[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

turn 50 - japan

so after all my grandstanding, i open the save and it turns out thrawn has ships at Shodai ALREADY. jesus. so my "defensive line" is broken some 10 turns before i had any kind of chance to put it together, and now i have to finish the monument in Asanoyama instead of the GP just so we don't miss PP.



ok, THAT is game over for us

[williams482]

Yeah, sorry guys. Not much more you could have done to save this one. Thrawn did as Thrawn does: found an "I win" button nobody else had fully actualized, and mashed it about as proficiently and forcefully as possible. You two anticipated this, pursued the obvious defensive countermeasures to the best of your abilities (and better than the other two teams), and still got rekt.

Such is this game, and such is life.

[williams482]

maybe i have too much of Epic 12 Sirian in me (that report IS the reason i'm on RB, after all) but i think nothing in these games is more fun than holding on by the skin of your teeth for spite's sake alone. 

Thanks for mentioning this, by the way: turns out that report is still intact and available (with pictures!) on the wayback machine. Great read, 20 years and a full three civ games later.

[TheArchduke]

Funny enough I underestimated Norway after the show the last two times on a sea map.

Anyway. I think you can concede as well or wait till everything except our capitals are burned.:D

[ljubljana]

turn 51 - japan



thrawn is keeping cities, so i am throwing my ships into a doomed attempt to contest control of shodai, which may succeed if they have just the two ships there and no more on the way. but it's over.

i concede to thrawn and krill, and no doubt the others will follow suit very quickly now that they see what has happened to our scores this past turn

[ljubljana]

i do think we could have contested this attack, if i had truly built nothing but ships from the start of the game. there is not much reason a civ like japan shouldn't be able to do the same thing with their 35-strength galleys - not to the point of killing other civs on turn 50, which requires ocean movement, but at least to taking all four of our CS and defending against this kind of rush. but no, i got sidetracked into a religious race with chev, and that decision cost us any chance to compete. sorry about that, TAD

the right move, i think, was to build just the two HS and take divine spark, like i did, but then nothing else to secure the religion no matter what chev did. and no shrines until we had the CS secured. i could have had probably 6 more galleys by now with no investment in religion and that could have saved us...

well, my read on the geopolitical situation was mostly correct, i guess, unlike last game. but my misplays were absolutely catastrophic and way worse than any i made in PBEM20. not sure if that really indicates development as a player in any meaningful sense, which is pretty disheartening :|

[ljubljana]

anyway, back to permadeath runs of final fantasy tactics, i guess

that and mainlining random map 1v1s in polytopia until the phrase "aggressive strategic instincts" means something to me

(friend code is ljubljana_no_yabo although i kinda suck pretty badly still tbh)

[ljubljana]

turn 52

well, i am tilting a bit, playing too quickly, and making compounding mistakes, which is not a good look. like this one:



this city is needed for monumentality, and it is also 100% guaranteed dead as i have no ships in range to defend it. unbelievably stupid of me. you are welcome thrawn

at least with crusade it could be hard for thrawn to hold on to as well. if he captures instead of razing i may swap to agoge and spam a few warriors out of hakuho to actualize that

somehow, chev and inc are still at peace with thrawn which is a little surprising at this point. but i am sure they are building up a nice big swarm of biremes to at least do SOMEthing to take the heat off us...

[ljubljana]

turn 53

bluh

shodai attack has failed as thrawn is sailing west with the MoM ships to trap me from behind. i highly doubt i can hold on to anything north of the capital. what a nightmare man :|

[ljubljana]

i do think i have identufied a strong candidate for the biggest issue with my game currently, which is that i am JUST too emotionally invested in these games. which can be hard to avoid when they last a full 14 months, it's true. but investment in a predetermined gameplan ossifies my strategic sense and leaves unable to react to changing circumstance. hence, overinvesting in the race with chev when i KNEW on some level that this likely conceded the game to thrawn. hance, too, the fact that i am even now still chasing monumentality when there is no longer much justification for any non-ship builds: the fact that i let my turns get rushed and my tactics sloppy in losing positions like this one is quite telling. and what williams pegged as risk-aversion in my PBEM20 was in fact, honest-to-god anxiety and fear of my opponents' armies which led first to avoidant builderism and then to skittish strategic choices.

not an easy thing to work on when i only get about one practice game per year, especially since (as it turns out) it is a manifestation of a larger problem in my life generally. but you'd better believe that once this is over i will 1v1 the shit out of thrawn (thrawn's time and interest permitting) until this stops being true...