I understand that Norman, however the dynamics of a discussion on Discord are just better than on a forum. I don’t see a good solution to this.

I'm fine with you discussing stuff there, @AI. However, I'm really curious what the 3 picker thinks and all MoD wrote after the pick outcome was a casual "Lol". So I'm not asking you to stop using Discord but just to also write something meaningful here (as some of you are doing already).

Edited 7/15/2020 13:02:03

I get your reasoning Norman. However, I don't understand why it's necessary to narrow it down already and make a decision that he will be in ME? Maybe it's just my style of play, but I wouldn't rely unconditionally on your thoughts. Surely I'd take them into consideration, but in the end I would be highly reluctant to draw any early conclusions from it. To me it seems impossible to make a safe assumption with the intel that we got right now. And at this point I don't even think we're required to make that assumption. So personally I'd keep both options open here without favoring one or the other - but maybe that's just me and how I like to play.

You guys are also overrating Middle East I think. I see that it is fancy and all that, but if we are in Georgia before Rufus, it is just a bad, inefficient pick.

I vote B here,

A is too risky, I hate having SA when the opponent is in CA.
Completing scandinavia first is the safest, but will led to income disadvantage,

With option B we can take WR in 2 turns. I dont expect Rufus to come after WR straight away, so I think it should work :)

You guys are also overrating Middle East I think. I see that it is fancy and all that, but if we are in Georgia before Rufus, it is just a bad, inefficient pick.

Isn't that the whole point tho? It works because you think it's not that good + don't bother to defend Georgia (like us moving to Georgia mostly only makes sense to safeguard against a ME pick).

@99thlap: The problem with Middle East is that first I thought Middle East would mean that Rufus first takes the bonus and then later shows up in Russia whenever he feels like it's the time. However, as I thought about this, then we would have 3 bonuses while Rufus is lacking behind in Middle East while he has to fight us in America. For this reason I believe that if Rufus is indeed in Middle East, he will show up as early as turn 3. As AI has pointed out, Middle East is, in some sense indeed just a bad inefficient pick. If Rufus is in Middle East and he just takes the bonus he risks losing by default by getting outpaced. When he then finally shows up in Russia, he has already lost the America battle and I'm not even talking about us taking Georgia before him.

So if Rufus is in Middle East, I'm pretty sure that Rufus' play is pretty straight forward. With option B, after turn 3 we both would have 12 income and Rufus would have a double border to Russia.

Edited 7/15/2020 13:58:56

My logic on Rufus picking ME is that ME works as both EA cover and Russia cover and it seems like a Rufus move to grab the pick that covers both. I could see a constructed pick set something like this:

CA 1
WR 2
EA 3
SA 4
ME 5
Scan 6

Basically with ME working as the omni-solution to losing out on either WR or EA or both.

Now I don't think its the only possibility. Most everyone thinks EA is one of the other picks. Blind caucasus is believable. I can talk myself into east china, but think its unlikely Rufus left Russia area with that much room to breathe. Something like east Russia is also possible. But I do think ME is the most likely possibility.

As for game situation, I'd like to hear more from AI on the "not panicking yet" argument.

Rufus has CA. Farah has SA. Very bad.

I vote for pushing that surrender button. Should have gone with mod's pricks

C

I vote B.
I think the risk of Rufus countering that is lower than SA, and if he does it's less threatening. A seems too risky to me - if he counters SA successfully (which is probably fairly likely) it's hard to see a path to victory.

Id have to go with option B.
Pretty much all the reasons have already been stated. Plus risking it with SA is not really in my style.

A

We currently have 6 votes for A, 5 votes for B and 1 vote for C

B

hmm

Unless we get really good leftovers and Rufus really bad luck, i doubt this is winnable.

I vote for procrastinating until 2d 23h and then go with your gut.

I vote B

As for game situation, I'd like to hear more from AI on the "not panicking yet" argument.

Well, the only reason we would be panicking is that we have SA while Rufus has CA. This isn't ideal obviously, however it also is not easy to convert into a winning advantage for Rufus. Basically the only conversion that works reliably is to counter SA while we're trying to take it. Now let's suppose we don't take it, how is Rufus going to get a significant advantage? The only way really would be to take CA at some point, while we don't take SA and/or don't counter CA. That is difficult to do, it takes at least 5 deploys to do so and more likely to take like 7 deploys. We need less to border CA, and it's also territory-wise easy to break CA from SA (due to the flanking options and the misplaced stack in CA). Ok, Rufus still has more momentum, that is for sure, but it's not that easy for him. He always has to fear us finishing SA too.
Honestly thinking about it that way, I am convinced that Rufus HAS to counter SA before even thinking about CA, which makes option A even more unattractive.

As for Scan, Russia, those picks are nice. We have income there and can use the leftovers from taking either bonus to take the other one and /or to take Georgia or fight Rufus if he shows up. EA as a single pick is strong, but the leftovers can not be used. And the lack of intel about his last pick is uncomfortable, but not more than that. Time will tell, and we will consider all the options every move, so no "real surprises" will happen. We will just have to be accurate / make a good guess at the critical moment.

That being said, I doubt Rufus has much intel too. He probably knows 1-2 and can guess the rest, but guessing is not certainty.

For those reasons, I also don't see why Timi is so pessimistic, but his message suggests that he doesn't care much anyways.

Edited 7/17/2020 16:34:59

For those reasons, I also don't see why Timi is so pessimistic, but his message suggests that he doesn't care much anyways.

Yeah, that wasn't an analysis but just him being mean about your pick options.

Honestly thinking about it that way, I am convinced that Rufus HAS to counter SA before even thinking about CA, which makes option A even more unattractive.
What you are missing there IMO is that Rufus has already one pick which he can't transform into easy income and this is true for Middle East, Caucasus or whatever, even if it's East China. If Rufus counters South America he will get stuck with 9 income for too long and he can't even deploy properly in order to hit South America. Rufus can't play against Russia and South America at the same time. Well, he could of course, and he has some chance to get away with it, if we choose option A. However even if Rufus should get a lucky punch against South America, this kind of random counter play is pretty bad and isn't how Rufus got his gold stars.