Grave Errors: The Bobchillingworth Experience

[Bobchillingworth]

Okay, I've got a lot of pics saved in Dropbox, I should probably post them before I'm eliminated (Est. 2 weeks).


This covers about a week of turns, so it's more of a retrospective than anything.


Dave traded me Death Mana for Body, in what may be the definition of a mutually-beneficial arrangement:





I settled this badly over-exposed city- I figured that it would be pretty good if TBS ignored it long enough, and eventually I intended to stock it with a genuine garrison as I expanded further into the peninsula:





You can also see some Vampire builds- I had at least a couple building almost every turn since I unlocked Feudalism. Unfortunately I just couldn't produce them quickly enough to attack TBS.


This was my first indication that the hammer was about to fall, and soon:




Obviously this game was going to end in bloodshed, the nodes however were the sign that TBS was switching from a defensive stance to aggression.


Now, it would have been much better had I been able to deal the first blow and take the initiative to attack TBS on his own turf. A big part of the problem was that he always kept a strong garrison on our only border (ignore the theater build, I canceled it after a single turn):





I could conceivably have punched through this garrison with what I had on hand- 5 or 6 vamps, 8 or so Moroi, 4 catapults and a handful of bloodpets. But to do so I would have first had to have given him a turn of warning moving my catapults into attacking position, since they only had 2 moves (and no commando) after I spent a promo on mobility, and even if I did manage to raze the city it would have cost me most of my units except probably the vamps, and this was just a fraction of TBS's power- he could have annihilated me on the counter-attack. Ritualists would have helped, certainly. I probably erred in not adopting the Veil, although the runes only took a single turn to research.

Arete was a mistake- had I had much more time perhaps it could have paid off in Iron and Enchanted Blades as I intended, but it didn't end up doing anything for me. It is a shame OO was banned, it would have made defense much easier. Too much water to allow it though. If I had beelined Ritualists after researching Feudalism I could have likely produced a few to hit TBS- it would have meant skipping Command Posts, Hunting (for Ivory and Deer) the Runes and Arete, but it likely would have been worthwhile... although TBS would have added many more units in the meantime. I simply couldn't match his huge number of cities constantly producing units.


In an all-too-brief hallelujah moment, I discovered I had a fourth node:




I suspect this was actually intended to be Jim's instead of Qg screwing up and giving me four to make up for Qg screwing up and making my home node Meta, but whatever. Had I been able to build in peace, a Tower win was a distant possibility.


Sign #2 of the coming apocalypse- the game bugging out and showing me 6 TBS ritualists being built in a single turn:





Thankfully TBS changed his settings and that was the last turn the game revealed spoiler info to me.


This stupid fucking barbarian city cost me (over the course of two attacks several turns apart) 6 bloodpets, 3 moroi and a veteran Vampire (at 99% odds!) to capture:





I almost burned the damned thing. Probably should have. The barb AI played an uncharacteristically intelligent defense, never sending more than a single unit to attack me, while the rest of the kill-team remained fortified in place.








Last city I'll ever settle [emo.gif]:




Jim might actually declare and take it in a couple turns- he killed the AIDS Herald with Hosts this most recent turn. No hard feelings if he does, although I won't surrender anything without a fight. If he leaves me alone I'll gift him my remaining mana a few turns before I die as thanks.


I built units constantly, ignoring infrastructure in my core cities save Command Posts, but I just couldn't keep up:




He had the land of two civs, two very small fronts to defend where he could concentrate huge armies, and at least in my case I got caught with my pants down by the speed with which he devoured Tholal, leaving me on my heels and unable (or at least unwilling) to act proactively against TBS on my own, giving him plenty of time to build up. I can't speak to why Dave never attacked TBS- as best as I can tell, TBS has always been his only neighbor- but I suspect both of us were simply trapped in a Prisoner's Dilemma regarding who would take the initiative to attack TBS first.


If TBS hadn't been a runaway, I would have actually been in a darn good position:






Unfortunately this turn the hammer finally fell- TBS razed three of my coastal cities with fog galleys, and has a giant Doom Stack on our border:





I retreated my vamps, catapults and a handful of Moroi to what I think is outside of Blinding Light range. I won't go quietly, but I'm utterly fucked here. TBS also declared on Dave, so he probably has a monster army in that part of the world as well- either that or he wants a 10-turn peace treaty while he demolishes me.



It's a little early for a full post-mortem, but I don't expect to survive for much more than 10 turns- once my main army goes, I won't have much left except a few scattered vamps I had farming barbs, and some drafted moroi.

[Bobchillingworth]

NOTE TO SELF: NEXT GAME, JUST BECAUSE YOU DON'T SEE MORE BOATS, DOESN'T MEAN THERE AREN'T ANY.


So yeah, I'm getting totally eviscerated here:





I was going to get rolled no matter what I did given the numbers involved (he hasn't even popped his WS yet, lol), but having 1 or 2 unit garrisons in the cities I lost was just dumb... I had assumed he had used up his boat troops and/or wouldn't have enough movement to reach them. A foolish error. Ah well, at least I'm actually killing a (very small) handful of (incredibly unimportant) units left over from razing my core cities


This must be a very frustrating game for jim. Everyone is dying to TBS, and he's going to have the game lost through no real fault of his own (his empire is way too small, but that's neither here nor there). Kind of a sad, pointless, passive experience.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hrmm, I can imagine most of the recent lurker & TBS threads posts are something like "wow Bob is doing a crap job at defending".


Well, my response is, One: Yes

And One Subpoint A: It doesn't matter.


Here's some relevant bits from a recent (slightly edited) chat with Ellimist, which will save me a little bit of Postmortem time:

Ellimist
btw, it looks like TBS hit you like i hit Mardoc in 25
with the penetrating amphibious strike
Bob
eh. You didn't have a 30 unit Doom Stack camping on Mardoc's door
I had no good options
Ellimist
yeah i hit mardoc before i had an "absolute" advantage over him
my attackers were all destroyed, but they accomplished their goals
Bob
he has so many troops, he's destroying me with an amphibious army and a giant land-based army and he's soloing Dave at the same time
Ellimist
yeah
Bob
I'm not exactly putting up an inspired defense, but realistically there wasn't a heck of a lot I could do here
Ellimist
yeah
Bob
I have sniped a couple highly-promoted Sons so... hooray? This game was over when TBS ran over Tholal and both Dave and I didn't attack him before he could consolidate
Ellimist
yeah
also, i think this game is yet another example of why the sheaim suck
Bob
in my case, I kept beelining vamps when I should have just followed my goddamned instincts and attacked with ritualists and moroi. I'm really not sure what Dave's deal was, to the best of my knowledge he has never bordered anyone but TBS, but still never attacked
Ellimist
PZs don't give enough of an (early) advantage to compensate for the rest of the civ
Bob
I agree.
Ellimist
yeah i love Moroi
governors manors and moroi
the great thing about that combo
is that you get so many more hammers than your opponents at that stage of the game and you can put them into a strong unit with several unique strengths
Bob
Yeah. Add an adept and a few ritualists. Squishy on the defense, but I might have done enough damage to finally convince Dave to join in
Ellimist
well the defense isn't supposed to matter since you're RAI
commando moroi are sweet
especially with haste
Bob
but I decided "well, going for ritualists instead of vampires is such a stereotypical thing for me to do", so I focused on getting my big guns out and playing builder
Ellimist
well i think the EITB changes really removed some of the overpowerdness of vampires
they're still strong but EITB made them less broken
and they're what, 3 times the hammer cost of moroi?
Bob
defense would have mattered in this case, because TBS never used his WS, so even if I killed the dozen or so highly promoted melee units he camped on my border as soon as he killed Tholal, I would have been vulnerable to beastman spam + wolves
at no point has he had less than double my power
Ellimist
yeah
Bob
what he had on our border was hardly his entire army
Ellimist
he really just played a strong charadon game
and when charadon does what he's supposed to do, and does it well, there isn't a whole lot that can stop him
Bob
Yeah, two rushing civs on this map, one pulled it off perfectly, the other never attacked anyone- and his only neighbor was the other rush civ.
Ellimist
i just don't think averax is that strong
the AI does him well enough i supose, but that's because deity AI get econ bonuses
Bob
also Jim was never a factor. Not sure if having him closer to anyone would have helped me, but he has an extremely isolated start
Ellimist
[snip]
Bob
[snip] I only really neighbored Tholal, replaced by TBS. Dave neighbors only TBS. Tholal was totally fucked and neighbored both me and TBS, and Jim doesn't really border anyone.
Tholal had absolutely no chance in this game
if TBS hadn't killed him, I would have
up until the point I was alpha-striked, I was 2nd or first in all the important demographics, competing with a guy who had over double my city count. I think I played a pretty good calabim game! I just got overwhelmed and should have deviated from the calabim script.
I should have played an Alexis game, not a Flauros one (in terms of strategy, not actual leaders)
oh well :P
Ellimist
yeah
well
i think the calabim are tricky like that
vampires and the later stuff is very powerful and tempting, and they aren't unreachable (unlike a lot of late game toys)
but some of their most powerful advantages come much earlier, and it can be difficult to fully capitalize on those if you're focusing on the later stuff
manors are absolutely amazing, especially if you're ORG
Bob
Hey, I built those in every city :P
I played the economics game fine.
drama -> sanitation bulb worked out pretty well too
the real mistake was going for Feudalism- I underestimated how much material TBS could commit to keeping me in check (and eventually overrunning me)
Ellimist
yeah
predictions are hard, especially about the future

Speaking of my "goddamned instincts", I looked into my saved chat archive and found this from the day before I submitted my leader picks for this game:

Bob
yeah
fuck maybe I should be Alexis
I keep saying that the moroi + ritualist gameplan is totally legitimate and overlooked

[...] (Talk about why Decius is better than Alexis)

Ellimist
ha
well vampires are somewhat more straightforward
and moroi are just super-axemen
Bob
well, yeah :P
ez-bake econ and really, really obvious military
vampires and ritualists!
yaaay
Ellimist
and hyborem
Bob
of course

Funny how the hindsight / foresight worked out. Ah well, perhaps next game :P

[Goreripper]

We are just clapping for Black Sword you do fine man with what you have. No body is saying any thing about bad defense. You are a good sport to limp on here.

[Bobchillingworth]

We are just clapping for Black Sword you do fine man with what you have. No body is saying any thing about bad defense. You are a good sport to limp on here.

thanks man, means much, big love (no gay)

[Qgqqqqq]

Agree with Commodore. Amphibious strikes are unquestionably brutal on any vaguely naval map, and Torusland is practically built for them. There's very little you could have done.

And yeah, Sheaim are really awful.

[Bobchillingworth]

Heh, thanks. I would actually be kicking myself if he had attacked with just the naval force, since even if I couldn't have realistically done much to stop it I was still totally unprepared in large part due to poor scouting and not having a sentry net. But with the giant land army TBS had on my doorstep, even if I had been aware of both threats I just didn't have the numbers to hold him off.


Anyway, in-game I'm down to a single island city, so I should be gone as soon as TBS sends a couple galleys my way. I've got a tiny invasion force salvaged from my southern cities headed to some random town he planted semi-recently, except even that is doomed to fail since he'll see me coming with Eyes, plus he knows I have galleys remaining in the area. Otherwise I'm just sitting around for a few turns until The End. I'll gift Jim my mana if he makes peace with me next turn (I declared on him to gift away my workers).

[Bobchillingworth]

I recognise part of his counter-argument may be to point out that he was doing a "deep vampire beeline", but ultimately when the Doviello have Sorcery for mages and you don't even have adepts, despite having the free gift of a Metamagic node at your capital...

While the "deep vampire beeline" argument is indeed meritorious, more compelling still is the fact that I had a metamagic resource, not a node. In other words, it was completely useless until I researched Sorcery, which was going to happen approximately never. I was actually finishing a mine on the tile when the Infamous Boat Raid occurred.


Not having Hawks was kind of dumb, although I'm not sure when I was supposed to have found time to research Animal Handling and build a Hunter's Lodge, but say I had discovered TBS's boats a turn before they hit me- what was I supposed to do then? Even if I could have run my main stack across my empire & somehow gotten it into defensive positions in every city TBS could have hit (which I couldn't), he would have just rolled across our land border with the giant army he had positioned there and crushed me even more quickly on that front. I guess I could have used the amazing power of foresight to predict a naval attack forking 2/3 of my cities and drafted giant economy-killing moroi stacks to camp in each potentially threatened city, except that's completely insane. Not to mention he still had his WS, extending the range of his troops to encompass every single city.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not like angry at you or any of the other lurkers or anything, just kind of tired by the feeling that, having once again been crushed as Calabim Decius in a completely hopeless war, I'm going to be reading posts for a year about this event as though there was some sort of miracle strategy I could have pulled from my ass to defeat a guy with three times my cities and five times my military.


Although I suppose I could have stopped him from getting to that point in the first place. I've already done some post-mortem stuff previously in my thread, but I'll just finish up my remaining thoughts here. File this under "Lessons Learned (Which Are Totally Obvious In Retrospect)":

1a. If you want something done, do it yourself. I kept hoping that Dave might take some of the TBS heat off my border after Tholal fell, and assumed his lack of action was due to a Prisoner's Dilemma situation between the two of us, both unable to communicate our mutual interest in coordinating an attack. In reality he apparently never intended to rush anyone with PZ, didn't build much of a military until way too late in the game, and was "disturbed" by TBS sticking like four units in his border city at a time when he had about a dozen facing me. Help was never coming from that direction, and nobody else bordered the emergent runaway.

1b. Don't allow anyone to get away with having tons of land to expand into & leisurely consolidate, if you can't make equivalent gains on your own and the game is with AI diplo. Once TBS had 30+ cities and was comfortably camping the top of the demographics the game was over, with no way to coordinate a dogpile against him, beat him in the field or outstrip him technologically.

2. Don't be afraid to deviate from a tried-and-tested plan if the situation calls for it. I never should have researched Feudalism. If TBS's attack on Tholal had failed and my neighbors were the Svarts and Amurities, sure, beelining Vampires would have been great. But even though they were better units than most of TBS's troops, I could never have produced enough to match him, especially since you can't even draft them in EitB.

I think bulbing Sanitation was a decent enough play, but immediately afterwards I should have gone for Warfare, Philo, the Veil, Priesthood + then hit him with Ritualists, drafted Moroi and a couple Adepts for haste + blur. Those units could have dealt with his Sons & Shamans military, although it would have been bloody and his WS would have been painful. Alternatively I could have attempted a riskier (and tactically suboptimal) but quicker attack with catapults subbing for Ritualists, going Warfare, Philo, Military Strategy, Construction and HBR. It's a shame Catapults can't benefit from Raiders.

I'm not sure there was much I could have researched after Feudalism to save me, but Runes was certainly a mistake, borne of a prayer that TBS might not have an appetite for further conquest. Desperately trying to get the Empyrean for drafting Radiant Guards was probably my best bet, although it wouldn't have done much to avert the amphibious assault.


3. If you border Charadon, play like you border Charadon. Not so much advice for me in the early-game at least, but a lesson regardless. Tholal had basic warriors and scouts when TBS attacked, having apparently collapsed his economy attempting to research Hunting. I write with the benefit of hindsight, but I think he really ought to have prioritized Archery. His copper wasn't in a particularly convenient location and he didn't really need BW for anything, so I can understand not having bronze warriors. But there's really no excuse for having such a feeble military when he knew that his only neighbors were the Doviello and Calabim. Charadon has like one early-to-mid-game strategy- he hits you with a pile of T1 and/or 2 melee units and probably a bunch of WS wolves. You just can't play anything other than an incredibly defensive game.

I don't think I'm being hypocritical here- I realize I didn't have much of a military when TBS finished off Tholal, but I had been playing most of my game like I bordered the Svarts, and didn't expect them to collapse over the course of like a half-dozen turns. Just as superjim is going to find himself badly outmatched against his new neighbor :P Tholal defending using tons of scouts was inadvisable. Hunters would have been good, although I think archers would have put up a better fight, but whatever better-than-plain-warriors unit he wanted to use he needed to have unlocked much more quickly.

Dave didn't build up much of anything either, but I already ragged on him enough above.



And finally, a few last thoughts about the map:


* Overall I thought it was pretty good. Tech pace was very slow, but it was enjoyable to play on.

* The land had some imbalances, but they tended to cancel each other out. I got kind of screwed in the river department- two tiny rivers near the capital, a very nice river system made semi-useless by jungle in the west, and a medium-sized river in the far south-west, with nothing to the east. But I was apparently living in Pearl Heaven, and according to Dave's thread I had one of the only whales resources on the map.

* Dave has a point about the dispersion of islands- TBS had access to a really nice large one, Tholal and I could have reached a few small islands, and jim and Dave were screwed. Of course vassals were enabled, so islands weren't as good as usual (), but it's still something to be cognizant of since IC trade routes are so useful.

* The placement of civs was... interesting. Tholal really didn't have a chance, being stuck between me and TBS- he was doomed to suffer aggression all game. Dave bordered one person, and not for lack of expansion. Jim was very isolated- at first I thought it was just because he wasn't building enough cities, but even though he didn't expand much he still was pretty far away from everyone else, with roaming barbarians seemingly placed to ensure nobody would want to settle near him.

* Speaking of barbarians, future mapmakers need to like quadruple check any preplaced units they stick on the map. I'll be honest, had a wandering hostile Herald or Valkyrie entered my lands I would have either requested T-Hawk remove them or quit the game. As it turned out I apparently didn't have any roaming barbarians placed near me, or they all walked away early on. I think in general roaming barbarians are just a bad idea, even the Animal AI is too unpredictable. If you do add them, playtest the heck out of the map before shipping.




And that's everything! Thanks everyone for the most ridiculously fast turn-pace of any game I have ever played before, I think that means we had fun

[Qgqqqqq]

All of your points are valid, so this is not trying to excuse them or anything, but
a) No unit above s4 was supposed to be wandering, animal AI or no. This was an issue of held promotions AND AI unknown not being quadruple checked, which, yes, is braindead stupid on my part
b) Starting locations were random, and IMO were balanced if you ignore the civs that they were - there are tradeoffs for each location in terms of distance (and roaming barbs were all either weaker than or comparable to those naturally occurring so it shouldn't be obstructing movement much)
c) I did not adequately consider islands or sea resources in great detail, probably because of how much work altering this would have been
d) I especially agree with the playtesting point. I never will release a map without that, it was just plain silly.

And finally:

e) mana locations were all halfway between players, and balanced equally. Your meta was excess

[Bobchillingworth]

e) mana locations were all halfway between players, and balanced equally. Your meta was excess tongue

Yeah, I was surprised to read that they were equidistant- I had one to my west which seemed much closer to me than anyone else, and only really saw competition for one node (the one between me & Tholal / TBS). And yeah, it's clear now that the nodes were actually rigged in my favor :P Was everyone supposed to have had a meta node near their capital? Seems like it would have been difficult otherwise for anyone to grab enough for the ToM without conquering at least a neighbor's border city, or founding a shrine.