[SPOILERS] Pindicator as Qin Shi of China - Boring Ol' Vanilla

[pindicator]

With the leader & civ combinations, I really wasn't paying attention to what other people were doing while the process was going on, but after seeing how it ended up.... I have to admit a bit of surprise. No, a lot of surprise. A lot of these combinations aren't really combinations. There isn't anything that really jumps out for a lot of these. Maybe a lot of people figured with all the civs taken that they could only do better in their leaders? Well, whatever the reason here are the ones that I like:

Old Harry + Fintourist/Victoria/Aztecs
This is going to be great for expansion early on. Slavery with IMP and FIN, then add the Aztec UB to it.

Molach/Genghis Khan/Portugal
IMP Feitoria's, 'nough said.

Scooter/Shaka/Ottomen -
Jealous. Jealous. Jealous. AGG & EXP were the top of my wish list, and on top of that let's translate that into AGG Jannisaries and half-priced Hammams. Fucking jealous.

AutomatedTeller/Peter/Rome -
AT, I hope you do the obvious thing here and just go great person crazy. Do it even if it isn't the "best" play. Do it for half-priced Forums that give +35% GP production. Do it for the joy of synergy.

Whosit/Hammurabi/Vikings -
AGG Berserkers are back!

[pindicator]

Pre-Game Planning
Part 3

I would link to some very excellent posts by Commodore about war from pb13, but the game is still going so I'll just list the main points and expound on them a little bit:

• Maxim: Protracted Land War Against a Competent Opponent is Never a Good Idea
  
• Corollary: Aggressive Land UUs Are Awful
  
• Corollary: Naval War Against a Compotent Opponent Isn't Necessarily a Bad Idea

If you aren't in PB13 and haven't read those posts yet, I suggest you go read those right now. It's worth the time. There are many examples in our games of someone getting into a protracted war that bogs down their empire and leaves them putting continued resources towards trying to hold on to gains in a miscalculated war, and likewise the celebrated wars are the ones that are decisive and swift.

And even as I'm re-reading Art of War, Sun Tzu reminds us why we want our wars to be quick and decisive and warns against what can happen with a war that goes longer than anticipated:

Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

So let's take a look at a couple games that have gone poorly and see what factors may lead to a long and drawn out war that threatens to take over your entire game.

Mistake #1: Giving Your Opponent Too Much Time

Or why 2-movers are seen as better in MP than 1-move stacks. Example is my war against Slowcheetah in PB7. After an initial strike where i took the bordering cities of Void Rays and Proxy Pylon, the war quickly became bogged down into stalemate. My superior numbers of Cho-Ko-Nus were countered by SleepingMoogle's stack of HAs and Catapults, and my inability to advance only allowed him more time to whip in catapults and make advancing an even more difficult proposition.


Click image for link to the original post

Eventually Moogle's borders would push up against both captured cities, leaving them indefensible. You can see my thinking by clicking the image and going to the post in PB7, but I'm already worrying about falling behind in economy and being dragged down into a long war with SleepingMoogle.

The biggest mistake I made was giving my opponent time to react and defend. You can argue that the mistake was invading with a stack of 1-movers to begin with, and it would certainly fit with Commodore's corollary of Aggressive Land UUs being bad, and that would not be a bad lesson to take from this. But in this situation the entire point was to use CKNs as the backbone of an army. So I took a bad situation of attacking with a slow-moving stack, and compounded on that by delaying and giving my opponent more time to whip up an army. My advantage here was only a small and temporary one of having a better initial army, and every turn i let fall that advantage fall farther and farther away.


Mistake #2: Overestimating the Impact of Quality over Quantity

I'm sure Commodore loves me bringing this game back up, but it's a good lesson even if it's a mistake that I still see being made. The following images are taken from PB8, where Commodore's superior rifle forces were set off against the less-advanced, but more numerous Zulu troops. In the first image scooter and I landed a force of 30 knights and 2 maces against a defense of 8 CG rifles. In the second image, Commodore held a city on our home island with a force of 9 rifles, but we had numerous catapults, maces, and muskets in range to re-capture the city.





The PB7 example showed why slowing down is a bad thing when you have a temporary advantage (Note: I should be thorough now and find an example where the attacker has a prolonged advantage, where going slow is to the attacker's benefit!), as it gives your opponent time to whip defenders, move them to a defensible position, and to counter your troops in their territory. So the other method we use for gaining the advantage, other than time, is quality of troop. The whole point of building a strong economy early in the game is so you can build better units that can then win 1 on 1 battles in the field, and then use those superior 1-on-1 odds to quickly overwhelm your opponent's defenses.

But it is an awful mistake to assume that just because your units can win 1 on 1, that your superior quality troops will also win against superior numbers of lesser troops. Although I suspect if you were to hold an informal poll of players on this site, people would feel safer with a smaller force of more advanced units than a larger force of out-dated ones. Even some of the better players would fall for that. It was one of the frequent arguments I had with scooter in PB13, although I will have to save further commenting on PB13 until after that game has finished.

If you don't know the aftermath of both pictures, the superior quality troops were utterly destroyed, and with less losses than expected. Scooter and I lost 6 units attacking the Rifle stack on our island, the one that Commodore expects us to take back with losses of "a billion troops" in his thread. Clearly an exaggeration on his post, but it gives the impression that he expected us to take high losses to take back a city garrisoned with 9 CG rifles. Just as shocking may have been the knight vs. CG Rifle attack, where we lost 14 knights and a mace to kill 8 Rifles.

I suspect this is because as the number of units become larger, people have to abstract the battles in order to guess at their outcome. And the far easier abstraction is to say that since a rifle beats a knight, a lot of rifles will beat a lot of knights. It's a better abstraction to say that on average 2.5 knights will take out 1 rifle. Of course when you get to large mixed stacks it gets more and more difficult to put into abstract which stack is better. That's why it's a good idea to simulate large battles -- if only it wasn't such a hassle to set those simulations up.

[NobleHelium]

I was skimming your post a bit and thought for a minute that you were making a point about using Void Rays to kill off buildings before the enemy can react.

[zakalwe]

Nice reporting, Pindicator.

[Gaspar]

Really interesting posts, Pindicator.

I do wonder to what extent any of these or any other of our military maxims are true. If you look at things scientifically, pretty much everything in our Civ games is pretty statistically insignificant. I mention that not to pedantic like my frequent teammate, but rather that the question you have to ask is: Is this meaningful or are we finding the data that backs our assertions.

For example, in our early NTT games here, generally speaking the agreed upon "best plan" was rush out to Rifling as fast as possible, draft a bajillion rifles as fast as possible and then roflstomp (a/some) neighbor(s) to gain a land advantage and presto - win! Can we actually think of times where this has happened recently? I don't really lurk the games anymore, so I can't say. But I can say, if I'm neighboring roflstomp guy, I'm building HAs/Maces/Knights (depends on your tech level, obviously) and Cats as soon as I see it coming and I probably have enough units to at worst, make it a long, ugly slog. This comes back to the competent opponent idea - I just don't think you're smashing a competent opponent in any situation unless you've caught them unawares or have a tech advantage on the order of Bombers to an opponent without any method of countering air supremacy or something similar.

I think the core issue is that our opinions are heavily colored by our SP games/anecdotal evidence/what-we-think SHOULD work. When I think about my most successful MP offensive campaigns each one was either a quick strike on a specific target, involved strategic feints, or were against overmatched opponents (in terms of skill, not necessarily technology.) I personally have never had an overwhelming victory against a competent opponent. They have occurred, of course. But mostly they're naval strikes, I think and again, the victory is more in the tactics than the overwhelming sledgehammer.

I guess if I were to create my own MP military manifesto, it wouldn't be all the different than what you posted here. Specifically:

1. Opponent skill is the most important factor in military success/failure. If you spot an easy mark, eat them.
   
2. Beyond that, your military campaigns should be quick strikes with realistic and specific goals. Bonus points if you have an exit strategy.
   
3. Really, have an exit strategy.
   
4. Mobility matters. Being able to threaten multiple points/give as little warning as possible is the surest path to victory against a competent opponent.
   
5. Numbers matter more than tech. I'll take 50 inferior tech units against 20 superior tech units almost every time.
   

Perhaps the most important one, and the hurdle I see more players fall at than any other:

Never underestimate human factors. It might not "make sense" for player X to do thing Y in a perfectly logical world, but we are not perfectly logical beings. If you irritate someone, they're going to look for an opportunity to give you your comeuppance. So even if a specific action confers short-term advantage, beware when you take your foot off their throat. They're going to look for every opportunity to make you swallow it later.

Great posts, Pindicator, really enjoyed how you got me thinking about this stuff.

[pindicator]

Wow, i think you put twice as much content as i did in half the space. Good stuff Gaspar. And that's right to call me out on the topic of truisms for our community versus actual maxims for use in all of Civ4 multiplayer. Part of that is that last post of mine started in one direction and ended up going several places i hadn't originally intended. Originally i was going to talk about a variation on the top item on your list: player motivation. And how i think that's the biggest factor in any war. Except, as i dug into the topic i couldn't exactly figure a way that one would use despiriting their opponents as a valid strategy. First of all, it's wildly unpredictable from person to person. I've had some wars where being invaded invigorated my play, and other wars where i just wanted to give up when attack came. And second, i can't feel good about advocating for the use of it in something that's meant to be a fun passtime.

Now i think there are some truisms in warfare in Civ as in so much as it is a strategy game that deals with the aspects of space and time. But those are principles that all strategy games share in common. I think that principles are a good thing to examine as they help players decide which course is a good option and which is a bad one, but we should never confuse the advice of principles with that of dogma. You can't forget the facts on the ground, and really only experience and calculation will be all you can use for seeing when rules are meant to be followed and when they should be broken.

I like your list, especially #3. I think Sun Tzu would like your list too.

I don't think enough people think about how they are going to get out of a war, they just see an advantage and think they have to act on it. But if you end up stuck in a forty-turn war, even if you win that war you've lost the game. One thing i don't like about your list, even though i'll admit it is right, is the first point. I prefer to think i'd make my decisioins in a vaccuum, but really i know that's because i know if someone is a tough fighter then i'll be afraid of getting into that fight even if it is right move on other levels. But knowing your opponents does count for a lot.

[NobleHelium]

Well, I've seen quite a few people say "and then I'll take peace" assuming the other guy will be happy to give peace. Which is often not the case.

[pindicator]

Well, I've seen quite a few people say "and then I'll take peace" assuming the other guy will be happy to give peace. Which is often not the case.

Exactly. You have to give your opponent the ability to want peace. Maybe you just take enough so that he feels like he still has something to play for. Maybe the threat of annihilation, or at least of you taking even more is the motivator. Or actually finishing the job and wiping him out of the game. But the last thing you want to do is leave yourself with a pissed off opponent that feels like he has nothing more to fight for than to get revenge at the person who put him in this perdicament, and you without the troops needed to finish the war in a timely manner.

[pindicator]

Password

pindi34

Turn 000

Sit back and relax, because we are a top shelf civ.



No scrolling for us. Perks of playing China.

On to the action!



I've checked all my fingers and toes and nothing seems missing, so onward!

SIP looks like a winner here. With a plains hill start and a pfh nearby I am sorely tempted to go warrior first and see if we can knock someone out early. Only question is which way to move the scout. There probably isn't a lot to go over here, but there's also no reason to rush.

[SevenSpirits]

With a plains hill start and a pfh nearby I am sorely tempted to go warrior first and see if we can knock someone out early.

Hmmm...

there's also no reason to rush.

You are your own best advisor!