[Rejakor]

Uh.

My capital is 2 sea provinces and one two three FOUR land provinces away from abysia's cap. And that's via a /cave/.

If someone is sited in the cap city of the empire (altdorf) then i'm a somewhat less comfortable 2 provs away from them but that's within tolerances.

As for my strat.. it's by no means a rush strat. It is an expansion strat, but a ****ing celestial general is not going to be rushing anyone's capital naked, I don't care who they are. ****ing MARKATA could kill this guy, his strength is his freespawn troops that let him just keep on rollin'. And if you think 18 TC spear and tower shield infantry can take the ~50 aby inf and heavy inf (+ PD) my scouting report says your cap has, well. If I won that battle I would probably convert to [insert religion of choice here] due to irrational universe.

This map has big sea provinces, but so do many other maps, it's because sea provinces are mapmove1 and it's nice to give a map ocean without overpowering water nations. Even then all the amphib nations (LA Atlantis and uh... jomon?) get some minor boost out of that but who even cares those are some of the weaker nations in the game.

Awake SC pretenders are so nerfed in CBM anyway that I don't think any pretender rush strats would work against anything other than maybe a monkey nation with sloth. Even then you can usually research something to scare them off. Even earth meld works if you spam it.

The fundamental reality of playing with 15 provinces per player is that sometimes your cap is going to be two squares away from another cap. That's all the game ever checks for, and no-one has ever found a way to solve it other than fixed starts.

Lung Drago, what you SHOULD be worrying about is that everyone got sardined into one section of the map and someone else is carving up indie provinces like no tomorrow but even then that means everyone who neighbours them should /gang up/ on them because their province growth chart will reveal that they're snaking all the lands.

If caps are further apart the only thing you're really defended from is a turn 4 pretender rush. Because if someone finds you or your lands on turn 8, and they're a rush build, they're going to rush you. And your thau 2 research is not going to save you. Or rather you'll still end up locked in your cap with whatever you've been able to build. All the best rush builds are great at expanding too. If they have to cut through 2 provinces of yours to reach your cap, they don't care. You're going to need your whole army to fight them anyway.

And considering it's turn 6 and no-one has complained of a carrion dragon landing on their cap, i'm pretty sure that the dreaded small map turn 4 rush has not materialized.

I was really enjoying this game and map so far. I have an interesting position where i'm isolated on an isthmus with enemy candles (yours and someone elses) on my two possible routes out so I need to get as much as I can quickly and look into maybe trying to reach the islands or something.

If there's a restart I won't be playing again.