[SPOILERS] By the Rivers of Babylon, FIN has no effect (on krovice)

[Krill]

And I don't think it needs to be said that I don't mind playing the turns. NOt like I need to think about much other than gradually retreating troops and causing as much WW as possible.

[Krill]

Bit the bullet and offered BGN peace. I doubt he takes it, but what with TBS losing a culture city he may be considering exactly what it is he wants from this game.

[Krill]

Yeah we got peace with BGN. Now to play out this game by hitting enter and seeing if we can maintain fourth in the tech tree.

[Miguelito]

Why that change of mind?

[Krill]

Short answer: I've been at war with BGN for 50 turns. I've essentially stopped him from winning a domination victory, but I don't think I can stop him from just eating ruff and sitting off my coast with bombers, pounding every single tile back into the dirt whilst he races to SS with OT. That is to say, that I can't actually make him attack me.

Long answer I'm going to post after I grab a shower and something to eat, but the above answer is still mostly true.

[Krill]

Why that change of mind?

The long answer is the sheer number of units that BGN has present, and the length of time it will take OT to launch SS.

BGN had something in teh region of 20 fully loaded carriers, all fighters, 20 bombers, 35 DD and 10 TR. Assuming teh TR were loaded that's an additional 40 inf. I could also see a further 30+ inf adjacent to Ruffs culture, plus unknown amount just outside the range of the airships. Oh, and one submarine.

That is a total of 3200 hammers for the carriers, 6000 for the fighters, 2800 for the bombers, 7000 for the DD, screw the TR. inf is a total of say 11200 hammers worth of inf and maybe a dozen of those were mobility. That's basically thirty thousand hammers worth of military I can see.

I have 15 arty and 40 inf. Most of my hammers have been put into navy, in the knowledge that this allowed me to force a delay in any war between us until he could cheaply remove that navy. Now that he has built that tech lead to include flight and radio, he has the ability to ping my navy down on the turn that he places his boats in range of mine, so he should have odds on defence...except all his boats are 3 promo boats and mine are only 2 promo, and I have no naval collateral so I can't even kill his navy.

He has a bunch of commando units, gained from the copious number of GG he produced from beating up weaklings. So I have to spread all of my units around to stop him from taking a coastal city, moving in and then razing a bunch of cities with suicide commandos. I can't even defend my coastal cities from the number of inf he has, considering he can use bombers with impunity as I also have no anti-air defenses in place.

On top of that, the local geography makes defending very difficult. I have a large island with 7 cities on it, a single city on Plakos island, and then the mainland. Due to the lack of naval collateral, it is trivial for BGN to push my units back and capture the islands first (in fact this turn if BGN had commando inf on boats he could have lost a few but already started taking some of my islands). I think there is a single city, Willow Lake, that is not boatable with amphib and then commando inf in a single turn.

So basically, if BGN attacks, and he doesn't screw about, he could take every single city without anything more than logistical headaches.

It just doesn't help him win space, so why bother doing it when he can just kill ruff, and use the bombers to remove all of hte tile improvements from the map? How much more entertaining for him would it be to do that, every single night for the next 3 months? How much would it hurt him to do that? Too much and not enough, respectively. So I'm willing to quit whilst I'm ahead, having wrecked his chances for a domination win (or perhaps allowed him to wreck his own chances for a domination win, but really it's two sides to the same coin).

And anyway, 10 turns worth of building units should mean that if he wants to fight afterwards it should be a little more even. Like we might live 2-3 turns longer.

[Krill]

Also now I get to fight for fourth place with dtay and Joey, whom somehow seem to have almost identical cropyield with us.

[Miguelito]

thanks. Interesting to know what made the scales tip, after so many turns where you managed to keep up the fight, despite always being behind in tech (as far as I understood). So the SAMs you mentioned before haven't come in time or just don't matter?

[Krill]

Well, I've finished Electricity, and will one turn Rocketry with a few research builds then save gold. I've also sent out a billion defense pacts to dtay, Joey and the rest. The aim being to make BGN think twice about attacking me and nucking ICTR. I believe that Joey will take it. dtay won't. The rest I'm unsure about.

What happened with managing a fight is the same thing that happens at every other stage of the game. Someone manages to pull ahead in tech and get more advanced boots on the ground (backed up by a prebuilt stack that is equal in tech with the other party) and then just pushes a stack at someone. A stack so large that even if the defender throws collateral at it, and attacks with everything they have, doesn't kill enough of the invading stack. It happens with cats and HA and it happens with inf, bombers and tanks. The latter is just fast.

[Krill]

I have defensive pacts with dtay, Joey and AT. Plako declined and I've re-offered to him as he may have seen that the others accepted after he exited the diplomacy screens. I will not re-offer next turn if he declines again. I am still waiting on moloch and William to log in and reply. But I'm happy with Joey and dtay, those were the important two.

I've set research to Refrigeration. It's a 5 turn tech but solves all health issues and gives naval units +1 move so may annoy BGN a bit more if he still intends to invade. I don't think he will given the defence pacts. dtay is using espionage to try and steal from Yuri/TBS. Don't think it's working out amazingly for him atm. Still down Biology and Electricity, up Combustion.