[SPOILERS] Dazed and scooter play Stalin of Vikings and make a big mess

[pindicator]

Okay, I'm through! I am a lot slower than Rego & Krill, I guess.

First off, I had a blind eye to your luxury problem. Just never thought to look at how the map screwed over other people, but that is a bit of human tendency I think. Good thing you leveraged those wonders, and I think you played that initial part pretty well (despite the criticism you got for spending too many early game resources on wonders).

I'm glad you got some mileage out of vikings! They are a TON of fun on island maps, and I'm sure you know why. But I wish you would have tried taking advantage of them before rifles. why not an earlier astro? You Could have terrorized the seas in earnest, especially if you had gone Chemistry for Privateers after that. But you were honestly worried about losing Taj to Nakor, so that's understandable. Still, +2 movement and islands you gotta rule those seas!

It was nice to see the reactions to our wars from the other side of the world, especially the Yuri one.
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid286095

RE: Krill - yeah, i think everybody was waiting for everybody else to make the first move with a krill dogpile. that's one problem with AI Diplo: you don't get dogpiles easily. At least, you have to put a lot of trust in another team to have it work out, which I think is why the only time I've managed to pull it off was pbem23 with mackoti.

RE: rejecting your education offers. I think we were on our own goals at that time, and while the offer was tempting we were trying to keep our eye on the prize. But everybody had such varying opinions on what these techs were actually worth, it's really tough to negotiate without diplo on. We were fighting about it in our own thread, at least until I realized that everyone is miserly with gold and loose with their techs.

More generally with trade, we didn't want to trade with either you or krill at first, but eventually realized that you weren't nearly the threat we thought you were to run away with the game. But I have to say, I think you could have done more damage in this game if you would have teched Astronomy earlier than you did. And when you saw us trading with Krill, that was our "fuck it, everyone else doesn't seem to care, why should we?" attitude coming through.

And your war declaration on us - we really had no idea you were that upset with us; we just took it as a "stay off these islands" declaration because they were so close to your homeland. Yikes, one downside of AI Diplo is you really can't tell how other teams feel about you. We both felt the same way about Krill and towards each other, it seems (although we were a lot less annoyed with you as the game went on, while you seemed to get more annoyed with us.) I wonder if Commodore realized just how BFF we were with him at the end?

So you were the one who traded gunpowder to yuri! Man, we thought Nakor was just screwing with us some more after the iron trading. But that was you!!! Actually, we thought you had traded with Krill earlier. But it was Commodore that traded Krill Printing Press? Whenever whoever did that, we figured it was over at that point and started caring about trades a whole lot less.

Wow, t219 was a good turn for you!

I'm always at a disadvantage to Rego because I hit enter for a new paragraph and he hits "Submit Reply" instead. So I'll take all the lurker help I can get .

So true! He didn't post for 5 days once and I was worried something had happened to him.

And post 949 was exactly my worst nightmare

[scooter]

Okay, I'm through! I am a lot slower than Rego & Krill, I guess.

First off, I had a blind eye to your luxury problem. Just never thought to look at how the map screwed over other people, but that is a bit of human tendency I think. Good thing you leveraged those wonders, and I think you played that initial part pretty well (despite the criticism you got for spending too many early game resources on wonders).

I'm glad you got some mileage out of vikings! They are a TON of fun on island maps, and I'm sure you know why. But I wish you would have tried taking advantage of them before rifles. why not an earlier astro? You Could have terrorized the seas in earnest, especially if you had gone Chemistry for Privateers after that. But you were honestly worried about losing Taj to Nakor, so that's understandable. Still, +2 movement and islands you gotta rule those seas!

We basically had two choices. First, I could get Astronomy as quick as possible and thus greatly weaken my teching machine sooner. This means trying to conquer with Berserkers. Everyone had longbows and muskets weren't far away, so this felt like it would result in a lot of casualties. My second option was to wait on Astronomy until after I had gotten Rifling and try to blitz through the islands with upgraded Zerks -> Rifles (using trade missions). I would be able to suffer fewer casualties AND have a modern army in the field rather than one on the verge of obsoleting. The main problem was that losing that great merchant in the random HA attack by Krill delayed Rifling (and thus all my attacks) by a good 5 turns or so. This was a pretty significant setback as my wars would've been even faster had they launched 5T earlier.

I don't really regret the choice though to wait for Rifles. I'm not sure if I would've been able to completely wipe Nakor off the islands had I tried to do it with Berserkers. Same with Brick - his army was so large that I really needed it to be Rifles so that I'm attacking with odds in the 80s and 90s rather than 50s. I rarely had numbers vs Brick/Nakor since I was fighting both wars simultaneously, I just used my tactical advantage to pick my fights. I don't think that would've worked as well with Zerks. It's hard to say though. The main problem was not wanting to obsolete Colossus - I was working something like 80 coast tiles at one point and losing that much commerce/turn would've been painful. I also was trying not to goad Krill into an Astronomy arms race, which is a factor I didn't discuss as much in my thread. As long as I didn't have Astronomy I was no threat to him whatsoever, so he didn't need to invest in ships to deal with me. So that was a factor.

It was nice to see the reactions to our wars from the other side of the world, especially the Yuri one.
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid286095

Haha, I kept checking civstats and was like "whip Yuri whip!!!" . Didn't happen too much.

RE: Krill - yeah, i think everybody was waiting for everybody else to make the first move with a krill dogpile. that's one problem with AI Diplo: you don't get dogpiles easily. At least, you have to put a lot of trust in another team to have it work out, which I think is why the only time I've managed to pull it off was pbem23 with mackoti.

RE: rejecting your education offers. I think we were on our own goals at that time, and while the offer was tempting we were trying to keep our eye on the prize. But everybody had such varying opinions on what these techs were actually worth, it's really tough to negotiate without diplo on. We were fighting about it in our own thread, at least until I realized that everyone is miserly with gold and loose with their techs.

More generally with trade, we didn't want to trade with either you or krill at first, but eventually realized that you weren't nearly the threat we thought you were to run away with the game. But I have to say, I think you could have done more damage in this game if you would have teched Astronomy earlier than you did. And when you saw us trading with Krill, that was our "fuck it, everyone else doesn't seem to care, why should we?" attitude coming through.

I sensed you guys thought I was a bigger threat than I was, and that was frustrating. Also the hard part on trading was that Nakor traded freely with anyone and everyone, so often I had the choice between selling a tech for bargain prices OR not doing it and letting Nakor reap the benefits of me not doing it. This is kind of why I was hoping Krill would pile on Nakor, which would've made an embargo much easier...

One other thing though. I looked at my situation and figured, ok so if Krill gets locked out then what? Maybe you guys have a chance at winning. Did it increase my chances of winning? Not really at all. So if helping you or helping Krill had very little impact on my chances of winning, I was only going to help one side if I felt some sort of loyalty to them. I didn't really feel any loyalty to either of you because both of you had done things to annoy me, so I decided to just do my own thing until one of you started giving me freebies. Krill seemed more apt to just take a deal and not try to nickel and dime me over it (in the last 30-40 turns anyways), so I think that caused me to feel more negatively about your civ than his civ, if all that makes sense.

And your war declaration on us - we really had no idea you were that upset with us; we just took it as a "stay off these islands" declaration because they were so close to your homeland. Yikes, one downside of AI Diplo is you really can't tell how other teams feel about you. We both felt the same way about Krill and towards each other, it seems (although we were a lot less annoyed with you as the game went on, while you seemed to get more annoyed with us.) I wonder if Commodore realized just how BFF we were with him at the end?

I also was sort of hoping Krill would be lured into piling onto you guys. I figured my best shot at being relevant was if I could incite the inevitable Krill vs Regopin showdown to happen sooner. Didn't do anything of course, but it was an idea running through my mind at the time.

So you were the one who traded gunpowder to yuri! Man, we thought Nakor was just screwing with us some more after the iron trading. But that was you!!! Actually, we thought you had traded with Krill earlier. But it was Commodore that traded Krill Printing Press? Whenever whoever did that, we figured it was over at that point and started caring about trades a whole lot less.

Hah, I figured people were trading so crazy around then that I could get away with it. Plus at the time I was also trying to make the point that playing with brokering on was all kinds of stupid.

Wow, t219 was a good turn for you!

Yes, that was one of the most fun turns I've played. That screenshot of Civstats from that turn was fun.

And post 949 was exactly my worst nightmare

I think it would have been fun, but I had a feeling you guys might immediately concede upon seeing me declare war, so I didn't want to end it weirdly like that. Plus my energy for slogging out a war against you guys wasn't quite there. Plus if Krill didn't join in against you, it was a losing battle as you would've eventually produced more ships than I could produce and things would swing the other way.

Thanks for reading. I'm over 2/3s through yours, and hopefully I'll finish by the weekend.