RB Pitboss #1 SPOILER - Hatshepsut / India

[regoarrarr]

While waiting for the turn to roll and for me to get my units to safety before shady can move, let's get some dip in.

Had a real nice chat with Munro in-game. Nothing too game specific and the hassle of pasting in-game chat is too much, but I am sowing some seeds there. Doesn't seem we'll work together just yet but if alliances shift, I think we're in good position there.

Email from shady

Are you saying that were to move against Elkad instead of you, you'd stay out of it, not give units / tech / help to Elkad and not opportunistically send your troops to Persia while my army is away? Ism't that just as bad as actually turning your guns on Elkad?

My reply

I dunno - you did a good job of letting Imhotep's stack get whacked there! :-)

I know what you mean though - when you put it that way, it doesn't seem very nice either. Something seems kind of different about only passive-aggressively "attacking" someone rather than slipping the knife all the way in.

But you're right, I probably wouldn't do that and probably would just "opportunistically send my troops to Persia"

So it seems we are destined to continue down this path a little longer...

[T-hawk]

Since I love combat numbers... Yes you got worse results than expected, though by a margin of less than one unit. Crunching in Excel, I get expected losses of 6.087 units and expected wins of 13.913, against actual values of 7 losses and 13 wins. (That's ignoring the catapults, but presumably none of them had any significant odds of retreat and survival.)

Code:

Result    Chance    Expected losses    Actual    Expected wins    Actual
lose    50.0%    0.500    1    0.500    0
win    57.3%    0.927    1    1.073    1
lose    70.1%    1.226    2    1.774    1
win    67.5%    1.551    2    2.449    2
win    68.1%    1.870    2    3.130    3
win    69.0%    2.180    2    3.820    4
lose    70.4%    2.476    3    4.524    4
win    84.3%    2.633    3    5.367    5
win    81.5%    2.818    3    6.182    6
lose    67.4%    3.144    4    6.856    6
win    75.1%    3.393    4    7.607    7
lose    81.5%    3.578    5    8.422    7
win    69.0%    3.888    5    9.112    8
win    68.1%    4.207    5    9.793    9
win    88.7%    4.320    5    10.680    10
win    72.8%    4.592    5    11.408    11
win    88.7%    4.705    5    12.295    12
win    68.4%    5.021    5    12.979    13
lose    53.4%    5.487    6    13.513    13
lose    40.0%    6.087    7    13.913    13

[regoarrarr]

Excellent!

(Though it's more fun to complain about it)

I didn't think about just adding up the decimal probabilities to generate expected wins / losses.

I was going to multiply all the probabilities together, and then take the 20th root of it, which would give me the overall probability (at least in my head it would), then do a binomial distribution on that. But this seems much simpler, if my way even is statistically sound

[T-hawk]

My way is simpler, but it just gives the expected value, saying nothing about the distribution: we have no idea of the standard deviation or how likely it was that you would come out 0.913 unit shy. A binomial distribution would tell us that. I don't know either if it's sound or even approximately correct to take the average probability like you're saying (or even a straight mean average of the probability.) I had one semester of statistics in college, where a 48 average got curved up to a B since nobody else understood it either.

[regoarrarr]

Well the product and 20th root gives you an average of 68.38%. Straight average (which doesn't seem right) says 69.57%

If I'm understanding my excel right, 68.38% says I had a 72.1% chance of winning at least 13 and a 54.5% chance of winning at least 14, and 35% chance of winning at least 15

69.57% makes those numbers 75.8%, 59.1%, and 40.0%

Disclaimer: I probably did worse at Prob and Stat in college than t-hawk

[regoarrarr]

Okay - as I mentioned in the public player thread, I took out the rest of Imhotep's army. When the turn rolled over, I'm not sure what happened, but it looked like Shadyforce had his units queued up to automatically move 1S? But Imhotep's did not, so they were alone on the forest.

So, I sent in one cat which died, then I had a cat retreat @ 25%. This good luck was immediately turned around by having a mace die @ 90% . The rest of the folks all won at 97%+

So for a cat and mace, I took out 5 elephants, a Praetorian, an axe and an Impi and Imhotep's army is gone.

I'll be cleaning up some diplomacy loose-ends today and will keep you updated.

First here's one from Kodii

I'm sorry to hear that things aren't working out between us

I can admit to not putting in much effort on my part due to time restraints, but I also feel that there wasn't a lot of input on your part either. If we can benefit from a relationship with each other, I say we negotiate to make it work, but if you feel that neither of us will benefit, then I can understand your reasoning.

May you live long and prosper

I wrote

Well, I can probably take some blame for that, and maybe it was a bit of the game pauses.

So, I'm up for continued negotiation, but if you've got limited real-time and I know that you're involved in rbp2 as well, do you think you'll have the time?

[regoarrarr]

Email from Yaz

Sorry it's taking me so long to get back to you on this, things are
just crazy and haven't had time to do a dot map of the region and work
out spots for the both of us that I think would be fair.

To show good faith though I've begun work on clearing out the
barbarian city to demonstrate my intentions are not to take it as a
surprise settlement or something of that nature.

This is odd since he kind of is ignoring my proposal that I get the gold from that barb city in exchange for letting him take the island and both coastal fish

Hey Yaz,

Okay. I thought that the last suggestion I made involved as a proposal in exchange for allowing you to take the island and both coastal fish that either you'd leave the barb city to me or split the experience / gold for it, since it is on "my" side.

Thoughts on that?

[regoarrarr]

Email from shady

I'm not sure if that was sarcastic gloating or not but my lack of cover for Imhotep's stack was not deliberate. I didn't get home too late and thus was too late moving. If Imhotep and I could be online all the time like some people (not naming any names), we might have done better!

This was actually written before I cleaned up the rest of Imhotep's stack but I didn't get a chance to reply till now.

Your sarcasm-o-meter is functioning propertly - that was indeed sarcastic gloating :-) :-) :-) Though I got your email and started replying before the turn rolled over last night - I'm not sure if you guys did not cooperate again or what happened but Imhotep's stack lagged behind you again so I went ahead and cleaned them up. I have a longbow in the forest which I would appreciate if you didn't kill, but if you do then I guess you do.

So, I was thinking about this and how we might be able to change things up. I actually started writing this (in my head) before the 2nd battle of Norwood but I still think it bears some investigation.

I was thinking about you turning on Imhotep not as a stab in the back but just telling him up front that you were stopping the war on me. Though now that his army is gone maybe it makes it easier?

But when I was thinking about it, I was thinking that we (and I think you and I should play a leading role in this) should reconfigure the UTA / NUTA into an alliance of "the people that want to keep playing" vs. "the people that are just going through the motions". Your call on which one you're in (I know you've mentioned before possibly losing interest in the game), but the way I saw it, it was the rest of us vs. Imhotep, Munro, and Kodii. Imhotep obviously has said that he doesn't really want to play and hasn't for awhile. Munro is a nice guy (I had a nice long chat with him a few nights ago while I was up waiting for the turn to roll), but he told me that he's here mostly just to keep our game going and not really planning on much. And M-H has already left (I think) and Kodii mentioned in the thread that he's not really planning.

So, the obvious benefits are that it's an 8v3 which makes war(s) much easier. It features 2 people who are low in score / tech, and 1 who is advanced in tech but has a very low army. You might even include Yaz or the Lins in this list but I figured at least in this first wave, 8v3 is easier than 7v4.

So obviously, some people benefit more than others. I think this is something that benefits me, which makes sense because of course I'm not going to suggest something that doesn't! But I think that there are some big benefits to you. #1 - it means that you're part of the 8, instead of part of the 3. But there were 2 potential concerns I thought you might have

1 - others might stand to gain more from the demise of those 3 powers. Here, I'm thinking more from a land perspective. For that though I thought we certainly could make sure that the gains were equivalent, either from granting other lands or other incentives
2 - You might be worried that the 2nd wave would be the 5 UTA members ganging up on the other 3 of you (you, dsp and yaz). And while of course that is a possibility, I think there's a lot of reasons why that might not happen. First off, I am intentionally not sharing any of this with the other guys until we can get some buy in from your side. But secondly, the UTA was never as tight as you guys made it out to be, and if it was close, it's lost a lot of steam with the (not so) recent pauses in the game. Which as I'm sure you remember, was caused initially by someone on our team (ZPV) leaving. So, I'm definitely not as tight with Elkad as I am with you. And while I've continued to work with Broker and sunrise, the Lins seem to have lost their enthusiasm for the game. So I could definitely see a 2nd wave where it's something like Broker, sunrise, you, me and dsp vs. the Lins and Yaz.

So that's the basic framework that I see. What do you think? Obviously there's a lot of details to work out but I think that the basic framework makes a lot of sense. The only other thing is (and I'm not saying this to be pushy or a jerk) but this is a limited time offer. I am constantly writing things to different people (you've probably already seen me express what some of my friends have refered to me as "diarrhea of the mouth"), and while I think this option is one of the strongest for both of us, it's not the only thing on the table, if that makes sense. But I'm pretty confident, from what I've seen from you and how fast you are to reply and diplome, that we can make this happen

Hope to hear from you soon

I really think this is a strong option for where we go next in this game. And of course, it's very strong for me :-D

[regoarrarr]

Email to Imhotep this was the main "other" option I alluded to in the email to shady. I don' t think that Imhotep will really go for it, or even respond, but it's on the table

As you may have seen if you've logged in or seen from my posting in the public player thread, shadyforce once again moved his covering stack away from yours and I eliminated the rest of your wounded units. I'm not sure if getting a cat to retreat @ 25% makes up for losing a mace attacking @ 90% but ya know :-D

So, are you interested in peace now? I don't know what your relationship was with shadyforce or if this was a mistake by one of you guys, but I thought I would give you another option. I saw that you founded a new city towards me (near the sheep), so maybe we could call that the border and start working on other things.

Specifically, I don't know if you might harbor any ill-will towards shady for his part (or lack thereof) in the war and/or getting your army killed, but would you be interested in a 3v1 with me, you and Elkad against shadyforce?

Again, since you have already expressed that you're not really that interested in this game, I don't know what you're looking for. And you never respond to my emails so I'm just kind of guessing :-) I am assuming that you do read them though so maybe I'll make some suggestions. If you don't like them, you gotta work with me and give me some feedback to help me out!!!! :-)

I am not sure what the composition of your standing army is now, but I'm sure that if this was something that was interesting to you, we could get you some good techs (Guilds, etc) and I'm sure you know plenty of ways that we could make things work. We could even get "General" "Mister Top 20" Sunrise to coordinate things on this end.

So what do you think?

[regoarrarr]

Email to Elkad

Hey Elkad,

As you may have seen in the public player thread, there was once again some mis-coordination between shadyforce and Imhotep which left Imhotep's units vulnerable, and for the cost of a cat and mace, I removed his remaining units (5 more eles, another Praet, axe and Impi). So Imhotep's stack is gone. Shady's stack is still threatening me in the north (I can see 5 eles, 1 mace, 10 cats and assorted stuff), but I may be able to send some aid your way if you need it.

I know that mini southern stack is still floating around, at least as far as I can tell - did it ever head towards Sicca like you were worried about?

Tech-wise you're still on Nationalism, right? I swapped out of bureaucracy (yay spiritual!) for a few turns so I'm down to 159bpt but still have PP in 11 - might go down a turn when I swap back to Bureau, though I may go to Nationhood once you get Nationalism - I'll have the Globe up and running here in ~10 turns. Broker got Education which I am assuming he has offered to you by now - he told me he'll have Gunpowder in 10.

Anything else going on?