[SPOILERS] Pindicator emerges from the wilderness to play pb74

[Mjmd]

Thanks for the detailed war report.

[Amicalola]

Hey Pindicator, I have just been catching up on your thread. It's great! I wanted to respond to a few things.

Firstly, I apologise for my turn pace. It was initially caused by my ridiculous internet situation, but I admit after the Jan-Feb period it was largely caused by disengagement, which is inexcusable. Sorry.

Secondly, I know my play created a lot of frustration for you. I sincerely apologise for the frustration, but not really for how I played things. To me, making peace with you at any point after our initial scuffle (particularly after you razed Curtis, while scooter was temporarily covering), was just accepting that you would run me over at minimal cost later on. In particular, I thought there was a good chance that Commodore would join in with me at various points, which was much better than you wiping me out with knights/rifles/whatever in 25-75 turns. But also, I would rather have someone cripple themselves killing me than do it virtually for free.

Especially, after you razed Curtis, my civ was extremely weak (it was already laughably weak beforehand) with no viable options for scaling. In that context, I view it better to delay and tie down my attacker now, than to wait and accept death. You seem to blame 'tilt' for that, but rather I just don't see how making peace, let alone giving cities for it, would have helped me long-term when your civ scaled better than mine in every capacity. So I hold no issues with how you played - you were stronger than me from very early, and pushed that advantage with aggressive settling, and later conquering. But neither do I see much issue with how I played, beyond being frustrating and costly for my conqueror - which was the point.

In saying that, I would quite like to see you win, in a perverse way. I think as Naufragar told me once: 'I demand to be carried to victory in the belly of the beast.' I wish you luck for the rest of the game, and will read this thread with interest.

[Hitru]

Thanks for posting and sharing your thoughts Amica! Will try to post something more coherent later, but just wantee to say I don't have any hard feelings towards you.

How you feel about your initial attack? We were prepared to leave most of the area to you after settling Waimea ( would gave tried to settle one more city most likely ) and felt we could have eaten Bing after that while you take area from your north. Did you feel lije you can't live without central spot of Waimea?

After you attacked and inflicted small wound to us, it was really hard to send our units south and hope you don't stab us again when we are busy with Bing.

[pindicator]

No hard feelings, Amicalola. I hope you'll forgive the posts where I expressed my frustration in the moment.

Adding to Hitru's question, I was wondering why you offered us such an easy piece with your first attack against Waimea. I remember thinking at the time you could have taken the northern third of our lands if you had pushed them.

[pindicator]

Because it's criminal that nobody is reporting over here...

Metal was this close to being eliminated by Donovan Zoi.




If DZ gets one more roll to go his way, brings another 2 horse archers, and metal is eliminated. Instead he asked peace from GKC in his last turn, and GKC gave it to him here. So now it's metal's turn on 174 and his stack will be able to kill off DZ's invaders and possibly turn against one or both of us.

Or more likely just turtle up in his capital. But I'd be looking to inflict some pain with a stack like that.

[pindicator]

174

Gav is about to take Picadilly's capital.




Commodore's knights are going to be too late.

Meanwhile, Miguelito finished whipped a bunch of units - presumably muskets - as he upgrades to rifling this turn. Need to get our catapults over to the eastern continent ASAP. And we're going to need a lot more of them. Hitru and I agreed to stop the galleon production and focus on land units. Miguelito & Ginger have denied our Fish for Fish overtures so we have to assume they are coming for us next. Better we make them fight for this continent than get it wholesale: if we hadn't landed they'd be going for DZ next.

So I sent DZ a proposition to attack Miguelito/Ginger with us once they are done with Metal.

We did get sight on Miguelito's army:




23 Knights, 7 muskets, 4 ele, 3 pike, 10 catapults, and a scattering of other units. Something we can definitely contend if we can shuttle our units over.

But it's a long journey to shuttle everything: first from all the way in the north the units have to come down to God's Thumb, and then they await the galleon chain to make it to the eastern continent.




I had first thought to leave some catapults and units behind in the north, but now I think we have to be all-in on the east. Hopefully Plemo keeps Tarkeel honest enough that he doesn't attack us. Though we probably need to keep a dozen knights and some catapults up north just to keep Tarkeel/Civac honest.

Our first Great Person in forever is born end-of-turn. Crossing my fingers for a low-odds Artist.

[Amicalola]

Thanks for posting and sharing your thoughts Amica! Will try to post something more coherent later, but just wantee to say I don't have any hard feelings towards you.

How you feel about your initial attack? We were prepared to leave most of the area to you after settling Waimea ( would gave tried to settle one more city most likely ) and felt we could have eaten Bing after that while you take area from your north. Did you feel lije you can't live without central spot of Waimea?

After you attacked and inflicted small wound to us, it was really hard to send our units south and hope you don't stab us again when we are busy with Bing.

Great questions. I think my initial attack was entirely justified by ethical and short-term practical means, but obviously looks terrible in hindsight and for the long-term. Partly that's because I (as you commented at the time) did not take your return-strike seriously enough, and partly it was because my civ simply didn't have the production base to ever seriously fight yours other than skirmishes.

I felt I would never compete without the jungle area, including Waimea. I still think that's true - I just bungled the process. I was also a bit offended by you settling a city so much closer to me than you, but I'm sure I would have done the same thing in your position - albeit with a slightly bigger garrison.  

As to an easy peace, I felt that I could not push further. Maybe that's true? It is inevitable on RB that aggressors underestimate how far they can push, and defenders overestimate how screwed they are. I'm not sure if my perception, your perception, or somewhere in-between was right. But even then, I shouldn't have signed peace, as I should have kept threatening you imo. I also (maybe?) could have taken more land, but I doubt I would have been able to hold it, even if I prepared properly (which I did not).

[pindicator]

I would have to dig back to our discord conversation at the time, but we really had nothing in the north. I felt like if you had 2 units in the gallery you could have burned GT, and felt like we would have to whip hard everywhere just to be able to maybe hold you at Cathedrals. But my memory was everything north of Palouse was likely lost if you pushed us then.

The map is kind of cruel to both of us here: we have so little bonus food that we had to expand north to get the good spots in the jungle. Meanwhile you probably thought you could delay settling because it was jungle. Our early plans were to fortify Waimea and then turn our attention south to Bing where we felt we could get the lions share of a split with Comm just due to how his empire was laid out.

[Hitru]

It would have gotten messy that's for sure. I think with our superior axes we could have stopped you and turned the tide, but it would have cost us a lot.

[Amicalola]

Oh of course, I forgot to mention but the super-axes were the other reason I didn't push further. I found it hard to see a serious classical attack working when one side has strength 6 axes. Although I suppose I've never technically tried, so maybe I overestimated them?