[SPOILERS - PBEM16] scooter's thread

[darrelljs]

I've always said no UU should have a boost to base strength, given the way the combat mechanics work. Best line of your post?

he has the typical Krill martyr complex

Man that brings back some PBEM2 memories .

Darrell

[Lewwyn]

Serdoa is... mildly out of his mind here, and I haven't decided what I'll do with him.

Isn't that par for the course? Though I find it amusing that Serdoa has suddenly blown up in two PBEMs at about the same time. I hope it wasn't me that broke his mind...

Anyway, I've been following all the threads and for a while no ones been really updating, but I think everyone just updated all at once... and its hilarious.

I also agree that Rome is quite ridiculous in this mod as the cultured, cheap barracks are amazing and as such get higher on the build order for border popping and thus every praet coming out of Rome is going to be ready to upgrade to shock or cover as they invade depending on what hey run into. I mean, slaughter, pure slaughter.

[luddite]

Also, this mod is utterly broken for Rome, which is something I realized in the opening turns. Thing about it:

1. Rome was already broken. Krill himself has said over and over that the only way to beat Agg Rome is to hit them before Praetorians. He's said it multiple times, and it was very, very true in unmodded BtS.

2. Rome was not nerfed in this mod. No offense to Cyneheard/Krill (they've done a nice job on this mod), but I never understood this. So the problem from BtS has continued to here. But wait, there's more!

3. Aggressive got a very large bonus. It now gets culture on it's barracks, which are cheap for them. This way, you don't need Kublai with Rome to pop borders! This makes Agg Rome even more strong. But wait, there's more!

4. Protective is now a top-tier trait in this mod. You get cheap granaries and still the archer bonus. So with Krill's choice (Tokugawa), he gets a mix between Kublai and Shaka. Wonderful. Modded Toku of Rome is better than Kublai or Shaka of Rome in standard BtS. But wait, there's more!

5. Just about all the other top traits got nerfed. You can't out-expand/tech Rome with someone like Pacal/Willem, because those guys got nerfed. This indirect subtraction to those traits makes the Rome combo stronger by default.

I think you're overvaluing the strength of an aggressive/protective Rome combo in this mod. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely strong, but I think the old agg/exp combo was better, at least for doing a pure praet rush. If you're praet rushing, you really can't afford to settle 2 away from iron and wait for borders to pop- you need to settle right next to it, or better yet on top of it, and get those praetorians building immediately. So the culture bonus of the barracks is basically irrelevant.

On the other hand, I totally sympathise with why you'd want to choke Krill. Anyone who choses agg Rome is basically holding up a sign saying "I'm going to rush you with praetorians as fast as possible. Be prepared". It makes perfect sense to attack them before then.

In regards to your comment about other top traits being nerfed- I really wish that someone in this game would have chosen an old favorite like willem of India, so that we could see just how much they've been nerfed. My hunch is that any financial Indian leader would still develop much faster than most other picks.

For pure rush value- have you considered a protective Mali leader with this mod? Maybe Tokugawa of Mali. You'd get super fast barracks that pop borders, cheap granaries to grow the cities, and then you could build skirmishers with cover or shock. It would be an almost unstoppable choke.

[Cyneheard]

In regards to your comment about other top traits being nerfed- I really wish that someone in this game would have chosen an old favorite like willem of India, so that we could see just how much they've been nerfed. My hunch is that any financial Indian leader would still develop much faster than most other picks.

Serdoa is Pacal of Inca, but hasn't bothered to set up a spoiler thread. Of course, it's a little weird, since Exp no longer gives cheap Terraces.

[fire&ice]

does Krill realize the Dazed is the real mastermind behind this entire choke/rush tactic?

What does Krill now and how soon could he be at your borders assuming from when he made peace with Dazed?

Also could you post the whole chat with krill when he said Serdoa rated you out? If so post it please.

[scooter]

Man that brings back some PBEM2 memories .

Glad someone else can relate.

Isn't that par for the course? Though I find it amusing that Serdoa has suddenly blown up in two PBEMs at about the same time. I hope it wasn't me that broke his mind...

Yeah it seems like it's been a hectic stretch of days for him. Craziness.

Anyway, I've been following all the threads and for a while no ones been really updating, but I think everyone just updated all at once... and its hilarious.

It's funny because this was off to a boring-ish start and then all chaos broke loose at once.

does Krill realize the Dazed is the real mastermind behind this entire choke/rush tactic?

As far as I know - nope he doesn't. He thinks it was me.

What does Krill now and how soon could he be at your borders assuming from when he made peace with Dazed?

Krill won't be coming after me. Serdoa and Dazed are his neighbors - I'm the furthest away from him out of anyone... So it won't really affect me much outside of losing diplo contact with him pretty much. We're outlined something like this:

----Serdoa-------
MH-------------scooter
----Krill----Dazed

That's not the best representation, but you get the idea.

Also could you post the whole chat with krill when he said Serdoa rated you out? If so post it please.

Sure. It was pretty brief. Here it is:

12:46 PM
scooter: ok so i'm dying to know. who are you going to kill, dazed or serdoa
12:47 PM
Krill: Well, if I tell you Serdoa just ratted you and Dazed out 5 minutes ago...
scooter: ratted out me and dazed..? about what?
12:48 PM
Krill: He forwarded an email exchange between you and Serdoa about sending starting units at me
scooter: hah. dazed asked me to do that, and i knew i'd regret doign that for him
12:49 PM
i'd lik to kill them both right now
Krill: That's the spirit
12:50 PM
scooter: so where does that leave you?
Krill: With an AGG warrior next to a settler/worker/Quechua stack of Serdoas
with two oppurtunistic neighbours
and mh
12:54 PM
Your problem is you're too predictable
12:55 PM
scooter: really?
Krill: yeah
scooter: how so?
6 minutes
1:02 PM
Krill: You just are

As far as I know, Krill has been giving everyone the silent treatment since the end of that chat. Fun stuff.

[fire&ice]

you dead yet

[scooter]

I'm going to try to update on what's going on this weekend, but I had an interesting exchange with Krill that I figured I would share. Dazed told me that apparently Krill was complaining about the map, which is pretty normal I guess . I hit him up on chat, curious as to what his reasoning was. Two minutes later I got a huge email from him. Apparently this is just copied and pasted from his thread (minus screenshots) so here's what he wrote (in spoilers, as most of you probably read it in his thread already):

There will be some players that can just look at that and understand the situation. I'll let them wince in peace.

First note. Dazed (green bottom right) and Serdoa (brown top left) settled in place. Scooter started 1NW (grey top right) and I started 1NW (red bottom left). So Myself and scooter had to lose a turn to settle our capitals.

I'm going to continually edit this post and add in the description, but to whet your appetite, here is the map. I've had it for about 2 weeks, courtesy of Dazed.

On top of that This is what Dazed got:
Plains hill capital.
Irrigated corn
Grass cow


Serdoa:
Grass hill capital.
Grass hill Pig
Coastal fish
Coastal clam


Scooter:
Plains hill capital.
Irrigated corn
2 coastal clams


Krill:
Plains.
wet rice
Grass pig

If you want to compare starting positions, this is what scooter and I got:


Scooter:
Plains capital.
Irrigated corn
2 coastal clams


Krill:
Grass hill.
Dry rice
Grass pig

All capitals are riverside. All had 3 hills, although some were grassland and some were plains but with the change to slavery that doesn't actually matter.

Conclusion: Two players get plains hills and 2 players don't. The two that get the plains hill are the two with the best and easiest food res in the game to hook up. Whereas Serdoa and I have to tech all the way to AH to get our land food online (OTOH he gets an easy fish hook up as well).

Now let's look at the areas around the capitals. A 6 tile radius.

Dazed:
Four land food that are 4 food res (2 grass cow, plains sheep, dry wheat)
One 5 food res (grass sheep)
Three coastal 4 food res (3 crab) (all land adjacent)
One coastal Fish (land adjacent)

On top of this Dazed has access to a wet rice that is closer to me by a tile but has a desert between me and the rice and river grassland between him and hte rice. So really, that is his as well for another land based 5 food res.

He then has a copper that can be settled such that the city also has the fish on the inner ring, so he has easily accessible copper, and horse that can be settled with 2 food res on the inner ring, or one coastal food. He has flexibility with his strat resource dot map. There are also a minimum of 17 forests.

He also has these happy res:
Furs
Wines
Dyes
Gems
Incences
Ivory (debatable)

And that is without knowing all of the land to his NE


Scooter:
Four land res that are 4 food res (3 grass cow, dry rice)
Three land food res that are 5 or 6 food res (dry corn, hill pig, grassland pig)
One coastal food res that is 4 food (clam) (land adjacent)

Thisis without knowing most of the outer ring of the 6 tile radius, so there should be extra stuff hiding in the FoW. He also has a huge swarth of forests that he can chop down, over 30.

I can't see any horse, but his copper can be settled with 2 food res on the inner ring (grass cow, clams)

he also has these happy res:
Gold
Spices
Ivory (Debatable)


Serdoa:
Four land res that are 4 food (plains sheep, grass hill sheep, dry rice, deer)
Two 5 food res (grass sheep, dry corn)
Two coastal 4 food res (all land adjacent)

On top of this his copper can be settled so that it has two 4 food res on the inner ring (it is on the hill 1SW of hte 1 tile lake to the south east of the capital). He has horses that he can settle that either can take a food or two from the capital, or have one of any three food res in the outer ring (or food inner ring, horse outer ring). Those food would be a grass hill pigs just outside the 6 tile radius, a coastal clam or plains (river) sheep.

He also has over 20 forests that he can chop within the 6 tile radius.

He also has these happy res:
Gold
Wine

that is without knowing most of his north.


Krill:
Three land based food res that are 4 food res (grass cow, grass hill sheep, dry rice). Two of the food res are adjacent to the only desert on the map.
Two food res that are 5 food or higher.
One coastal 4 food res (crab) (only reachable with border pop)

The copper can only be planted to use a single 4 food resource (all others have double food) but this then invalidates any settling solution to use the sole seafood. There is no horse. Iron is in the desert and requires border pop for double food city with no food in inner ring or can be settled with a single 4 foodresource tile plus the iron. About 18 forests maximum.

Happy Resources:
Silks

On top of this I have the longest coastline taking up my entire west and south (plus the desert in the east).

Conclusion: Less food res, less land, less happy, about the minimum forests, and crap strat resource placement.

I figured I'd go ahead and respond to him, as the more I read his explanation, the more I think he's being kind of unfair or disingenuous. He basically told me by chat that his start was easily the worst (disagree) and that Dazed's start is easily the best (agree). Here was my response:

Finally got around to reading this. Honestly, I don't think my start is any better than yours. You are being slightly disingenuous on some of your descriptions:

1. No mention of your grassland hill gems. It's actually equally close to your capital as my gold is to my capital, and you moved your starting settler away from it, so it's actually closer to you.

2. My "high food" sources like the pigs and dry corn are to my north, which are essentially backline spots, therefore they are pretty much irrelevant early on when I need to be establishing a border with my southern neighbor. So outside of my wet corn, I'm also dealing exclusively with 4 food tiles. If you farm the floodplains, you have quite a bit more 4 food tiles than me.

3. My land in the fog of war is a giant desert. It's utterly useless land, so you can see alll my good land in the world map Dazed sent you (he sent me the same one). You can see the edge of it by my northwest pig.

4. No mention of the fact that you have the most grassland river tiles of anyone available to you, meaning you have the best cottage land out of anyone.

5. Pretending like the 5 floodplains don't count for anything is.... kinda crazy.

6. You are the only person who doesn't have a neighbor who is extremely close to you. Border discussions are very difficult between Dazed and I and between MH and Serdoa, but you get to settle wherever you want because you don't have a close neighbor like that.

7. I actually counted your forests vs my forests. I have 30, you have 25-28, depending on where the boundary between you and Dazed are. Not much difference.


I agree that the starts aren't perfectly balanced, but I think the notion that your start sucks compared to everyone else is not very realistic at all. It sucks compared to Dazed's start, but so does everyone else's.

I'm mostly posting this for Plako's benefit, although I guess it's possible Krill posted this in his thread already.


Since I haven't posted it yet in this thread, here is the world map that this discussion is coming from: (spoilered for size)

Alternatively, you can download it here and view it on your computer (or not download it and view it in your browser), which is what I recommend because it actually scales that way:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM16/2...pdated.jpg

Dazed made this a couple weeks ago.

Krill's criticisms of Dazed's start is pretty valid I think. Dazed got hands-down the best start out of anyone. He's now running away with the game and there's not much I can do about it because he has Bowmen. Krill also seems like he is purposely letting Dazed run away (by that I mean - he's got a NAP with him for some crazy reason) just to spite me... So yeah. Interesting game right now. I think Krill and MH will end up attacking Serdoa, so I'm going to try to expand west very hard and try to capitalize on that by getting some land. We'll see how that goes....

[scooter]

As for where I'm at right now - I badly misplayed my start. I do think moving onto the plains hill was absolutely imperative to do, but I'm falling quite a ways behind Dazed at the moment. Basically, I had a scout start, so I talked myself out of going worker first, which I should have done. Normally I'll just risk it and go worker first, but I didn't, and I really regret it now. So I cooked up this idea to go warrior for 4T until Fishing came in and then build a work boat. This would be nice except for the part where Clams are 4 food and wet corn is 6 food. Also it was a stupid idea.

So here's why Dazed is significantly ahead of me:

1. My start
2. I had a scout start, he had a warrior start
3. I had to move to settle plains hill (T1 cap) and he started on a plains hill (T0 cap)
4. He is creative, so I have to build Ikhandas in order to get half the amount of culture he automatically gets
5. He has better food resources to work with - for instance, his capital can work wet corn and grassland cow, while I'm working wet corn and clams.

So that's how Dazed has managed to out-pace everyone. Krill got choked by Dazed and Serdoa, Serdoa got into it with Krill which slowed him down, and I'm not sure what MH has been doing. We'll see what happens.

[scooter]

Diplo

Here's where I stand with everyone.

Krill - I think he dislikes me because he thinks I was the puppet master behind the Dazed/Serdoa choke on him. This isn't even slightly true, but when Krill thinks something, he is automatically right. It's just the way he operates . Either way, little to no longterm potential to work with him

Serdoa - Don't even trust him slightly, and I will continue to hold a grudge (in-game only obviously - I don't take things personally) for the fact that he sold me out at first opportunity. I'd like revenge, but I don't intend to do anything foolish just for revenge's sake. I haven't written him off yet, but I won't hesitate to make an opportunistic move on him if the chance presents itself. Apparently he lied to MH, but I'll save that for MH's section:

MH - Very quiet in general so he's impossible to read. He's forever away from me, so we don't matter to each other that much yet. Apparently Serdoa lied to him about where I am on the map in order to get a more favorable settling deal. MH asked me about this a few days ago, asking if maybe it came because Serdoa didn't know about the map. I debunked that myth for him (Serdoa told me early on he knew he was much closer to MH so he was thinking conflict could break out), so he knows Serdoa is a liar. That's good I guess.

Dazed - That leaves Dazed. I have little choice but to try to work together with him and hope I can get an ally that way, even though it means allowing him to be a runaway. My only real hope is to take advantage of a possible Serdoa/Krill/MH war and benefit that way, hoping in the late-game that I can catch up to Dazed by virtue of being Financial. Unfortunately again, Dazed has much more good cottage land than me, so even that might be a pipe dream.