TheHumanHydra Loses His Head(s) [Spoilers]

[TheHumanHydra]

On a more general note, I just want to say after reading all the threads I can't count the number of times I had this creepy, shivering sensation of how close I came to being attacked/some disaster. Timing was everything in this game, and I seemed to come squarely on the lucky side of it. To quote someone I admire,

"It has been a damned serious business ... Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life."

[Miguelito]

Thanks, guys, it was a pleasure playing with you, too, and to reiterate, I really respected how you soldiered on after losing your mainland cities and plotted some rather effective methods of revenge against me (galleons plus grens, the fort). It was only due to retep that your plans were foiled (he managed to predict both!). In fact, this turn presented a golden opportunity for you to try and enact them, as I had decided to take the risk of moving what response units had remained in place west to join in an attack on Alhazard the following turn, so any landing you might have made would have been opposed only by the garrison of The Other Side, and who knows how that would have turned out. I'm curious to know if you would have landed this turn, and I'm sorry you didn't get the chance to try it out! Also, I'm dying to know what was actually on the boats. Was it all CR II grens and cats like I feared?

I also have to apologize again for my mistake in offering the illegal trade after I first attacked you. I see that it did affect your thinking rather greatly, which is unfortunate. I want to thank you for your faith in me that I wasn't trying to screw you deliberately; not every player would have reacted with such magnanimity (reading your thread, it seems you did consider it, which was wise, but ultimately decided it wasn't the case, for which I'm grateful).

I guess this was your first game, Miguelito, and I guess you joined within the last year, too, Adrien (my, you've joined a lot of games since then!). I think you guys show a lot of promise - you certainly showed a lot of creativity and capacity for discussion and long-range planning this game. I wish you every bit of luck in your future games!

As a side-note, in case you miss it reading the thread, I feel you should know it was Old Harry who came up with the precise tactical plan for attacking you via Hulk (forking your further cities and hitting any units behind). Without him, I may never have been able to exploit such opportunities as occurred. Credit where credit is due!

I'm still going to write some sort of a big post game post, so just a few words right now:
- first, thanks for the kind words
- I definitely would have attacked this turn. War between Al and you was all I had been looking forward to for ages (well, after I. Refrained from the ltroll idea of invading Al's island). Sadly, it seems that Al took our cease fire for a 10t peace, which led to the concession . Looks like he was upset at our incompetence all game and didn't expect anything good from us.
- the galleons were full of grenadiers (maybe two or three cars for the tos garrison, but I wanted to reserve most for the knight stack, hence second wave) most had just one promo available, the ones from Pfeffi two, but afaik you can't give them CR if not by upgrading piles or maces
- the peace offer added to our confusion, but the main problem was that at the same time I was handing the game over to Adrien, and we had very different interpretations of the situation, which just messed up our play. But honestly, I never got why you made that offer in the first place. I think I threw fit cats at your knights, but I still fully expected them to just take ToS without too much problems
- I never thought you were causing confusion on purpose, because you already had demonstrated enough sportsmanship and character during the course of the game. It just seemed to me that if someone wanted to ruin my sanity, that was the perfect diabolic plan to do so: lol:
- from the moment you had settled The Hermitage, Hulk was indefensible. I really wanted to raze it but couldn't /was behind to much on expansion already. Seeking Hulk 1s would have got me a way better border with you. I still wonder if I could've got away with that?

Fwiw, could I ask for a save and password? I really had a good idea of what was going on in your land s until some turns ago when you decided to counter my amateurs spies with serious courthouse ....
Also, the spy! I just has remembered last turn they were legal! But I thought myself secure because your boats couldn't pass, right? Should have thought this through a little bit more...

[Miguelito]

also btw, no iron, no frigates. Nor pikes. Nor cuirassiers. Nor cannons. Hell that sucked.
Really, my only critique to Commodore about the otherwise very very nice map. I think it would have been much better to put copper on the mainland only, to force early expansion there, but have iron on the island so a player that was beaten once still would have military options.

[retep]

To be fair 3 workers in a tile where they don't have anything to do is like super suspicious/obvious guys

[Miguelito]

of course, but also no way not to make it obvious

[TheHumanHydra]

I'm still going to write some sort of a big post game post, so just a few words right now:
- first, thanks for the kind words
- I definitely would have attacked this turn. War between Al and you was all I had been looking forward to for ages (well, after I. Refrained from the ltroll idea of invading Al's island). Sadly, it seems that Al took our cease fire for a 10t peace, which led to the concession . Looks like he was upset at our incompetence all game and didn't expect anything good from us.
- the galleons were full of grenadiers (maybe two or three cars for the tos garrison, but I wanted to reserve most for the knight stack, hence second wave) most had just one promo available, the ones from Pfeffi two, but afaik you can't give them CR if not by upgrading piles or maces
- the peace offer added to our confusion, but the main problem was that at the same time I was handing the game over to Adrien, and we had very different interpretations of the situation, which just messed up our play. But honestly, I never got why you made that offer in the first place. I think I threw fit cats at your knights, but I still fully expected them to just take ToS without too much problems
- I never thought you were causing confusion on purpose, because you already had demonstrated enough sportsmanship and character during the course of the game. It just seemed to me that if someone wanted to ruin my sanity, that was the perfect diabolic plan to do so: lol:
- from the moment you had settled The Hermitage, Hulk was indefensible. I really wanted to raze it but couldn't /was behind to much on expansion already. Seeking Hulk 1s would have got me a way better border with you. I still wonder if I could've got away with that?

Fwiw, could I ask for a save and password? I really had a good idea of what was going on in your land s until some turns ago when you decided to counter my amateurs spies with serious courthouse ....
Also, the spy! I just has remembered last turn they were legal! But I thought myself secure because your boats couldn't pass, right? Should have thought this through a little bit more...

Sure, here's the last save I received; password is THH.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d48k4f806178m9...dSave?dl=0

Obviously no micro, etc. since it's start-of-turn.

Thanks for the information! Sounds like we would've had an interesting time over the next couple turns. I think you're right on the CR promos. I think posts 173-182 in this thread do a good job explaining my thought processes around the time of the attack. Suffice it to say when I saw muskets behind 60% defences on a hill I believed it unlikely my knights could make further progress, especially when collateralled. I wanted the guaranteed 10 turns' peace so I could go hit someone else, and I offered Hulk back as an incentive to take it. My lurkers found my reluctance to attack a little puzzling, too (though I believe my impression was correct, as I recall simming it after to make sure), and as I could have twice as many knights on the spot in just a couple turns, I was persuaded to stay in place and prepare to head back in rather than stage against someone else. When your units moved to the hills north of Hulk to retake it, I knew I had a golden opportunity.

I'm honestly not sure what I would have done if Hulk had been settled 1S - best guess is I probably would have let it slide till I could hit it with knights, but I'm not sure. I actually think it was a pretty good border until I went looking for someone to attack anyway (and you were closest); we weren't really contesting anything culturally and we managed to keep it pretty demilitarized. 1S would have been much more problematic as it could have cut my communications between the two halves of my continental holdings and allowed for forking attacks on the adjoining cities.

I had one tile's culture worth of water between you and me at the very western tip of our territories that I was able to use to drop off the spy. That's what I built that one random galley in Red Star for. Yeah, spies were pretty important for me this game - one reached Alhazard's stack, moving in a straight line from my territory from when built, just in time to warn me of his impending attack on Mardoc, giving me the opportunity to respond. Like I said above, timing was everything for me this game, and I seemed to come out pretty lucky.

on the iron. Yeah, I was pretty glad from an in-game perspective when I saw/it was pointed out to me what you wouldn't be able to build because of it, though I didn't realize it precluded frigates/ships-of-the-line, too.