[spoilers] Commodore rolls it lolrandom.

[shallow_thought]

I don't know Marvin the Martian, but hitchhikers depressed robot Marvin also works for this line

Also don't know about exact winning conditions but... gratz, I guess?

I can't help with the voice, but my avatar is a (bootleg) version of the Martian.

@Commodore - congrats and thanks for another great thread.

[Krill]

Really didn't understand what Krill meant about animals not attacking settlers. Sucks.

That's a direct lift from CtH, I think barbs don't attack stacks that have a settler in them, but you still need to have a military unit on the tile?

Pindicator expects a knight timing attack, but given Yuri's big stealing his unique unit I'm more or less jettisoning fast knight pushes, just doesn't seem sporting. Keep massing elephants, sir.

Achilles: I won't let a rock take all my glory!

Krill's power is now up to 90% of mine, mostly in destroyers.

If you ever reached my coast I was dead, all the way until about T210. I had nothing you couldn't see. I was defending cities with archers, and I never built any fast movers until tanks (except for scouting chariots).

What the hell, Krill? This has to be one of the craziest throws I've ever seen.

Well, there's a bit of a story to this.

I posted in the tech thread:

Another heads up, I'm travelling to London for work on the train and everything's up in the air because someone's been hit by a train (no pun intended) on my home town. I should be able to play but it will be this evening ie about 12 hours from now.

I hadn't slept well as I had a bit of a headache, bit under the weather after a gym session the night before, up early for a train. And then had my wife needed to take me to another town to catch a different train to make it to London for a conference/"learning event" that was a massive waste of time. My headache was getting worse and I was struggling to read the slides. The font was tiny, but I didn't need to read it because someone was giving a presentation on something I have written about professionally. Another underground and train ride later I'm back home as my usual station was up and running again. There's a turn to play, so I start to play it.

And you've started to push with submarines! GG point farming! I can't be having that, so I search for a reply amongst the available units. I couldn't build attack subs yet, because everything was put into building research to push for Space and prepare for a nuclear confrontation, to try and nab a win. So I figure I can bomb a couple of tiles in a city that just doesn't matter. I count tiles, find a tile I figure isn't covered by fighters, and bomb. I see some green, I bomb a second tile. I see more green.

Wait, where have my fighters gone? They lost? I squint closer, and I finally see the red font.

And then I realize that I'm wearing an old pair of glasses, with an old prescription, and that's why I can't see shit and I've had a headache for the past day. I'd been wearing the glasses I wear at the gym instead of my usual pair (they are the same frames, so much for style). So I moved the destroyers over and bombarded to make a point whilst they went down to cover for subs.

[xist10]

Congratulations

Thanks for reporting, this was a fun game to lurk.

[Krill]

What the hell, Krill? This has to be one of the craziest throws I've ever seen.

Krill's voted for Thoth to win, so it's just hunker and calculate, seeing if I can produce 3 fighters for every jet fighter.

I just want to check before PB83 starts, we good, or we need to discuss this? Because this sort of situation is likely to come up again, and the lurker thread wasn't pretty, and could be even worse in the next game.

[Commodore]

I think the logic was totally bunk, but from your thread it's clear it wasn't personal, so no malus.

I really was just completely baffled about how on Earth I'd offended you.

[Krill]

You never did anything to offend me. You were simply the front runner. I fully agree that if anything I was the aggressor in our relationship here, but isn't that to be expected given the in game situation?

If it wasn't, what was I supposed to do then? I got all the necessary techs for space. I built the ship and launched it: I played to reach a victory condition and I was simply behind everyone else in time to completion. I'm not sure which part of the logic was bunk (in relation to what information I had at the time), and following on from that which actions were unreasonable?

[Zed-F]

To me it seemed like you were justifying being able to catch up on the theory that if you attacked Comm (and only Comm) hard enough, you could somehow drag him and Thoth into a fight against one another that would allow you to somehow sneak ahead of both of them to the finish line. To me this is a non-starter logically; neither of them would ever engage in fighting one another to a sufficient degree as to reduce their own timetable to victory, never mind you catching up. Thus the premise justifying attacking Comm and not Thoth was fundamentally flawed.

[Krill]

To me it seemed like you were justifying being able to catch up on the theory that if you attacked Comm (and only Comm) hard enough, you could somehow drag him and Thoth into a fight against one another that would allow you to somehow sneak ahead of both of them to the finish line. To me this is a non-starter logically; neither of them would ever engage in fighting one another to a sufficient degree as to reduce their own timetable to victory, never mind you catching up. Thus the premise justifying attacking Comm and not Thoth was fundamentally flawed.

I think we're going to have to accept that in these games, it's likely to not devolve into a simple first versus second and everyone else has to back off. Note that I had the micro to finish 10 turns behind Commodore, and 6 turns behind Thoth.

The original assertion was only fundamentally flawed if the premise is only to pull back the front runner, and never second place. The short version is that, in a different world, Thoths' capital was in nuke range, and the rest is getting transports into position. Was it likely? No, but at the same time I played with the knowledge that Manhattan could have fallen at any point. Please be assured that I would have attacked Thoth if necessary; my original explanation was not a fully fleshed out position.

The second point is that there were only really two theatres that we interacted in. The first was skirmishing on the approach to my original starting point, through Pindi land. This was essentially defensive in nature as Commodore was putting units in place, including bombers, which would have required me to contribute a disproportionate amount of resources to defence, so I don't think this could be argued as me doing anything unreasonable.

The second theatre was the narrow ocean between our borders, and I had a bay which if Commodore ever got a navy into forked about seven cities, so I focused naval production. That led to a force disparity which I used to pillage a few work boats and push a naval stack around a bit. At one point Commodore did have DD in place and pillaged a few work boats himself but I just got to Combustion in time.

That's about the limit of our military interaction this game. That should be seen in the context of posts 107 and 123, and the sheer level of resources that Thoth and Commodore poured into their fight as noted by the number of fighters and jet fighters lost. Most of our hammer exchanges occurred in Pindi land: even the final naval battle was fought after Commodore had a naval stack approach my starting area, which had minimal naval units, supported with air power when I didn't have flight. If I hadn't intervened there then Commodore had an open back door to walk into.

Now I could have done far worse things: I could have built Manhattan myself and nuked everyone.

Which brings me to the bolded point. I didn't really attack Commodore, I didn't drag him back. I just didn't sit back and let him walk over Thoth (my first view was that Commodore would have just rolled through Pindi, before bulldozing through my lack of units in my north for a Domination win. I still think this was the quicker win). Thoth and I traded resources for corps which was mutually beneficial. Were those trades also unacceptable? Where is that line drawn?

I'm honestly baffled: I don't know how a player is supposed to play out a third place position like this, if not to try and reach a victory condition? I do want to know what players and lurkers think should have happened.

[T-hawk]

I'm honestly baffled: I don't know how a player is supposed to play out a third place position like this, if not to try and reach a victory condition? I do want to know what players and lurkers think should have happened.

From my perspective of following but not super closely on all the details, I thought your approach was fine. If you needed Thoth's corp resources, then you had to be at peace with him and should direct your military efforts where it might help which was against Commodore. And if you thought your only chance at a win condition was to slow Commodore and hope Commodore could slow Thoth because you couldn't, your approach was correct. Not all the lurkers agreed with me but that was my take.

[Commodore]

It's time to summarize. This is the latest game we've played in a long long time, and it reached not only a victory condition in my CV, but a couple spaceship launches too. Amazing game.

My Legendary Cities are the top in the world, albeit a little under-bunkered right now. Wonders in this game were pretty dominant for me early, but when Thoth and Krill dogpiled me with Yuri helping, I was slowed in my front-running enough to miss some pretty big ones. The Statue of Liberty was the obvious one, but both Rock N' Roll and Broadway hurt to lose. If I'd known, I'd have burned my GEs on them, but I had no idea my last two Great People from the roulette would be engineers. Fun stuff.


Of my three main cities, Capital Poker was by far the best. Bureaucap with Oxford/Academy very early on, this thing was a huge proportion of my civilization's research. The most important thing was its solidly inland position, even a GG trick couldn't threaten it. I loved this city, good on the Ottawa Scale before going Silly Mode for Culture.


Horserace Bet was the least logical of my legendries, tucked in the mountains with an absurd amount of production (including the Ironworks). I had to skew it heavily towards culture early anyway to crush all three of Yuri's nearby cities, including Hermitage, so it was well worth the awkward positioning. The most important thing was its solidly inland position, even a GG trick couldn't threaten it.


My most focused-on city towards the end is Pool, city #3. Hold 'Em and Baccarat would have also worked, but Pool was the pinch-hitter most ideal. The most important thing was its solidly inland position, even a GG trick couldn't threaten it.


Demographics. Culture means most of this GNP was wasted, but the thick soup of 80% border cities also worked as more defense for the Final Three. So. Many. Fighters. Lost.


Graphs. It hurts to fight Future Era armies with World War II tech, but arty is still arty, I was secure.





Cards on the table, from turn 10 as soon as I saw this riverland, my thought was "culture victory". Having multiple inland cities all with green riverland means security is pretty viable, and I started my religious spreading for the backup cathedrals over a hundred turns ago. I could have proceeded with a more "normal" hegemonic march to domination/space if not for the dogpile, but the dogpile meant trying to capture land outside of the Home Continent was futile. So...

...welcome to the world of Pitboss 80. You're all Incan.

This was a blast to play.