[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[pindicator]

160

Like any well-oiled strategic command, when things dont' initially go as planned we bring in new blood.  So with that in mind, I'd like to introduce my new strategic advisor / dedlurker.




His main job is to keep me from tilting.  But he's also good at keeping me from playing or writing turn reports.  And honestly, with how this game is going those are needed things.
He promises not to read any of the other threads.


On to the turn...




So what is Mjmd doing up north?

Here's my guess:  Mjmd decides to feint my core and then send the slow stuff and ultimately everything to the south where he hopes to make gains and capture territory.  (Why do you burn cities when you want to capture territory - we'll talk about why I honestly think attacking me is bad strategy by Mjmd later.)  So what I'm going to do is pull everything out and send it west to Superdeath.  I'm still whipping new stuff, but I feel reasonably okay that I could stop the 8-10 two-movers that I saw here earlier.

However, I bet those are headed south for his main attack force.

So let's look south:




He put 8 knights out ahead of his main stack, leaving a stack of 7 knights on the ruins of Belisarius and moving 1 west of Harney - unsure why he would separate this knight out though.  For my attack to have the desired effect I don't want him to be able to see how many units are coming.  So I felt it was critical that this war elephant win it's 67% battle.

It did.

And so did all the other knights that won 60% and 70% battles against his knight stack.  I didn't lose a single fight and eliminated his stack.

Code:

C2 War Elephant v C2 Knight (67.8%) - win
C3 Knight v C2 Knight (67.1%) - win
C2 Formation Knight v C2 Knight (75.5%) - win
C2 Knight v C1 Knight (67.6%) - win
C2 Knight v C1 Knight (67.6%) - win
C1 Knight v C1 horcher (96.2%) - win
Knight v sentry horcher (96.2%) - win
Knight v horcher (96.2%) - win

Here's how things look now




I whipped a bunch more units, and then counted my remaining population (74 - that's so low now...).  Used that to calculate getting just enough beakers into Engineering so that the great engineer will get me Engineering on the turn.  But we're looking at something slightly better than a coin flip.




So far I've lost 2 cities and 3 longbows, but I've killed 11 units.  And if I get that great engineer I have enough knights in range to maybe wipe out his stack.
What do you guys think?  Great Scientist or Great Engineer?  Are we lucky or unlucky?

PRO: 38 (2561)
FIN: 48 (2417)

[pindicator]

161

The answer, of course, was scientist. Why would you think we'd be lucky this game?




Superdeath once again demanded gold for peace. But there is a larger issue here: I cannot take Boil It with my forces split like this. Or it will take a long time for catapults that had to go south to come back north again. So I made a hard choice: no longer do I have any chance for winning or contending in this game, so my goals need to be changed. (Before Mjmd stabbed me I would have put my shot at winning this game as slim but possible: I had to conquer superdeath quickly and then not be invaded for 30-40 turns while I built infrastructure and caught up in tech or continued building units and invaded Mjmd. But if Mjmd would have smartly used his MoM to catapult to Taj and then chain supercharged golden ages? He probably would have been in Rep before I would. One reason why invading me was stupid.)

I thought about all this after denying, but maybe I should have just accepted. So I sent Superdeath these replies:




I also sent him peace for me giving him 1g. There, his ego can say he got something from me.

Without the Great Engineer I'm about 5 turns away from Engineering. I sent Jowy a deal to try and let him know that if he invests in me then I'll hurt Mjmd for him:




But expecting him to both understand my intention and to see how 200g would be a pittance for helping taking down the leader? I doubt he comes through. I should have tried Mr. Cairo. Maybe I'll just ask for the gold next time.

So what is my revised goal? If I can't win, I can keep the people who invaded me from winning. Superdeath is out of contention. He'll never win no matter what he does. Mjmd needs to be shown.

I'm still #1 in something in Demos. And I don't see Mjmd building more units.





PRO: 36 (2635)
FIN: 47 (2512)

[Kurumi]

160

Like any well-oiled strategic command, when things dont' initially go as planned we bring in new blood.  So with that in mind, I'd like to introduce my new strategic advisor / dedlurker.




His main job is to keep me from tilting.  But he's also good at keeping me from playing or writing turn reports.  And honestly, with how this game is going those are needed things.
He promises not to read any of the other threads.

No, no, let the doggo read!

Hope you can smash Mjmd out of winning possibility, that's only fair

[Hitru]

I don't think you are out of running yet, just need some diplo luck from now on.

[pindicator]

I don't think you are out of running yet, just need some diplo luck from now on.

well, i need a lot of help now. Before the path I saw was within my control. Now we need to actually take Mjmd land or get enough people to jump in with me that he gets knocked down. I need Superdeath to take peace so I can send everything after mjmd. And then I need something to happen to Cairo to let me catch him. All while fending off the inevitable Superdeath stab.

I'd add Jowy to the mix but I haven't seen anything to make me think he can win against charriu and he doesn't seem to have another route.

Cairo whipped a ton of units (knights). If those come after mjmd then that would be a start. But I think he's going to just stay out of it and take another city of AT then take peace again.

[pindicator]

162

In the end it came down to one simple fact







There's one neighbor that I can work with and another that just refuses to do so. Sorry superdeath. Why do you demand more money this turn than last turn? Does this mean anything to you or are you just clicking random amounts of gold? Do you really want an end to this or are you just hoping to goad me on to ending you?

I really wish superdeath had offered white peace. I would have taken it and I would have declined Mjmd's offer. I was even thinking how I would offer superdeath excess resources in hopes of mending fences because I just want to mess shit up now. And I would have kept all my catapults around Marion for the inevitable backstab that he would have sent at me when he got bored.

I had enough on hand to raze Mjmd's new city too. How different would this game have been if Superdeath was swapped with anybody else!

So next thing is I need to get everything north fast. That means Engineering. Right now Engineering is about 3-4 turns away. I offered Jowy a deal to speed that up.




With me no longer at war with Mjmd I don't expect any favors, so maybe I can appeal to Jowy's small view of this game by giving him a good deal on a loan. In the end I'm paying 80g to speed up Engineering 1 or 2 turns. I wish I had people in this game that understood larger picture politics rather than just how it helps them immediately.

And we need to move things up because Superdeath has just been stuffing units into Boil It.




Right now I have as many attackers as he has defenders (after the catapults). But there are 20 knights coming north, and most of them are 3 turns out, even if Jowy gives the loan. I could wait for more catapults to come in but that would take even longer. I could wait for trebuchets but that would take longer. When the size of these battles gets this big then it just gets hard to grasp how these fights will shake out.

I could also send the farthest south knight stack to mop up the southern jungle cities of superdeath's while I bring up the catapults and make trebuchets.

The other thing is I don't have a ton of time. 10 turns from now I need to have my units back south again.

I'm at the over-whipping point in several cities. None moreso than Clatsop:




I was sure to give the Copper tile to Clackamas.

PRO: 36 (2633)
FIN: 45 (2509)

I really hate neighboring superdeath. Remind me to kill him quick next time.

[pindicator]

I think I attack with everthing I have available on t166. That will give enough time for 23 more knights and 4 more catapults to join the attack (if I recall the cities that whipped knights and catapults this turn correctly).

[Kurumi]

So while Mjmd giving peace is a great thing, I honestly don't understand why? Sure, it made your slim chances to win drop to the slimmest of slims, but was it even worth over doing something else? Especially with the stack splitting?

Oh well, maybe Mjmd saw a stack on their border and figured out this conquest isn't easy enough/danger is imminent and thought that you'll use this time to deal with superdeath (which, well, is not a bad guess).

[pindicator]

My guess is that superdeath was asking Mr. Cairoa and Mjmd to intervene because of his superdeath-pact to kill me from turn 1 (thanks map) and Mjmd got distracted by the shiny light. All these hammers into units and losing ... 8 knights and 4 horchers (or thereabouts?) ... just to refound Harney - which wasn't that grand of a city. Those hammers could have gone towards infrastructure, Wealth Builds, going towards Nationalism, building Taj, and winning the game by chaining MoM golden ages. Tried and true.

Now he's slowed his research, given the other contenders (Mr. Cairo and Jowy - though I don't trust him to make it work) a chance to catch up by slowing his own research down and wasting time. Yes, he slowed me down by 3 or 4 turns in conquering superdeath but was that worth slowing himself down compared to the other players? When you're the leader you have to measure your progress against everyone. When you're not the leader you only have to measure progress against the leader.

As for why, we're back to superdeath. Ask superdeath why he can't give me white peace. Honestly, it was more important for me to get peace with one party so Icould focus agasint the other. I'd have prefered to just wreck Mjmd. Superdeath decided otherwise.

[Gaspar]

I've played games like this before and I usually get infuriated by the behaviors of players like Superdeath and Jowy.

Mjmd I understand - I think he just misjudged the situation. Probably as you suggested Superdeath was out there throwing out enticements for everyone to dogpile you, he saw that your Superdeath conflict got hot and figured he could make some easy gains. Maybe what he got was his plan all along - I've had similar sorties in the past (the Mikehendi attack comes to mind) - but those sorts of incursions are smart if you're behind and you want to drag a leader back a bit to give you a chance to catch up. If you're in a commanding economic position, then you should be capitalizing on it and only to go on the attack for one of two reasons - you don't have enough land to win and you have a chance to take a lot of it or you're bringing the game towards its inevitable conclusion. Otherwise just keep kicking ass and make sure you build enough units to make attacking you seem a hopeless proposition.

The others - you can't evaluate deals in a vacuum, sometimes its to your benefit to take less than optimal trades to maneuver the geopolitics in a favorable manner. Jowy treating every deal you offer him as a zero sum game in a game where he's second or third is just dumb. Superdeath... well, as you say, the map led him in this direction. On the surface, why would he want peace now, he long since can't win and he may as well just see things out. But you extending the war with Mjmd is exactly what he should want. It gives him 10t to build up more force/tech/allies while your attention is diverted and hey, you're slugging it out with the leader, lots of good things can happen for him. Maybe you get your ass kicked and he can kick start his game by picking your bones. Maybe you make heavy gains, bringing Mjmd back to the pack and he can find a new place in the restructuring of the world that shakes out of that. The status quo just ends up with him on the losing side of a forever war, so anything that changes that is to his benefit.

That said, I also have been in the place where I'm fighting a long defensive battle against slightly superior forces with no way of winning. That is some depressing stuff right there. So human nature - eh, let's get this over with as soon as possible.

I'm not sure I said anything there. But make the bastards pay! Or something.