[SPOILERS] Lurker discussion thread ... players keep out obviously

[Mist]

My best count at this moment in 11 tiles from capital of sheaim to the capital of the elfs

So Mist how bad would the bears and other barbs be for that distance

IIRC the limit was 1 barb/animal unit per 20 tiles of land, so with 12 hundred or so tiles in play this gives you up to 60 unfriendlies roaming the wild. In the rush window ( say till t70 ), it's going to be animals rather than barbs ( so no entering borders ) and getting stronger ( so more bears / scorpions / giants and less lions / wolves ) as the turn clock ticks on. It might get crowded.

Granted, a stack of half a dozen PZs will still punch through, but not without losses.

When i made the map i thought that the closeness to each duo would at least allow some diplo while still being far enough away to prompt expansion over rushing...

I guess i didn't anticipate the bloody thirsty aggression in the air. The Hippus are allready planning a war and the Elves have anticipated having the Sheaim as their border buddy.

In retrospect do you think the duo's should have been further away or have more difficulty getting contact?

No, this is good, they all have space to expand, but can't go full on farmers gambit with no worries about defense. 11 tiles is borderline for viable rushing distance. You presented them with a set of dilemmas ( expand or rush? tech economy or military ) without making any of the options clearly superior. It will make the game more interesting for us and them.

[Ravus Sol]

Thanks Mist!

Well so far the Hippus still seem to be in favour of the military option for their dilemma. Good job the Balseraphs set up on the Hill surrounded by the moat.

What does everyone think of their idea to skip on horses for a axeman rush? To me that seems completely wasting the potential of the Hippus. The horsemen are so manoeuvrable... although i guess that makes them the perfect pillagers and choke units then rush conquerors.

The Elohim and Grigori are the most likely to play happy builder at the moment... unless one gets the urge to rush with adventurers or monks.

[Mist]

Thanks Mist!

Well so far the Hippus still seem to be in favour of the military option for their dilemma. Good job the Balseraphs set up on the Hill surrounded by the moat.

That's a bit double-edged. Good for the siege, awful for breaking a choke.

What does everyone think of their idea to skip on horses for a axeman rush? To me that seems completely wasting the potential of the Hippus. The horsemen are so manoeuvrable...

I wouldn't do it. BW is out of optimal tech path for the Hippus. Using axes means they are trading 3 extra movement points and extra withdrawal chance for bonus on defense and insignificant boost to city attack. It also makes them pay high unit upkeep for way longer.

although i guess that makes them the perfect pillagers and choke units then rush conquerors.

There is no significant difference in city taking potential between bronze axe and warcried Hippus horseman. What's more, having choice between two I'd always take warcried horse for much smaller attrition.

Generally I think all that early rush planning is a mistake. Rushes are expensive. They require a clear exit strategy and time to utilise the gains ( which this early will be nothing more than extra territory ). You can't do either without favorable diplo arrangement around you. You definitely shouldn't do it blind.

At this point, assuming both hippus and sheaim go ahead with bloodletting, I'd say Brian is a favorite to take the game.
The Elohim and Grigori are the most likely to play happy builder at the moment... unless one gets the urge to rush with adventurers or monks.[/quote]

[Amelia]

I'm lurking everyone as well, but no comments so far, since Mist is doing a really good job at it.

[gingereagle1969]

umm .. the thoughts shared here are not supposed to get back to players right?

how is it, c.90 mins after my post, Gaspar is trying to justify why he thinks he has the Sheaim & Hippus as his immediate neighbours?

For the record, my paranoia truly knows no bounds. Whilst being unable to sleep this evening, I rolled another 20 ErebusContinent starts with the civs in this game to get a sense of whether my "The Sheaim are coming, the Sheaim are coming" paranoia was valid or just the consequence of spending too much time preparing posts for this thread. There's little scientific about it, I just rolled the start, popped open the WB, assessed the layout and recorded where the players fell, then generated a new map. I didn't take notes on the specific positioning of the Ljosalfar in regards to the world, since that question has resolved itself (I assume everyone is comfortable with the idea that we are in the NE corner of the map, yes?)

The maps seemed to break down into one of two common distributions of the 6 opponents on a Standard-sized ErebusContinent map. By far the most common was this (obviously this a rough approximation, they weren't this clean) :

x--x--x
-------
x--x--x

I saw that configuration 10 times.

The other common configuration was this:

x-----x
--x-x--
x-----x

I saw that configuration 6 times.

The other 4 were a bit more blobby and random and I didn't see a distinct enough pattern between them to have it be worth recounting here.

Across all configurations, the Ljosalfar landed in the top of the map 15 of 20 times, 11 in the NE corner and 4 in the NW corner. The other 5 were sort of all over the place, though we never landed in the SW corner.

As far as the neighboring Civs were concerned, we saw every Civ as one of the two closest neighbors at least 3x, so these things are definitely a bit more random than I was initially giving them credit for being. The Sheaim were the most common neighbor, falling as one of the two civs able to borrow a cup of sugar 12 times. We also bordered the Elohim 10 times, the Hippus 8 times, the Grigori 7 times and the Balseraphs 3 times.

So what conclusions do I draw from this data? Mostly I think I'm jumping at shadows a bit. There's enough of a random distribution that just about anyone could be nearby. That jungle to the south, assuming it extends a bit, actually should serve as a bit of a buffer, as its likely to be animal/barb filled, which should slow any would be attacker down. Clearly, getting eyes on the immediate east is a priority, the last thing we want to see is a big stretch of plains for horsies to trample through. Anyway, I think it would be good to at least spend some quality time discussing the best ways to counter the two rush Civs in the early game, plus some thoughts on dealing with the barb threat and when we can expect to see it. This is supposed to serve as a bit of a tutorial game, so if nothing else, I can refine some of my strategies for dealing with the nasties were most likely to see, even if those threats never present themselves. Also, I think its pretty clear that decent diplomacy is the place where I'll be most able to defer a rush attempt, so we'll want to meet some folks and get the friendship growing. And pray that we got the Elohim-Grigori cocktail instead of the Hippus-Sheaim one.

Now I'm not saying he's personally reading other threads, but this post does seem more than a coincidence and smells of someone spying and feeding intel at least.

[Ravus Sol]

I doubt Gasper is cheating... Maybe paranoid. I wouldn't be surprised if he thought I placed the rushers there on purpose if he's feeling the paranoia bug. But he is right about the Erebus map script being biased.

After looking over the map again i'm actually a little glad that the Grigori got Mining from a hut. Their start isn't so good on the commerce front and that will open up the wines earlier.

[Ravus Sol]

And then the Grigori got ANOTHER tech. Sheesh.

Well most of the duo's have met each other.

Elves <> Sheaim
Signed a NAP till turn 100. Elves want to go tech beeline for their religion. managed to get an adventurer
Sheaim beeling Bronze working. Don't know if they will be rushing or expanding into all the Jungle.

Balseraph <> Hippus
Agression. Hippus threatened first then the Balseraphs got lucky in a dungeon and gained two hunters and threatened back.
Signed a NAP and secret alliance i think.

Grigori <> Elohim
Working out their borders. No aggression so far.

-

All the doubles seem to have done well. No big rushes but lots of tension. I'm liking this start!

[Caustic Soda]

^ So do I. I especially like the early aggression and the high quality of posts in the threads. Of course, since so many people are dedlurkers, that doesn't leave much room for activity in this thread. I think that's a worthy sacrifice though.

[Ravus Sol]

Indeed. +Dedlurkers makes for good threads but not for good lurking pondering. Oh well. When one of them dies instead of just one extra lurker a bucket load will appear.

I've just realised I may not have enabled world wrap for the map... which i'm pretty sure they wanted...

[Mist]

Some random ramblings...

Brian

Wants 3 cites by t100 and copper warrior invasion on the wrong side of t50? Seriously? I understand lack of experience, but given all the other PBEMs to go through as a reference this is ridiculous. Anyone can figure out what is this all about? And what on earth is Ichabod doing *not* bashing some sense into his head?

Tech path is poor and completely lacks synergy with the Elohim. Build plans have absolutely nothing to support economy, never mind full scale war. That's basically a path straight into irrelevance. Don't even start me on going mining and not settling that grass river gold.

Acalostas/Mackoti

So why exactly are they playing Grigorii again? Not a lot of info for the lurkers, but Warrior-Warrior opening after popping free Crafting and Mining is poor. A lot of wasted opportunities here.

Kyan

Ehhh.... Ravus, we should have gimped the Balseraph waaaay more

And in all seriousness, his play thus far is brilliant. He's my pick to win the game.

Gaspar

So far good and focused. Has the best lurkers considering amount of information, help and advice provided and what's important he's really listening to what they say. His long term potential will be hampered by being boxed by Sheaim and Hippus.

Nicolae

Surprisingly timid in diplo given big flaming stick he has in his arsenal. Sensible tech path, looking out of his comfort zone in the mod so far. I'm not really sure he and Selrahc are on the same wavelength.

Rawwking

Greed might be good, but sometimes it backfires spectacularly. If he didn't push for so much before Kyan got the lizards, he might be able to find some diplomatic way to salvage the mess he found himself in afterwards. Now that his way south is effectively shut it's going to be interesting to see how he salvages the game.