[PB81] naufragar is a rock. He is an iiiiiiiiiisland.

[naufragar]

good luck!

Thanks, Klops!

But I forgot something important... Remember how Mjmd and I had a plan to coordinate our attacks, with me attacking on t157 and soaking the first TBS hit, sacrificing my stack, so Mjmd could attack on t158?


A desperate plan, but better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees, etc., etc.


But I forgot something crucial. Mjmd, pal, if you were already flirting with a reputation as utterly dishonest, I wouldn't break an agreement two turns after you agreed to it! 


Is life so dear and peace so sweet? (Etc., etc.)

We did the only thing we could do and retreated to more defensible terrain.


Odds our army sees another turn? Unlikely.

But, because we are fighters at heart, we'll keep scrapping down to our finger nails.


I had a sneaky little chariot on a carrack just back from exploring Gira's cities. TBS emptied his garrisons, so I was able to burn this. (I never put culture into it, and TBS is creative, so I got to raze it instead of needing to preserve it as my own.)

I offered TBS a peace offer in exchange for him paying me 100 gold. Is that brazen? Well, unless his reinforcements are in range of the island, I can burn at least one more city, and I'd bet preventing that is worth some gold at least. (Who knows if he's actually sailed too far away to reinforce.) On the other hand, if I'm TBS, I use these next ten turns of enforced peace with Mjmd to eat as much of Portugal as I can. (Which is likely all of it. )

[Commodore]

Heh, Mjmd is the most blatantly treacherous NAP-stabber on RB in a decade, this one's honestly on you.

[superdeath]

Heh, Mjmd is the most blatantly treacherous NAP-stabber on RB in a decade, this one's honestly on you.

Good to hear it isnt me.

[naufragar]

Our core is collapsing under the weight of TBS's Cuirassiers, so it's time to do what any good pirate would do. Run away!


As you can see, we are in trouble. TBS doesn't have too many cannons, but he has enough, plus he has every incentive to throw bodies at my defenses with little regard to casualty ratios. (More on this later.

So, we pull a slightly more piratical Dunkirk:


Arrows indicate where I moved and where I'll move next turn, with a little bit depending on how heavy TBS swings either west or east. The goal is to retreat every possible unit to our last pirate holdout of Teach.

Meanwhile, we're producing as many privateers as we can before we lose our ports. Teach is a terrible city, originally settled for the overseas trade route, but beggar pirates can't be chooser pirates.

Sharp-eyed readers may notice that Mjmd and I are at war. He sniped FireonTheWater from me, presumably to keep it from TBS, but still! Outrageous effrontery! Robbing from me what I stole from him! He keeps asking for peace, but I don't know why he thinks I would want peace with him? War with him matters literally not at all to me, and keeping at war with Mjmd while TBS and Mjmd have enforced peace allows Mjmd's scouting chariot to pillage my Towns which hurts TBS. (More on this in a minute.) (Speaking of pillaging, you can see I kept a trireme in my interior lake. This is to spite-pillage the crabs when Morgan falls. TBS, when you read this after, it looked like a spite-pillaged a plains cottage in my retreat from Bonnet. Not my intention! I was trying to pillage the road underneath and forgot you can pillage friendly roads. ) Plus, and I cannot emphasize this enough, I moved my stack out of my borders on the assurance that Mjmd and I were advancing together and then he peaced out to leave my stack to be obliterated for nothing...

Mjmd, like the hedgehog, knows one good trick. (Actually two if we count the ancient era rush.) He ignores the world and builds away. Truly the Dwarven King of Realms Beyond. The trouble is that the nefarious TBS, thanks to skill and America, has a stupidly large lead. Mjmd actually is passing TBS in tech rate if I read the signs correctly. (Both are in a golden age.) And what's hilarious is that TBS is losing money in a golden age while at 100% commerce slider. The man doesn't have a single cottage.

But, this won't really matter, since he's about to conquer mine; he'll lose his army supply costs soon; he hasn't yet to build a single commerce multiplier building; etc. Nevertheless, if Mjmd could only keep tunneling in his cozy mountain, surely he won't get eaten by the dragon.

Of course, this is nonsense. TBS is surely aware of this weakness in his empire. In a handful of turns, TBS will have Cavalry. TBS will be looking around thinking, "hmm. I make no money, but I have double the army of the guy to my west, whose best defensive unit is the musket. " Who knows. Maybe for reasons unknown to me, TBS gives Mjmd the long peace he needs. But I doubt it.


But the real reason for my report is advertising! Get yourself to the gaming subforum and sign up to restart Realms Beyond's noble tradition of Diplomacy.

[naufragar]

Could I get lurker input on something? Last turn, as you can see from the screenshots, I had a bunch of privateers about to finish. This turn, none finished, and the game told me I couldn't build them. TBS took my capital which lost me the iron SW of the capital (in the previous pic, the one with Mjmd's chariot).

But the problem is I'm pretty sure I should still have another source of iron:


Hornigold has a roaded iron one tile to its south. Note the mouseover.

But even Hornigold can't access this iron:



Am I missing something? I just lost a ton of production, and it feels like a bug.


Edit: DAMMIT! I'm giving Dreylin Iron for free and I can't cancel the deal yet.

[klops]

nice... :D

declaring war should cancel the deal, afaik

[Mjmd]

I'll read later, but know I love you Nauf, but I did not like you this game.

[naufragar]

Likewise, man, likewise. But if it's any consolation, my villainy was intentional.

[naufragar]

Hi I'm Nauf... I know tanking the whole game for a city that was worthless to me is already a strong performance, BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE!!!!

I will now get mad at [Mjmd] for not invading like he promised as his army would get shredded first before mine will.

Hope some perspective makes it feel less personal:

1) You give yourself away with the second half of the quote. You were the #2 on the continent, but you never tried to police the #1. I didn't trust you as an ally because you weren't willing to take the initiative, let alone sacrifice, for a common cause. I moved my stack up expecting it to get wiped as the price of you taking Celsus. It's impossible to imagine the opposite: you offering to sacrifice your stack so another player takes a city. So you give yourself away: "I will get mad for not invading like he promised as his army would get shredded first before mine will." Your issue was that you'd have to take losses first. You were never going to challenge TBS if it meant taking damage. And, no thank you, I'm the #3 on the continent. I don't have the obligation to replace a #1 with a different #1.

2) "Tanking the whole game for a city that was worthless." You mentioned throughout your thread that I torpedoed your game. For lurkers following at home, I have circled the city that I took that torpedoed your game:



I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why this particular 2 tile island was key to the whole game. (Unlike the identical, unsettled two tile island to the south.) For my part, I got a second intercontinental trade route (+1 gold per city) and 250 gold out of the peace deal. (And then immediately declared war on TBS and took 600 gold off him. Was this more or less than the damage you did to him all game?)

Oh, and btw, I wasn't trying to be a dick when I didn't give you that final peace. I was waiting for TBS to leave an opening so I can sneak Carracks into Scottish Hero and burn it. 

WRAP-UP

For a more positive post mortem, the Boudica of Portugal plan sort of worked as a proof of concept. The Great Lighthouse plus 3 islands gave our economy the juice it needed. We got to Carracks plenty early off the back of an extortionist economy. We actually did alright in demos for the longest time. Mjmd and TBS were ahead in crop, sure, but that was due to TBS building green farms over cottages and Mjmd having an entire half a continent to himself. We kept pace with or were ahead of Mjmd (Org/Zulu) through Guilds. TBS, obviously, we shouldn't even mention.    My point is just that the Boudica/GLH/extortion economy kept itself up at the front pack for the midgame. If... (but damn it's a gigantic "if") If TBS hadn't been as far ahead as he was, I think the Carracks->Overseas colonialism plan would've payed out massively. The trouble was that even with the midgame economic boom into Optics, TBS was still at Galleons (and freaking Cuirassiers) too quick for me to setup the overseas colonies.

Oh well. Probably can't try the plan again. This was the perfect setup for it, and that's unlikely to come again. Plus now neighbors will know what I'm about when they see me rocking Portugal.

SHAMEFULLY LATE EDIT: Thank you very much Tarkeel and lurker committee who checked over the map. You're the real heroes. 

Even Later Edit: Now go sign up for the upcoming Diplomacy game.

[Zed-F]

Competition for wonders was a lot less fierce than we expected for a number of reasons, most especially constant warring on the other continent. Without competition for wonders, or a serious effort to force us to turn hammers into military rather than infrastructure, there really wasn’t anything that could stop us.