[NO PLAYERS] Squaring the Circle of Sevens (For Nine) - Map and Lurker Thread

[Zed-F]

It also slows Cornflakes to knights & makes him whip a bunch of not-knights, which isn’t nothing. Maybe not Comm’s best play given hindsight, but it could have worked (arguably should since he simmed ) and doesn’t seem indefensible or anything.

[scooter]

This is why the whole thing was a bad idea.

So I've been meditating a bit more on the geostrategic situation here and in RB-style FFAs in general, and I think I've come to a rather stark conclusion:
Maxim:
Protracted Land War Against a Competent Opponent is Never a Good Idea.

Now of course you need to qualify each element of that maxim:
-Protracted obviously means the existential kinds of conflicts, like Mackoti waged against MH or Ichabod is apparently now waging against Slowcheetah. Light skirmishing is certainly fine, using force to achieve limited goals, etc, etc...as long as both sides keep the investment minimal. Which naturally can be tricky.
-Land war means war primarily overland, be it with axes, knights, cannons, or infantry. I'm not sure how tanks modify the calculation, having built exactly none my entire life, but I suspect even then the statement remains true without air power as part of the equation. The seas are very, very different, as I'll expand on later.
-Competency is of course a majorly fraught evaluation, but what I generally mean is someone with the ability to not make major tactical blunders, who knows how to produce heavily rapidly, and who can stay within about an era and a half of you. So cats and maces vs. rifles, etc. Krill can clearly show how even cats and horse archers can stand off against most land stacks this side of machine guns...and if you have that much of a discrepancy then you are either incompetent or damaged.
!-I'm going to also allow for cripples to fall in the incompetent category. Earlier wars slowing down tech or, naturally, dogpiles can alter this calculation, but even then competent cripples are dangerous and dogpiles need diplomacy to function profitably; otherwise, the competent dogpilee can and will maul at least one of his attackers.
-Opponent assumes one out of several or at least two, naturally. Duels are weird grinding matches of zero-sum fun where all bets are off. And you can duel in a larger FFA but never profitably.
-I said good idea. People can certainly fight land wars for motives other than profit all the time. I myself have gotten sucked in to many a land war in Asia, where punishing my opponent is my goal, not winning the game. MAD doctrine is unavoidable, man, and if someone competent screws with you sure, screw right back. But don't delude yourself into thinking it is a game-winning move.

I can expand on this later but does anyone care to disagree with my statement as a whole?

I agree with whoever wrote this.

[Mjmd]

It also slows Cornflakes to knights & makes him whip a bunch of not-knights, which isn’t nothing. Maybe not Comm’s best play given hindsight, but it could have worked (arguably should since he simmed  ) and doesn’t seem indefensible or anything.

I mean this is part of why I was wondering much earlier what the goal of the attack was. Cornflakes is serving as a buffer between the top powers. If he was successful he would weaken himself and then putting himself right up against Fin. It might still have been a good idea before Cornflakes turned prickly with his whips and upgrades, but after is why I started this dialogue.

[Zed-F]

I think the argument is that it was a bigger throw of the dice than he needed to make is a reasonable argument. I’m just suggesting it’s not completely obvious what path he should have taken when he asked ‘what do you think I should do next’. Reasonable minds could differ. If it was obvious that option X is best, he just would have done X.

[Mjmd]

I don't suppose someone is keeping a war declared count for this game by any chance? Putting Aggressive AI in civ survivor to shame probably.

History wise, which RB game would you think has the most wars? Or bloodiest? (just in case people are looking for something to read while in lockdown)

[Charriu]

Yeah, several players are quite unhappy about this, so it needs to be addressed. Proposed message to post in his thread:

Hey Ruff. A few players have remarked about you frequently logging in and/or occasionally making moves outside of your half of a turn split. Can you try to be a bit more cautious about that? It's usually best to limit logins outside of your half of the turn split just to avoid the appearance of a possible double move, even if no such thing has happened. I think it's probably ok to do so occasionally if you're looking at the aftermath of a particularly important turn or looking something up, but it's best to limit it to your half as much as possible.

Seem ok?

Looking at Mr. Cairo it seems like Ruff_Hi hasn't learned anything about double moves.

[Charriu]

Shit.  I think I double moved Mr C.  No ... I definitely did double move him.
I got it in my head that I am planning first in the turn that I didn't check when Mr C played last turn.

That is bad.  Lurkers - talk about it and let me know if the game should be reloaded.
I don't think the outcome will change at all ... but Mr C should see what has developed on Gem Island.

That was very quick after.

[scooter]

It's unclear to me what Ruff gained and Cairo lost from this. We may need to piece that together first.

[Charriu]

So turn order should be

1. Mr. Cairo
2. Ruff
3. Miguelito

Correct?

So Mr. Cairo was double moved.

[scooter]

I think this is a play-on situation. Miguelito was not double-moved, which would have been bad. Cairo is now indicating that the outcome was not actually changed in any way, and if that's true, I think this is fine to play on. Am I missing anything?