RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - Locke and Cervantes

[Sullla]

Hmm, perhaps it would have been better to focus a little more on helping us stop the runaway civ, and less on grabbing land for yourself? You seemed to think that the 3 of us would have no trouble taking down Parkin, when in fact we needed a lot more units. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if you had attacked Parkin instead of Adlain with your macemen army.

I've seen this comment a lot too, so let me answer that one. It was the distance involved. We couldn't get our maces over to the Parkin border in time to do anything worthwhile. Let me go over the timeline again. We tech Liberalism/Nationhood on T156 and start drafting maces. I believe we got 17 of them on the first round, T156-161. They all appear in the cities where they are drafted; that meant as long as 10 turns just to reach the border with Nakor, and then another 15 turns to reach the southern Parkin border. Let's assume that our team does nothing but send every mace over towards Parkin immediately. They get there around T180... and Parkin techs Rifling T181. With Nationalism already in hand. How well would two dozen maces fare against drafted rifles? Yeah. (Remember, Nakor did not get Astronomy until T173 and then still had to build galleons, so it's not like we could have speeded things up by sea very much.)

OK, so maybe if we do nothing but draft maces, we could then upgrade them to redcoats, right? Well no - we didn't tech Rifling until T188. Same turn as plako, one turn after luddite. So no magic upgrades there. Everyone is underestimating or forgetting the massive logistical problems involved with getting our units over to the other side of the map. You really needed Industrial era ships to do it, which Parkin was able to tech at the end of the game. That's why Speaker and I were so frustrated by the water barriers: they perfectly protected Parkin from attack until he had to the tech to go on the offensive himself.

Furthermore, everyone is sort of assuming that we were already a major power, and if only we had sent more units against Parkin, we could have changed things. That's assuming the successes against Adlain without fighting the Adlain war! Honestly, our team is only marginally stronger than Nakor without going in and attacking our neighbor. If you look at score as a rough gauge, this is where we were T180 when starting the attack:

Parkin 1690
plako 1452
Luddite 1257
Locke 1200
Nakor 1107
regoarrarr 1053
Moogle 952
Adlain 789
mackoti 685

We were not exactly a superpower... To have any shot at winning the game, we needed more land to be competitive. It was not enough for us to just fall on our swords and help plako win the game. Maybe - maybe, not likely - if we send every drafted unit to the east and turn off all science to upgrade every unit and sign a new NAP with Adlain... then perhaps plako has a better chance to win. But why would we do that? It doesn't help us.

Basically, we could send our maces against Parkin and probably achieve nothing, or we could send them against units that they COULD kill (longbows) and effectively double our territory and turn ourselves into a superpower. It was a no-brainer decision. The problem was that Parkin was just so far ahead, we couldn't absorb land fast enough to make up the difference... and that was largely due to other teams signing foolish NAPs and letting him run farmer's gambit for the first 180 turns of the game. Watch, I can even display it in a picture here:



There you go, 180 turns and no army. Again, don't blame us for failing to contain Parkin. We were on the other side of the map - we were too far away to do very much. We sent 20 redcoats, and Nakor's tactical mistake got them all killed uselessly on the first turn of the war. We were in the process of sending another 25 or so units, which never happened because the game ended. Given another 20 turns of peace, we would have been in a very strong position. In order to counter Parkin the way lurkers have suggested, we would have needed to cripple any chance of ourselves winning, which was not acceptable.

See, I told you everyone would like Locke better... LOL?

[mackoti]

Sullla , let Luditte speak what ever he wants he practicly gifted victory to lord parkin, i even sent him screnshots with what good and large terain Parkin had but he no and no , from then i said Parkin will win because practicaly he got 2 peoples land and Luditte to remain competitive took half of mine more than go and take at least something from Parkin.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

See, I told you everyone would like Locke better... LOL?

I've lurked this game for a while and have read your website (which led me to RB) about CIV and enjoyed it very much, to say nothing of learning a great deal about how to play the game. I'm still not that good, but I enjoy it nevertheless and appreciate your attention to detail, etc. I'm sure others have said this before.

Having said that, I am a bit sad to see "Locke" and this tremendous diplo style is not a newcomer to RB that I can look forward to hearing more of in the future. I LOL myself sometimes reading this blunt style and have loved this thread.

Job well done.

[pindicator]

Gotta agree with Boldly. It's fun to think that Sullla and Speaker were actually a part of this game, but a little sad to realize Locke isn't a new person who could contribute to future games.

...Unless you start taking on the persona in future games

[luddite]

I've seen this comment a lot too, so let me answer that one. It was the distance involved. We couldn't get our maces over to the Parkin border in time to do anything worthwhile. Let me go over the timeline again. We tech Liberalism/Nationhood on T156 and start drafting maces. I believe we got 17 of them on the first round, T156-161. They all appear in the cities where they are drafted; that meant as long as 10 turns just to reach the border with Nakor, and then another 15 turns to reach the southern Parkin border. Let's assume that our team does nothing but send every mace over towards Parkin immediately. They get there around T180... and Parkin techs Rifling T181. With Nationalism already in hand. How well would two dozen maces fare against drafted rifles? Yeah. (Remember, Nakor did not get Astronomy until T173 and then still had to build galleons, so it's not like we could have speeded things up by sea very much.)

This all makes sense, but remember that none of us were in a good position to launch an earlier war. You were the tech leader for the first half of the game, far ahead of me and plako, so if anyone could have done something it would have been you guys. You also had the advantage that you could build an army without Parkin feeling threatened by it. I agree, it was probably impossible, because it just takes too long to build and transport an army, and Parkin's tech rate was too strong. Just don't point fingers at us, when you were in a much better position to attack, OK? My suggestion would have been to skip liberalism and go straight for knights, and try to work out a deal with me or plako where we trade you cities in exchange for your efforts.

And I really don't see the point of the comments like "look at Parkin's low power rating! It would have been easy to kill him!" He's not an idiot- he would have noticed us building up a military and reacted by building his own, much faster and with better units than us. Even if I had somehow taken him completely by surprise, and marched straight towards his capital with no opposition, and somehow prevented him from stopping the war with the AP, he'd have time to start drafting rifles before I got there.

Sullla , let Luditte speak what ever he wants he practicly gifted victory to lord parkin, i even sent him screnshots with what good and large terain Parkin had but he no and no , from then i said Parkin will win because practicaly he got 2 peoples land and Luditte to remain competitive took half of mine more than go and take at least something from Parkin.

Mackoti, what did you expect me to do? Just hand over all the good land and resources in the south to you? Yeah I could have fought Parkin for more land early on, but it would have crippled my growth, and at that time I was mostly afraid that plako was going to grow out of control.

[Lord Parkin]

Gotta agree with Boldly. It's fun to think that Sullla and Speaker were actually a part of this game, but a little sad to realize Locke isn't a new person who could contribute to future games.

...Unless you start taking on the persona in future games

Wouldn't quite be the same now though, would it?

[oledavy]

Wouldn't quite be the same now though, would it?

Indeed, I don't think there is going to be an RB game from here on out without someone joking at some point: "Oh yeah, I'M SULLA!"

[pindicator]

Wouldn't quite be the same now though, would it?

Sadly there is no tongue-in-cheek smiley. The winkey one is the best i got.

[Gaspar]

FWIW, while I'd probably say Sirian deserves equal measure for bringing me to this website as Sulla, Sulla is definitely the other half of me being here... regardless, I too am quite sad that Locke isn't a real person. Locke's diplo was easily my favorite thing from this game, so its sad I won't get to see it again. I think I said it in our thread somewhere, or maybe it was via chat with someone, but I enjoyed listening to Locke tell me why I was stupid as much as I loathed listening to Lord Parkin tell me why I was stupid.

It really is all in the delivery.