[SPOILERS] MNG as Hattie of France

[Mr. Nice Guy]

No morning turn today means likely just one turn today. Bummer. Shouldn't be too upset because we had another 4-turn day yesterday, and a turn a day is still good. But I'm excited because in the next 2-3 turns I will be increasing my gold capacity at 0% by 20-25 gpt thanks to laying down a ton of markets and courthouses... and I want to see what the empire looks like then.

Oh well. Update after work, if there is anything to update on.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Hey MNG,

Sigh. Your offer for silver is more than fair, but unfortunately I'm going to have to turn it down. As of this turn, our empires are at war. I meant everything I said about how much I've been enjoying playing with you, I truly wasn't worried about the GLH, and so I feel like I owe you an explanation. I understand if you're still mad, but here's how things have been from Hyboria's perspective.

I wish that it had been anyone else but you, but I was right in my spoiler thread when I nicknamed the hub "casus belli land". Avignon is simply too close to my empire to be allowed to remain in French colors. If you had been willing to work out some sort of settling deal back when it was settled, when I was lowest in soldier points by a lot and you had a million trade contacts...I'd have probably been willing to let you keep the area. Still would have been bummed about it, but I would have slated it as the cost of running a farmer's gambit and probably geared up for fighting GES. As it was, coming as a hammer blow right after GES settled aggressively towards my land, I realized I was waaaaay too weak, and I needed to expand somewhere or my cruddy play was going to be the end of me as a competitive force in this game. Of the two settles, Avignon is far more aggressive and makes the most sense to try and take. Ergo, the massive power spike.

Having said all this, there are now two ways we can play this. Unless you've massively reinforced Avignon in the last two turns I will capture it and will follow up with a bomb that should secure my hub. Yuri and Maestro have been building up navy and enough forces to contribute to a full-scale invasion, although I am not so prideful as to assume that such an invasion would go off perfectly against a proven competent player like yourself. I'd prefer to not leave you feeling like you have nothing to lose, and so I have an offer:

I take Avignon and the hub area in between us. This is non-negotiable, but if you want to battle it out before conceding it by all means.

On the other hand, I know how valuable IC Trade Routes are to your empire. In return for not fighting my control of the hub, I will reopen borders (to heck with the others' complaints, let 'em whine) and allow non-military transit to the islands for TR fishing villages. Warriors can be used as MPs, and if you don't have any more warriors I'll actually give you one per island city.

NAPs: I dislike NAPs as much as you do, but we'd both need some sort of assurance that the other wasn't planning some sort of blitzkrieg against the other. How about a five-turn minimum war warning time for the next, say, sixty turns?

Basically, I don't think this has to devolve into total war with the three solution set of me and Yuri totally wiping out France, you wiping out us, or all of us dragging ourselves down into the dust while GES/RL7 tech us into irrelevancy. I doubt I could convince Yuri/Maestro to reopen borders (no, I had nothing to do with the embargo) but if I tell them we've reached a peaceful resolution I'm sure they won't want to risk war by themselves.

Of course, you could prefer to let slip the dogs of war, and in that case, hey, much needed MP war experience and may the most yellow team win. I don't mean to come off as insulting by offering terms before any combat has taken place, and certainly I expect you'd prefer to skirmish/battle it out for a little while first. I'm just letting you know from the outset that I'm willing to discuss peace while still waging war. I'm obviously running the worst farmer's gambit in history, perhaps you might be in position to dictate terms later.

However this goes, I hope we can both have fun with the game. Until later,
-Commodore

[Mr. Nice Guy]

So... I see 2 war chariots, 1 regular chariot and ... 3 workers. That was my crucial mistake, I thought they had only 2 workers. But because they have 3 they can reach Avignon and take it immediately next turn.

I tried my best to use diplomacy to get Commodore to not attack, but it didn't work out. Here's the chat. Bummer is, I don't think it will have worked. But at least I had some fun with it ... So, now I wait until he plays his next turn to find out how things go down...

me: well played
10 minutes
9:10 PM me: if you're in, i'd like to take a couple minutes to chat game
10 minutes
9:20 PM Darius: Sorry, back now.
9:21 PM me: no problem, i've spent the time working on combat simulators, and having DQ with the wife
Darius: Awesome, we were actually finishing up Sonic ice cream.
me: hmm. never had that, but it's definitely an ice cream kind of night
9:22 PM Darius: Ugh, Down here in the south, humidity at ~90%, over 90F
me: oh, no thank you. not even a little bit
9:23 PM Darius: Heh, yeah, it's like walking into a sauna.
me: thank goodness for the pacific nw.
Darius: So no hard (out-of-game) feelings I take it?
me: none at all
Darius: Yeah, it's nice in the summer.
9:24 PM me: nah, i'm not really surprised
Darius: I noticed Thing 1 roading towards me, was that heading for an invasion?
9:25 PM me: no. not yet anyway. i was probably 20 turns from any aggression toward another team
but at that point it would have been gunpowder invasion
Darius: I figured pre-Musketeers was prudent.
9:26 PM me: yeah, the timing was just about right
5 turns earlier would have been a critical blow
or declaring war one turn later would have probably been optimal
with avignon at 40% culture now you have to slog through a turn of blue borders to strike
9:27 PM Darius: Yeah, I noticed that.
Stupid cultural.
me: yeah, three big reasons i picked it, and that's one of them
Darius: Libraries are nice, and monuments aren't being the other two?
9:28 PM me: that combo is one of them. the third reason is flexibility to settle - it forgives errors i may make in settling/dotmapping
9:29 PM Darius: Right. Building culture is only now giving me a way to ape that.
me: and i'm average at best at dotmapping, so i expected cultural to help make me look better than i am. same thing with spiritual in a mid-late game aspect
9:30 PM so thanks to cultural, and stone, i should be able to hold avignon for two-three waves
unless you have considerably more force that i can't see
9:31 PM Darius: Aha! Bravo, the games then begin
me: yep
Darius: First time trying this against a human, ought to be fun
me: i guarantee it will be more fun than my first time against a human
9:32 PM Darius: Ugh, Krill's shenanigans and that map
shudder
9:33 PM me: yeah
even if it would have been fun, that was a much more complex situation than a rookie newbie should be trying out
this is a bit easier
Darius: Pitboss just seems to be asking for it.
9:34 PM me: yeah, i won't be trying that again, especially now that i know how fast pbem can go
Darius: And hey, we've proved, PBEM is faster.
me: exactly
brb, putting the baby down
Darius: np
9:36 PM me: fingers crossed and hoping that works
Darius: Heh, know the feeling, actually.
me: so... do i understand correctly that the main objective of your war is to get avignon?
9:37 PM Darius: My youngest brother is sixteen years younger than me.
me: oh wow, you would know about that from him then
Darius: Avignon and the hub area in general, actually.
I figure Rathauses actually give me a chance to make it more profitable than most.
9:38 PM me: that's probably right, actually
you know i have a city behind avignon, right?
9:39 PM Darius: I figured from the info.
I wasn't sure where exactly though.
9:40 PM me: well, even if i cede avignon, that city should not interfere with your access to the hub area
remember, i can hold it through 2-3 waves easily
9:41 PM but i would rather not, as i learned in pb3 that kind of warfare doesn't help the defender any more than the attacker
Darius: Right
And I'm not totally convinced it can hold that many waves.
Remains to be seen, naturally.
9:43 PM me: of course. unless wave 3 is significantly stronger than 1 or 2, the rest will be irrelevant, by that point i'll be fielding longbows
Darius: Exactly, that's the window.
9:44 PM My crossbows will eat the older stuff, but the longbows are just unpleasant units.
Honestly, we've banned their natural era-appropriate counter.
me: yep
9:45 PM Darius: Even though it makes sense. I wish we could cherry-pick RB mod features.
WE as Strength 7 actually makes sense.
9:46 PM me: well by the time we got that far we'd both be irrelevant against ges and rl7
so, peace terms
9:47 PM i give you avignon
Darius: Ah, good start. Is that all the terms?
me: lol
9:48 PM
Darius: Where is the other city? I assume it works the second silver mine.
9:50 PM If that's tactical data you want to avoid sharing, question redacted, but I need to know how much pressure Avignon is under.
me: 4n, 1 west of avignon
avignon is not under pressure
it wouldn't be easy to keep the silvers, but i am happy to work out terms for them
9:51 PM Darius: Ah, I wondered if it was that hill.
me: kind of a bummer of an area
Darius: Silver #2 and crap deer both second ring there.
9:52 PM me: yep
9:53 PM for obvious reasons, next term is great artist is used in your mainland. i cannot allow aggressive bombing or settling of the artist
Darius: How much culture is the settled artist?
9:54 PM Hrm. Wish I could be sure to land Sistine, that would make the calculation simple.
me: 12 culture
9:55 PM Darius: A permanent scientist is two with Sistine, which = Creative.
It's an ugly area.
9:56 PM Meanwhile, every other team watches with great interest as these are the only two silver on the map.
me: lol yep
9:57 PM Darius: Let's see...learning my cultural rules now.
You get 20pt +12 inner ring.
Until second pop, then it's 32cpt outer.
9:58 PM Avignon at second-pop is currently 21, but with lib+temple+monument it's...25?
9:59 PM That's currently for me
10:00 PM me: oy i don't even know
brb baby gain...
Darius: np
10:04 PM me: back again. hopefully that will have her down.
Darius: crosses fingers
me: yep :0
10:05 PM Darius: Hrm. I really need to see Avignon's garrison before I can decide on this one.
10:06 PM Sorry, you understand how it is though.
me: of course.
10:07 PM that makes me wonder how much better a deal i offer you now before blood has been shed
Darius: Yeah, exactly.
me: i'm not strong enough to directly damage you
but this will be a stalemate
Darius: It's so dang hard to massage creative border deals
10:08 PM me: and i would rather see an end result that has us working together against the rest of the world
Darius: Yuri and I both lucked out with the whole holy-city-on-border bit.
Yes, I agree about that one.
10:09 PM me: so - avignon will be under no cultural pressure. grenoble will have its deer and silver for a time
but that will be the worst part of our future borders
Darius: Right, it's a mess up there.
me: you could spend your great artist to guarantee those two tiles, but that seems sub-optimal to use a great person for two tundra tiles
Darius: I wish there was a way to safely split those two silver.
Dangit Gaspar.
me: lol yeah
10:10 PM well i'm still willing to trade the silver to you, though the price will have gone up for a time
but i'm not so worried about one happy resource
10:11 PM Darius: Right, makes sense.
me: are you concerned over the happy resource of silver, the tile yield, or something else?
Darius: Happy, tile yield, both.
10:12 PM GES is desperate for silver. I could probably trade it for gems + something else.
me: okay, what if i made my only cultural build in grenoble a library?
Darius: That'd certainly enable me to take the silver sooner or later.
10:13 PM If the Sistine does drop for me, actually, I'd have to make sure I avoided too much.
Sigh.
It's a bit late, and I need to see the area.
10:14 PM The only bloodshed point right now is your poor isolated chariot.
I'd be willing to hold off one more turn on poking him if you can hold off moving him.
me: uh, too late
Darius: (or pillaging the road)
Oh, crud.
10:15 PM me: i just moved him west-west for visibility
Darius: I figured you'd move him towards Zamora.
10:16 PM me: yeah
didn't even know the city tile before this turn
but had to go that direction
Darius: You catch the naming theme, by the way?
Yeah, makes sense.
me: yeah. try not to read too much into it, but i got it
Darius: Oh, it's nothing to read into
10:17 PM I've just been reading old pulps lately.
me: well, i will move reinforcements toward avignon
but will also offer peace with avignon
Darius: Well, would the deal be null and void over the popping of an unwanted chariot?
10:18 PM me: no
Darius: Okay, I'll be checking out what's actually there first then too.
Your sims must be telling you things mine aren't.
10:19 PM me: there will be more behind the city you can't see, plus walls whipped before you can attack
Darius: Yeah, I figured the walls.
Nemedia got her own nice set as insurance last turn too.
10:20 PM me: so it'll be two axes, a spear, and a chariot behind walls and 40% culture
just to tell you my whole tactical battlefield lol
Darius: Hum.
I'll sim it then.
10:21 PM But yeah, move as if at war, but we might make this the most tense peaceful gifting ceremony ever instead.
me: lol
the only other term i would add is the one you've put in your e-mail, open borders (screw the rest lol)
10:22 PM Darius: Yeah, it's really not a big deal there.
me: any other issues we can work out as time goes on, i'm confident our diplomacy is that easy
Darius: Like I said, dunno why everyone is freaking out.
Yep, enjoyed it as usual MNG.

10:23 PM 'till next turn then, gg, gl and hf
me: you as well. and good night
Darius: Ah yes, and may your baby sleep long.
Cheers MNG

[pindicator]

Good luck in the upcoming battle. Do you think you will be able to defend or was that all bluster to try to get him to agree to a deal?

Also, your Pacific NW comments are making me homesick...

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Good luck in the upcoming battle. Do you think you will be able to defend or was that all bluster to try to get him to agree to a deal?

Also, your Pacific NW comments are making me homesick...

LOL, yeah, no.... that was all bluffing. Commodore will take Avignon easily this turn. I actually only have 2 axes (against 4 catapults, 3 war chariots, and 1 regular chariot). Granted, they are behind 40% culture and walls, but even with good rolls, I'll still lose the city. Even one or two spears and I would have kept it. So I'm whipping spears like mad across the rest of my nation. It will hurt me in the long haul but every other team is intent on hurting me, so I guess that's the way it goes

That having been said, I'm impressed. Commodore correctly addressed the situation, and chose almost the perfect time to attack. If he would have gone 8 turns earlier he'd be fighting against 20% culture, and probably just the one axe.

Also having said all of that, this won't be the worst thing for me. Truth be told, the hub cities are a net drain on the empire. So unloading them will not be the end of the world. And I'm whipping most cities to make some extra defense, so if Yuris does have a massive invasion planned... it'll be hell for him

Now I'm going to try and convince Commodore to take peace for my 2 hub cities....

[Mr. Nice Guy]

More conversations:

Hi guys,

Just want to find out if you have an opinion on the war Commodore has brought against me. And of course, wondering if I should expect more from your flank in the near future?

MNG

Figure I'll pick their brains. Commodore says they're willing to invade. He has been honest to me all game (although choosing to spread Hinduism to Avignon is a little ). Can't help but wonder what their response is.

And my response to Commodore, in an attempt to stop more war:

Hi Commodore,

I figured I'd offer you one more treaty before real blood is shed. Having seen the force you're bringing, I'll be a little more generous than last night.

I give:
*Avignon
*Grenoble
*Permanent spice gift, once it is hooked up (due very soon)

You give:
*Permanent open borders, without restrictions
*Use great artist in a backlines city. That is, not in any aggressive way against France. Hey, you're smart, you know what I mean

I think this deal is pretty nice for you. You get two cities instead of one. You get a happy/healthy resource as long as we remain at peace, and you get peace now without having to waste time trying to fight both of those cities.

From here, the deals will become less generous. If Avignon stands, you may not get it at all, and you definitely will not get Grenoble. Weigh your options and let me know.
In game, I only offered Avignon, but if you offer Avignon+Grenoble, I will accept.

Hope you're beating the heat...

I had typed a bit about my mainland becoming too strong to take and longbows being on the way. But considering I already bluffed about Avignon, I figured it wouldn't help, even though that's more truth.

We'll see. I bet this game is fun to lurk, though :0

[Mr. Nice Guy]

And we have peace! It was expensive, but in the end I'm going to be stronger in 10 turns than I could have hoped for 5 turns ago. I think

Hey MNG,

The terms as discussed are acceptable, and I returned the offer in-game. Um, unfortunately, I had to play it on my wife's laptop today and the game loaded there has an odd bug where all the city names are just "TXT_KEY_CITY_NAME". I guessed which were the two newest, but if I got the cities wrong you can change them. Sorry for that inconvenience, and please don't be offended if you open the save to "Commodore wants your Moai city and the GLH". Avignon and Grenoble were my objectives for this war, and if they can be resolved without dragging both of us down, so much the better. Spices for OB is perfect, and my Great Artist is bustling his way back to his homeland.

So, again, terms accepted. Furthermore, I'll start work on both your missionaries, as Avignon's spread obviously no longer counts. We can also discuss the loan of a galley in the inner sea if you want to settle the IC-TR areas. My wheat is being traded for corn with GES at the moment, but once I hook up my own corn I'll be happy to start trading the wheat again. I look forward to working with you more.

Still in a sauna,

[Rowain]

:wink2: MNG you still alive? How does glorious France fare?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

:wink2: MNG you still alive? How does glorious France fare?

Hi Rowain,

Thanks for the message

Sadly, France does not fare well. Rl7 declared on us with a stack of 10-12 knights a few turns ago. We are already down 2 cities, and will be losing more shortly. Things look very grim, especially since we have lost Paris.

This turn, Commodore jumped on, trying to take whatever spoils of war he can. That's not the worst news, honestly. I truly hope he can take the Great Lighthouse, but I'm not going to just give it away.

I'm going for a scorched earth end in my satellite cities, whipping them into the ground and using the units to burn up as many improvements as possible. All available units are moving to defend the Great Lighthouse and make Commodore/RL7 fight for it.

Sad to see the game is ending quickly, but I have learned about multiplayer play from the game and had a good experience. Now I just can't wait to read the other threads

[Gaspar]

Hi Rowain,

Thanks for the message

Sadly, France does not fare well. Rl7 declared on us with a stack of 10-12 knights a few turns ago. We are already down 2 cities, and will be losing more shortly. Things look very grim, especially since we have lost Paris.

This turn, Commodore jumped on, trying to take whatever spoils of war he can. That's not the worst news, honestly. I truly hope he can take the Great Lighthouse, but I'm not going to just give it away.

I'm going for a scorched earth end in my satellite cities, whipping them into the ground and using the units to burn up as many improvements as possible. All available units are moving to defend the Great Lighthouse and make Commodore/RL7 fight for it.

Sad to see the game is ending quickly, but I have learned about multiplayer play from the game and had a good experience. Now I just can't wait to read the other threads

Sorry to hear the game isn't turning out so well for you, MNG. I thought you played a quality open, which unfortunately hurt you diplomatically. People treat GLH as though you've just launched a spaceship, and I don't think its nearly that powerful. Still, glad you had a good time.