[spoilers] Now, Commodore Frogger, roll those 71 dice

[Miguelito]

The reasoning for removing the holkan and holkan rush wasn't that it was a game winning or even a good strategy (unlike the impi rush, which is great at doing both, amazing it took so long for those to be nerfed). Rather that there shouldn't be any units enabling those kind of super early rushes because dealing with them is annoying without messing with the growth curve. How effective the early rush is will be very map dependent, but again, I'm not going to cry if that option is removed from the game given how it works in practice.

amounts to saying sandboxes should be undisturbed until turn 30/40/? (not only your post, but the whole anti Holkan sentiment)

Picking Maya you have your power spike right at the beginning. It can result either in catching someone unaware and getting a second capital, or, if your neighbour defends competently, maybe force them to do suboptimal choices early on, like planting a less than ideal 2nd city (it was actually a totally acceptable spot, but I disgress). That is what the civ gives you, and after that there's nothing, and you have to deal with what the others have.

If my neighbour is Byzantium, I also may have to make suboptimal choices - rush them before they get to Guilds, or get the hell prepared to fend off cataphracts, even if I'd much rather focus on a lib push or whatever. Civs give power spikes at different points in the game. I don't see why we'd exclude the very early game from that, after excluding the late game already (for good reasons).

Else we could just have players post their t30 sandboxes and start the game there.

[greenline]

amounts to saying sandboxes should be undisturbed until turn 30/40/? (not only your post, but the whole anti Holkan sentiment)

Essentially, yeah.

Early game combat in Civ 4 tends to be extremely binary based on unit strength. I built an axe and you didn't/can't? You instantly lose. Even if you pivoted to early archery based on the demos? You need two or three to clear one axe from choking you. I think anything pushing the game away from this is a good thing.

Compared to the cataphract, even though a cataphract or a praet is stronger than the base unit, just building one of those doesn't equal winning a war, because at that stage of the game there's terrain, collateral damage, city counts, and all kinds of other factors to consider.

The early turns can be shaken up with scouting changing people's plans and having dotmapping to consider. But I rarely think the game is better off when rushes are added to the mix. The only benefit is giving people an option for pink dot removal, and I think the game works better when the distance involved in a pink dot plant is what makes it easy to remove, not an ancient UU that would otherwise be useless.

[Commodore]

Unfortunate. Looks like Superdeath was made aware of what's coming. Very irritating, I guess we're just going to have to twiddle our thumbs and hang out.

[Commodore]

I'm going to make a bet here: This shows Krill losing all his cat stack, and Pin losing all his samurai stack (which he only massed, rather than having 50% less samurai and double the number of spears). Not sure, but "RtR Japan" has become something of a thing at this point.


I might poke in next turn, it's primitive but I can probably raze Krill's lower city at least.

Really a bummer that Thoth and Krill are on opposite side of the world, Thoth is pretty legit right now in GNP/MFG/CY.

[Commodore]

I was trying to keep my Eastern theming, but I really should have picked Christianity as the bulbed religion. It's 25AD, timing was precisely right.


I'm moving with the forests into Sumer; leaving the defensive terrain is asking to be evaporated by horse archers.

Not a lot of hope of accomplishing much major but at least Krill will have to whip his Hanging Gardens population a bit.

[Magic Science]

I thought your theming was moving backwards through the religions, which would have put Christianity next.

And I like your use of the verb "evaporated" there. Very evocative, got a chuckle out of me.
"Evaporated by Horse Archers". .

[Commodore]

And I like your use of the verb "evaporated" there. Very evocative, got a chuckle out of me.
"Evaporated by Horse Archers". .

It's a distinctive feeling, let me tell ya. Spears are notionally the HA counter, but particularly given that Pindicator's promoted them well I'd only expect flatland spears to win 50% of the time. With forests, though, we're looking at Krill needing a good dozen horse archers before he can trade at parity. 

Nice aside, that copper was Krill's only source of metals as of 2t ago, so the nightmare vultures are blocked for now.

[Commodore]

Welp.

I looked at the military advisors for a little while, Krill positioned more vultures than I'm comfortable breaking through in the woods covering what from his power graph is just some of his horse archers. I didn't sim all of it, but I know I don't have enough axes to reliably kill off those vultures, so I peaced.

Well, I say that's why but the other reason is actually this:



Thoth is making this not a Krillian roflstomp, but actually a legit race. If Krill was unstoppable, I'm happy playing crabs-in-the-bucket, but Thoth is legit strong enough that this feels less like a dogpile, more like a throw. So let's just builder and see.

And the mainstay of builder effort will be this:

I think Krill's got too many irons in the fire to beat me to this.

[Commodore]

The hilariously treacherous Superdeath asked me to declare war on Thoth, which...yeah no.

Krill's got 10 turns to eat all of Bing, curious to see if he makes the most of it or if his economy isn't up for such a big bite.

[Qgqqqqq]

What made you come back?