AUSG101 - Opportunist Team DAR2

[G'Kar]

and Korn's game:

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Defcon5
Just to be clear, when you guys say 2-tile or 3-tile for culture wins do you mean 2 and 3 tiles in between cities, respectively?

No, the now accepted convention is the number of tiles from city to city.

So:

cxxxc

is 4-tile placement.

[Dominae]

2 tiles is as close as you can pack them (city-tile-city). It's great for when you want to generate a lot of Culture.


Dominae

[Mountain Sage]

My turn to vote: Dominae (GodKing 2nd best). Well, Arrian, this time you were a bit unlucky.
As for the others, excellenet job but what impressed me most with Dominae's DAR were not only the achievements, of course, but also the strategy. I like to understand what the strategy for this round of playing is and what the strategy for the future will be. For this, Dominae is the most clear and coherent.
Generally, I am impressed by your number of cities. What did we of the Spaceship team do wrong to have so few???

[Arrian]

As Dominae said, the other teams didn't get the settler pumps we did, due to Dominae's opening move to get the game tile in range of Mecca. That, plus practically ignoring defense, results in a REXplosion.

-Arrian

[alexman]

And don't forget that Settler in 3850 BC, which almost doubled the size of your empire. Of course you need sound strategy to exploit these things, which you guys have displayed in abundance.

[Arrian]

That too.

-Arrian

[Makahlua]

I have to vote Dominae, too - kind of hard to beat Monarchy being thisclose!

Edit: moved comment below as it makes more sense I think

[alexman]

Dominae's is a fine game (I will vote later, as I haven't examined the games closely enough yet), but Monarchy being 3 turns away is hardly a reason for getting voted.

For one thing, Nor Me is also 3 turns away. For another, had these guys gone all-out on research (instead of saving gold) they would already be in Monarchy a while ago.

Please take some time to go through all the games before you vote, otherwise the AUSG will not last.

[GodKing]

Actually, I figured that most would go all out on research, which is why they are 3 turns away and I am something like 28. I decided to max gold instead to 'just be different'. I have an extra 250 gold. All around, probably would have been better to go max on research, but seeing different things is what this is about.

[Dominae]

I went 40 turns for Polytheism, then max research for Monarchy. Big mistake, even though I'm pretty close to Monarchy now. Had I known the tech rate was so slow, I would have rushed to Monarchy as quickly as possible.


Dominae

[alexman]

OK, I'm done going over the saves. First of all, it was a pleasure to see how well you're all doing!
So here's what I think:

Godking is closer than anyone for a Horseman attack. But his looser city spacing seems inconsistent with that goal. If you plan to destroy your neighbor immediately, you don't need to grab all that land by REX, as you will have it by force anyway. A tight city spacing would have been more effective as a production base for units.

Dominae continued his Culture/REX plan flawlessly, and should be in great position for a horseman offensive soon.

BRC's expansion is almost identical to Dominae's, but he's a bit behind in Workers, military, and culture.

Korn's game is also similarly light on military and heavy on REX, but he also went nuts with workers, and I like that a lot. However, he already has iron connected (why waste a worker for a colony, when you can pop-rush a temple to get iron in your borders, btw?), and knowledge of horseback riding, so his military buildup will be slower.

Nor me has a clear plan. His focus was to set up his 3-ring core and get in position to mount an early Swordsman attack as soon as possible. He's in the best position to have a second core set up by the next turn block.

Arrian did a great job of recovering from his bad luck. He's not far behind in expansion, and his almost 1000 gold gives lots of flexibility. The lack of RCP hurts the production in his outer cities though.

I'm at a loss to judge this game when there is no clear goal defined. It doesn't help that the number of turns in this block were too few to give a clear differentiation between strategies. You are all on your way to UP!

Overall, however, it's clear to me that the best games here are Dominae's and Nor Me's. Even though Nor Me is behind in land area, he will soon make up for it by whacking a neighbor. And he has an extra Granary to fill up the continent. The question is, what is closer to the goal for this team? If the victory goal is culture, I have to go with Dominae. If the goal is to win big, I have to go with Nor Me. Maybe it would be better if this team votes for a goal before the next save is chosen.

[Makahlua]

Sorry I'm not expansive in my analysis, I should've included that settler pump which will help keep the REX'ing going even during conquest as well. I'm still kinda getting my footing in here; I'm a newbie in comparison to some of the folks playing, so I feel a bit under-qualified to totally take apart other folk's turn blocks

[Rhothaerill]

Originally posted by Makahlua
Sorry I'm not expansive in my analysis, I should've included that settler pump which will help keep the REX'ing going even during conquest as well. I'm still kinda getting my footing in here; I'm a newbie in comparison to some of the folks playing, so I feel a bit under-qualified to totally take apart other folk's turn blocks

Feel free to tear them all apart (in a nice way of course ). This is a learning process for everyone, even the "graybeards" of the strat forum.

[Arrian]

Arrian did a great job of recovering from his bad luck.

Thanks, but not really. My reaction to the *bam-bam-pow-bam!* rapid-fire battlefield losses was largely irrational... and at first, wasn't really a reaction at all - more like inert shock. The first thing I should have done was use Mecca to help out right away(I didn't because it didn't have a barracks and because it was the mongo settler pump). The second thing I should have done when things started to get real bad was to poprush. I could have prevented the temporary loss of Damascus, probably. Further, even if I hadn't, I should never have attacked the American warrior who took it with my vet spearman across the river. That was pure anger.

In other words, strategically speaking, my 30 turns were poor. I micromanaged relatively well (until losing Damscus, at least, since once that happened I lost control of the game tile temporarily), but screwed up some more important stuff.

Research? Heh, I didn't even think about it. I just left it at 10% for no real reason.

-Arrian