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[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

Hi Ceil, lovely to have you here, please make yourself at home! You too Zed-F - help yourself to cookies.

We ended turn, leaving Suttree five hours to play (I'd prefer to leave him longer, but today was a tricky day), wonder what he'll do?

We did the OB's thing with William and put Koniggratz on the worker for a 2-pop whip next turn. We also came up with a new term while wondering which of the forests around Nuremberg we should chop first, to allow the best chances of re-growth. Normal worrying about worker moves is micromanagement, but going down to this stupid level of detail has to be nanomanagment.
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Expected good news: smile
- Suttree took our peace deal
- Dhalphir accepted the trade

Expected bad news: frown
- Suttree took the peace with mackoti too (at least he had to pay 10 gold more...)

So now both we and mackoti have a peaceful border and I would say that neither of us has any real means to threaten each other currently so mackoti gets to consolidate his gains and we get 10 builder-turns. It's a pity that suttree does not want to punish mackoti, he really could have done it I think. shakehead
Finished:
PBEM 45G, PB 13, PB 18, PB 38 & PB 49

Top 3 favorite turns: 
#1, #2, #3
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Why did he have to pay ten gold more?

I just tried to do some score analysis for Yurimack to see if we can have any idea where they are on the tech tree. It pretty quickly became apparent that there is too much going on to calculate that kind of thing. frown How about we bee-line Paper so we can find out if our Guilds bee-line will work?
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(November 28th, 2013, 05:44)Old Harry Wrote: Why did he have to pay ten gold more?

Mackoti is now paying 3gpt to suttree.

Quote:I just tried to do some score analysis for Yurimack to see if we can have any idea where they are on the tech tree. It pretty quickly became apparent that there is too much going on to calculate that kind of thing. frown How about we bee-line Paper so we can find out if our Guilds bee-line will work?

tongue
Finished:
PBEM 45G, PB 13, PB 18, PB 38 & PB 49

Top 3 favorite turns: 
#1, #2, #3
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The game is practically down, I'm too tired for doing anything useful, but can't sleep because my better half is studying for her exam... So let's clear the backlog of nice posts! nod

(November 26th, 2013, 14:58)Zed-F Wrote: Good luck smile

Thanks! mischief

(November 26th, 2013, 15:05)TheHumanHydra Wrote: I suppose one needs luck against mackoti.

I use this opportunity to state this one more time, then I try to reduce my ranting.. Maybe crazyeye When forgetting the geopolitical lottery we were completely on the same line with mackoti ~20 turns ago. Similar crop yield, similar MFG, more cities, probably a bit ahead in tech + Philosophy. We had even 2-3 more cities. We also had the same power level. The main differences were:

1. Because mack only bordered m_h and suttree he had managed to create himself a backline that he is filling up now. We have created more or less 2 sensible filler spots that get us to 18 cities when we want and I think that is already a good performance in our squeezed position. Even without war mackoti could have easily settled 20+ cities.

2. His power consisted of units able to perform an attack (2-movers) while we had to built an army just to protect us from suttree's cat+axe stack. Shock axes were simply the most affordable thing doing that job, HAs and Cats are hammer-wise more expensive, because we still would need more or less the same amount of units and our struggle to keep up economically also relied on our Alphabet & Philo plays. We also did not in the beginning really believe that suttree is going to stop his whole game and just whip all his cities down to revenge us so we thought we would get away with smaller military investment.

But then this thing with m_h happened. Have we shown the power graphs often enough? M_h had mackoti's graphs and there were clear border tensions, but still he decided to remain at the level of half ours or mack's power (even less in terms of actual units). That is just so incredibly annoying from our perspective. Of course well done by mackoti, but from his direction I think it only took something like 8 HAs (of which maybe 1 died) to take 4 cities during the first 2 turns. Falling for that is just basically the same thing as gifting your empire away.

I mean I understand we are humans who play the game. It's just really annoying for us that suttree's reaction after bad start was total revenge mode and m_h's reaction after bad start was not giving a sh*t. I can live with that, but it obviously pisses me off after investing a lot of time into this game.

But yeah, now I guess we need even more luck than what one always needs in a 18-player game. It's clear that things need to start going our way quickly if we want to be economically competitive still in 50 turns. If we can focus our efforts towards south I'm sure we can take suttree's land eventually and also make mackoti's game a nightmare. We will be advanced enough, we will have enough MFG and population to whip + sitting around doing nothing while waiting to lose just is not part of my or Harry's mentality. Our central position is of course the big problem here. We can maybe succeed in full 1-front war, but if our relationship with Ichabod or dtay does not continue peacefully we are simply out of resources, and out of luck. As a side-note of course we are considering opportunistic moves in every direction when the time comes.

Ok, I appreciate if someone managed to read my rant.. mischief thumbsup

(November 26th, 2013, 16:03)BRickAstley Wrote:
(November 26th, 2013, 13:42)Fintourist Wrote: --> We are not going to go down without trying something radical. Be it attacking mack, dtay, ichabod, eastern continent.. Who knows when the time comes.

You are awesome and I'll be rooting for whatever it is you decide to do. thumbsup

Thanks! smile

Btw, I'm not sure I've said it often enough, but while I also often rant about the map, I'm not ranting about you. tongue The map is interesting and I think exactly was was ordered. (Apart from mack's plain oasis of course wink ) Randomness and luck was supposed to be part of the game so everything is totally ok. Of course everyone then hopes that the land and neighbor lottery goes one's way.

Buuuuut I don't think we won that lottery.. lol If you look at our early demos they are full of 2-digit demos. And we were basically running full farmer's gambit (although we knew our neighbor situation and had whippable bows) during the first 60-70 turns. And we also spent a lot of time optimizing our micro.. But still, those 2-digit demos were really the most we could do with this start. Yesterday I chatted with Harry and expressed my envy of Ichabod's start. I mean that's a super strong position where everything is in your hands, he has excellent tiles and should be at 20+ cities by now and conquering whole northern part of the continents in economical way should be totally realistic given the play of his neighbors. There are other examples too: e.g. Lewwyn's start gives a direct 5-10 turn lead compared to ours already during the first 40-50 turns.

Btw, we are happy to provide our sandbox if some lurker wants to prove that he can do with our land a lot better than us, but overall I feel that we played our cards pretty well (of course we made a number of mistakes in our decisions and execution too... I can provide that list too). We have never recovered from that slow start and never will but we will keep trying and hope that people keep making mistakes. ~10 civs or at least their warmonger neighbors already have...

(November 27th, 2013, 10:37)Ceiliazul Wrote: that chat looks like good teamwork taking place. keep up the good work and good reporting!

Thanks! smile We are chatting with Harry on daily basis and Hydra also joined when we had crucial war turns. I'm pretty sure that I drive Harry crazy by sending latest civ news when he is trying to work.. tongue


Ok, that's the way I see things crazyeye
Finished:
PBEM 45G, PB 13, PB 18, PB 38 & PB 49

Top 3 favorite turns: 
#1, #2, #3
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Hi guys. A little late in the day, but I'm finally catching up with your thread. It was a bit intimidatingly large, so I avoided it for a bit. Once I found out that I was serving in your army, I was sold. This is a great thread, and I appreciate all the strategic musing you guys are doing. Love the naming theme too.

Congrats on getting yourself into the top tier of civs, whatever else happens.
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(November 28th, 2013, 19:22)Gazglum Wrote: Once I found out that I was serving in your army, I was sold.

Our press-gangs roam the whole of RB. You aren't the only survey sea dog we've purchased...

Are you planning to play any mp civ? I assume you didn't just find this site for werewolf?
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I have leisurely duels with Qgqqqq. I might do a PBEM sometime, I definitely don't have the patience for this kind of undertaking.

Actually, yes, I would like to do a PBEM. You've got me interested now!
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(November 28th, 2013, 18:47)Fintourist Wrote: (of course we made a number of mistakes in our decisions and execution too... I can provide that list too).

nono That list shall never see the light of day. nono

I agree with a lot of that rant (I'm just far too polite to say it out loud) but I think you are understating how well Yurimack played the situation - first they expanded rapidly into a contested area and defended their holdings, then they spotted the weakness in their neighbour and rather than just winging him they destroyed him extremely efficiently.

It makes me wonder if instead of settling for taking that city from Suttree we should have whipped a lot more axes and pushed on to take Madrid? Would we be better off than we are now? That seems like the whole point of AGG now that I think about it...
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Welcome Gazglum! nod

(November 29th, 2013, 03:42)Old Harry Wrote: nono That list shall never see the light of day. nono

lol On the other hand, at some point it might be constructive to look back and think how we could have improved our opening etc. But yeah, as already stated, in big picture I believe that what we did was competitive and I guess we will never know if other players would have played it better or worse.

Quote:I agree with a lot of that rant (I'm just far too polite to say it out loud) but I think you are understating how well Yurimack played the situation - first they expanded rapidly into a contested area and defended their holdings, then they spotted the weakness in their neighbour and rather than just winging him they destroyed him extremely efficiently.

Fair point. And you are definitely more polite than me. lol I totally agree that Yurimack/mackoti/yuris played the situation very well. Opportunity arised, they made the right decision and went for it, and obviously also executed the attack well. Well done surely. thumbsup From distance it all looks obvious and easy, but so do most good performances.

However, starting to build an offensive army surely has been a questionable decision ~30 turns ago. In hindsight it was a great decision of course, but actually things should not have been so easy. If m_h had paid attention (or not made a crazy gamble or whatever) and built even some defences the situation would be totally different. Already 6-10 more units placed in border cities as a reaction to ym's rising power (instead of building Shwedagon Paya..) would have made the difference. That would have slowed down the attack and made taking the 3rd, 4th and 5th cities signficantly more costly. Damn, he must have known that those cities can be attacked out of the fog... shakehead

Quote:It makes me wonder if instead of settling for taking that city from Suttree we should have whipped a lot more axes and pushed on to take Madrid? Would we be better off than we are now? That seems like the whole point of AGG now that I think about it...

Maybe... crazyeye However suttree was not m_h. Suttree always had some kind of an army, and most importantly, immediately after we razed that city at ~T90 suttree's reaction was full military mode. We quickly took the no.1 place in soldier points, but that was nowhere near enough for an economical offensive ancient warfare. We would have needed to invest a lot more into military (Cats or HAs) in order to be successful and I'm not sure if that would have been so great even if we would have pushed all the way and conquered suttree. That trade-off would have surely been visible in the development of our core cities, our expansion to western island and probably it would have cost us Taoism etc. I still believe that full ancient warfare is expensive and almost always a wrong decision if your opponent knows what he is doing. It's only beneficial if you can score such an easy victory as Yurimack did and with suttree that was not possible. IIRC suttree's power graph quickly surpassed e.g. yurimack's power graph.

But that said, I agree, when we look back and think what we could have done differently suttree situation is a very relevant area. However, I don't regret the decision of razing that city. Owning that river valley was considered then (and we still consider) extremely valuable, and if I had to choose one direction where to expand aggresively I would always choose that area. The other option would have been sitting tight with 12 cities and waiting somebody to tech knights/rifles and eat us. tongue (Or wait 20 turns and come back with a big army, but that would have ment living 20 more turns with our original food-poor cities and settling non-productive jungle cities)
Finished:
PBEM 45G, PB 13, PB 18, PB 38 & PB 49

Top 3 favorite turns: 
#1, #2, #3
Reply



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