[Spoilers] Shallow Thought and Hitru's series of (unfortunate?) events

[JR4]

Congratulations! Very well played indeed.

[shallow_thought]

Im hoping they didnt attack me sooner due to my #expert defense?

Actually, you have built yourself some reputation in this area. Against Rusten in PB37 wasn't it? At least partly the reason why we went with just slowly constricting and crushing at the end rather than a direct strike.

What I wondered for most of the game is, why you didn't attack SD sooner? Before the dogpile against me SD's only iron was in Deadpool directly on your border. And you both shared a long border, which was ripe for tension.

Huh, I never noticed that was the only iron . As for deeper reasons,  I was mostly (over?)focused on the huge stacks of praetorians somewhere on our other main border. It was only your move, unbalancing the situtation, that gave us the feeling we were free to make a move ... against our natural ally, China.

It may not be clear from the thread, but in chat we were constantly searching for a way to set up a chance to attack on that border, but never managed to get the diplomatic or technological security. Hampered also by that fact that I am an even less agressive player than I thought I was.

I've had a chance to skim the lurker thread, which tells me there was a lot going on that I was barely aware of (no surprise there), but not the others. I hope for a chance to spam my thoughts both before and after reading the other threads, but right now I'm on holiday, relaxing, for the first time in months ...

[Hitru]

Yeah, we had pretty tense border with Rome after settling J ( which I don't regret, it was one of our best hammer cities ) so we had to be aware of possible 2 vs 1, which almost did end up killing us.

[Charriu]

Which one?

The war against rome or the second war against RFS

[shallow_thought]

Which one?

The war against rome or the second war against RFS

I assume you mean this?

It was only your move, unbalancing the situtation, that gave us the feeling we were free to make a move ... against our natural ally, China.

The second one, against RFS, which drew the jackals in. At the time of your war with Rome, we'd have happily joined in with you against the rising superpower, except that at the the time we didn't share a border with it (for which were duly thankful in the early stages).

[Charriu]

Yes, I meant that. Writing on a phone is annoying.

[Elkad]

I was aware it was super's only iron. And after him giving me horses half the game, I would have given him one of my 47 irons without even thinking about it.

[superdeath]

I was aware it was super's only iron.  And after him giving me horses half the game, I would have given him one of my 47 irons without even thinking about it.

<3

That being said, that was part of the reason i joined in on attacking Charriu, needed to secure more iron.

[Charriu]

Actually you secured the iron before attacking me with your culture.

[Magic Science]

Why RFS-81 was allowed to live so long is something I have been wondering for a while, and now I think I know. It was was because the praetorian doomstack was never occupied for long, so you could never be confident that OT4E and Elkad would let you take Golden Void without trying the swipe the city or capture Jacques S II, is that right?

Your perspective of the dogpile against me was one of the funniest parts of my post-game reading experience. I never thought that my little stack of elephants and catapults could make the implacable, unstoppable Dark Lord(s) of the Orphans know fear! Your fear probably would have turned out to be true if my back was up against the wall, though. If I didn't have my colonies, I would have been more concerned about going out with a...flash ..., but since I did, I was content to continue backpedaling until a better opportunity came, and then to ultimately not attack at all when there wasn't one.

I was also surprised to learn how pessimistic you two were about your chances for most of the game. For my part, I put you in the top tier alongside the Romans on Turn 51, and never removed you from the favorites' category after that. I think that you often underestimated the value of your advantage in basic demographics like Crop Yield and city count. Sure, sometimes you missed your chance at a good war or didn't make good gains in a war you did fight, but that was alright, since you were doing well enough to still be in good shape when the next opportunity came, unlike some of your rivals.
I'll admit that it looked bad for you when you were being dogpiled, but even then, I think that you were selling yourself short by considering concession to Superdeath. Your empire was still the biggest and the best, it just needed Replaceable Parts and Rifling to take a commanding lead again, and I don't think that it was feasible for even a continued dogpile to take you down faster than you could research them.