RBP6 Lurker Thread

[regoarrarr]

If Team 2 wins a culture victory in this game, it will be probably the most awesome thing in the history of PB / PBEMs

[NobleHelium]

I dunno, the PB1 ending was pretty awesome.

I don't think T2 has cannons. And is Kremlin allowed?

[mackoti]

Why should be banned, going comunism its a very bad option...,actualy without kremlin its not realy worth.

[Krill]

Kremlin legal according to this post: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...post166299

Also, if T2 don't have cannons, Cyneheard lied to me!!!11!eleven! Shrug massed cats work. Kinda. If you have 200.

[treskies]

Interesting, thanks Krill. All I'm looking for are posts like this.

That's edifying? Sulla forgot that T2 still have cannons...and inf defend against cannons, not their own cannons. This means that T1 will actually be taking collateral whilst if they were attacking with just cannons and cuirs they wouldn't even take that.

That said, using Machine guns offensively (which he didn't comment on) alleviates this concern.

Not sure exactly what you mean here though. I take it you mean having infantry in their attacking stack opens them up to collateral damage, where just cats/cavs will be immune. True, but won't producing infantry and attacking with infantry in the mix be a better long term play, as cavalry will become pretty obsolete soon? They definitely should use machine guns in the stack though, I'm sure sunrise will see to that.

It doesn't seem like their overall attack plan is optimal, partially because they still don't seem to see the cultural victory threat from T2. And even from their viewpoint (forgetting the T2 cultural victory), I would be attacking T3, not T2, since that team looks to them to be their main contender, and their strength is their size/pop. I would use the critical time between landing industrialism and T3 catching up to it to at least heavily damage one of the T3 civs, not go after a weaker team's cities that're already being attacked by another civ. But if they get their act together fast enough, maybe they'll inadvertently make the right move and wipe out T2 in time? Could be interesting.

[T-hawk]

And even from their viewpoint (forgetting the T2 cultural victory), I would be attacking T3, not T2, since that team looks to them to be their main contender, and their strength is their size/pop.

T2 is a softer target because they're so far behind in tech. Sullla wants to conquer T2 first to get some easy land before T3 conquers them instead. Makes sense to me. Sullla is mostly worried about T2 folding to T3 before T1 can get the land. T3 swallowing T2 is the only way T3 expands enough to threaten Sullla's team.

Sullla's team most likely never needs to attack T3 directly; just get more land and they can turtle up to a space win if necessary.

[SevenSpirits]

It's true whipping becomes worse later in the game but Sullla gets the reasons wrong. Having hammer multipliers (factories) doesn't suddenly change what the best base source of hammers is. Here are actual reasons:

1) The relative productivity of slavery compared to just working tiles drops.
* Cities are bigger sizes so marginal population points cost more food.
* Working tiles becomes significantly more efficient because improvements get bonuses e.g. at Railroad, Printing Press, Biology, etc.

2) Other ways of getting emergency defenders become more prevalent, making slavery less necessary to run at all.
* Drafting.
* Railroads.
* Higher production multipliers leading to cities naturally building units with higher frequency.
* Cash-rushing.
* Higher cash reserves for emergency upgrades.

3) The opportunity cost of running slavery becomes higher.
* Caste System becomes more useful with other bonuses to workshops, especially state property.
* Emancipation becomes available.

4) Non-wasteful whipping becomes more difficult.
* It becomes harder to whip for more than 1 pop due to higher base production into the first turn of an item and due to higher multipliers on the whip itself.
* High base production makes it more likely that overflow from a whipped item will hit the cap and be partially lost.

[treskies]

Sullla's team most likely never needs to attack T3 directly; just get more land and they can turtle up to a space win if necessary.

I see.

[Krill]

Interesting, thanks Krill. All I'm looking for are posts like this.

There's a lot of much better posts in the completed games section that you might be interested in. PBEM23 (Seven, novice and Spaceman) is the current game that everyone gets pointed to.

Not sure exactly what you mean here though. I take it you mean having infantry in their attacking stack opens them up to collateral damage, where just cats/cavs will be immune. True, but won't producing infantry and attacking with infantry in the mix be a better long term play, as cavalry will become pretty obsolete soon? They definitely should use machine guns in the stack though, I'm sure sunrise will see to that.

Attacking at this stage of the game without a good tech edge (hell, that's true for all of the game, really) isn't usually a smart play: even if you can get numbers you could have invested in other items for example city improvements. However, attacking here is a good play because every team needs to shut down T2's culture victory attempt, and the only method for doing that is to raze the cities.

The idea then is how to reach the specific cities that need to be razed? They are cities that are deep in enemy territory, but T1 (and other teams) want to also hold as much of that land as possible to gain productive cities. This suggests 2 competing aims: to move an army straight to the culture cities, ignoring everything else, or capture everything on the way to the culture cities. The latter won't work because it'll be too slow to stop the CV, but the former might get T2 to abandon outer cities to protect the only really important assets they have remaining, the CV cities.

I'd use a multiple prong attack: I'd use my navy, which includes iron clads, to shut off as much of the coast as I could, and galleons to threaten coastal cities. For this to work, you'd really need to have inf on the boats, where being slow movers doesn't matter, and the AGG player can make Amphib inf to take cities and a couple of CG2 inf will make it too expensive for T2 to retake the cities.

In addition to this, there is the straight forward SoD threat at the front city, with no inf, a decent chunk of cav and cannons (plus MG which are the best anti-siege defense unit in the game) to keep most of the T2 units at the "front". This stack won't take cities unless T2 retreat, but it's the anvil that lets you hammer T2 with the naval stack.

The third prong is the straight forward fast mover stack. This serves two purposes, to stay behind the slow moving siege stack so it can't be attacked by T2 without the slow mover stack being able to attack first, and to be able to peel off to threaten additional cities to split forces further. It also should be possible to use a fast mover force off galleons into captured coastal cities to get closer to the T2 CV cities. This is the only real way to threaten the CV cities IMO.

Now, this is one of the issues with attacking at Inf: cannons are about to become obsolete to Arty that can't be flanked, which makes slow mover stacks more dangerous. Cav are weak against rifles (so a fast mover stack is only going to be useful against T2 and not other teams that have rifling), making them a risky proposition a an investment. Ironclads are slow, so a bunch of them need to be built early to get into place prior to an attack with Inf on galleons. Galleons themselves still need to be defended, so you still need to build frigates or N1 SoL to defend them. None of hte navy save the galleons are really upgradable. Machine guns can't attack so are a straight hammer sink to defend a stack (you still need to defend in a bunch to defend cities).

Basically the whole attack is a huge hammer sink. The other option is to wait for Tanks, but sometimes you can't wait due to other constraints.

It doesn't seem like their overall attack plan is optimal, partially because they still don't seem to see the cultural victory threat from T2. And even from their viewpoint (forgetting the T2 cultural victory), I would be attacking T3, not T2, since that team looks to them to be their main contender, and their strength is their size/pop. I would use the critical time between landing industrialism and T3 catching up to it to at least heavily damage one of the T3 civs, not go after a weaker team's cities that're already being attacked by another civ. But if they get their act together fast enough, maybe they'll inadvertently make the right move and wipe out T2 in time? Could be interesting.

Attacking T3 would lead to a blood bath, I don't see how they'd pull it off: even attacking mainly through a naval stacks is expensive: there is no available method of collateral until bombers at Radio and flight. Attacking through land means attacking into cannons and cav, and frankly, all that happens is one of the other teams manages to catch up.

Attacking T2 whilst T2 are attacked from another angle is usually the best move, as you do not need to invest as much in units to capture and hold T2's land; most of the T2 armies will be defending the first invasion. This is one of the reasons why being the first person to attack a weak target isn't the best move.

[Ceiliazul]

Interesting, thanks Krill. All I'm looking for are posts like this.

For another great industrial era game, check out PBEM 19. I was lucky enough to have dedlurked that game. The reporting is great thoughout, and I learned a whole lot along the way.

Just in case no one's said it lately: Team2's culture push is unprecedented for many reasons. Culture victories are very rare here at RB because humans can see it coming and do something about it... in this case the victory screen is not quite as obvious, and Team1 hasn't caught on yet. Make sure to not mention culture at all to team1.

That goes for everyone, but Treskies your appearance makes it a good time to restate this.