RBP7 [SPOILERS] - The Chronicles of Nyania

[nabaxo]

Mmmm, starting in the center of a pangea-map with no available land and scarce resources. This is reminds of those nightmares. You know, those paradoxical ones where stuff just shouldn't be the way they are but somehow still are and they kind of make sense... (Low blood-sugar, sorry if I'm just rambling).

[Lord Parkin]

Mmmm, starting in the center of a pangea-map with no available land and scarce resources. This is reminds of those nightmares. You know, those paradoxical ones where stuff just shouldn't be the way they are but somehow still are and they kind of make sense... (Low blood-sugar, sorry if I'm just rambling).

Nah, don't worry, I get what you mean. This is certainly a bit of a nightmare start. Would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and realise we'd actually got an entirely different one.

At least the upside is that we pretty much have nothing to lose in this game, which could give us an advantage. We're able to take risks (in combat, etc) that other nations might not dare to - because from our perspective we're screwed either way, so there's little harm in risking some lucky rolls (etc).

That's about the only upside, admittedly. But may as well look at the bright side.

[Lord Parkin]

We met xenu's Scout over in the southeast. Hardly a surprise at this point.



Will have to keep a close eye on HitAnyKey's Warrior, but our Scout should be able to get past - especially if he's damaged if the Lion attacks him.

As for other news, we finished Animal Husbandry this turn, and it turns out we do have Horses - a small sliver of luck. However, they're not on a river, and thus we'll have to research The Wheel and build roads before we can even hook them up. So on the current schedule we still won't have them until T45.

We could rearrange to get The Wheel earlier, but then we wouldn't have chops until around T45 and our Worker would be lame and useless for even longer. Plus, there's little point in getting Chariots if we can't chop or whip them. And we may as well see where the Copper is at before locking ourselves into a Chariot rush - we might be able to do Axes or a mix instead if we're really lucky (hah).



The other news is that Team Googly's Warrior has annoyingly homed directly towards our capital. Surprisingly early actually, given that to reach there from their capital they would have had to head directly towards us no later than T12 - only just after they met our Scout. Did they really instantly react to finding we were their neighbour by sending their only Warrior straight towards where they assumed we'd be? Bit harsh. Also surprising given that they would have had to leave their own capital unguarded for at least a few turns to do that.

We got graphs on Googly this turn, and they tell a few stories. Of particular importance is that they had 4 food/3 hammers for the first ~10 turns of the game, as compared to our 5 food/1 hammer. Thus they must have settled on a 2 hammer tile (groan), which means in addition to all their other advantages (abundant resources, flood plains)... they also got an automatic early boost in production over us. Hence they would have finished their first Worker on T12 (rather than T15 for us), and their second Warrior on T17-18. Everything else just snowballs for them from there.

Hmm, still weird that they sent their only Warrior at the time on a collision course for our capital immediately after meeting our Scout. Bastards. Anyway, the significance of the current situation is that if they choose to, they have the freedom to choke us quite badly if we're not careful. Even 2 Warriors aren't guaranteed victory against 1 Warrior holed up in a forest or forest hill. At least they can't get to our capital before we can get our Warrior there, so I'm not concerned about racing out another Warrior. (We could get another Warrior in 2 turns by sacrificing our ETA for Bronze Working and The Wheel, but it's just not worth it so I'll leave it at 3.)

If they decide to engage against the defensive bonuses of our single Warrior (+20% culture, +25% innate city defence) and actually win, then so be it. If our luck is that shitty then we may as well be out of the game anyway. However, I'll still build the second Warrior at a quickened pace so we have the option to protect our Worker and capital simultaneously. We absolutely cannot afford to have our improvements pillaged or slowed down; we're already playing at a huge disadvantage here, we can't afford any more time wasting.

Guess we'll see what they do in the next couple of turns.

[Lord Parkin]

Actually I was mistaken about a few things. Firstly, Twinkletoes can't reach our capital until T24, when our second Warrior will be built. Secondly, our defence in the capital will be +70% rather than +45% (forgot about the hill). Thirdly, Twinkletoes must have left his capital undefended since at the latest T11 to be here, not T12. Finally, we're guaranteed to have two Warriors in our capital before he can arrive if we want to.



I'm going to sit our Warrior in place this turn. Could have moved him 1NE, but I'm not going to. Why, you ask?

If Twinkletoes wants to make an opportunistic stab for my capital, the quickest way is for him to move onto the Horse tile next turn, T23. (He's already moved this turn.) That means he'll be standing on a flatland tile, which is the best opportunity we're going to get to take out his Warrior. If he moves there, we're going to throw our two Warriors against his and hope one wins. We should have very high odds of winning with the second if not the first, and if our luck is so crappy that we lose both of them then so be it. We can only be expected to fight against so much bad luck; if the RNG is heavily against us too then we have no chance.

But wait, you say, why not just retreat to the capital and ensure he can't capture it? Because we've already got a crappy start, and the game is not worth playing if we're also put into a headlock this early on. If his Warrior decides to park and hang out in our forests, he'll have the freedom to double move to pillage our resources, or just continually harrass our Workers and require us to keep 2+ Warriors constantly around the capital. Not to mention he'll have visibility and see everything we're doing. That kind of situation isn't worth playing in, especially with our already shit hand.

So, if he decides not to pass by and instead aggressively moves to the Horse next turn, we're going to take the (very slight) risk of throwing both Warriors against him. It's our only chance going forward. Sure it has a small risk of immediately losing us the game, but we don't really have a choice. If we just leave him to put a stranglehold on us then we're going to lose the game anyway.

Anyway, let's see what happens next turn.

[Lord Parkin]

A few graphs. Firstly, MFG, showing our 1 hpt throughout the early turns, and Carthage's 3 hpt start.



Secondly, food, showing Carthage's 4 fpt to our 5 fpt early on.



Finally, the power graph. We know Googly's only got one tech so far (very likely Agriculture), so the power jump must correspond to when they built their second Warrior. Was definitely well after T11 (looks like T18-19), so they were taking quite a risk by leaving their capital open to send their only Warrior homing directly towards us. I still think that's a very weird move for them to have made.

[Lord Parkin]

I should note that another benefit of leaving the current Warrior in place is that it prevents Googly's Warrior from being able to move up to harrass the Pig Worker before he's done improving the tile. That was another reason contributing to leaving him in place - we can't afford any delays or risks in hooking up our improvements.

[nabaxo]

I just hope that he decides to beeline towards us and goes over the flatland horse.

[Lord Parkin]

I just hope that he decides to beeline towards us and goes over the flatland horse.

Yeah, would be quite satisfying if we can successfully ambush him there. Hopefully our visibly empty capital will entice him enough to move to the right spot.

[Lord Parkin]

Well, good news... he "fell" for our trap. Seems you can usually rely on someone's sense of greed and cruelty.



Barring the RNG completely screwing us over, we're now pretty much set. We'll try to log in first next turn and ambush him on the flatland with our two Warriors. If the first one wins and we have a spare Warrior afterwards, I'm going to take out ASM's rubbernecking Scout too. Sure that might upset him a little, but he's just asking for it being that nosy. Plus I don't really trust him anyway, especially in an always war environment, so I think leaving it alive if we have a choice otherwise has no real advantage.

Anyway, first things first: let's see if we can't deal with that Warrior next turn. Incidentally, even in the scenario that TT logs in before us, that new Warrior will still be produced in the capital, and TT will only have 3.6% odds against it. If he engages and we don't survive that battle then we can hardly be blamed... the whole game would obviously be conspiring to screw us. Likewise, if both our Warriors lose against his one on flatland, then so be it... we can only fight against so much horrendous luck in a game.

Regardless, this next turn's going to be the final chapter of an exciting little saga. Stay tuned.

[Lord Parkin]

Just checking, our Warrior would have 78.3% odds against ASM's Scout on the forest. And if it wasn't already obvious, the first Warrior-Warrior battle will be at 50.0% odds, while the second (if the first fails) should hopefully be at 90+% if decent damage is inflicted.

If someone's interested and has the time, they should be able to work out all the permutations of remaining hit points and find the exact % chance of TT's Warrior remaining after two potential attacks. It should be very low, definitely below 20%, possibly below 5-10%. I'd be interested to know, but can't be bothered to do the calculation myself.