Civac and the Last Pitboss

[klops]

catching up late here... *sigh* old StarCraft brings back at least as many good memories as old Civ

Now, where do I find the time to watch all those matches?

[civac2]

Empire development is proceeding exactly as planned. Switch to Christianity, Hereditary Rule and Organised Religion in GA, spreading Christianity, making Apo and so forth except I made several irksome micro mistakes.





During the stagnation period prior to HR we made a couple settler to avoid growing into unhappiness. One settled the filler city at the oasis and cattle, the other is standing by until Larva sends a workboat. I'm currently considering using it and the neutral road to settle below xist's stack on the jungle hill but it would be very telegraphed. xist has so far not planted his city though he should have been able to at least as of a turn ago, maybe even two.

It seems we are only allowed three Christian missionaries at a time. Wasn't the limit 4 on large maps? Or is the limit for all religions? There is also a Jewish missionary in training.



Another thing I don't understand is why only Last has a foreign trade route. We have open borders with everyone. SD and mjmd have settled their fur islands as well. They have fur in the trading screen. We should have at least two more international trade routes with a yield of 3.

Last has to leave some of the cottages lying fallow unfortunately. Hammers are more important right now. We are chopping three of the forests as well leaving one for Sankore. Initially, I planned to chop all four which would have gained a turn. However, we will barely have any Apo buildings done either way and losing the wonder is very improbable. Theoretically, mjmd could make an engineer with his Gardens and American library.



This area is interesting. Is it possible to settle inside barb territory? I assume not?

[civac2]

During the Kespa era Light was an up and coming player for MBCGame Hero. At the time he was known for his exceptional multitasking which earned him the nickname Dark Sorcerer. He had decent success in ProLeague with MBCGame Hero but never made it to the top in any of the individual leagues. It didn't help that he found himself placed in truly horrifying groups of death several time featuring players such as Flash, savior and Nada.

After his military service Light returned to the post-Kespa Broodwar scene. This time he broke through in individual leagues, winning season 4 of KSL and season 13 of ASL. His play style changed to favouring straight macro battles where he would grind down opponents with nigh perfect macro, decision making and army control. Some (read Artosis) contend that he would have won even more if he occasionally mixed in some cheesy or off-beat play.

During his victorious run in ASL 13 Light defeated Bisu in the semi-finals



and swept Rain in the finals.

The following video is an analysis of Light's somewhat famous group stage game against Ruin where he came back from a hopeless position.

[civac2]

catching up late here... *sigh* old StarCraft brings back at least as many good memories as old Civ

Now, where do I find the time to watch all those matches?

I am basically just watching Artosis' cast every day unless ASL is on.

[BaII]

It seems we are only allowed three Christian missionaries at a time. Wasn't the limit 4 on large maps? Or is the limit for all religions? There is also a Jewish missionary in training.

It's actually 3 which seems like an oversight. I recall Sullla running into this playing the Boreal map script with large settings in one of his runs.

During the stagnation period prior to HR we made a couple settler to avoid growing into unhappiness. One settled the filler city at the oasis and cattle, the other is standing by until Larva sends a workboat. I'm currently considering using it and the neutral road to settle below xist's stack on the jungle hill but it would be very telegraphed. xist has so far not planted his city though he should have been able to at least as of a turn ago, maybe even two.

Is he waiting for us to contest the site before settling? Maybe he wants to settle that city as late as possible because of maintenance costs but still wants the city site for later? Which is fine with us I think because the later the city comes up the longer it'll take before it builds up culture. I almost wonder if it's better for us if he settles it because it seems like such a liability and even if we can't do anything about it now we might be able to punish it later with some tactics. Still annoying if he plants it though so hopefully changing his mind.

This area is interesting. Is it possible to settle inside barb territory? I assume not?

Just checked and we're not allowed unfortunately.

catching up late here... *sigh* old StarCraft brings back at least as many good memories as old Civ

Now, where do I find the time to watch all those matches?

I am basically just watching Artosis' cast every day unless ASL is on.

Second that, it's nice to watch his casts or if you're backed up a bit on content always fun to binge it.

For the next player I'll be choosing BoxerR

He's one of the legendary early Terran players to have taken the scene. While he made major innovations within the game itself such as promoting Terran dropship play at a time when dropships were considered very weak. His first major win was at Hanbitsoft OSL back all the way in 2001, a full 25 years ago. Not only was he an influential figure in game but also outside of it similar to the way people in South Korea would be able to recongize Faker.

But for me nothing really compared to when I was roughly 10 years old first learning about the horrors wonders of the internet and YouTube. I remember searching professional Starcraft games and stumbling into a game between him and JulyZerg. I became entranced watching his play and it made me want to play SC professionally. And while that never happened I did manage to play for my college League team for a little bit.

I haven't been able to find that game since but here's a more recent game casted by Artosis on his YouTube.



And while he's definitly not as nearly as good nowadays it's always pleasure to see him back in the scene.

[civac2]

Our third prophet completes the shrine.



Other than our 15 mjmd also has a Christian city.

I have done a detour to Currency. Due to the extra income getting Paper takes barely any longer. We could have gotten Currency 4 turns earlier but I was too lazy to calculate the research rate out of GA (counting the tiles with GA bonus) and estimating the research duration for CoL -> CS -> Paper so I was not aware of how big the impact of Currency would be. Or rather, I didn't realise we were only at <60 gpt after the end of the GA.



This is with Currency and at 0% research. It seems every other Civ already has CoL, so we can barely 1t it. Presumably some players will aready have CS as well. Very nice.

Meanwhile, Mjmd has grabbed Mausoleum and Colossus.



With those and his generally strong economic position he should be in the lead. We are likely second. Tarkeel got Great Lighthouse and Pyramids which each gave us a payout of failgold.

Most cities are still busy constructing their religious buildings. In Last preparations are starting for Sankore.





xist has chopped the only forest into a monument in his pink dot city.



It won't help him. Boxer gets the second culture expansion in two turns. xist can use the sugar to the west to grow the city but he is not going to get either the corn or bananas without a culture bomb.

Likewise, our culture is contesting tiles of SD, although not intentionally in this case.



We stole the sheep despite SD's CRE trait. Bisu also will expand its culture to the next ring shortly.

[civac2]

People following the city name choices will have noticed that they are rather Protoss and Terran heavy. There aren't that many Zerg players that I like and Mouseferatu (BaII) has not bailed me out in that respect. There is however a Zerg player that forced grudging respect from me back in the day by beating up a bunch of my favourite players. sAviOr, the forbidden one, the Antizerg*. The difference between his reign of terror and that of, say, SoulKey is that Kespa tried to stop him by selecting a set of disgustingly Terran-favoured maps in the hope that NaDa or some other high profile Terran could defeat him. The only other player which got such treatment is Flash. And unlike the Flash case it didn't work!

RealmsBeyond won't allow me to embed a fourth video. So here, have a link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Kpk-PNHuk

sAviOr defeated Nada 3-1 in the finals of Shinhan Bank OSL season 3 cementing his place as the only non-Terran bonjwa. One factor that allowed sAviOr to win so much was his innovation in the TvZ matchup. Zerg traditionally had been an underdog against Terran. sAviOr's approach of rushing to hive and defilers with Dark Swarm after the usual mutalisk harrass and lurker switch was the key to giving Zergs a better chance against Terran. Once a Zerg had defilers they were advantaged against the common infantry based playstyle. sAviOr's insight was that Zerg should get these units as quickly as reasonably possible accepting some sacrifices in terms of economy and army size. Moreover, sAviOr was a gifted tactician and it was his tactics rather than mechanical skill that elevated him above his peers.

https://tl.net/forum/final-edits/226236-...eld-part-1
https://tl.net/forum/final-edits/405029-...eld-part-2

The name of Tl.net's sAviOr retrospective is telling.

* So what is the problem? Shortly, after his OSL title sAviOr lost the famous final against Bisu which we have already featured in the Bisu writeup. Afterwards, he quickly fell in the rankings. Bisu in particular continued to have his number. At some point, sAviOr decided to augment his income by match fixing. Not only did he throw games himself he also recruited other players which were in a slump for his manipulation of e-sports betting. sAviOr received a life-time ban from Kespa and his achievements are tainted forever.

[BaII]

Oh wow I'm shocked that Bisu managed to hold onto that sheep tile. We might not be able to keep it for long but nice to have for now.

People following the city name choices will have noticed that they are rather Protoss and Terran heavy. There aren't that many Zerg players that I like and Mouseferatu (BaII) has not bailed me out in that respect.

Oops thought we had 1 more actually  well time to remedy that issue

Introducing the next player I had in mind is Queen sometimes also known as Zero.

He was a very strong player and I remember him having very strong showings around ASL season 9-13 being a very strong contender to win it or placing very deep into the tournament. He was well known for very strong macro oriented play in both ZvT and ZvP. This made him a very strong and stable player although a little predictable. For awhile it served him really well and he was able perform because of it. I actually thought he was going to be similar to SoulKey where he would go on to win multiple ASL titles in a row. Unfortunately his predictability came back to bite him as he lost to Mini 2 times in a row as I pointed out earlier. And there was another close loss to Mind in ASL season 15 where in the final game Mind went CC first abusing the lack of cheese from Queen and was able to ride the solid position into a win. Queen did proceed to go in a slump for awhile after that but is back now with more aggressive tools mixed into this build orders so I'm excited to see what the future holds for him.

But enough talk about Queen's faults. During his the seasons I mentioned he was definitly a force to be reckoned as you can see him take down Flash in ASL Season 9 Ro4 where afterwards he proceeded to beat Light in the Finals.


And although not quite as exciting since it's a ZvZ finals but ASL Season 10 Finals vs Soma

[civac2]

I pillaged the copper this turn to make some military police warriors. Workers are building irrigation chains.



Otherwise, the preparations for Sankore are almost done. Unexpectedly, no one had Civil Service as of two turns ago, the last time I was able to check. Regardless, I am a bit worried about mjmd. He has built up a significant bank and could easily research CS -> Paper and pop another engineer (possibly he even still has the first one, though probably it was converted into Mausoleum).



Last has a full 180 hammers into its library which required a 2pop whip; 90 of those hammers will become 162 overflow into Sankore. Then we need 5 turns and the forest to finish the wonder. There was also the option to reach Sankore a turn slower with ~30 more food in Last but I didn't want anymore risk than necessary.

Other than going for Currency too late I also forgot to cancel the loan repayment to mjmd 5-6 turns late. We could easily have gotten Paper a turn faster, possibly even two turns faster with more Wealth building.

[civac2]

Best is the first player on our list who is not a champion. He reached the finals of EVER OSL in 2008 and much more recently the finals of ASL season 19 but was defeated both times by Zerg players, JulyZerg and SoulKey respectively.

Best makes this list because he is one of my favourite players due to his oddly entertaining style of making humongous gateway armies and showing them down people's throats. In one PvZ he lost his high templars to clever maneuvering by his opponent's hydralisks only for that opponent to find that he couldn't handle Best's huge dragoon ball anymore after the losses taken during the templar hunt.

Best played one his strongest series in the quarter finals of the aforementioned ASL 19 against Queen. This is a fantastic series to watch.



This group stage game against Ample in ASL season 15 is archetypical.

https://youtu.be/thbKw6As4C8?t=3680

Best shoves large armies through narrow choke points into entrenched Terran positions multiple times and wins the game.