[PB74 spoilers] Plemo in epic contest

[scooter]

Hey Plemo, I played your turn, and here's a quick look around what I saw. I mostly didn't do too much other than try to make defensive and sensible choices. Your builds were all already queued, so I didn't touch any of those. The main thing is your peace treaty with Commodore is about to expire, and I saw this which I'm sure you're aware of.






I retreated the Privateer after taking this picture, and I generally just tried to set things up as defensively as possible in case he attacks, as peace expired at end of turn. Stamford looks indefensible if he were to really go for it, but I loaded a few more units onto Galleons behind the island as well as stacked some Privateers together along the coast next to Vasteras. Gave a couple of them Combat promos too just to be safe.






You can see that here. It does not look like he can boat Vasteras, but he can land a bunch of units next to it, so I've made it so you (or I) can ferry them in if you'd like. If you aren't able to get Civ running, just let me know how hard you want me to defend in the event he does attack. I also did nothing with some of the random loaded Galleons you have in various surprising places. Let me know if you want me to do anything with them - let them sit mostly. I mostly did the same with the various mainland defensive stacks. Let me know your preference on this. I have no knowledge of any rival current plans here to be clear.





I did move this Galleon to peek at the city. Let me know if you want me to take these shots or not. There's 3 longbows in, so they cannot be killed in 1T, but there's a good chance you win both fights, promote, and then kill it the following turn. Of course, it's size 1, so maybe not worth it. Just let me know if you'd like to. In the meantime I moved the Galleon away from Commodore's Galleon back into the fog so he didn't see it.

[scooter]

To be clear what's going on, I pretty much assumed Commodore was going to attack based on the screenshots above, and then Tarkeel told me they did both declare.


So, the reason this needs to be held is that the spoils split in a 2v1 is complicated. One strategy for example might be to cede all the islands, pull everything back to the mainland, and stack up on land. This has the side effect though of effectively gifting cities to one of the leaders. IMO this is a totally valid path, but a decision that ought to be made by the player. Or maybe Plemo has a stronger grudge against one player and would prefer to defend harder against that player. Maybe he wants to get aggressive on the water and do as much damage as possible to Commodore's navy, or maybe he'd prefer to keep it alive to defend a port city or something.


Also, there are some scattered loaded Galleons. I could try to burn just any random Commodore/Tarkeel cities possible, or I could bring them home and defend. Or I could ferry more units over to the islands being threatened, as I did setup Galleons with the capacity to do so. Again, all valid paths, but I can't be the one to pick which path.


Main issue is I don't want the perception that a spoiled player swung the game between Commodore/Gavagi, so I'd really like Plemo to give detailed thoughts here on how he would handle this if he was logged in and playing. I sent him a few questions via PM.


ALSO, in my opinion if Gavagi wants me to not play at all even with consultation from Plemo, that is 100% his right. He has a lot to potentially lose (if Commodore makes easy gains) or gain (if I defend hard against Commodore) here.

[scooter]

Plemo, here's a run down of your options.






First, I don't know what this offer means, but maybe you do. I just closed out of it.






Some defensive naval exchanges first that went fairly well.





This does not look saveable to me, personally. I can stuff as many units in as possible if you'd like. They would inflict more casualties, but likely not change the outcome. Up to you on priorities.





This stack is rough, but you've got some options. Can combine these two land stacks and probably do some damage to it? I really am not sure, and I would not spend the time to sim myself. But your two stacks here combined with those units on the boat from the last screenshot could probably be a match for this stack. But again, it depends on your preferences here. Also not sure if you want to sacrifice a city for time or not.


Also, some random options that I see you have, not sure what you'd like:

[Plemo]

As mentioned in the general thread, here are the pictures of my problem with the changed turn order.

Last turn I attacked Commodore's units on the desert hill and destroyed most of them. I then deliberately secured Oslo with so many troops that conquering it would be costly (I would still have had enough troops in range).

   

Had I known that the unexpected turn order change and exploiting the advantage would wipe up my injured units, I probably would have put more units into Oslo.

   

If Haithabu (Tarkeel) falls first and then Oslo (Commodore), I could have withdrawn my stack.

   

I'm not really enthusiastic about the situation, as I can't think of a solution due to the many battles and, in particular, Pind's declaration of war on Tarkeel.

@Lurker: Am I just overreacting here (like in other places) and is it normal game behavior? If so, I'm happy to continue playing, even if Commodore and indirectly Pind benefit from it.

[Dreylin]

Lurker consensus was that this should not have happened, but with Pindicator declaring on Tarkeel after they had played, we couldn’t see a way to unwind the turn without knock-on effects.

Thanks for being willing to take the hit and keep the game moving.

[klops]

Hej Plemo, it went very quiet after that war, understandably...
At the very end, I am curious about something Pindicator said about a couple galleons being "not suspicious at all"

Were you planning something funny or just hitting the red button until it ends?

[Plemo]

I had been prepared for some time to do something unusual. However, I had no desire to spend a lot of time in a war, be it against someone of the same tech level or against one of the 4 superpowers.

For example, I could have destroyed SD's island city for several turns, along with a few coastal cities, before he evacuated his troops to the island. Also, my galleons had been on the move for quite some time and occasionally saw some lightly guarded coastal cities at Mig and Pin. 2 or 3 turns ago I think I could have destroyed up to 4 cities of Pin at the same time. I also had a knight on the border between Pin and Comm for a good 5-10 turns, which I could have used for a command attack with the general hidden on the caravel in Pin's coastal city. In the end, however, it wasn't worth another war to me. For the same reason I didn't follow Gav's request for war against Picc.

[Gavagai]

Hey Plemo, thanks for being my only friend in this game. You helped a lot. In particular, you were my only source of silver and this +2 happiness was a really big deal in the final war.
Would you attack Pic if I destroyed his megastack? That was one of the options I've been considering.

[Plemo]

I probably wouldn't have attacked him anyway, since Pic had secured all the cities on my border with 3 highly decorated riflemen and I only had a few cannons and grenadiers. Besides, I had no stress with Pic ingame, maybe we could have worked better together against SD, but that was it.

My relationship with Mig was similar. Pind had once taken the opportunity to take an island off my hands, for which I would have preferred to return the favor. But as I've already written, the cost would have been too high for me. In the end, I was at least able to tie up a few troops with my galleons.

[Tarkeel]

Hageel have conquered Dreylin's capital city. Since I don't follow and document the game as intensively as I did my first games, I'm trying to recreate Hageel's development using old screenshots and PBSPY. The filter options on PBSPY are very good for this. Here are my observations and interpretations:

So, this goes exactly to the core of my main issue with your play in this game: Several of your first city settlings were disguised on PBspy. You probably think this is a clever trick, but in a game where it was decided by vote that score was on, I consider the explicit hiding of score timings to be cheating. Sure, you get the occasional double-whip being combined, but personally I try to avoid even that.

After a lot of back and forth and a thousand times changing my mind, I decided not to attack. Even if I am halfway sure that the attack was done with chariots and I could weaken them quite a bit, the following things are too uncertain for me:
[...]
In the end, the uncertainty was too great for me to ruin someone's game without any real benefit.

I'm very curious why you changed your mind here. Being hit from the fog that way wasn't very much fun, and my impression was that it was mainly motivated by the out-of-game reasoning of crippling one of the serious contenders. Especially since you didn't really get much land that you wouldn't have had otherwise, our island being perhaps the only difference.

For Tarkeel, I would like to move the borders as follows.

Yeah, I bet you'd like that. The thing is, without your initial war, you'd have gotten the most of what your initial dotmap showed, except Rococo and the island. While we did have a filler pencilled in where Aarhus was, that spot wasn't on your plan, but you might have gotten it regardless.

Hageel delight me with a pre-Christmas declaration of war. Very good timing and also somewhat surprising in terms of strength. Especially as I'm also a power leader.

The funny thing about that war is that it was purely to give Superdeath a reprieve. Since you hadn't let our units past, we had no idea what was happening over there, and though that you and SD were in a similar situation to what you'd engineered against us; SD's diplo was desperate enough for it. Imagine our lack of surprise when SD didn't honor the timer and attacked on the other side, but what did surprise me was the lack of reported fighting in your thread up until SD did attack 10 turns later:

At the moment, my time is pretty limited due to both personal and professional matters, so I'm happy if I can make a train without extra time. In addition, my relationship with Superdeath has cooled down quite a bit. I had declared war on him 6-7 turns ago to get forced peace and safely accept caste in the GA, which he has refused to give me so far. Nevertheless, I accepted caste for a shorter than planned time. Maybe I should have left it alone, since SD is now invading me.
[...]
Looking at the graphs, I guess I didn't end up with neighbor luck. Picca is farming Greenline (4-5 cities) and Commodore is also making progress (several cities of Bing probably conquered with knights), while I can't get active with the highest power. If I survive SD's attack reasonably well, Picca should conquer most of his cities afterwards.

This is again why I think your attack against us was a real mistake: We could have had a safe border that wasn't worth fighting over, while expanding in the opposite direction. In an alternate world, we'd be having a cold war with Commodore and Pindicator while you could split Superdeath and then Greenline with Piccadilly.

Can I also point out how absurdly lucky you were in this game? First rolling Viccy of the Vikings on a water-map *with a hunting start*. Your capital was easily one of the best here, even if you had to move for the plainshill. In a game where most capitals were dominated by animals, all of your first cities could be fed with grains and deers. You then had the crucial extra few tiles of land to support two circles of cities. When the attack did come, you got an assist from the barbarian spear spawning on pretty low odds, delaying our copper and drawing away units.