Thing is it wasn't a huge risk - I always had the ability to slave, draft or buy enough units to defend myself. If you read Kyles' thread you'll see numerous references to me having a huge amount of population that at any time I could convert into an army. I even altered my tech path on a few occasions to give me a better ability to defend.
If sunrise had attacked me I'd have lost 1 front city, but he needed to take both of them to invade my core, and if Cyneheard invaded, well, I had a collapsable front city for a reason.
That said, others did build much larger armies than were strictly necessary...
I wondered as well what impact the bug in the no-score mod had. It might have favored gambits like Krill's, but I had hoped the other way around: That people might play more aggressively, thinking they can do a successful surprise attack because the others don't see the build-up. Looks like I was wrong, and everyone was too paranoid to attack. (I've been paranoid at times as well, but at least I took the risk and attacked Darrell at some point)
In Darrell's report, somewhere he had written how he misplayed the game, thinking AW was more about military where instead it turned out to be a pure economical game (or something along that line). That pretty much sums up my biggest mistake as well, even though in hindsight it's really obvious.
What I liked (even though it was pure chance) was that the three runaways (Krill, Cyneheard and Sunrise) were neighbours with the strongest (Krill) in the middle. That allowed some interesting situations for us losers.
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
Krill Wrote:Thing is it wasn't a huge risk - I always had the ability to slave, draft or buy enough units to defend myself.
Is that really true, at least during the first half of the game? (MP noob speaking here!) Against a really big army which you cannot see coming because of the no-score bug, can you really slave fast enough to prevent more damage than simply losing a disposable front-line city? In addition, if one of your neighbours had tried, it would have slowed you down economically at least (admittedly favoring not the attacker but your other neighbour most probably), and maybe had forced you to play more careful for the remainder of the game.
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
Kylearan Wrote:I wondered as well what impact the bug in the no-score mod had. It might have favored gambits like Krill's, but I had hoped the other way around: That people might play more aggressively, thinking they can do a successful surprise attack because the others don't see the build-up. Looks like I was wrong, and everyone was too paranoid to attack. (I've been paranoid at times as well, but at least I took the risk and attacked Darrell at some point)
In Darrell's report, somewhere he had written how he misplayed the game, thinking AW was more about military where instead it turned out to be a pure economical game (or something along that line). That pretty much sums up my biggest mistake as well, even though in hindsight it's really obvious.
What I liked (even though it was pure chance) was that the three runaways (Krill, Cyneheard and Sunrise) were neighbours with the strongest (Krill) in the middle. That allowed some interesting situations for us losers.
Safe surprise attacks don't really exist, if you want to hold the cities, because you need to capture the ring nearest you and then raze the ring beyond that because it'll have culture pushed right up to your newly captured cities and you'll just lose them to cats and whatever that sit 3 tiles away ready to attack you the next turn. Acorn Archimedes is a good example of this - if Darrell hadn't screwed around you could have lost even more units, which might have changed the course of the war. I think it's also fair to say that Darrell shouldn't have lost his capital, which when you think about it means that the economic pay off of war is usually so low it isn't worth it.
I think it's been said before, in PBEMs 5B and 22, that Always War is the most peaceful, and Always Peace is the most aggressive.
Kylearan Wrote:Is that really true, at least during the first half of the game? (MP noob speaking here!) Against a really big army which you cannot see coming because of the no-score bug, can you really slave fast enough to prevent more damage than simply losing a disposable front-line city? In addition, if one of your neighbours had tried, it would have slowed you down economically at least (admittedly favoring not the attacker but your other neighbour most probably), and maybe had forced you to play more careful for the remainder of the game.
Well, you could consider the fact that I lost my third city (because I was an idiot, I should have had a second axe in there from an upgraded warrior which would have saved the city, as I'd have had 2 axes and a spear against 1 axe and a bunch of warriors) and still managed to replace the city before sunrise could found it. Beyond that, with culture pushed hard giving you more turns before an attack can reach a core city, at some points in the game it would have taken Cyneheard 7 or 8 turns before a slow mover stack could reach a core city. I agree that if someone had invaded me, it would have slowed me down, but again I agree with you that it would have slowed them down more.
However, I think what I agree with most of all is that I did play much more carefully for the rest of the game, after sunrise razed my third city. I didn't go into Bureaucracy until turn 125ish. I teched HBR and COnstruction and Feud before Calendar, CoL and Currency. I built and slaved LB before markets and libs. I'd claim that I didn't unnecesarilly throw away units but I did against Cyneheard when trying to protect a few workers which went badly, and that I blame on trying to play the turn after a 12 hour night shift (well, I also blame losing my third city partially on that). But for the main, I was conservative and stayed in my borders. I was only aggressive in claiming land, and I did use an army to push back others units so I could safely settle.
If you split the game down into 20 turn chunks, you'll see that form about turn 40 to turn 60, when I lost my third city, I had to gamble a bit, running limited military in the west and leaving spears and axes in a walls city in the east. Without cats, a sunrise attack is a no go because he'd lose too many units to then carry on into my core, and Cyneheard was a good 15 tiles away.
The gamble there is that the Cyneheard doesn't WC rush me, but with copper in the capital that's probably not the best idea in the world. So the gamble is that both players decide to build up and expand, not the most unreasonable expectation for the early game. Also remember that in this time period I teched Archery, HBR and most of construction
Turns 61-80 I was beelining LB after finishing Construction, and I was pumping out HA and cats from a capital that was growing to size 11, so I wasn't weakly defended. I started off this chunk by expanding north where no one could reach my new cities, and I showed sunrise that I had HA and cats by placing them in my city. At least half my cities were on military builds at this part of the game, with the majority of MFG going to the military, including whips.
Turns 81-100 I had just finished Feud and slammed down my front city against Cyneheard on the gold, immediately upgrading 2 archers to LB, and throwing down a walls. This is here the game got interesting, because massed HA and cats will kill anything until cannons. Even rifles if you have enough. Anyone walking up to my front cities had to either stop on flat land so I could wipe out a stack (theoretically) or use massed HA, attacking into CG2 LB because I was in vassalage. Those aren't good odds, even with flanking2, but because I was pusing culture I would always get 1 turns notice of a fast mover attack.
This is a turn report for t95 showing both neighbours with scouts on hills looking into my front cities. I think about this time there were sentry units on both hills as well.
Up until this point I was still intending to tech to gunpowder via Guilds, but I changed my mind to go for Liberalism, because I knew I could still get GP via Education, which yes meant it was slightly further away, but gave me other options such as PP quickly which gave a solid boost to bpt. I also ran the espionage slider for 2 turns here to check everyones research and research times. when sunrise states that he was only a turn or so behind me to Liberalism, remember that I could have been 2 turns further ahead of him to the tech, and could also see his research and shortly after it his researched techs because I researched Alphabet.
T101-120 were the turns where my economy went from "frontrunner" to "...how good?" But first of all, you can see how my cultural push made it near enough impossible for Cyneheard to attack me. I had 4 turns to whip units and get them into place before he could even attack my front city.
Shows t105, when I got Lib for Nationalism. I was then only 1 tech away from GP, which I was always able to research in two turns due to overflow, then whip out jans with my large amount of pop I ghad lying around from trying to increase the amount of beakers I got from my GS bulb into Education.
I think this was one of the more dangerous time periods for me to get invaded, right after I got Lib. However, sunrise was chasing Lib as well, so I didn't have anything to fear from him, and Cyneheard had all that culture to wade through with...knights, maces and cats, into LB and muskets on a hill with 50% defensive bonus, and he would stil have lost his cats to my cats and HA. I think a good comparison would be with PBEM13 where it took a double artist bomb, rifles, cav and a shitload of cats before NoSpace could take out Pegasus' front city simply because of the 30 cats and 40 knights/HA that I built for him. You just can't walk into someone land when they have collateral available to them.
This is a quick report from t109 talking about a 25% increase in bpt in 4 turns. This shows F2 from about t112 when I went into Merc/NH, making drafting possible, so I gained more security again. Turn 117 with screenshots, and explaining that I changed my tech plans to get rifling to put the others off from attacking me. I lost Taj because I didn't have marble and sunrise used a GE to grab it. Turn 119 shows the difference between me and Cyneheard in tech.
I think after this point was the time I triggered my first golden age and revolted civics to Universal suffrage, and I finished Rifling eot t123, so I had the ability to build and draft jans for 10 turns...such a junk unit. After this point, it's knights and mace and cats against rifles, when I was able to make over 500 gpt. I don't think I was actually threatened much after this point.
Krill Wrote:Destroyers to pillage and blockade all coastal cities and force people to play defensive, then tanks to get CR2 fast movers. Tanks are only 3 techs past Combustion, anyway. And I'm only 2 techs from seeing where oil is...
Selrahc way back on Feb 1st 2011 Wrote:I've gotta say, this does sound like the kind of logic that will end with "And then stealth bombers are only a tech beyond that, so I might as well tech to them."
I got to tanks and found out I had so much gpt that it was accumulating even though I was rushing every possible unit on every single turn I could, without the rushing from scratch penalty. I think I got about 6k worth of tech during the war just for that.
I got to tanks and found out I had so much gpt that it was accumulating even though I was rushing every possible unit on every single turn I could, without the rushing from scratch penalty. I think I got about 6k worth of tech during the war just for that.