PBEM4 post-game discussion

[Kylearan]

I've skimmed over most veteran threads now (except Krill's), and have some first comments to make. I don't know if any of the vets are still reading though...

- My play was awful, but at least I'm the only one who managed to raze 3 cities and a capital before the modern age! :neenernee I don't understand why Cyneheard never tried to attack Whosit, or Sunrise never went for Darrell.

- I'm a bit disappointed about the level of reporting. I know it takes a lot of time and of course I don't have the right to expect a Sulla-style thread after the game. But it's kinda sad I don't really get to know what my opponents were thinking at important stages of our struggle, or why people ended up so far ahead/so backwards.

- Again, I know my play was awful, but it looks like I've been the only one who had to deal with an enemy unit in my capital's BFC at turn 10(!). That slowed me down tremendously, while my own warrior found Whosit's capital only at turn 18. What's up with that?

- I definitely paid tribute to my MP-noobness. This game turned out completely different from what I had expected. I had a lot of fun nonetheless, mainly thanks to the prolonged hot war with Darrell. Razing two cities and his capital felt rewarding, even though I knew he didn't really concentrate on this game anymore, and our struggle for that useless city of Opis was great fun, too. (I realized quite early that Krill would win this, so going after my personal whale kept this game alive for me)

- My apologies to Krill for not really trying to defend against you. Once Darrell and Sunrise were dead, you could have steamrolled me anytime you wanted, as I not only was backwards (rifles against tanks at that time), I also was gassed from the Darrell war. Since it was clear you wanted to beat Cyneheard instead because of the challenge, I didn't bother to rebuild my military and built up my economy instead because it required fewer actions from me per turn.


More comments to follow, if anyone's still reading...

[Krill]

- My apologies to Krill for not really trying to defend against you. Once Darrell and Sunrise were dead, you could have steamrolled me anytime you wanted, as I not only was backwards (rifles against tanks at that time), I also was gassed from the Darrell war. Since it was clear you wanted to beat Cyneheard instead because of the challenge, I didn't bother to rebuild my military and built up my economy instead because it required fewer actions from me per turn.

TBH, I'm sorry that I didn't take you out earlier, but for me to attack you successfully and to not give Cyneheard an opening I needed to triple the number of tanks I had at the time, plant the front cities against you, push culture in them so I could one move your front cities and make sure I had yet more tanks to take out your defensive stack on turn one of the war. That wouldn't have shaved a dozen turns at most off the game for you but added at least 20 to Cyneheards and Whosits' game, probably significantly more.

FWIW, I was capable of rushing about 12 tanks a turn by the end of the time I knocked sunrise out, on turn 165, but had about 24 places to rush them. That would have given me additional 300 tanks by t190, but when you take into the account I needed bombers on top of that, marines and transports etc, I think it's far to say that growing first was actually the quicker course of action than carrying on the warfare. That said, I'm not going to complain about you not building up - I allocated about an extra 40 MA to your front than I strictly needed to, so building up on your part wouldn't have made a huge difference apart from forcing more turns to be played, and I did have the marines to forcibly take your coastal cities.

[Krill]

Oh, something rather important to keep in mind. sunrise razed my third city...

[Ilios]

From Krill's thread, T63:

Cyneheard really has this game sewn up, into Bureau, HR, Theo...and hear I am stuck teching Contruction?

[Kyan]

Hi Kyle, i just wanted to say i enjoyed reading your thread and how you played our leader/civ combo. Mighty shame we couldn't have had the same starting location for greater comparisons.

I think you played well, Krill is just fairly dominant. Don't let that put you off at all from another game though. I think you probably had the worst starting position if that helps at all.

[Cyneheard]

From Krill's thread, T63:

Cyneheard really has this game sewn up, into Bureau, HR, Theo...and hear I am stuck teching Contruction?

And then I sputtered. I lost track of Grabbing More Land Constantly; got too worried about armies showing up in my face (the lack of demogs REALLY messed with my head. I got paranoid about incoming armies showing up at any moment, and that was a problem). If I'd known more about what was going on in Krill's or Whosit's lands, I may have been able to do better, but the in my piss-poor expansion given my awesome start in other ways...

Also, funniest moment in the game for me:
Whosit tried to choke me with a warrior...the turn I built my first axe. Oops?

Best moment of the Late Game:
Burning Ankara before the war went...uh...VERY south on me.

[Whosit]

I'm not really sure what to add. It's been months since I've really paid this game any real attention, and my memories of the early game are pretty foggy. I'm sure for a fact that I failed to expand quickly enough. I was very, very worried about expanding too quickly only to have everything razed by a neighbor who decided to build an army instead. I never managed to expand as far south or east as I hoped to. I kinda feel like I was stuck in a corner from the start, though I know everyone had an opponent to each side.

Eh... my MP skills were never any good, and I pretty much lost the ability to manage my stuff once I got several cities. I haven't even played any Civ in months (not counting this), so my general skill level had atrophied, not that it really mattered by that point.

I had no idea what anyone was doing. I just assumed everyone was much further ahead than me, so I kinda sat around and did nothing except the one time I threw an army at Kylearan.

Edit: Skimmed through the lurker thread. Pity that we players can't read it until it's all over, because many of the lessons I would have learned are kind of useless now. I'd say that most of the smoke I was blowing was due to a lack of skills in general, plus an unfamiliarity with how multi-player/always war games work. I do kinda regret not updating my thread since forever (there were still mentions of my entertaining PB2 thread, heh), but since it did reach the point that I was literally just hitting "end turn" without further thought, most of the time there was never actually anything to say, sadly.

[Krill]

OK, games finished now...finally.

Thanks for playing it out after Darrell and sunrise died guys, you've helped demonstrate just how broken corps are, among other things.

Some things to point out:

The starts weren't all that balanced. Speaker said he gave players the option of a plains hill plant with AH food res, or moving off the plains hill to grab a grain resource. This wasn't fair, some players got grass cows as the AH food res, others (myself included) got a grass pig. On top of that, some players started with Agri, so could tech AH first and hook up the food with a worker first start but others couldn't do it.

I had a lot more land to my north than people realise, even though I crammed in a couple of cities, they were never "bad" cities, always able to slave or build stuff quickly. However, I had to grab the third city location against sunrise because it was the only city site I had towards him that was both viable and defensive - if I hadn't had that then there were no city sites east of my capital that I could settle, and sunrise would probably have been the one to beat.

Cyneheard didn't press me like he could have done. If 2 archers and 3WC had started to probe my borders I'd never have been able to settle on the gold hill, and Cyneheard could have settled up on me using 2 spears and an archer to cover a bunch of workers and settlers and I couldn't have stopped him.

I never really built a defensive army, just enough cats and HA on Cyneheards front to destroy any cats that came up to me, so I could cower behind a few CG LB in a hill city, and on the sunrise front, I showed him a cat and a HA so he knew he couldn't invade me. After that, I just made sure I stayed in civics that would let me immediately liquidate pop into an army to defend if I had to, and I kept a ton of pop working cottages. Yes, it's "inefficient" in production terms, but it meant that tech pace was absurd. T105 I got lib making about 400bpt at breakeven. t120 I was at 1kbpt. And I went into US as fast as I could, and the pop that I had spent on improving cottages suddenly gave me a great production and commerce edge.

Cyneheards' only time to really hurt me after LB would have been a few turns after I invaded sunrise and my units were stuck in his culture, so I couldn't get them back to his front to defend, and right at the end when they were on the other side of the world and they were half a dozen turns away. I'm not sure nights would have done much unless they were slaved out hard.

Darius sucks. Organized on a standard size map on noble is not a good leader choice. Ottomans aren't much better, the UB was junk (really 2 archers are cheaper and I never really needed the health until factories) and the UU doesn't do much against nights when your front city is on a hill, behind 60% cultural defense or a castle. What's an extra 25% there? I know Speaker and Sullla think differently, misrepresenting the argument that I think China is the best civ in the game, but China was the best civ in PBEM4 when paired with the best leader. EXP or ORG? EXP without a doubt, right? So the Hammam that gives +2 happy (ie 2 archers) plus the Jan that never got used has to be significantly better than a theatre that makes culture wars easier (oh look what happened on both of my fronts) and an Xbow that can collateral cats making it easier to flank them.

Nice naming schemes as well Apart from Darrell, yours sucked .

[Krill]

Thanks for the Sig, NH

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....tcount=479

I highly recommend playing another game. Just probably not against Krill.

[darrelljs]

I settled away from wet Corn. That about sums it up for me.

Edit: And built like 3 Warriors to start.

Sorry Kylearan for not reporting with more gusto .

Darrell