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Super Jay Mann
Nov 6, 2008

if you're in the lead and you can guarantee avoiding a WoC by ending Age III early then I think it's worth passing on a wonder to do so. Although a lot also depends on what Yellow's infrastructure looks like and if he can gain more on this last turn than you can with internet or UN.

Also Yellow has a prime opportunity to AI you on his next turn if he has it and a strong enough unit to sac. That's a 17 point swing right there and there's not much you can do to respond on the final turn. I suppose that situation also begs the question, would you as yellow risk an AI against green in this situation with 8 cards and 5 MAs defending? If you can Himeji your way up to +11 you have to take that chance, right?

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wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!
Well, that didn't play out how I expected, but I'll take it.

Red spent their whole turn pumping military to soften the blow of war. They also offered me a peace treaty (+1 culture each, no attacks) which I had no problem with. They did take Tanks from the row though, so I would have been better off gambling on that wonder last turn. Oh well.

Neither Yellow nor Blue attacked me in their final turn; both prepared events. Yellow spent every civil action to hate-draft the UN wonder. Blue drafted Bill Gates and most of the remaining techs, but inexplicably took the Age III arena and not labs. (I think it might have been for the Impact of Competition event they prepared, but Computers still would have scored them more.)

I was happy to take the Computers for myself along with Sid Meier, and I used up my turn beefing my science for him. I didn't worry about military since I was out of the running for any strength races and knew Red couldn't attack, and I didn't do anything with farms like someone suggested because I had a better event to prepare than the Agriculture/Balance I was holding. (But it would have been even better still to play the Impact of Culture that you can see still in my hand. I don't know how I missed that, other than my hand was really full. Oops.) Since some wanted to see the others' infrastructure, this is what I passed the turn into:



In the time it took me to make this writeup, Red took their final turn (demolishing a farm for a theater) and ended the game. Final event evaluation saw Blue squeak ahead of Yellow by a few points but both stayed behind me.

I didn't make these posts to gloat or have other people cheat out my turns for me, just thought I'd share a scenario and get people's thoughts on it. Thanks for following along. I'd love to see similar situations from others.

silvergoose
Mar 18, 2006

IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS




Oh yeah, strategy posts are super cool, and "here's the game situation, your move" tend to be the best. See: literally all chess/go problems.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

silvergoose posted:

Oh yeah, strategy posts are super cool, and "here's the game situation, your move" tend to be the best. See: literally all chess/go problems.

Yeah, TTA is very hard to discuss meaningfully in the abstract anyway because it's a game where so much is context-dependent. It's odd to see people try and make leader tier lists for the game, for example. Seeing a game state analyzed like that is so much better.

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!

Super Jay Mann posted:

Also Yellow has a prime opportunity to AI you on his next turn if he has it and a strong enough unit to sac. That's a 17 point swing right there and there's not much you can do to respond on the final turn. I suppose that situation also begs the question, would you as yellow risk an AI against green in this situation with 8 cards and 5 MAs defending? If you can Himeji your way up to +11 you have to take that chance, right?
I'm not sure, I probably wouldn't have attacked as yellow either. But then I don't like to take risks with aggressions; for me it's either a sure thing or pure desperation.

I rely on this mental loop to tell me what an opponent's minimum defense needs to be:

1) Assume they have no defense cards and will just get +1 strength per MA
2) Replace a generic card with a +2/4/6 strength one
3) Repeat until their strength matches mine; that tells me how many defense cards they need to hold

For +11 strength vs 5 MA holding a hand of 8 Age III cards, the defender needs only 2 of them to be bonus cards. I don't like those odds against a player who's been weak all game because they are probably hoarding defense. At that point it might come down to how many defense cards I've seen/discarded myself.

This brings up one of my few peeves about the game. Its card-counting is really nice, tracking the position of each card in the deck that you've seen. But the tracking for military cards is almost useless because it doesn't include cards you've seen and discarded. I get that you have the potential to draw them again if the deck is reshuffled, but the game should be able to track whether that's happened yet. This would help a lot when trying to estimate what's in a person's hand. Am I missing some reason why that wouldn't be trackable knowledge?

The General
Mar 4, 2007


Panzeh posted:

Yeah, TTA is very hard to discuss meaningfully in the abstract anyway because it's a game where so much is context-dependent. It's odd to see people try and make leader tier lists for the game, for example. Seeing a game state analyzed like that is so much better.
The only tier I am sure about is that Moses belongs in the garbage. I haven't taken homer in more than 1000 games.

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!
According to today's news update, the app now supports player-created tournaments. Can't figure out how to start it though, and there are no updates or patch notes in the iOS app store.

rchandra
Apr 30, 2013


wizzardstaff posted:

According to today's news update, the app now supports player-created tournaments. Can't figure out how to start it though, and there are no updates or patch notes in the iOS app store.

You have to go to your CGE account webpage. There's a link in the announcement.

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!

rchandra posted:

You have to go to your CGE account webpage. There's a link in the announcement.

Oh thanks, I could see the link formatting but couldn't click on my phone for some reason, and the announcement hadn't made it to CGE's front page yet when I looked there. Found it on the account page just like you said.

hito
Feb 13, 2012

Thank you, kids. By giving us this lift you're giving a lift to every law-abiding citizen in the world.
https://account.czechgames.com/tournaments/ to save y'all a click.

Only a few slots left in Celebration Trio/Quartet, sign up now if it interests you! I'll be playing in both.

hito
Feb 13, 2012

Thank you, kids. By giving us this lift you're giving a lift to every law-abiding citizen in the world.
For folks that got in flight one of the Celebration games, how'd it turn out?

My initial showing in Trios was super underwhelming - 0-1-2 - though in my defense I had two very strong players in my group ( deluks917 and vitek, the latter of whom - at least by CGE's scoring system - won the whole thing). But since the second stage is seeded and I placed 6th in my group, I was in group 6 for the second stage and had a pretty dominant 3-0-0 (with win margins of 11, 43, and 90).

In Quartets, I did a fair bit better. 2-2-0-0 in Stage 1, but taking second place because I had a group with deluks917 AGAIN and they were also 2-2-0-0 with a better head to head. So I was in Group 2, but despite the group being seeded with second place finishers I still managed to repeat 2-2-0-0, this time with no one tying so it's an uncontested group win. (Technically there's one game left in Group 2, but no matter who wins I'll have the most points.) That feels pretty respectable to me!

It was super disorenieting having trios, quarters, and meeple league at the same time - sometimes I'd wake up and play eight bleary-eyed turns from bed. My play suffered a bit and I want to try to be more discerning. But having said that, I don't have many games right now, so let's try doing Goon League through the ingame tournament system this time.

I'm thinking Default Async, 4p, and 7 players total (which means 4 games each), but want to open it up for votes before doin my preferences by fiat. No need to sign up explictly - I'll just post a link in this thread when we get a rough quorum on settings - although feel free to positively affirm that you want in if you want an invite to make sure you get a slot.

hito fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Jun 6, 2020

The General
Mar 4, 2007


I'm too lazy to actually check how I did, but basically I learned that I am mediocre in 3p and atrocious in 4p. I think I conceded half my 4p games not wanting to give way way too many points away in wars.

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!
I also can't be bothered to look it up but my memory is that I got trashed by late-game wars much more than I should have. That's been a big weakness of mine in games lately; I keep devaluing military.

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rchandra
Apr 30, 2013


Pajada's international championship is giving me more 4p than I want right now. Would play 3p or 2p.

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