[SPOILERS] Cheater Hater hates bad advice. BGN gives only bad advice.

[Cheater Hater]

Having read the last few pages of your thread, I feel like I'm compelled to defend my good name.

I'd like to start off by saying that I was never unaware of Elum's dominating position. You might have been unaware that when I was battling Grimace, Elum ended my participation in that war by completely destroying my army. The other main consideration was geography, which I don't recall seeing brought up. Basically, with Elum taking all of the Korean gains away from me, I had only two ways to attack: By land, first having to traverse a narrow, windy bit of land through enemy culture, or by sea which Elum dominated with advanced naval tech. Even when Elum was off making war elsewhere, geography allowed him to leave garrisons behind that would have crushed any army I could field, simply because it would take 6+ turns for me to even get to one of his cities. I might have been able to launch a naval invasion that could have captured or razed 1-2 minor island cities, but that would have had no real impact.

So, from my perspective, I was in a losing position and had only two bad options to pick from: 1) Attack Elum and die, 2) Attack you and have a 0.1% chance of gaining enough territory to maybe find a way to hold my own. Obviously, since you were the one I was attacking, you didn't take too favorably to that, but I really wasn't as irrational as you painted me. I was just desperate.

Anyway, good game, and if we both end up in PB27... maybe we won't start as neighbors again?

Feel free to defend yourself as much as you like--I'm sure I'll need to defend myself soon

I remember the narrow points from my early scouting, but wasn't thinking about it as much (and probably forgot about it entirely). I also don't know how he could always defend his border cities while I couldn't--and still, you'd need to make more gains with me than you would with Elum, even if I'm not making horrible moves (including not considering at all the special ability of Keshiks ).

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

At some point you have to find a way to topple the runaway civ, even if it is not profitable or palatable to do so. Doing anything else, especially dog piling #2 will usually only cement the runaway's lead and decide the game. The exception is if you are a close #3 and can get enough out of the war on #2 to bridge the gap to #1, but when #1 is eating a technologically inferior civ and you are attacking at a military tech disadvantage, this is not likely to be the case.

I never studied the game intently from opponents' viewpoints, only from CH's position. The attack on him only makes sense if you thought he would collapse or that he was about to invade you. In both cases, this turned out not to happen. I'm still reading other threads (started with Zulu because they were in the most antagonistic position most of the game) so I don't have a complete picture of what was happening or motives for different stuff, so I may change my opinion on some of this. I'm especially interested in finding out how Elum secured the choke point and how he built the large lead in the first place.

[ipecac]

Having read the last few pages of your thread, I feel like I'm compelled to defend my good name.

I'd like to start off by saying that I was never unaware of Elum's dominating position. You might have been unaware that when I was battling Grimace, Elum ended my participation in that war by completely destroying my army. The other main consideration was geography, which I don't recall seeing brought up. Basically, with Elum taking all of the Korean gains away from me, I had only two ways to attack: By land, first having to traverse a narrow, windy bit of land through enemy culture, or by sea which Elum dominated with advanced naval tech. Even when Elum was off making war elsewhere, geography allowed him to leave garrisons behind that would have crushed any army I could field, simply because it would take 6+ turns for me to even get to one of his cities. I might have been able to launch a naval invasion that could have captured or razed 1-2 minor island cities, but that would have had no real impact.

Basically the game should have been called months ago

[AdrienIer]

I finally had time to read this and I'd like to thank you CH for being a good neighbor throughout the whole game. Well you did consider attacking me many times but you were still a much easier neighbor than Agent and Ipecac. And sorry about joining the dogpile on you, I'd have been better out backstabbing Agent. Well in the end it benefited you so maybe I shouldn't apologize