"How I Lost Dobber's 2007 Easter Contest"
by: Dread Pirate Terry

OK, now that the shock is wearing off maybe I can explain the strategy that allowed me to lose a contest to mamayourpeoplearehungry again.
First of all I want to thank Dobber one last time for providing such an excellent challenge for all of us. Thanks to both Dobber & Sir Henry for providing the prizes we fought so hard for.
I particularly enjoyed the posting that went on in the last 24 hours or so of the contest. I especially enjoyed that last day because I was almost positive that I would finally defeat mama. On the morning of the 30th. I got an e-mail from mama saying that she had submitted her final entry and would not be able to improve on it before midnight. I started to celebrate a little too early though. She told me her final score by her calculation was 50,045 points. It was in the bag, I had her beat by 22 points. She played an excellent game but unfortunately for me her calculation was a little off! Somehow she missed a couple of houses when adding up her score and ended up with 102 points more.


Opening Strategy:

In Dobber's original "Trading Partners" scenario, as in most "help the AI scenes", the military option is enabled. That makes it easier to assist the AI in the planning of their cities. You can send in a few soldiers and "remove" those frustrating monuments, gallows and farms the AI has built between the church and bathhouse. As mama & Bomi noted early on that strategy wasn't available. In my first entry, 23647 points, I thought I had been very lucky with the way the AI built there cities. All three AIs were smart enough to each buy a ship. None of them however was smart enough to build higher than settlers on their "off" islands. After a few days I realized that that was as good as I could do so I sent it in.

Next Step:

After thinking about it for a couple of days I remembered a strategy that had been used in some earlier contests by several of the "Old German Masters". I hadn't been aware of what they did at the time but after the contest was over mamayourpeoplearehungry pointed out their strategy to me and tried to teach me how to do it myself.
My next thought was, if I remembered this old strategy, mama would certainly remember it too! Back to the drawing board!

In my 2nd. entry I drug out the partially learned strategy and tinkered around with it a bit. After about a week I was pretty proud of myself for actually figuring out how to make it work. My 2nd entry was 39,863 with which I was very pleased so I sent that one in.

The Final Paranoia:

Within a few days of sending in the second entry I remembered how competitve mamayourpeoplearehungry can be. Anyone that has played multiplayer with her can attest to that, right? Since there were still two weeks left in the contest I figured it wouldn't hurt to see if I could improve some more. Thank goodness I did, otherwise we wouldn't have had a one, two, Illinois finish to this contest. Thanks for pushing me a little harder kateker! By the 24th or so I figured I had gotten as lucky as I could hope so I sent in my last entry and finally relaxed. As I noted above that was a BIG MISTAKE!

Finally, My Losing Strategy:

After looking at both mama's and kateker's entries I see that my strategy was just a little different than mama's and considerably different than kateker's. It seems to me that kateker's plan was a lot more difficult to pull off than mine or mama's. I could be wrong about that though, I never tried it that way myself.
In my final entry, unlike earlier attempts, I sold ships to all three AIs as soon as I had sold them their first extra tools. I hoped that that way they might on their own build their main city on a better island. It didn't work, even after I moved my main city to the Northwest island. I hoped one of them might build a good main city on the island we all started out on. Even though they all still refused to advance beyond settler level on their "off" islands they did very early on provide me an opportunity to set up very well to implement the "Old German Master's" strategy. Step by step, this is what I did:
#1 As soon as an AI built a warehouse I built one myself on the very opposite corner of the island.
#2 Next I added one or two marketplaces that would encircle the AIs warehouse's area of influence, but not too close to him.
#3 After I was satisfied with where my markets were placed I immediately sold the AI all the building supplies he wanted.
It doesn't always work out very well but I was lucky enough on two islands to have the AIs go along with the plan.
#4 After buying up all the materials he wanted, in two cases, the AI built a/several marketplaces that were directly up
against the area of influence of my marketplaces.
#5 At this point the trap is sprung. At my leisure through the rest of the game I build a city of my own, outside of the area of
my warehouse, which I intend to leave in place, but within the area of influence of both my and the AI's marketplace.
#6 Through the rest of the game I supply my Aristocrats in my "New City" to keep them very happy. Because of my final step
it was much more efficient to set up this strategy on two islands only and by using the least number of marketplaces
possible.
#7 The final, exciting & hectic step. After checking out around the map to make sure everything else was maximized, I
carefully planned the last move. As fast as I could I deleted the marketplaces on the first "New City" island and then
rushed to the second "New City" and deleted those too. Without hesitation I immediately "saved" the scene. The way I
did it meant that the entire city I had built was now "captured" by the AI. The aristos that previously had been mine
were very annoyed that suddenly their new master was not equipped to provide for them so saving right away is vital.
In my case because I limited the number of marketplaces used I only lost 100 of the aristocrats due to dissatisfaction.
I'm not sure exactly sure why mama took the time to also delete her "New City" warehouse, but I guess it doesn't
matter much since she still clobbered me by 80 points.

Thank You mamayourpeoplearehungry for letting me write the post operation battle report! It was alot of fun to do, even though I had already been working on it. The only difference is the title for my original report was: "How I Finally Beat mamayourpeoplearehungry and Won Dobber's 2007 Easter Contest"
I hope everyone enjoyed the telling of my sad story. Play around with making this strategy work, you never know when it might come in handy in a future contest. If you have any questions or comments please post them here, I've enjoyed hearing from several of you during the last five weeks in PM's but let's share our thoughts and comments here for all to read.

THE END

__________________
"Sail to distant islands, meet new and interesting people, and then them"