution to the trade bias, except to wait for late civ prices and trail the AI's. Either buying or doing your own research, follow what the AI's know. We did our own research too, but at least the first few techs we got, were all the ones the Germans already had, so they came in more quickly.

On my last turn, I never forgot about settling the islands even though there was the war to press. We needed land, and no one tile is worth more than any other for that purpose, so ANY cities anywhere is what we needed. So along with preparing to attack the Aztecs, I had to finish off Russia ASAP (reduce risk of flips and other headaches), and outfit ships, troops and settlers for more land grabs, all the while dealing with some bad luck in the early Aztec war. (I lost about eight cav. Uh... we only had about twelve total, and that's after I rushed about nine or so -- but at least I took out their four main cities in the process).

Team A is not currently showing that kind of balance in their game, if they don't have any temples yet. I'm not sure they got to republic too soon. We whipped some stuff, but really not all that much. 2 at Tokyo, 2 at Steveville, 1 at Satsuma, 1 at Son, 2 at Edo. That's about it, I think. Even with no whippings they could have temples by now if they made them a priority, since corruption is less under republic and they could use the extra cash and lower corruption, over a period of thirty turns or so, to make up the difference vs what they'd have gained staying in despotism to whip whip whip.

Score is such a fickle measurement. It tilts to two things: early finish, and territory-over-time. We continuously juggled both. Team C has temples, I've seen it in their screenshots. But they have fewer cities, too, I think. (Nothing up by where second Berlin ended up in our game, no Nara, only two cities north of Kyoto, nothing down by Son or on the Isle). We'll have to wait and see what their early footholds on the big continent bring for them.


- Sirian


EDIT: A couple of extra points to keep in mind about Team A. They don't plan to put the FP where we did. So all those towns in the east are like Edo was for us: too far away to be more than marginally productive, and they are WISE not to have any buildings in them (except a temple, always good to get a temple, and maybe a harbor for food growth). They may be thinking they need the military units over there to free up their swords for other duty, more than they need the score from the temples and expanded borders.

Lack of courthouses is hurting them by now, but they might not have control of the wines if they had stopped to build courthouses. And who the heck builds courthouses anyway? Zed might, having learned in RBD12 just how bad corruption is on small maps, and he is used to playing small maps. He prefers them. But who on Team A would know? Maybe any of those guys, or... maybe none of them. We'll see. Not good yet if their Edo (equiv to our Tokyo) doesn't have a courthouse by now, though. I think both A and C are underestimating what it will take to win, and thus not thinking far enough ahead, and slowing themselves down, ultimately, by trying to go too fast too quickly. We'll see.

(My new favorite phrase: "We'll see." Going to be saying that one for weeks, while we wait and wait on the others to finish and the next game to start up.)

 

[LKendter]

Lack of temples - OUCH!

That one is very surprising. To me *ONE* culture builiding (temple or library - scientific civ, lower cost) is a mandantory rule of the game. The sooner the better - temples aren't just for claiming tiles either. Wide culture borders are the most powerful defense latter in the game as the can keep the faster units away from your cities.

I agree with Sirian, we never got stuck 100% war focused. 100% military always is a sure file loss. Even I was marching on Konigsberg, had a settler ready to fill the gap. Even during my bad attack Russia turn - I was just about ready to stop - The team realized that wasn't going well.

Team "B" adapted to the situation well - For example, in principle I *HATE* colonies - most will wind up inside your borders later - however, I knew Japan needed Iron now and build one my first turn.

I never saw wacked military moves - crapply luck, but no major combat mistakes.

For the most the part the team cooperated well -
The area with disagrees were mostly minor -
I still would NEVER whip a granary (speed growth adding unhappy problems?)

Consider that DURING war with Germany - I had the settler for SteveVille. At the end of Arizona steves turn 2 more citiies beyond that. The team keep the #1 focus - expand - All members did. I know I rushed setter to keep this going.

Hey - I got a city from Peace treaty extension

 

[Sullla]

Well I hope it doesn't sound like I was being too harsh on the "a" team in the last post; admittedly those regions are not very productive at the moment, but they will NEVER be productive if no improvements are built there. Most of those citites are close enough that with a courthouse under republic they can get 3 or 4 shields and have potential value beyond useless colonial 1/1. And no culture buildings at all? That's just criminal neglect of cities; ALL cities deserve at least one cultural building (except in the Cretan game).

But it's really not just those cities, there's very little built even in their core cities. Kyoto is about the only one with more than 2 improvements, and even it can't get past size 7 because the only happiness improvement is a temple - no cathedral, etc. And how were they planning on researching their own techs if they have 0 libraries and 0 in production? Maybe it will work out for them, but I don't see any of their cities as being able to get more than 10 shields/turn (admittedly not bad) any time soon, and most stuck at no more than 2/3 shields.

"We'll see"

 

[Charis]

zzzz.....

Charis wakes up from a brief nap and time with family. Let's see how team b is doing...

DONE????!!!!





Outstanding game gentlemen!!

Those Samurai really do come around just in time to make this kind of early domination possible. The outcome and the speed of the finale reminds me of rbd2. In fact I haven't seen a Japan game outlast Samurai yet

I'm glad you guys get to read what's going on in the other games now. I do hope that their game end isn't ages off so that when they read the other threads, the happenings early on won't be dim memories.

Go A! Go C!
Charis

 

[chaucer]

Great job guys. I have read a lot of these games and have never seen one done so efficiently.

Sirian - Big gamble on the early war, but that is what I would have done. In fact I played a game as Rome where I had a similar starting point. Went to war with warriors and spears and took bab and egypt. Tough but gambling works.

Your game should stand as the model for team cooperation. Way to go. When disagreements came up you quickly went over them and moved on. As far as I can see there was only one case of bad weed The boat with the seattler. But hey only one case of weed in all of that.

Question: Do galley's always sink without the lighthouse?

 

[Sullla]

I believe that galleys that end their turn in sea or ocean squares have a 50% chance to sink; don't know for sure about that though, it might be higher for ocean. And even with the Great Lighthouse, galleys cannot safely travel ocean squares

 

[Arizona_Steve]

As far as I can see there was only one case of bad weed The boat with the seattler. But hey only one case of weed in all of that.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeehah!!!!!

Steve gets the award

 

[Sullla]

I don't know if the other "b" team members have been following the other games in the last few days, but I would expect most of you have been doing so (at least as time permits). So... any thoughts on what they've been up to recently? No one need respond but I thought I'd post my thoughts at least for anyone who may be lurking in all three threads following the games (you know who you are )

Team "A"
They've reached up to 650AD after Toecheese's last turn and still seem a long way away from victory. They do not have samurai yet either, though they did just research chivalry. For some reason, they are sinking all of their capital's production into wonders despite having the goal of a conquest victory, something I don't fully agree with (choices are: Sun Tzu on an island map? Great Library when already in Middle Ages? ). Their recent leader that got them a Forbidden Palace in the Aztec area should help them out a lot, as long as they don't lose the city because it's undefended! They also did not pay any attention to the 20-turn peace treaty agreement; I find that only a few other players strictly adhere to that, and I have yet to find more than one or two people in the GOTM forum that treat the AI fairly. Oh well, to each his own. In short, they are nowhere near winning and I don't see them as likely to beat the "b" team score barring something unusual happening.

Team "C"
This team is more interesing, because their play style has been so different from our own. They have by their own admission largely ignored a lot of infrastructure in the hopes of an early conquest. They've had *VERY* good luck in the combat results but have used it to full advantage so I can hardly fault them for it. Their timetable of conquest has been quite a bit different, with a much earlier conquest of both Aztecs and Zulus; both almost gone by 850AD. That being said, they still need to invade and conquer both Persia and Russia, because they are not very close to a domination victory at all (just look at how many cities we needed to get it on that screenshot above!) Persia has saltpeter and therefore muskets, and several of their cities are located on hills. Whether or not the "c" team outscores us may be largely determined by their combat results over the next hundred years or so. The odds are not great for samurai against muskets, and their supply lines from Japan to Persia will be pretty long, so this might be more difficult than they anticipate. I hope they get a taste of some unlucky combat SOMEWHERE in this game! Then they still will have to move all those samurai over to Russia, which is a good distance away. Their score should be very close indeed to that turned in by us, and I'm definitely interested to see how they do.

Any other opinions/comments? No need to respond but I'm curious what others think.

 

[Sirian]

C's going to win. No doubt about it in my mind. The winning move was the upgrade of a whole stack of horse to sam, which allowed them to lay into the Aztecs at a point in time which we did not even have chivalry yet. They are now well ahead of us on territory compared to where we were at the time, and they have more lux online too, so from here on out they are scoring more than us, and so the balance there has shifted. They would have to take LONGER than we did to finish for us to win. That's not going to happen.

I didn't even think horse would upgrade to sam, nor did I think to check on it. Sams don't ride horses or have anything to do with them, and right up to the point where I read "and we upgraded our horses" I thought they would be in for a rude surprise. All the shields they sank into colossus were recouped, and then some, by building all those horsies then translating them to sams with cash. We didn't do ANY of that, so our better production didn't mean squat by comparison.

Still... WHY did they have all those horses? It was the ultra early gambit attack against Berlin that succeeded. Arathorn took it out with a couple archers and... a spear? Attacking another spear? Or something like that. Big risks and bigger rewards for the dice rolling their way. They didn't wait for swords to beat down the Germans, didn't HAVE TO wait, didn't face several more centuries of Berlin cranking troops, and Germany never even expanded across the rest of the continent so there was less even for them to conquer. All -- ALL -- because of the successful gambit. So while we had to park our troops around the second Berlin for 20 turns, they picked theirs up, established a beachhead on the big continent, got attacked and got a free great library out of it.

The Colossus was a good move, too. Economically, that one move made up for all of our strong economy. If they had built the Lighthouse as they originally intended, they would not be where they are now. Yet... AGAIN this is a byproduct of the early win at Berlin. They could afford to start a wonder while we were still building troops. By the time I could even look in to the Colossus, Russia already had it built.

Then there was our horrific luck losing a whole stack of veteran swords to a single enemy spearman. Just... wow. If we'd had Team C kind of combat results, we'd have conquered most or all of Russia with the forces we sent up there.

I knew this game would break on such points. I knew it from the fifth turn of the game. What can I say? Team C deserves props for the horse-to-sam strategy and making the most of the early Berlin capture. That even translated into them gaining control of the Isle, because they got the Zulu city down there as a peace concession by taking out the Zulus SO early, didn't have to conquer it down there.

If they had had to build swords instead of all those horse, because (like us) they didn't yet have any access to horses, they could still have gotten as far as they did vs the Zulu with the combat luck they had, but then they'd not have had all those horse in place ready to upgrade. Would probably still have had some, though, but the final results would be closer than I expect they're going to turn out to be.

I took an early risk then lost the fight in the mountains that team C won. They had control of the mountains all along, so never had to face elimination like we did at an early point. If only I had won that mountain fight, archer vs our warrior, we could have taken it to the Germans sooner. That was perhaps mismanagement on my part, but building your strategy around luck will lead to great results sometimes and really bad results others, and I've had too many of the ridiculously bad streaks. I hate losing, so I generally tend to hedge my bets more and make sure I win. I actually didn't do that here, instead embracing the luck factors, and our luck just didn't break as well as another team's. I think that translates to strength in my game, but... it does not translate to best performance in competitions like this one, if there are others taking bigger risks... and pulling them off.

It's unfortunate, but Team C's game is not really comparable to the other teams after the Berlin capture. They made a bold move and got lucky (no other way to put that one) and from then on, they did not have the same circumstances to deal with. They had horses, they had a much weaker, flimsier German enemy to deal with, and as it turns out, they had an open road straight to the earliest stack of samurai.

I suppose it's possible they could bog down now, if they press for a full conquest victory. Attacking Persia? No idea how that would go, but if they get in there before Persia has any knights or much of any longbows, could go quite well for them. The idea that they've gotten all the way to Chemistry out of the Great Library is another luck factor, and so was the leader that got them the Library. I'm not even sure whether or not they have the whole world map yet... may not have any idea they could reach domination without ever facing down Persia. I also don't know how strong Russia's going to be. We beat down Russia in our game, took out their colonies, their ships, their lux city, beat down a lot of their troops and hemmed them in. Just look at Russia's graph and how it petered out in our game. I do know this, though. Team C is much farther along toward domination than we were at that point. If they don't beat us now from this position, it's because they suck.

One more thing. Team A has broken a treaty? Hmm. And what about Team C? I wasn't clear on what they did. They had a bunch of alliances vs the Zulu running. Did they break any of them in that peace deal? If so, then our team would be the only one that played under the rule "no broken deals".

The alliances they formed vs the Zulu were another strong move... and another place where we had BAD luck. In our game, the Aztecs were hamstrung by the early loss of their second city, in like 2000BC, to a Zulu attack. The Aztecs were crippled by that and far too weak to "help us" with any early attacks vs the Zulu. Our Zulu were thus stronger than C's Zulus, and our Aztecs weaker, so we would have had much more dire threat of Zulu's wholly swallowing the Aztecs if we had tried the same moves C played out. So instead I turned us toward Russia... and we all know what happened to our troops in Russia.


And the luck factors fall squarely on smegged's shoudlers. All of this is inherent to the scenerio he set up for us. We threw ourselves at the mercy of Lady Luck and didn't get many breaks. I still had fun playing, once we were past the early gambit zone, but I'd have had more fun if the scenerio was less gambit oriented.

I intend for the next RBD competition SG to play out on at least a standard size map, with objectives that won't leave the game hanging on the outcome of a couple of early combat rolls.


- Sirian