Spoilers! Time For A Change. ( superdeath spoilers )

[Mr. Cairo]

Airships aren't OP, but I do think that all modern-era ships should have a chance to Intercept instead of just Destoryers. The thing is, each Destroyer can only Intercept once. So a stack with some Battleships and a couple destroyers can still be hit pretty hard by enough Airships. Also, rather than nerf Airships I think modern research costs should go down so Fighters arrive sooner. Or there should be an earlier version of the Fighter, a Bi-Plane with something like 6 Strength and a reduced range and interception chance, just for intercepting Airships.

At the end there I was pretty happy you moved your Transports towards my capital. It let me withdraw a lot of my garrison from Vanillaisis. Even more so once you unloaded, and I saw it was mostly Tanks. Since I'd seen you build lots of Marines earlier, I knew that I could move my ATs into my cap as well. I don't know if it would have made any difference in the end, but just by keeping all your Transports in Lyons you would have forced me to leave a lot more units in Vanillaisis, making it easier for wetbandit. I think I might have had enough units to adequately protect Vanillaisis and my cap, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, good game, thanks for making it interesting. I suspect if you hadn't attacked at all, JR4 and Wetbandit may have just sat around until it was way too late. Which would have been a boring way to win.

Also, that really stressed me out, well done.

[superdeath]

I think it was more a combo of insane emperor tech rates coupled with this being the first time ive "actually" been in the late game. I think realistically, airships should have a smaller range for actually attacking.

[JR4]

JR4, im probably going to be a little salty for a while. Justified or not, it is what it is. I hold no hard feelings EVER, ( cept sometimes vs commodore <3 ) but i think that you were a bit passive in this game when you could have maybe made gains and been in a more commanding lead/changed the game had you pushed vs Wetbandit, or myself, or Mr.Cairo at the end. But, nonetheless.. GG all!

I`ve skimmed through part of your thread and there are a few things that I wish to address.

After the failed invasion with Knights, I was a bit reluctant to trust you. We shared a quite long border and we were both well set up to take out the other with help from a third party. Relations were pretty bad for the major part of the game.

You complained a bit about us failing to join in against Mr. Cairo. I didn`t really feel like helping out you (or Wetbandit for that matter) unless there was a serious chance of us getting the lion`s share of the spoils. After razing YeeHawdists, I felt that our best chance was going for Yokel Haram instead of Mr. Cairo`s capital, not least to try to make MC defend all of his culture cities. I also definitely hoped that having a large army in former MC lands would secure more territory. You do realize that I never knew that MC was about to get another high-odds Artist, right? With perfect information, I probably would have gone for Yaellqaeda instead.

I don`t really agree that Airships are overpowered. If you`re not concentrating on controlling the skies, then you should be left at a big disadvantage. It`s the same with my reluctance to build ships on the big sea. It just felt like a waste to spend hammers when we were outnumbered anyway. It did hurt in the late game, though as I was rather worried about a random raze of Lords (our Moai city).

Heh, I get why our buildup on the sea between us and Donovan seemed a bit.. weird. I changed my mind several times on what to do and it was probably not the wisest thing to do. Oh well, those ships may come in handy later if Donovan was going down.

I`m working full-time and have a stressful job and no longer really have time to play turns of an hour plus doing reports but I did it every now and then anyway, to keep the lurkers informed. So, some of my decisions might have been a bit off the mark. I actually decided to concede back in mid-December but as someone wanted to keep on fighting we did get a very interesting late game.

And just to be clear - no hard feelings. It`s just a game after all.

[wetbandit]

I'll take the blame on prolonging the game; I thought I had a chance to win with the way things were shaking out diplo wise. I thought superdeath would crash into Mr. Cairo so hard, prevent the CV, and enable an opportunity for me, with relatively easier opportunities to expand, to eek out a victory. I see you guys lost the faith around that time, but I thought with 3 other players relatively close, and with DZ as not too far away, there was enough incentive to organize a dogpile on Mr. Cairo.

[superdeath]

I thought i had a chance once i had caught up in tech a bit too, but once i realized it would take 10t + of wealth builds + more research builds worth just to get 1 modern era tech... and the fact that massed art/MG's are basically impossible to break thru... i was only caring about making sure that the culture victory didnt go thru.. MAINLY because my Heroic epic city lost valuable hammer tiles/food tiles to across a sea- city. Culture really pisses me off in this game lol

[JR4]

The late game techs were extremely expensive in this game. With little land and a need for a huge standing army it would take a dozen turns just to save up enough gold to get Radio or Rocketry for instance. Also, it obviously didn`t help that there were no intercontinental trade routes.

@Superdeath: Yes, I can understand why you were unhappy about the cultural pressure in this game with Mr. Cairo and us both in Free Speech for a long time. At the same time, I really regret not going for State Property earlier as you opened up.. a healthy lead in production towards the end of the game. SP was very good for your big Empire.

@Wetbandit: We all (you, me and Superdeath) probably hoped the other two would do the hard lifting and then proceed to reap the rewards afterwards. I think that this game shows just how hard it is to arrange a proper coordinated attack as we outnumbered Mr. Cairo combined at land, at sea and at the skies. We did of course make some inroads and Mr. Cairo did say that he was unsure if he could have held out if he`d gotten a bad roll there right at the end (a non-Artist).

[wetbandit]

@Wetbandit: We all (you, me and Superdeath) probably hoped the other two would do the hard lifting and then proceed to reap the rewards afterwards. I think that this game shows just how hard it is to arrange a proper coordinated attack as we outnumbered Mr. Cairo combined at land, at sea and at the skies. We did of course make some inroads and Mr. Cairo did say that he was unsure if he could have held out if he`d gotten a bad roll there right at the end (a non-Artist).

Obviously that would have been ideal, but in my last two wars (Cornflakes, Cairo) I was willing to take considerable losses.  There just wasn't a way to communicate that to everyone else.

Ultimately, I think what sunk us is the fact that Cairo was able to consolidate more or less his entire army, less 50 infantry, into one city.  That brought the collateral mechanics issue into play which no one, except cairo after doing extensive sims, realized would affect the outcome of the war.  Normally when you allow an opponent to march considerable siege units next to your city, that's a bad thing, except in this instance. 

If cairo was forced to spread his units out in his 3 legendaries, I think we would have prevented the win.  If Aztec marched towards YallQaeda, I was going to march towards Yokel, and raze Talibanjos along the way.