LURKER THREAD- No Players

[Thoth]

Thanks for the updates Civac2.

[chumchu]

Well written! Especially liked the ending.

[civac2]

South America:

Initially five civilisations developed in South America.




Next to the three you can see, Superdeath (Churchill) started at the southern tip of the continent and Empirate (Kublai Khan) used to reside in the area that is now the northern part of Babylon. South America has had a turbulent history. The action started off with CocoRico warrior-choking Superdeath who was set behind significantly. Meanwhile Mouseferatu (De Gaulle) sitting in Middle America unsuccessfully axe rushed MrX (Boudica) who started in Venezuela. With CocoRico distracted by Superdeath Empirate declared war on CocoRico and settled an aggressive blocking city on a hill overlooking Babylonian lands. They made peace almost immediately when it became apparent that there was no opening for either side to make gains. Empirate, however, was inexplicably surprised when just as the peace treaty ran out the Babylonian army was back for more having enhanced its capabilities with newly trained chariots. Mongolia quickly folded.
The next several centuries saw more skirmishes with Jerry Demmings (Maya) attempting an attack on Babylon and Babylon in turn razing a Celtic city in a settling dispute. CocoRico had by now annoyed all of his remaining neighbors and it looked like there might form an alliance between the powerful Maya as well as Churchill and Boudica to exact revenge. Superdeath was in fact looking for just such a pact. Instead Jerry Demmings went for the Celts which sealed his fate. While CocoRico moved horse archers south to remove the Superdeath thorn from his side, the Maya army was outflanked by the Celts each side inflicting horrible devastation in the others land. MrX burned down the great and beautiful (before it was set on fire anyway) production city the Maya had called the Pearl of the Andes. When Boudica's hordes were finally stopped at the Mayan capital the Maya Empire was too exhausted to offer any resistance to CocoRico's horse archers that swarmed over the border and essentially just walked into barely defended border cities. The Mayan army retreated out of Celtic lands and fell back to their capital while the Celts started replacing their lost cities.

CocoRico has since taken Churchill's final hill fortress bringing down catapults from his core cities. Pacal will share Churchill's fate as soon as the war machines can be lugged over half the continent yet again. It does not take clairvoyance to foresee the end of the Celtic Empire either. As for CocoRico he will soon be in control of an entire subcontinent but is far behind on tech. We will see if he can avoid getting becoming food himself for more advanced seafaring nations.

South America fell in CocoRico's hands almost by default because he was the only player starting there not prone to catastrophic tactical blunders. None of the other starters on the continent are weak players but they all messed this game up properly.

[civac2]

SD is moving small stacks into Indian territory which then get cleaned up by cats/axes. Not sure what he is thinking.

[Mjmd]

How small of stacks? Probably that he doesn't want a large stack to get wiped out. Instead he using his superior production base and whittling away at tiny India.

I'm genuinely curious how people usually resolve these large stack standoffs where both sides can hit with cats if you enter other territory before astronomy / to clean up someone's remaining cities.

[civac2]

The Indian Ceres has (or had) 22 cats, 26 axes, 4 spears and a GG. Plus reinforcements and city guards.

SD's first stack consisted of 9 units (3 ele, 2 cat, 2 axe, 2 char) and took down 3 cats with it.
Second stack was 6 units and took down 4 cats, 1 axe, 1 spear (dissolved).

You could make a case for the smaller second stack and I suppose SD wants to trade units that way. Thing is Ceres' simulations say that SD could just move in with his main stack and win. The first strike would hurt a lot obviously but his army would be able to eat it and wipe out the opposing forces with the counter.

If you are in a Ele/Cat/Axe stand-off like this you are essentially just f*cked. The best thing to do may be to make peace and go kill a third party together if your opponent is reasonable.
(If you are much bigger you can outproduce them but it is slow and painful. If they have no elephants your chances of doing that is much better and you can break the stalemate with Macemen.)

[Papa Bear]

You do it like Plemo (Holy Roman Empie) did it in this game against Firlefanzer of the Khmer. You bring more and better units than the other guy has.

SD has placed two stacks right in front of Ceres‘ nose and saw both stacks wiped out completely. Why would you place 10-12 units in striking range of a stack with 15 catapults and as many melee units? Even the Civ AI does not do stuff like that. What SD is trying to achieve by that is completely beyond me.

I did not do an exact unit count, but his stack was larger than Ceres‘. What you‘d normally do is keep the entire stack together and offer the opponent a first strike on your army in terrain offering you an advantage.

What SD did was to first split off some 10-15 units from his stack and placed them in flat country outside the gates of one of Ceres‘ cities. Logically, Ceres destroyed that stack. Instead of moving his entire army towards that city, SD split off another 10 or so units from his stack and watched these get killed as well.

This invasion ranks among the three worst fails in this PB so far (in my humble opinion). The other two? First, an attack by an inexperienced player (Player: Admiral G.) against an old pro (Player: Dulland) which ultimately led to the invader‘s exit from the game. Second, the Egyptian (Player: Lao-Tse) attack on the Chinese (Player: Rob Anybody) on the North American continent. Others have botched their attacks as well (Suite vs. Konsul; Jerry Demmings vs. Mr.X), but not as badly as the three I mentioned...

[Mjmd]

SD did not do a simulation I'll wager. 2nd stack sounds like a good trade.

Plus he is Stalin of Russia. Just throw waves of units at the problem. That is the Russian way.

[Commodore]

Sims are good, but take way too much time to set up if you're in 38055150091 different games all at once.

[civac2]

Someone needs to link Zulan's vodka tool for SD. He will then dominate rb until the end of times.

@Mjmd: Yeah, the second stack was fine. I initially thought it was bigger than it actually was.