[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[pindicator]

Scooter, I saw you finished up. What are your thoughts on some of the builds I put in? And do we try to build Notre Dame (and cancel our Silver for Stone deal to get our stone back)? I'm assuming we're in full econ mode now, right? And after that we zerk Commodore?

[scooter]

Scooter, I saw you finished up. What are your thoughts on some of the builds I put in? And do we try to build Notre Dame (and cancel our Silver for Stone deal to get our stone back)? I'm assuming we're in full econ mode now, right? And after that we zerk Commodore?

I would like a few more Zerks purely for opportunism's sake, but other than that, yeah full econ. I think we build HE in Orioles ASAP, then build Zerks out of there for awhile. It's our one and only chance to get units with free Amphibious, and you never know when we'll get the opportunity to snipe something. Other than that, yeah all-in on econ.

One thing to keep in mind - we just captured a second source of stone at Cold Rocks Hold. We'll have it in 10ish turns. I'm moderately mixed on Notre Dame only because there's so much happy freely available with full trading + Rep that I'm not convinced we'd get enormous benefit out of it. But I'm open to being convinced.

[scooter]

Oh, lovely. If I'm understanding Civstats and the forum correctly, the following sequence of events happened:

* Plako and Serdoa started next to each other. This is nice - at least someone good is there to keep Plako in check.
* Serdoa quits. Uh.
* Serdoa is replaced by unknown player, suspected green player
* Said green player starts thread in CivGeneral called "how do i mp"… That's the exact title.
* Plako logs in, razes city from said green player.
* WE REALLY ARE PLAYING PB8 AGAIN AHAH HA HA AH *dies*

Time to push for a concession?

Hey, just saw this post from way back. How much things change, how much they stay the same!

Can you post an f5 shot with bare map selected?

Wanted to say: thanks for this, this was a nice reminder. I think the moral of the story here is that it's a long game, so stay calm and play your game. I don't think we're necessarily in pole position just yet, but I'd say our chances are as good as mackoti and plako at the moment, so that's a major win this far into the game. I'd put our chances even higher if it wasn't for the fact that our remaining neighbors are generally pretty tough and all pretty good in a war context.

Pindicator: I've been thinking, and I really think I want soonish Astro, load up some Zerks, and go on a few opportunistic strikes. If we could do something like a big coastal blind-siding raze to cripple the morale/chances of one of our top rivals (Plako/Mack), that could be a big win for minimal investment. Just a thought. We'll want Astro anyway...

[pindicator]

Pindicator: I've been thinking, and I really think I want soonish Astro, load up some Zerks, and go on a few opportunistic strikes. If we could do something like a big coastal blind-siding raze to cripple the morale/chances of one of our top rivals (Plako/Mack), that could be a big win for minimal investment. Just a thought. We'll want Astro anyway...

YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!
OMG Christmas came early, LET'S DO IT!!!!!

[pindicator]

To be a little more clear, this is what I was hoping you would say. 6+ move galleons can really cause havoc. Get ourselves 8-10 galleons and fill them full of zerkers. Now, my idea was to do one huge amphibious assault on Commodore to take him over and really give us a safe border along the top of the map. But if we think it's better to try for a surprise crippling attack against mackoti or plako -- but don't count out fintourist and dtay either; fintourist had jumped to #3 in score before this last turn, and dtay just landed liberalism.

Geopolitically, I think plako makes a lot of sense if we think mackoti will have his hands full with the rest of the people on his continent. Mackoti makes sense if he think he's our chief rival and everyone else is a tier below. dtay makes sense if we think he's an economic giant that needs to be called on his farmer's gambit. But the easiest one to reach for us is mackoti.

[NobleHelium]

I don't think you should be overly ambitious and attack the big guys. We want them to provide counterweights to each other, and it's easy to damage one guy and not have enough time to mess with the other guys. It makes much more sense to attack Commodore (or another neighbor) and materially improve our position.

[pindicator]

I don't think you should be overly ambitious and attack the big guys. We want them to provide counterweights to each other, and it's easy to damage one guy and not have enough time to mess with the other guys. It makes much more sense to attack Commodore (or another neighbor) and materially improve our position.

The only thing I can think of that would work with scooter's ideas is sending out a medium-sized strike and hope to take someone down by surprise. But it would gain us almost nothing. (Although how cool would it be to use zerkers to take the MoM city from plako and then fire of a golden age? )

I logged in and tried to see what an attack on Commodore might look like, but the screenshots didn't take. Oddly enough, we can't hit too much of Commodore's core with zerkers, at least in the initial strike. But with 6-move galleons we could possibly take half a dozen cities in the opening turn of a war, and that kind of loss would certainly take Commodore out of the game.

[scooter]

I don't think you should be overly ambitious and attack the big guys. We want them to provide counterweights to each other, and it's easy to damage one guy and not have enough time to mess with the other guys. It makes much more sense to attack Commodore (or another neighbor) and materially improve our position.

Take a second and read the two underlined sentences and then think about them for awhile.


I think attacking Commodore is completely nuts, and we should not do that. That's farrrrrr more ambitious than just screwing with the primary threats to win. We don't need his land to win, and that's the kind of war that blows your chances of winning.

Anyway, when I talk about hitting the big guys, I mean a minor raid to put a dent in them with minimal investment. Plako and Mackoti can only hit us via sea, and we are the best naval civilization, so it's not like they're going to go all-in to counter-attack someone on a different continent. Commodore is a totally different story. Ideally, this Nakor battle is the last battle we have on this continent for the rest of the game.


I guess we should talk about how to win, first. With the addition of Nakor-land, do we have all we need to win? I think we do. We've got room for another 4-5 spots with islands and whatnot, and Black Sword's island by Nakor would be super vulnerable to a Zerking, so we could always add a half dozen cities that way too. Let's say we finish up this Nakor war and add another 7-8 island cities via settlings and maybe Black Sword's island. That's gotta be enough to win, right? Especially if we are able to raze a couple key cities off a far-away top rival or two? Anyway, that's my general thinking right now.

[NobleHelium]

Keep in mind that I always assume that games are won by (de facto) domination.

[pindicator]

I don't think we should rule off wars on our own continent. How many 18-player pitboss games have we played before? Pitboss 3 and Pitboss 7 are about it and both of them devolved into being called to end because of disagreements between players. So I'm not comfortable saying we have enough land for good here. If we can expand it in a way that makes sense then I think we should look to do that. Naturally being Vikings, going for islands is a spot we should look to expand. And if we can attack Commodore, that would make us a lot more secure long-term.

But scooter is also right that we have the most land in the game right now. So we should use that to our advantage: time to build up the econ, grow cities, and develop. Let's fight all our wars like the Nakor war: with a tech advantage