Commodore has a spoiler thread.

[Commodore]

Well, you definitely got at least half of your summary of DZ's position right . I guess we'll see about the economic half later.

Just how bad is it for you? I have to say that I'm a little confused as to the overall position (I've only been following this thread), but how has he been able to spare this force from his other wars?

I'm confused too; clearly OCC Regentman isn't much of a threat, but Alhazard is impressively powerful and burned a DZ city or two...I had assumed it was a hot war. That was clearly in error. 

The worst thing about this is that's our only source of horses, the whole reason we planted forward on flatland like that in the first place. Going to have to go Monarchy->Feudalism for longbows now, dangit, and we're slowed by the shrine loss, plus having to whip off gems/cottages. 

[Commodore]

Tale of the campaign to come, but...lost a 90% odds fight, lost the capital, lost the game. Donovan won't see a lick of profit for this, but his spite is very very satisfied, I'm sure.

[pindicator]

Good god, how many low odds battles can we lose in one game?

[Commodore]

This is the story of a war, that cried a river and drowned the whole world. And Commodore looks so sad
in photographs because now he’s forever chained to…this game.

So, initial wave was shown. Donovan is clearly past the point of winning…to be fair, he probably lost
with the Emperor map mixing with Mao of Inca. Foolish of me, I ignored the possibility of DZ attacking
because he was in wars with both Alhazard and Regentman, but, eh. You could argue that he attacked
because of us giving copper to Regent, but poor Regent only had a couple turns of copper from
us…those workers were roading in preparation before we did anything. So…did DZ truly expect to turn a
profit? He’s not going to, really, this is just accelerating Alhazard’s own conquest. Was this an elaborate
kamikaze? It just feels very personal.

On to the fighting. The shrine city was captured, naturally. Rather than pouring reinforcements into the
valuable shrine, however, DZ pushed forward while also tossing axes at Mammon (gems city). Frantic
sustained whipping sees our power rise, but that great general axe was able to cheaply burn Tali (copper
city). Spiteful, but okay. Then he scatters to pillage a bit, and I push out to punish his exposure.


This is where I gamble. Mammon is just a horror, sucking up axe after axe as our lack of horse means we
can’t rustle up a chariot or two to efficiently clear this out. I want to retake the shrine quickly and clear
the raiding army, so I took a risk, moving an injured combat 1 spear down to cover the capital at decent
odds from the single HA there. It was…unfortunately the more injured one.


So, here we are. And now I have The Lonely Road ahead.

Objectives as follows:
1. Don’t give up anything to Donovan.
2. Hurt Donovan and make him suffer.
3. Don’t give anything to Superdeath, who only didn’t Donovan us just because he Donovaned his other
neighbor first. These are going to be difficult objectives, and if I succeed…I’m grinding my nose into dull
and grim turns for the next three months. Ho boy.

Taking a 9% chance at losing is reasonable, but I don’t think I thought through the magnitude of the
purgatory I was risking.

[Zed-F]

Your objectives sound reasonable in light of the situation, best of luck with your quest for revenge.

[naufragar]

I feel for you. I guess it's time to raise the Armageddon Counter as high as possible.

[Commodore]

Amen. All Incan units out of our borders, now let's mass some catapults.

Vae Victus. Rome got sacked, but in the end...

[pindicator]

So DZ apparently doesn't know when to quit because he massed whips the turn before last. Commodore seems to think he's coming at us with another wave, and while I'd like to think that there's actually some payment coming on the Alhazard side of the war for his poor strategic choices earlier, I agree with Commodore that we don't have the luxury of thinking anything from DZ is going in any direction other than at us after his previous actions. So the dude is coming to kamikaze at us while in the middle of two other wars. Ok, cool.

You know, if that is what's going on ... It's interesting that someone in a losing position who decides to resign to AI in a lost position is heavily frowned on. Yet opening up a kamikaze attack that you have no hope to actually capture anything just to wreck another player's game is kosher?

Again, don't know what the full situation is, but if those troops are coming at us while he's in the middle of two other hot conflicts he's either making a huge strategic error or malicious.

[shallow_thought]

I'd kind of thought he originally just saw an opportunity to maybe take a vet down a peg, do some damage, make an impression on the game rather than just be the one being done unto (again). Cheeky, but not really malicious, and perhaps understandable. Also, he may have overestimated how committed Comm was against SD. Will have to wait to see his thread - although he's not posted a lot.

We'll see what he does with the result of all those whips. If he's fighting on all fronts ... perhaps that's fair. Is there any ancient history here I've missed that might explain a decision to play wrecker?

[Mardoc]

You know, if that is what's going on ... It's interesting that someone in a losing position who decides to resign to AI  in a lost position is heavily frowned on. Yet opening up a kamikaze attack that you have no hope to actually capture anything just to wreck another player's game is kosher?

I see your point, but I don't see any way to make a rule about it.  I think 'heavily frowned on' is the best you can do, and even there I think you need some sort of evidence that the player knows they are being a kamikaze.

I can think of all sorts of corner cases if we did have a rule:

• Dogpile hopes: I can't beat you unless your far neighbor recognizes the opportunity, but it's profitable if the dogpile happens.
  
• Optimism: you can't really be *that* much better than the AI/gamespy crowd, can you?  Look at the Power graph!
  
• Revenge: I can't win this war, but that's only because you [did x] to me earlier that wrecked my game
  
• Long shots: I can't win the game unless I win this war, and you might make a mistake.  2nd place is just the first loser!
  
• Bad data: Where the heck did those Longbows come from?  You don't even have Monarchy...do you?
  

Wars are retroactively illegal if they don't work?  Wars require pre-approval from a counsel of lurkers, if you submit a good business plan you can have a war?  Revenge is illegal?