Welcome Gazglum! 
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.
Fair point. And you are definitely more polite than me. 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. 
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...
Maybe...
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.
(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)
(November 29th, 2013, 03:42)Old Harry Wrote:That list shall never see the light of day.
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.
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. 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...
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...
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.
(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)