RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[SevenSpirits]

And you as a lurker should stop aiding players. rooting for Sulla/Speaker is ok but let them make their own mistakes else it is not Sulla/Speaker vs Jowy etc but Sulla/Speaker + aton of spoiled insiders looking over all their work which is completly unfair to all those players that don't have their skill and following.

Rowain, you are welcome to an opinion but lurker suggestions are neither against the rules of the game, nor against the wishes of these two players, as far as I can tell. Of course, they are welcome to let me and anyone else know if we cross the line. Meanwhile I can't decide if the implication that my post might be based off of spoiler knowledge is funny or mildly insulting.

This is up to all of you lurkers. If you choose to just follow our game, you can take a much more active role in planning and discussion, but the tradeoff is that you don't get to watch the other spoiler threads. Your choice! Just remember that if you are spoilered, you can't make *ANY* comments/suggestions using your spoiler knowledge! Careful.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Huh? I don't really follow this, the whole point of these spoiler threads is to discuss what teams are doing without spoiling them and as a side effect improve play.

No. The whole point of these spoiler threads is for the teams to report what happens and what their plans are, so that we lurkers(!) have a chance to follow the action without having to actually log into the game.

The "no players!" thread is the place to discuss what teams are doing. If you want to discuss moves and plans, you can join a team in one of the PBEM/Pitboss games.

If a lurker lets Spulla know about a game mechanic which they didn't know about/had overlooked without revealing any spoilerish information it's hardly unfair.

Yes it is. If they overlook something, it is *their* mistake - they are Team Speaker and Sulla, and there's a reason it's called "Team Speaker and Sulla" and not "Team Speaker and Sulla and Lurker X and Lurker Y and ...". You have spoiler information, and cannot make sure this spoiler information effects your comments and tips.

This community's one golden rule, starting way back with the Civ 3 Epics, was NO SPOILERS!, and we should remember and respect that.

They could have figured it out themselves and it wouldn't have made any difference.

If it wouldn't have made a difference, then don't mention it - it's as simple as that. And if they could have figured it out themselves, let them figure it out themselves - it costs time and energy, which they are either willing to invest or not.

Imagine a team with less well-known players and less well-written turn reports. How many lurkers would help *them*? How many game mechanics would they have to look up by themselves, all before the timer runs out? Would this be still a fair and even match between the individual skills of the team's players?

-Kylearan

[Rowain]

Rowain, you are welcome to an opinion but lurker suggestions are neither against the rules of the game, nor against the wishes of these two players, as far as I can tell. Of course, they are welcome to let me and anyone else know if we cross the line. Meanwhile I can't decide if the implication that my post might be based off of spoiler knowledge is funny or mildly insulting.

The comment was not meant to be funny nor insultung and it was not directed at you but on general lurker behavior (especially in this thread).

Your comment was at least the third time a lurker prevented a mistake from happening and that is a thing that a lurker should never do.
This game should be a competition on the Civ-skills (including diplomacy) of Sulla/Speaker and those other teams and not a competition about who gets the most lurker-advice thanks to overwhelming writing skills.

[novice]

Guys, take it outside.

[banshee]

Lurker's comment:

Thanks to the both of you for a very interesting read so far - I couldn't help but create an account here on RB
I'm wishing you the best of luck for the upcoming struggle

P.S.:

When outnumbered, and facing human opponents (not AI idiots), it's best to turn to genuine military strategy for some answers. I want to point to some key passages from Carl von Clausewitz' classic text On War. Clausewitz has a section on superiority of numbers, and argues that a force outnumbered has very little chance of winning engagements. Therefore one must try to achieve superiority of numbers wherever possible.

Even better: in Book VIII, Chapter 4, Clausewitz also tells you what to do when facing an enemy alliance

[Sullla]

Umm, Speaker immediately pointed out to me last night that Jowy would have visibility into Hampton Roads by virtue of that hill tile. We were all over that before the lurker suggestion, so there was no harm done. We still decided to clean out Hampton this turn because 1) no enemy unit can reach the city 2) we can reinforce with the exact same units if they move towards Hampton 3) it serves as bait for them to split their forces. So really, no harm no foul done here.

That said, when in doubt, it's best to post in the "no players" discussion thread. We do appreciate the readers, but we also want to keep the game fair.

[Speaker]

Dantski has ended his turn. Can we log in and see what he did?

[Sullla]

I had a chance to update the Power numbers this morning, including a lot of the new data we have on Jowy and Dantski. Here's the old and new Power charts for a nice comparison.

Turn 97:


Turn 100:


I'd say we've come up in the world quite a bit in the past three turns, huh? And remember, since the bar graphs are always "one turn behind", we're actually even higher than this, at 213k in total Power! (Of course, the other teams are higher than indicated as well.)

Here's my best estimates of the opposing militaries:

Jowy
2 scouts
1 warrior
6 archers
4 chariots
10 phalanxes
2 spears
[The invasion force has 10 phalanxes, 4 chariots, and 1 spear. Probably not a whole lot else in his territory!]

Dantski
4 warriors
4 skirmishers
10 axes
3 chariots
3 spears
[The invasion force has 8 axes, 3 chariots, 3 spears, and 1 skirmisher. Again, pretty much a skeleton force left behind on defense.]

Kathlete
5 warriors
1 archer
4 chariots
5 horse archers
[The invasion force has 4 horse archers and 2 chariots. But it's much harder to estimate Kathlete because we don't have visibility on their cities, so this one is most likely to be off.]

There's one troubling thing about the numbers from last turn: Nakor's power went DOWN by 6k (he lost an axe) and Dantski's power went up by more than the Foreign builds suggest it should have; basically it looks like Dantski got an extra axe somewhere. Now this could equally be due to him upgrade a warrior to axe or something like that, but there's a slight possibility that Nakor gifted an axe to Dantski. Nothing about that would make sense, but... it's possible. And that makes me a little uncomfortable!

Overall, not worth worrying about. If Nakor wants to jump into the war against us, and the entire western hemisphere wants our blood, we're probably doomed. That would actually be pretty funny, teams from a million miles away all rushing together to attack one team who had offered NAPs to all of them! Anyway, I think it's just a trick of the data from last turn. Can't see how a partnership with Dantski against us would benefit Nakor in any way, shape, or form. What would he get out of it???

Jowy and crew should be wrapping up their half of the timer in a few hours, and then I'll take a look and see what they've done. Updated Excel chart: http://cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/Pitboss/RBPB2.xls

EDIT: OK, just saw Speaker's post. I'll go ahead and check.

[Speaker]

Maybe he gifted that axe that was between our land and Dantski's? I'm really not getting a good vibe from Nakor, Sullla. I'm not counting on him for anything. Nor am I afraid of him. If this attack fails from Jowy, Dantski, and Kathlete, they are all dead.

[Sullla]

Well, Dantski made a stupid move, but I'm not sure if we can exploit it. He split up his stack near Gettysburg:



There's also a sword trickling in behind the rest of the attack force. Now this whole thing is utterly pathetic, but unfortunately we have 25+ units attacking from the other direction, which makes it tough to do anything at the moment.

Dantski added one extra axeman to his eastern attack force:



I guess it was on the fogged tile last turn - which is where they all should have been, of course! Anyway, that's actually kinda bad for us, because we have mostly spears over here for defense, and they'll fare poorly against those axes. Ummm.... hopefully Speaker will have some ideas on what to do here.

Jowy and Kathlete have not moved yet, but I noticed they (finally) have a worker roading the sheep tile near Sparta, which would allow them to move on Hampton Roads quickly in the future.

It's starting to feel a little fatalistic here, with 40+ enemy units marching around in our territory and apparently no other teams interested in coming to our aid. Five of our six cities are under pressure of some kind at the moment; if the three invading teams coordinate properly, they can make things extremely difficult on us. We're just going to have to continue to hope that they make errors, and give us time to react and respond.

At this point, even if they beat us, I think this would go down as a pretty epic game.