RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

Speaker already mentioned that we were irritated by the "not ending turn" clock phenomenon, so I won't go into more detail on that. (I'm not sure that I'm entirely buying athlete's explanation though, since he clearly took advantage of the clock rules to carry out extra whippings over and over again, and seemed to be doing so very deliberately.) But there was more than just that:

* athlete, your team attacked Byzantium during somewhat dubious negotiations. I don't blame you for doing so, since they were dumb enough to plant an aggressive forward city with no defense, but it did sort of establish a militaristic bent to your team's play...

* Which was hardly dispelled when you sent horse archers halfway around the world to come attack us, even though we had done nothing to provoke you and you had virtually nothing to gain from the attack. As I posted at one point, how would you have felt if sooooo had sent units in the Classical age to attack your Arabia in the first PBEM game? Wouldn't that have been kind of silly to do? Plus it was rather cowardly to attack only in a 3 vs 1 or 4 vs 1 or 5 vs 1 situation, IMO. We've been carrying an in-game grudge ever since against the teams that attacked us, and understandably so.

* Then, after that was over, athlete attacked slaze with Whosit, signed peace (selling out Whosit in the process, I might add!), and subsequently re-attacked slaze with his own gifted army in a vicious backstab. I mean, come on! Why would anyone trust your team after all that? We pegged athlete's play as completely unscrupulous, and there wasn't much evidence to the contrary from this game.

* Finally, athlete you just gave up when we attacked and started gifting away all your gold (and eventually some of your cities) in ridiculous cheese fashion. It's a juvenile reaction to setback, a case of "waaah, I'm not going to win, now I'm going to screw over everyone else!" I know you felt you were helping your friend Nakor, but the proper way to do that should have been a vigorous and tough defense, the same way slaze fought back earlier. (If you had finished researching Astronomy, you could have done a lot of damage to us. A lot.) Artificially boosting other teams by gifting them thousands of gold just comes off as appallingly bad sportsmanship.

This really wasn't your finest game, athlete. Sorry, wish I could be more positive here, but I have to be honest. You were really ruthless, and then gave up almost immediately when things went downhill. I hope that it proved to be a good learning experience though.

Also, nothing athlete posted was spoilerish in the least. What the hell is the point of playing these games, and posting them publically, with no security whatsoever, if everyone gets attacked any time they make any comments? Lighten up, Krill.

Hey, and we also played a turn today! I know, imagine that!



Nakor's stack remained in Walata, since there was really nowhere it could go. Speaker hit the stack with 10 catapults, and then we sent in the rest of our units. Everything died. For some reason, the event logger doesn't show most of it, but rest assured that nothing escaped from the trapped pocket of Holy Roman units.

Our losses
10 catapults
1 rifle
1 cuirassier
1 axeman
Total: 67k

Nakor's losses
8 rifles
6 maces
4 cannons
3 catapults
1 cavalry
1 trebuchet
1 axeman
Total: 255k

We had some axes along to clean up redlined units, which is why we lost one against a catapult. I also enjoyed the "axe defeats mace" result, although sadly we did not get an axe defeats rifle combat. We expected all of the Holy Roman siege units to be destroyed through flanking by our cavs, however apparently flanking does not apply if the defending units are in a city. Neither Speaker nor I knew that, actually. Because of that rule, Dantski actually took the city on his turnset (we made sure to play before him for this reason). That allowed Walata to repop its borders:



Our units are almost all on the rice tile, and will need a couple of turns to heal. Great General Medic III Clara Barton is on the scene to administer first aid. With Walata's re-expanded borders, Gao should be a cinch to recapture as well once our units are healed up. If Nakor is smart, he'll simply abandon Gao and not even try to defend it. But maybe we'll get lucky and be able to smash another exposed stack of units there too. One thing we do need now: more catapults. Most of our southern cities are building them at a pretty good rate. Several can get 2t cats (20 shields/turn base, then the forge takes it to 25/turn.)

Also, we have a caravel resting inside Timbuktu, which our Great General Medic will also be able to heal! Speaker, our next two frigates out of Hampton/Vicksburg probably need to come down here and patrol this channel. You can see the two Holy Roman triremes prowling around, and beyond that we might be able to push on and coastal blockade Nakor's capital, which would be a lot of fun.



Further north (or south, haha!) our galleons are pushing up to Margrave's Port. Holy Rome did something really clever here, chopping a forest tile to produce a trireme and sink our damaged caravel from last turn. Of course, maybe they should have saved that chop for some defensive units, but hey, it was still a nice move!

Next turn, we'll want to move the caravel first into position, which grants us sight into all three cities in the area. I've laid out my thoughts on unit moves, such that we can land all 9 units next turn and also hold the option of attacking Jonril straight out of the boat. (If there's just one defender, we'll probably take it.) Depends on what we see, but at a minimum, Margrave's Port is likely to fall to our team.

Nothing much going on at present on the center island. We have cats in place to blunt a stack if it tries to attack us, but not enough to go on the offensive ourselves there. The one thing we've achieved is forcing Nakor to whip or draft a lot of his cities... they are significantly lower in population now than they were a little while ago. And it's taking them forever to get to Astronomy, so we've achieved our basic goal of slowing down their teching progress.

For our own research, I realized this turn that we forgot something: Communism has a Liberalism mandatory pre-requisite. Ooops. That means two more turns and one more tech needed for our next goal. At least Liberalism will give us the option of going to Free Speech later in the game though, once we get out of the age of Nationhood and drafted rifles.

We deliver our Great Merchant to Korea's capital next turn, for what should be about 1500 gold. I'm estimating 7 more turns to reach Communism, working at a deficit off of the Great Merchant income. Turn 230 for our Golden Age, hopefully.

Also, don't get complacement and think that we have this game sewed up or anything. Yeah, we're in very good shape, but there's always the possibility of getting "Munroed" at the last minute. Constant vigilance!

[darrelljs]

there's always the possibility of getting "Munroed" at the last minute.

Good to see this make it into RB's lexicon .

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Good to see this make it into RB's lexicon .

Darrell

At least it's not "getting regoarrarred"

[P&nny]

We expected all of the Holy Roman siege units to be destroyed through flanking by our cavs, however apparently flanking does not apply if the defending units are in a city. Neither Speaker nor I knew that, actually.

Good it didn't cost more to you guys
This was noobish ! you should have asked

No actually, it's a little known fact !
Relatively shortly after the release of BTS, we made up in strategy in my clan (designed for 3v3 Medieval start) which consisted in producing flanking II horse archers (possibly Carthaginian so you get the 2nd promo quicker) and abuse flanking in having the attacking stack stationed 2 tiles away from the front city. Then at 8 sec from the end, hit with the 2 movers ! (50% retrieve) & move the 1 movers underneath at the same time (to protect and be ready to hit). The key was to do that pre-engineering so the opponent had to have the catapults in the city at some point.

Of course it never worked, because of the non-flanked cities limitation :D

And actually, on paper, it reads bad. But we were desperately looking for ways to deal with collateral & flanking abuse in defense. Since then*, we turn off flanking for most of clan games.
(* That was BTS 3.13, and the time of unlimited flanking with limited amount of horses flanking the complete stack of siege units)

Because of that rule, Dantski actually took the city on his turnset (we made sure to play before him for this reason). That allowed Walata to repop its borders:

That was great, excellent play / coordination !

The teleportation rules that everyone was discussing yesterday turned out to be more than just an academic exercise. Nakor declared war with his units still on the same tile as our stack, and they immediately teleported into Walata. (The units are highlighted in the picture above.) Was that where they were intending to go? We have no clue. Probably not, since Walata looks like a Stalingrad-esque pocket with no escape for Holy Roman soliders.

Incredible news for you guys indeed !!
I'm not surprised though : am I wrong saying that units always teleport in the nearest CITY

If so, then I think Nakor made what could be remembered as the biggest tactical mistake of the game (that most of us would have done) he didn't raze that city
He was good enough to predict your plan though, but he couldn't foresee enough

Lucky you, 2 peaks just were you needed them, things are lining up greatly.


BTW, I think you guys made the best choice by counter-attacking Nakor on Dantski front, you said that each war that doesn't bring you something (=in order to diminish the power of an ennemy) is a bad war Sulla, and its true...to some extent only, in this case the major blow you're inflicting to the likely only opponent left seems huge, and worth the trouble.

[Speaker]

BTW, I think you guys made the best choice by counter-attacking Nakor on Dantski front, you said that each war that doesn't bring you something (=in order to diminish the power of an ennemy) is a bad war Sulla, and its true...to some extent only, in this case the major blow you're inflicting to the likely only opponent left seems huge, and worth the trouble.

I actually disagree with Sullla's blanket statement about wars. In this case, the war is beneficial for us because Holy Rome is our only true opponent. Slowing them down really does help us because all the other teams are too backward to catch up. Hopefully Holy Rome will continue to slave their cities, and we are able to coastal blockade them and pick off an island or two, all the while as we finish building Observatories and Banks, flip our 2nd golden age, go into advanced civics, build Levees, and head toward Tanks.

It would be nice to withdraw our units in Dantski's land back to our own territory, so we don't have to pay for their maintenance. I guess we can leave the 5 rifles there for some city defense, but the Cavalry are heading home.

[Dr. Nomadic]

For our own research, I realized this turn that we forgot something: Communism has a Liberalism mandatory pre-requisite. Ooops. That means two more turns and one more tech needed for our next goal. At least Liberalism will give us the option of going to Free Speech later in the game though, once we get out of the age of Nationhood and drafted rifles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSXnYdgutpk

Yeah

[Jabah]

I'm not surprised though : am I wrong saying that units always teleport in the nearest CITY

No, in Pitboss1, a war declaration with 2 units on the same tiles results on the declaring unit moving just 1 tile (all happen in 'neutral' teritory).

I guess you might be teleported to the closest 'neutral' or 'friendly' tiles

[SevenSpirits]

No, in Pitboss1, a war declaration with 2 units on the same tiles results on the declaring unit moving just 1 tile (all happen in 'neutral' teritory).

I guess you might be teleported to the closest 'neutral' or 'friendly' tiles

Well it pretty clearly didn't do that. There was a closer space in Nakor's territory, but they didn't teleport there.

Actually, I just looked it up in the DLL code. It basically tries to minimize (2 * distance teleported) + remaining distance to nearest friendly city after teleporting. (Nearest city is determined based on the original location, not the new one!)

In this case the nearest city was Walata. The tile of Walata itself scored 2 * 4 = 8, while the apparently closer spot in Nakor's territory scored 2 * 3 + 3 (distance from that tile to Walata) = 9. Fascinating.

I'm assuming if Nakor had been in neutral territory instead of hostile territory, they would have just teleported 1S or 1SW instead - a legal spot that is in the direction of Walata.

[Cyneheard]

My guess is the game checks "When declaring war, make sure all units are outside enemy territory or tiles with enemy units", and doesn't think to discriminate between your troops (that are newly at war) and Dantski's troops/territory.

[WilliamLP]

Which was hardly dispelled when you sent horse archers halfway around the world to come attack us, even though we had done nothing to provoke you and you had virtually nothing to gain from the attack.

I'm really baffled how any smart person could think that the number two player joining forces to try and strike down the number one player has "virtually nothing to gain". Pretending you weren't seeing things from your own point of view, I can't see how anyone could conclude anything but that the 5v1 attack (especially if it succeeded) was a fantastic, and perhaps even necessary idea, especially if it would have succeeded. This is speaking from the point of view of teams like Kathlete and Nakor doing their very best to win the game.

(With ill feelings and negative diplomacy - of course that's a different matter.)