[SPOILERS - PBEM17] Kyan Does Dallas. The Orange Sensation.

[Shoot the Moon]

Based on Shoot's comments, he may well have joined in had it been 10 turns later. That would have been nasty. The only thing on our side was the tech edge.

Yeah, just to add on to this, I think the game could have been very different if you had waited another 10-15t. At that point we would have been able to at least have bombers and mech inf out at the start of the war (and if we specialized our tech path perhaps greater).

Only other thing I have to comment on in your post is about the navy stuff. The problem wasn't you building the navy (that was necessary for our war to succeed at all; I didn't have astro and if we had given rego any more time to build machine guns we would have lost). The problem was that you did it for free (although I did wind up paying you a significant chunk of gold afterward). You building the navy was efficient within the alliance, you not getting anything in return is where you messed up =)

[oledavy]

I fully expected you to counter heavily in World War III. I was very nervous of where your transports/EIs were and what was on them. It was interesting to read your opening strategy in your thread. Given your superior empire, it would have been better, I think, to sacrifice some of your cities in order to take some of ours out. But of course it's easy to say that now.

Definitely so. If I had invested more heavily in amphibious forces and struck against Darrell's west coast and at one (or all three) of our fronts at the outset of war - before you guys built up such a humungous navy and air force - I could have made it much more painful. I still would have lost, but you two would have suffered a much greater beating.

At the time I was operating under the idea that I could kill your fleets after you offloaded troops, and was severely underestimating the impact of air power. You rapidly rendered this plan unworkable due to clever maneuvering, refirdgeration + circumnavigation, and using Aleppo as a base. I learned very painfully from this war, defense in a modern war is just hopeless, you just die.

That being said, the window for me to accomplish anything on the offensive was extremely short. I could not operate in my north and west due to Darrell's air force. Even if I had based out of a city, the city would have probably fallen to his amphibious forces and the navy inside destroyed. The exception to this would possibly have been operating through the cities along my jungle arm, which were not under threat originally. In the Far East and my south (your north) I could have operated safely for a time (as I eventually did. However, operating against you was quickly impossible due to your rapidly expanding air force. Going on the offensive in the Far East was the best bet. The problematic thing there was that it was much farther for me to travel with slower ships, while Darrell could rapidly shift his navy from east of Kenya to block an offensive while still pressuring Constantinople.

Nonetheless, this quickly became a non-issue with you virtually eliminating my navy. I think you probably broke some sort of record for number of ships sunk in an RB game :neenernee

And the MDP was irrelevant in some ways. If it wasn't in place and you'd have declared on one of us, the other would have won by space. You had to declare on both of us, unless you damaged/heavily threatened one and got them to join you in taking out the other (which I think you did mention somewhere). I'm not sure how viable that was, though.

I thought the point of an MDP was that if one nation was declared upon, the other would come to its aid?

Yeah, just to add on to this, I think the game could have been very different if you had waited another 10-15t. At that point we would have been able to at least have bombers and mech inf out at the start of the war (and if we specialized our tech path perhaps greater).

Wish I had done that now

Only other thing I have to comment on in your post is about the navy stuff. The problem wasn't you building the navy (that was necessary for our war to succeed at all; I didn't have astro and if we had given rego any more time to build machine guns we would have lost). The problem was that you did it for free (although I did wind up paying you a significant chunk of gold afterward). You building the navy was efficient within the alliance, you not getting anything in return is where you messed up =)

You're right of course. Bit of a misnomer to say the mistake was building the navy. Error was definitely in not charging you for it.

[Commodore]

Wanted to chime in say this was a great read all the way through, davy! I hope to play one with you one of these times, you've made leaps and bounds as a player throughout this game. I think I agree with the thinking that newbies might learn best by being tossed into the deep end on day one, like you had happen here, impressive.

[spacemanmf]

I thought the point of an MDP was that if one nation was declared upon, the other would come to its aid?

What I meant was, you were effectively forced to declare on both of us because we were both racing for space so the MDP had no effect.

[darrelljs]

I always considered my western holdings an early warning system. I didn't have the force to be everywhere in concentration, and decided to focus on my south. I considered it pretty indefensible and wanted to leverage initiative to own that area. The way you deployed your troops the first round forced me to decide between razing your north coast or defending my "Forest" tentacle (opposite Constantionple).

Your MFG was beyond scary. The first thing I did every turn was look at your graphs. The really funny thing is if I hadn't been in such a tight race with nospace, I would have taken a different line and kept the Kremlin. With FIN Towns everywhere I would have been able to cash rush in the manner Krill did in PBEM2 .

Darrell

[oledavy]

Wanted to chime in say this was a great read all the way through, davy! I hope to play one with you one of these times, you've made leaps and bounds as a player throughout this game. I think I agree with the thinking that newbies might learn best by being tossed into the deep end on day one, like you had happen here, impressive.

Thanks man! Likewise, I've really enjoyed your threads, and would love to play in a game with you one of these days. Conversely, we could play together and win an optimism victory

Your MFG was beyond scary. The first thing I did every turn was look at your graphs. The really funny thing is if I hadn't been in such a tight race with nospace, I would have taken a different line and kept the Kremlin. With FIN Towns everywhere I would have been able to cash rush in the manner Krill did in PBEM2

I didn't realize until after the game that you had obsoleted the Kremlin. I forgot that fiber optics did that. Of course, that situation doesn't come up that often on RB

Little wonder your mobilization was slower. I was very scared by the prospect of you revolting into slavery or universal suffrage and doing Kremlin-assisted rushing.

[Krill]

PBEM4 I cash rushed. PBEM2 I used mass workshops and a bitch to give me tech. I think each game is special in that I didn't actually specialize any cities: I never used cottages in any of my cities in PBEM 2 until I captured some from Dreylin, and never used a workshop in my original holdings in PBEM4, though I did use a few after I finished off sunrise and got Darrells' original land.

[darrelljs]

Evend during a GA (hell even during a Colossus boosted GA) whipping is indeed better than cash rushing. The order is:

1. Whipping boats
2. Whipping Mech Inf
3. Drafting Mech Inf (only worse due to XPs)
4. Cash rushing

Darrell: krill
Krill: yes?
Darrell: with kremlin one gold is how many hammers?
and one pop is how many hammers
on quick
Krill: 1 pop is 30 hammers with no foge or factory
Darrell: so with powered factory its 60
and forge of course
Krill: gold, I think 2 gold = 1 hammer
Darrell: right
Krill: um
with forge, factory and power, think 1 pop is worth 50 hammers. It's additive
with Kremlin on top, I mean
Darrell: ok
Sent at 12:35 PM on Tuesday
Darrell: destroyer is 134 hammers right?
Krill: yeah
Sent at 12:39 PM on Tuesday
Darrell: pop of 16 needs 34 food to grow so 17, 18, 19 to recover from a 3 whip pop
55 food, so with a five food suprlus about 11 turns
Krill: good job corps were banned
Darrell: so you'd lose a total of say 33 + 18 = 51 commerce
if you 3 pop whip a destroyer
which the kremlin can turn into 51 hammesr
Krill: um
Darrell: so whipping is good
even with FIN coast and full gold multipliers
hell even in a GA
whipping coast is good
Krill: if you MM it correctly, and plant cities so you are growing onto ocean and not coast, the cost is lower
Darrell: yeah, sure, but in PBEM17 if still had the Kremlin whipping off coast would still have been okay
actually
no
drafting would still be better I think
Krill: actually
it's better to whip boats because you also had dry docks
Darrell: Mech Inf is the same # of hammes for the same number of pop
yes indeed
so whipping boats for the boosted XPs is better
Krill: 1 pop = 60 total
Darrell: then whipping units
Krill: so you could realistically have it as a 2 pop whip
Darrell: then drafting units
then cash rushing
right
which is even better
Krill: If you had 3000gpt surplus you are looking at 1500 hammers of units from cash rushing, plus they 600 hpt naturally, with the whipped boats...
it is frankly insane what you can do there
Darrell: yup
alas
stupid fiber optics

Edit: The chat continues will Krill claiming I should have finishes the space race then defended, but I don't believe with Dave's MFG that would have worked out. Also, nospace had a much safer capital than I did if Dave is the only aggressor.

Darrell

[Krill]

The point is if one player goes for Space, then so does the second player (in this case, NoSpace would follow). And Dave would have to have taken 2 capitals to win, because you wouldn't have been lax and not gifted away Russia, though I suppose that would in itself have been an interesting argument.

[Shoot the Moon]

Also, waiting would have taken away your (totally unearned) first strike ability.