[pb40 spoiler] Götterdämmerung: Destruction Is The Masses' Entertainment

[Magic Science]

Hello various leaders of Rome.

OT4E, I'm not sure if you are paying any attention to this pitboss anymore, but if you are, I have one question for you:
Why did you abort the war against me right away after burning Geneva? I was sure that you would try to burn Sofia (which probably would have worked, by the way), and I think that you could have taken Lhasa as well before I could finish enough archers and axemen to stop you. It seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

Elkad, I have some questions for you too, if you care to take the time to answer them:
Why did you start the golden age when the MoM was so close to completion? Why not wait?
Also, why did you delay doing anything with your praetorians for so long, and then why did you attack Charriu instead of me? I never had macemen or many crossbows, as I'm sure you learned later. Was it just that you were occupied with domestic improvement for a while and then saw that Charriu had left himself vulnerable at the time when you were looking to attack? I wasn't quite sure what it was from your posts about the subject.

And, to both of you, thanks for keeping the game alive despite not signing up to play at first.

[OT4E]

Hi there, Magic

Everything is simple. I wasnt sure we could gain more from that war with you than shallow_thought. He would either pile in and get everything without resistance or assist you and beat me on neutral land.

Also we were just about to get sub and I didnt want to commit to ethernal war right before being subbed.

[Elkad]

The early GA was to make sure I got MoM. I wasn't tracking anyone else, so I had no idea how close the race was.
Losing 4 turns of GA to make sure I got 4+4+4 on the next 3 ( and blocked anyone else, especially super) seemed the safer play.
It also shaved turns off pyramids.

As to attacking Charriu. You (Magic) weren't a threat. You didn't have any offense, so I was happy to let you fall behind and guard my left flank while I worried about my south.
So other than blocking you from getting horses with that worker snipe (incidentally, I really liked the horse arrangement on this map, with no extras, and them all on theoretical border zones, even though I spent a lot of the game without my own), I didn't really have an interest in attacking you. I was prepared to dogpile you, but I wasn't going to start it. Better to keep my troops in the south where they could threaten/defend against 3 enemies.

And note that in the south I had the same problem OT4E worried about. I started the war, and got 1 city (plus a raze and replant) for my trouble. super and shallow got all the rest of the land.

[Charriu]

Charriu will allways desire Schilda like Gorlum desired the Ring.

Love that comment even though it's not totally true.  

It actually went like this:

1. Coeurva planted Schilda in the struggle for gold, which I lost fair and square. At that point I had no intention of attacking Schilda and was ready to just strengthen my border defenses. The way I saw it at that point was. This is our border, which will be tense because of the distance between our cities, so best to get some culture up.
   
2. The moment Coeurva build the stonehenge in Schilda was like: OMG he will crush Forza with his culture and then easily march in with his praetorians, I have to do something. At that point I was just a few turns away from attacking RFS and I then decided to divert my troops towards you guys. This of course was a failure all in all. Would I have been successful in capturing Schilda, I may have just razed it and offered peace. I really felt pressured by the stonehenge.
   
3. After the failed war I never once thought about attacking you in Schilda again. The defenses were just too high. At that point it was a hard struggle to get as much culture into Forza as possible. I tried to settle the jewish holy city there, which failed. I was in a constant fear that you would attack me, especially when I lost my first ring around Forza. That's why I always kept a large force around Forza either to attack RFS or to force you away from Forza.
   

[Magic Science]

Thanks for the answers, they make sense. They do bring up another question though: was there ever a good chance to use those praetorians to make significant gains? It seems to me that one of the main reasons Rome fell from being the strongest civilization to being the weakest of the three contenders was that the massive, expensive army of praetorians went obsolete without having obtained much new land, but I figured that the mistake lay in not having found the right place and the right time to strike with them. Might it have been a mistake to build so many in the first place? I know you didn't have your own horses for a long time, but it seems like the two-mover armies Superdeath and shallow_thought+Hitru used proved superior in taking land during dogpiles.

[Charriu]

I think one of the problems Elkad faced during the dogpile was that my main army was on his side of my empire, which made it much harder for him.

[OT4E]

This is better than asking yourself a question: I got raped early what could I have done?

Could we do something better with praets? May be but in such a tight map direct 1x1 conflict is problematic. Seeking to scavenge a victim of someone else is always a better option. I dont think we would be doing better in development making 10 praets less than we did. Of course they were supposed to find better placement for them. But what exactly? I dont know honestly..