RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

a pity... I was hoping to see a re-enactment of Sulla's siege of Athens

Give it time.

[regoarrarr]

I think I speak for everyone when I say that I am anxiously awaiting the other folks to end turn so you can play and I can read your report!!!!

[Speaker]

Here's the current situation before we move:

[Sullla]

Well - we seem to have screwed up here. We thought that the other teams were done with their turn; Dantski, Nakor, and Kathlete all played and hit "end turn." Jowy moved all the units we could see, so Speaker and I went ahead and started moving units. But... apparently he never actually ended his turn, and there was still 2 hours left on the clock. Ooops.

We've asked Jowy if he would like a reload (back to when Speaker first logged in - obviously, they don't get to redo their military moves from the turn!) and are waiting to see what he says.

Sorry, but you'll have to wait a little longer until we hear back from Jowy!

[binary010101]

Wouldn't it be good for Jowy to not reload, though?

[Sullla]

I'm not sure if it would be "good" or "bad" for Jowy to reload, we simply wanted to give him the option because we technically played before he had finished his turn. Anyway, Jowy has declined that option, so it seems we go on as before. Let's go through the action.

I thought that Jowy and Kathlete would move their stack onto the horses tile, so that they would have the option of joining with Dantski in attacking Gettysburg. Instead, they sent a phalanx and two chariots to pillage the horses, then sent the rest of their stack onto the hill tile due south of Chancellorsville. Perhaps they were trying to fortify there with the defensive bonus and heal up (?) Well, I guess we'll never know for sure just what they were intending. This was our best chance to attack and destroy the combined stack, and we had to take it.

Speaker sent in our C1 horse archers versus the unpromoted Greek phalanxes, at 66% odds. Unfortunately, we lost two such battles in a row, and barely damaged the phalanx at all in one of them. Then we sent in our third horse archer, who also lost at 70% odds - *VERY* bad combat results. Thankfully we did win the next two horse archer fights at ~75% odds each, but the net result was that we lost three unreplaceable horse archers when most simming attempts had us losing only a single unit. From there, naturally our spears cleaned up against the various injured and horse units:



In the end, we lost 3 horse archers to kill 4 phalanxes, 2 horse archers, 4 chariots, and 1 spear. That's an 11:3 ratio, but it was still a somewhat disappointing round of combat because we really should have lost only 1 unit, or at most 2. And if we had had better luck with our horse archers, we could have killed the Jowy ministack and isolated Dantski chariot as well, for an even better kill ratio...

On the positive side, the Jowy/Kathlete main stack is simply GONE. Dead dead dead, with 1 phalanx and two chariots left. We killed 18 out of their 21 starting units, losing no cities (to Jowy/Kathlete anyway!) in the process.

On the negative side, now we must rest and heal up, because Dantski still has 14 units invading, along with 6 more from Nakor. Man, these guys must really hate us....



Hopefully we'll get Construction in 5 turns, although that will depend somewhat on pillaging.

[Speaker]

Our combat luck has been awful so far. The third battle was actually 77.7%. Shock Horse Archer vs. Unpromoted Phalanx. But anyways, the stack is dead. When facing a 5v1, you need to take a few risks, and get a little lucky, and we've done the first, but unfortunately, not really the second.

Yes, I believe that Whosit is sending Praetorians over by galley. We've explored a good chunk of his land and seen only 1 Praetorian total, and both of his fronts are secure. The only place they could be are en route to us, and this will be his best shot to hurt us, so it makes too much sense for him to not do it. I expect 3-4 galleys full of Praetorians will land next to Fredericksburg in the next 5 or so turns, maybe sooner, and I have no idea if we'll be able to stop them.

Having 3 extra shock horse archers would have helped a lot though.

[Sullla]

Diplo time! Speaker says that he thinks these messages are a waste of time, and that no one will ever sign peace with us until we're eliminated. He's probably right, but it doesn't really hurt to try, right?

Dear Rebel Alliance,

You've surely seen by now that the Ottoman mounted expeditionary force has met with its unfortunate demise. I got the impression from your last message that you didn't really take our threat seriously when we told you that we would hunt down and kill your remaining units. Perhaps now you may see things differently?

You told us before that you were "willing to resume friendly relations if this turns just into a blip on the radar." You also said that you were not helping out Jowy because he is your RBPB3 teammate. We'd really like to believe that those things were true, and that you haven't been lying to us all along...

We'd like to get back to the earlier spirit of cooperation between our teams. Seeing as how we have no borders to dispute, and that you don't really have any units left in our territory, now would seem like a logical time to sign peace and pretend this whole sordid episode never occurred.

There's no reason to send your last chariot to die too. Think of poor Dack Ralter!

Sullla
The Killer Angels

This message will not work, because Jowy and Kathlete are playing as a virtual team in this game. I expect that a steady stream of horse archers will continue moving west from Ottoman territory. The main reason to send it is to see what hilarious lies we get back in return from Kathlete.

Jowy,

We're willing to sign a white peace with your team, seeing as how most of your army has been destroyed. We'd be further willing to discuss trade agreements, NAPs, and so on if it interests you. Whatever you may believe, we honestly did not have plans to attack your territory. Our desire for a long-running friendship was genuine.

If you insist on continuing the war, and want to continue destroying your economy, ruining any long-term chance to win the game, we'll be ready for round #2.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

That has even LESS of a chance of working, but hey, what the hell, right?

Dantski,

We find ourselves in interesting times, don't we? I'm sure you've heard by now that Jowy and athlete/kalin have suffered a crushing defeat, as Speaker wiped out 90% of their attacking stack in one major battle. We've concentrated our attacks against their units thus far, but now that they're gone, your stack will come under fire next.

If you want to walk around pillaging individual tiles, that's your decision. Supporting a dozen units in our territory is hurting your economy pretty badly though. As you saw at Gettysburg, our core cities are well defended and will not be falling without a herculean slaughter on your side.

So... why bother to continue fighting anyway? This is actually a perfect time for you to cash out with your winnings, like a blackjack player after a hot run at the tables. Your allies have done all the fighting and dying, and you've been able to score some minor gains untouched. If you continue, you're going to be in for extremely bloody, grinding battles that do nothing to increase your chances of winning the game. And even assuming that you would be able to take us down (which is looking dubious at the moment), what then? Jowy, athlete, kalin, and Nakor are all playing on the same team in RBPB3. It's blantantly obvious that you are the odd man out in that alliance. If we are gone, you will be the next target invaded from both sides at once. Furthermore, Nakor spent weeks telling us that he was going to attack you, then cravenly sold us out at the last minute. He has been lying constantly in his emails. Do you really want "allies" like those guys?!?!?

Instead, you could sign peace with us and use your army of axes to tear through Nakor!!! His army is beyond pathetic, and half of it is ridiculously out of position up in our territory. Remember that we never made any kind of aggressive move against you earlier. Nakor stuck that silly city of Crydee right next Gao and has been trying to win the culture war there. Again, why not hit his pathetic military and double the size of your empire that way? We'd happily work together with you as your ally in that endeavor.

The choice is up to you. I think you'd have a lot more success against Nakor than against us though!

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Who knows about this one? I honestly believe it would make a hell of a lot more sense for Dantski to attack Nakor than us right now. Face a long, horrible slaughter to maybe take out one neighbor, or slice through the very weak defenses of the other? This would be made especially easy by Nakor having those units so far out of position in our territory. I dunno, unless I'm missing something this sounds like a slam dunk to me...

Now we try one last time to turn Nakor to our side. It won't work, but he'll at least feel guilty reading this message:

Dear Nakor and DMOC of Holy Rome,

You asked in the PM that you sent about the RBPB3 game if we were "still mad" over this game. Well, let's be clear here. Your team told us that you were going to cancel your non-aggression pact with Dantski and then declare war on him, coming to our aid in war. You told us that Dantski couldn't offer a better deal than we could. We asked if you would keep our strategic plans in confidence, and you said yes, only to turn around and betray them to teams that were attacking us. For all we know, your exploring units in our territory were relating info on the defenders to the other teams, who seemed to know where they should choose to invade, which very well may have cost us the city of Shiloh.

So, how would you feel about all that? Probably not too good, I'll wager.

However, the long break while searching for a replacement player has done a good job of calming things down. We're still pretty bummed over here, but perhaps you had your reasons. Maybe you assumed that with Jowy, athlete, kalin, and Dantski all invading you had no choice but to join on the winning side, or you would have no chance to survive in the postwar environment. Maybe you thought that Speaker and I would just get steamrolled, and you had to get in on the spoils. You did say it was a difficult choice, after all.

But if that was the case, those assumptions were wrong! We did not fold like a deck of cards, and this war is by no means decided yet. I don't know if your "allies" have told you this yet, but the Jowy and Kathlete main stack was eliminated this turn, with extremely light casualties on our side, 4:1 in our favor. Maybe they'll be back later with more units, but they are effectively out of the war now. Dantski is running around with a bunch of axes deep in our territory, but they have zero chance to capture any of our core cities. Once our units finish healing, that stack is dead meat as well.

Since you have not actually entered the war yet, here's your chance to redeem your team in our eyes! After all, no shots have been fired yet in anger. While Dantski's stack is off dying horribly in our lands, you have - once again - a golden opportunity to make gains at his expense. I'm not sure what your small stack of 6 units is supposed to achieve against us anyway; even if you did take a city, you could never defend it, and it would have crippling maintenance costs. What exactly are you gaining from this war again, aside from strengthening Jowy and Dantski???

Just like in the CivFanatics Demogame (and here I'm referring to DMOC's experience) you have the opportunity to be a weak member of a 4 vs. 1 alliance, or a strong partner in a 2 vs. 3 alliance. In that game Saturn thought it would do better to form the latter agreement, and I think the events of that game showed it was the right decision. The same deal that we proposed (and you accepted!) earlier is still on the table with regards to Dantski. I daresay we would be much better allies than a team that never updates their spoiler thread and rarely responds to email. Do you want to rely on Dantski? Do you really trust Dantski???

Remember that this is RBPB2, not RBPB3. DMOC is under no compulsion to help out Jowy and Kathlete just because you guys are buds in the other game. If they can really offer you something from this war, cool. But can they really make you a better deal than we can?

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Let's see what happens with these. Probably not much, but we can hope.

[Adlain]

Why would you offer simler terms to each rather that concentrate on 1 maybe 2 as you suspect there may be infomation leak from one side??

This is my first post and I hope I have followed the rules correctly - been an exerlent read so far and I hope this game will continue.

[Sullla]

We are concentrating on certain teams: I'm concentrating on Kathlete and Nakor, mostly. The only messages that really contradict one another are Dantski and Nakor, and I'm finding it a little hard to believe that Dantski (the man who didn't even consult with the other three teams before playing his turn!) is in such close contact that he'll pass emails back and forth.

Naturally it's a bit of a gamble. Still, we have to take some chances at this stage of things. Our only hope of success is breaking up this alliance against us, and that means offering each team some kind of carrot for peace. If we can get even one of them to bite, then we can patch things up with their team and stop the talks with the others. But we have to get that first bite before we can take the next step...

Speaker is out at work, so I sent off the messages. I also really need to send something to slaze and Broker, and maybe Whosit, but I don't have time right now.