RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[sunrise089]

What exactly happens with this? Does a musket that would have been at 70/80 hammers become a rifle at 70/110, or do the hammers get scaled up somehow?

They don't get scaled up.

[Kylearan]

And I must say I am totally disappointed at this fight. The staging was great (and the city fork was nice) but without any resistance its just boring. I miss the 5v1 days, those were some nail biting (and educational) turns

I agree absolutely. I also hoped for some stronger resistance, for at least some attempt to make it harder for you - not because I want to see you two (Speaker/Sulla) lose, but because it would be more interesting. I guess it's kinda boring for you too just to rush through more or less empty cities...I mean, this is easier than conquering AIs!

Ah well, congrats on your land gains anyway.

[P&nny]

Yes I concur I'm a bit surprised too.

I really felt like our hosts were underestimating janissaries and were going in with way too few sieges.
No trebs, probably no (much) 2 promos cats, I'd have expected to see drafted Janissaires behind slaved castled be a real pain for you guys.
Apparently I was wrong :D But nobody knew Kathelete was being sandwiched, right ? Wonder what if

[Speaker]

No trebs, probably no (much) 2 promos cats

About half of our 16 catapults are double promo.

I'd have expected to see drafted Janissaires behind slaved castled be a real pain for you guys.

He lacks Nationalism, so no drafting. Lack of walls/castles though is

But nobody knew Kathelete was being sandwiched, right ?

We knew. He's been fighting stupid attrition wars with Slaze for quite a while. After their first war, Slaze *gifted* him a bunch of units , and then Kathlete turned around and attacked Slaze again, failing to accomplish anything.

[Speaker]

I had a quick peak in game this morning before work. Hoth has been emptied. I'm starting to think we should take a turn and upgrade all our Cuirassier to Cavalry, and then just laugh as he continues to empty his cities until he has just 1 left.

[T-hawk]

What exactly happens with this? Does a musket that would have been at 70/80 hammers become a rifle at 70/110, or do the hammers get scaled up somehow?

They don't get scaled up.

Yes, 70/110 rifle. Also, the musket must actually be in the build queue when you discover Rifling for the build order to auto-upgrade. If it is not then the hammers are lost (actually the hammers stay as a musket but you can no longer access the ability to build one.)

[Sullla]

Pictures from after Kathlete played, before our turn (we'll play it later today):



Hoth is empty (and was sucker-whipped for 3 pop before retreating). We're lucky that you can't abandon cities in Civ4 like you could in Civ3! What we do really depends on whether there are units defending in Dantooine or not. We'll be able to move our Sentry horse archer to the hill tile next to Corulag, giving sight into the city. Depending on what Kathlete did, it may be possible to catch the Hoth defenders (mostly longbows) out in the open, where they would be easy prey. Guess we'll see. The capital city, Endor, has 6 knights inside, one of them the critically injured 0.8 knight we left alive last turn.

I don't really understand this whole retreating strategy. The border cities of Bothawui/Corulag would have been good places to take a stand, with their hill defenses. Barring that, Hoth would have been another good place to stand and defend, because it's Kathlete's best city and Heroic Epic location. Continually retreating into the interior is just feeding us cities for free and prolonging the inevitable. I guess the idea is just to delay death for as long as possible so that Kathlete can keep feeding all his income each turn to Nakor. Uber cheesy and poor sportsmanship, but I guess we can't do anything about it...



We're getting killed at sea off the coast of Gettysburg, and here's where losing two different trireme vs. trireme battles (30% odds) has really hurt us. Now there's a trireme and 3 caravels in the water, and our three ships (trireme + 2 galleys) are effectively doomed, lacking a safe port to retreat into. This is why the clock fracas at Alderaan was such a major pain: instead of that city being dead on the first turn of the war, it continues to spit out caravels and harass our coastlines. Alderaan could very well end up being the last Ottoman city we capture - we pretty much have to wait for caravels and galleons to clean this area up.

Things could have been a lot worse here though. Imagine if our NAP had lasted a little longer, and Kathlete was sailing around with galleons loaded full of enemy soldiers. He nearly got to Astronomy tech. We've been fairly weak at sea thus far in this game, but that should be changing dramatically over the next 25 turns. We've made galleons/frigates our next big tech push.



Just a quick Demographics picture. Still tops in just about everything that matters (Nakor is #1 in GNP, of course). Pretty happy that we have more Production than him even in his Golden Age mode... and pretty competitive in research too! His Golden Age should wear off in 4 more turns, I think.

Speaker, cavalry upgrades are pretty expensive, 80g each per cuirassier. Maybe we can just upgrade the 10XP units or something like that (?) Dantski gifted us a musket and skirmisher with money to upgrade them (110g and 275g). So keep in mind that 385 gold is actually his money, which we'll have to use to ugprade his units next turn. The other ~650g is ours to play with. Maybe use 400 or so of that for five cavs?

[Kristian95]

regarding kathlete's sponsoring HREs research, have you considered that they consider an enemy of their enemy a friend and that if they (kathlete) think they are doomed, they may feel that they can get some sort of "revenge" by propping up HRE to help them snatch victory in this game...

[Speaker]

regarding kathlete's sponsoring HREs research, have you considered that they consider an enemy of their enemy a friend and that if they (kathlete) think they are doomed, they may feel that they can get some sort of "revenge" by propping up HRE to help them snatch victory in this game...

Yes, and I also believe that one of the major tenets of Realms Beyond is to never give up in the face of insurmountable odds. That is the attitude that made so many of our succession games memorable, and (the 5v1 dogpile) probably what made so many of you follow our thread more closely than the others. Giving away your cities and gold the second you get invaded is horrible sportsmanship in my opinion and is not a great display of intestinal fortitude. "Go down swinging" is my attitude, to the best of your ability. If you get steamrolled, so be it. But don't warp the game for everyone else, especially after 9 months of play. Can you imagine if on T25 or T50, or whatever, Dantski decided he didn't want to play anymore, and instead of getting a sub, gifted us all of his cities...how big of an edge that would give. Wouldn't that have been pretty cheesy? How is this any different? Nakor has been gifted 3 mature cities on the central island and enough gold to run 100% tech for something like 20 turns now, between Whosit and Kathlete. Without those gifts, would he be anywhere near the strong position he's in? He didn't accomplish that through skill in Civ4 or skill in diplomacy. It was sheer cheese, designed to give him an artificial advantage. I may as well just have signed up as a player with a second name, and then gifted myself a bunch of cities, units, or gold. It's the same effect. Bleh.

Any game administrator worth his salt would immediately call for a reload after Jowy's bullshit city gifting, disallowed Whosit's city and gold gifting, and Kathlete's gold gifting, and decree that they need to use their resources to defend themselves, and if they didn't want to, find a replcement player. But whatever. We'll just play on to the end, win or lose. Hopefully win.

[Adlain]

He didn't accomplish that through skill in Civ4 or skill in diplomacy. It was sheer cheese, designed to give him an artificial advantage. I may as well just have signed up as a player with a second name, and then gifted myself a bunch of cities, units, or gold. It's the same effect. Bleh.

I would disagree with you on the diplomacy front, he has by your own admissions managed to reap rewards without getting involved atall (practicaly speaking) in any wars and managed to maintain a builders game throughout.
Saying that however, i do agree that the gifting of cities and gold has, at times, been rather gamey/ poor faith.

Any game administrator worth his salt would immediately call for a reload after Jowy's bullshit city gifting, disallowed Whosit's city and gold gifting, and Kathlete's gold gifting, and decree that they need to use their resources to defend themselves, and if they didn't want to, find a replcement player. But whatever. We'll just play on to the end, win or lose. Hopefully win.

I dont think attacking Krill so publicly will solve your disagreements with him, and from a lurkers POV he has tried his damndest to uphold the game rules/ spirit throughout this game. afterall, not everyone agrees to the same solution for every problem.