I received the MP smackdown!

[Kodii]

Good game to you guys. We decided to call it a draw after three hours of game time. We played a 2v2 game, on a wheel map. 'Old World' vs. 'New World', that is, mostly_harmless and mucco (both in Europe) against myself and mbuna120 (both in North America).

I must ask, what is that setting that eliminates a team when a certain number of cities are destroyed? I was hoping that setting was on, after I razed two of mucco's cities

I'm leaving tomorrow, and won't be back until Monday, so have fun as you continue to play MP games! I'll write up a short report about our game when I get back.

[Speaker]

Here is my report on last night's MP game.

Happy reading!

[Ruff_Hi]

Nice write up - interesting to see it from the other side. That was my first MP game and I felt ... ... flustered. I will be better prepared next time.

Re Memphis - I didn't really see the unlucky victories I got (see flustered comment above). What I did see was that I couldn't kill the last two units with two attacking Kishes who both had 95% chance of victories ... grrrr. Thx for the info about swords. What about medics?

[Gogf]

Medics are great because they let you keep up an offensive or heal your defensive units faster in case of an emergency. If you think it's possible that you're going to be attacked, it's usually a good idea to get a Medic unit in the city in danger. A low strength unit that can avoid combat (and thus the risk of dying) is generally a good choice. In Warlords, using a Great General for a Medic III unit might save you later on, or provided enough of an advantage to finish off an opponent.

Nice writeup Speaker. Sounds like it was a fun game !

[mucco]

Good game to you guys. We decided to call it a draw after three hours of game time. We played a 2v2 game, on a wheel map. 'Old World' vs. 'New World', that is, mostly_harmless and mucco (both in Europe) against myself and mbuna120 (both in North America).

I must ask, what is that setting that eliminates a team when a certain number of cities are destroyed? I was hoping that setting was on, after I razed two of mucco's cities

I'm leaving tomorrow, and won't be back until Monday, so have fun as you continue to play MP games! I'll write up a short report about our game when I get back.

Remember, I kindly allowed you to burn my cities only because I was concentrated on my attack at the center of the map Seriously, it was my first time playinng wheel, first time playing against humans, and first time with a time limit, which was the worst thing of all. I got so confused that I did some "sub-optimal" things such as forgetting to have a border with Kodii, and finding his SoDs in the middle of my empire, or using an engineer to lightbulb a tech that was 2 turns away . If it wasn't for mostly_harmless, who helped me during war-time by giving me advice (and horse archers), the game would have finished in far less than 3 hours... A very exciting game, overall.
I think the key of my resistance (my two core cities were far more guarded than the ones Kodii razed) was the technological edge we had. In the middle ages, it's a very difficult thing to overcome a combination of cats, crossbows and longbows, which counter very effectively the maces. The first unit that can effectively break this defence is the musket, which comes quite late and still isn't THAT strong for the attack. How does the trebuchet work in Warlords? That could be a balancing unit.

[mbuna120]

Nice write up - interesting to see it from the other side. That was my first MP game and I felt ... ... flustered. I will be better prepared next time.

This feeling I understand!! 8) Yes, both of my MP games I've played so far I've felt a little rushed. It's funny, because I considered myself a fast player and was worried that I didn't take enough time with moves in single player, yet in MP, I'm so rushed, some of the turns end on me before I'm done deciding what to do... But I'll adapt, I'm sure.

I wanted to say a few things about both games. First, the one vs. speaker. When I lost that city early on, I had probably six units right outside the city, but because of the spastic/sporadic (at least to me) movements of mine enemies, I thought I had a turn more to move my defenders into my city... the real kicker is that I think I had time to move in before the attack came, and I may have been able to save my city. All in all, though, having not had to deal with such an aggressor (AI doesn't attack half so well) I didn't realize what a waste Monty's "special" unit (Jaguar) actually was against axemen. That was a real eye opener. Especially considering I was headed towards the enemy's English capital with 2 twice promoted jags and a promoted warrior (aggressive civ plus barracks) that were suddenly smacked down by axemen. I thought the city was unguarded as my scout saw no defenders, but I think maybe it was Maniac's units that saw me coming as he sent defenders over? I don't know. I may have posted some of this in another post, I don't remember, but typing it seems familiar, so if it's a duplicate, I apologize, guys

Of course, with those two blunders, losing my 3 scouting units, and my front city, it was easy to see why I was the likely target for the opponents to finish the game. I counter attacked with suicide cats like crazy, but like Speaker said, 2vs1 is a hard matchup. Though Ruff_hi? I think it was him... sent me a few axe units to help out, so thanks for that at least
This was so fun, but so disappointing, because I felt that I had a strong start, and I blew it with what I can only consider would be "noob mistakes".

As for my other MP game, last night... bear with me any who are still reading this... apparently I ramble...as for that game, there were two points that I lamented in that game, both revolving around Nottingham. Damn English! :mad: The first is when I had units around that city, I was ready to attack with suicide cats, and I had two units to every longbowment, and felt I could raze the city. (I was assuming the 2 city razing thing again) I suicided the cats, checked stats, then attacked.. but somehow, inbetween looking at his city defender's stats, and actually clicking on my units to attack, 3 horse archers appeared in the city at full strength, and killed two of my units before I knew what was happening! Again, I don't understand the move structure of MP?! What is going on, am I just too slow? But at any rate, I advanced a city to control an important point on the map later and built up forces there, but I decided to try for nottingham a little later. I advanced a stack to it again, but was sitting in defense waiting on other cats to arrive to suicide with. However, in the meantime, war broke out on the front of my south advanced city, and for a turn I didn't check on nottingham! Next thing I know, as I'm attacking a stack of units in the south, I see all these (your units are dying painful deaths) messages from up near nottingham I didn't see the stack of cats and units my opponent, mostly_harmless, (yeah right!) had sent in defense/counter attack of my units near nottingham So I lost about 8-9 units. I had to switch to all out defense, as my teammate went for a last ditch effort to raze a second city of our opponent. He did it, Yah! But apparently we didn't have the 2 city razing thing in place? Oh well, we accepted a draw then, as we had gotten long on time, and our european buddies needed some sleep Again, though, very fun.

Well, thanks to any who took the time to read all this. I'm not good at writing reports yet, and I'm having trouble setting up a webpage to put reports on anyway, but I'm sure you'll all hear more from me as time goes on. As this 12 hrs worth of reading post suggests, I like to be heard.

Jason

[mostly_harmless]

The Sheriff of Nottingham speaking:
Hi Jason/mbuna120,
beware the fog of war. Dark armies are lurking in it! ;-)
You guys had me worry for Nottingham twice. In fact I was loosing units against your two stacks at probably 2:1. But checking the MFG graph, I think my war industry was a little more productive than yours.
As for the moves. They are simultaneous. I don't like the infamous doublemove, but I do use the tactic to move defenders into a city inbetween the collateral attacks and the city raiders. I also suicided my own share of cats against your attackers twice loosing tons of them. All this is likely to pass by unnoticed in the heat of a two front war on fast turn timer.

Good game, and good gameplay from all of you, considering you were fairly new to MP (mucco and mbuno that is, no idea about Kodii). I hope to play with you again some time.

mh

[mbuna120]

I don't like the infamous doublemove

I really would like an explanation of what this "doublemove" is

But I have to say I'm glad to hear at least you were worried for nottingham, even if I couldn't sac it. :mad:

Fun game

[mostly_harmless]

A doublemove is when you move for example a large stack of cavalry into the enemy territory almost at the last second of a turn and move them again further into the territory or even attack a border city first thing in the following turn. With mounted units that gives them a virtual movement 4. You will never see them coming.
I don't know what can be done against that. <shrug>
I found out the hard way, and actually tried it myself to see how it works without success. I always seem to have a long lag at the beginning of the turn.
Making my MP playing fast is the one thing I have to really work on.
Does anyone of the profs know a good thread with tips btw.?

[mucco]

As for my other MP game, last night... bear with me any who are still reading this... apparently I ramble...as for that game, there were two points that I lamented in that game, both revolving around Nottingham. Damn English! :mad: The first is when I had units around that city, I was ready to attack with suicide cats, and I had two units to every longbowment, and felt I could raze the city. (I was assuming the 2 city razing thing again) I suicided the cats, checked stats, then attacked.. but somehow, inbetween looking at his city defender's stats, and actually clicking on my units to attack, 3 horse archers appeared in the city at full strength, and killed two of my units before I knew what was happening! Again, I don't understand the move structure of MP?! What is going on, am I just too slow? But at any rate, I advanced a city to control an important point on the map later and built up forces there, but I decided to try for nottingham a little later. I advanced a stack to it again, but was sitting in defense waiting on other cats to arrive to suicide with. However, in the meantime, war broke out on the front of my south advanced city, and for a turn I didn't check on nottingham! Next thing I know, as I'm attacking a stack of units in the south, I see all these (your units are dying painful deaths) messages from up near nottingham I didn't see the stack of cats and units my opponent, mostly_harmless, (yeah right!) had sent in defense/counter attack of my units near nottingham So I lost about 8-9 units. I had to switch to all out defense, as my teammate went for a last ditch effort to raze a second city of our opponent. He did it, Yah! But apparently we didn't have the 2 city razing thing in place? Oh well, we accepted a draw then, as we had gotten long on time, and our european buddies needed some sleep Again, though, very fun.

Time has been my biggest problem in that game, too! It was my first MP game against humans, and the time limit was really too strict in those turns that require many unit moves. As your southern "neighbor", I had to deal with that city in the center of the map, and was never able to reach it because of the stack of units you piled up there. At some point, you eventually attacked - I think it was a planned move, as you and Kodii entered my territory the same turn - and tried to destroy the counter stack I had put on a forest. You succeeded, but then you didn't go further, although you had more than enough units to pillage all of my territories. Was that for a lack of time?

About the fight mechanism of MP, as far as I understand all players play their turn together, so while you are moving your units to attack, so does your opponent, and this is why you had casualties while not attacking on your turn. This is not so harsh as RTS games MP, which are a real mess, but the far more complicated structure of these games pushes the player to think much before acting, and this is often the most effective way to play in SP, but against humans you don't get this opportunity. I've learned two things from the MP combat system in civ in this game: first, group and promote your units of the same type, because when you'll need them you won't have time to pick the "right" promotion; and second, don't look at percentages because it wastes so much time! Just think quickly at the best unit of your stack, and attack with that group of units. This is especially true for cats, when you have a big stack of them it's "mandatory" to promote and send them all at once, you won't probably need them to bombard anyway. Also turn on fast combat, that saved me in the second part of the game. Well, almost .

I don't know about the fight near nottingham, because I was too concentrated on my side of the world, but I noticed two mistakes you and your ally did: the first, which you did, was not positioning your troops on some kind of defensive terrain, choosing instead the flat iron tile. If that was your only metal source, then the big defence is obvious, but I think you had some other source elsewhere. Maybe you made the same mistake up near nottingham. The other flaw that I noticed was from Kodii's attacks. While being really impressive, they were only composed by maces, thus a combination of cats and crossbows could take them down easily - once it had reached them... I didn't see the second stack until it had gone past my big city. If there had been a couple jumbos and horse archers, I couldn't have stopped the attack easily.

One question came to my mind while playing the game: how important is, overall, expansion? My point is that in this game, I had two well developed cities, which despite the lack of hills could produce a big deal of units. Mostly_harmless, on the other side, had 5-6 cities, which were quite small, except for the first two, IIRC. As a result, I had fewer points, but could afford a sizeable army (I recall being pretty much at par with my two enemies, while my ally had fewer power in the graph), I had quite a good economy, thanks to the developed financial-trait cottages, which contributed by at least 40% to the team research, and could afford some high-cost civics like police state, vassalage and OR, which I suspect my ally couldn't. Then, what's the point of expanding too much? You, mbuna, building a city in the middle, had to drain forces from the main front in nottingham, to defend that city from a possible double attack. That city was unlikely to become much of a help in the economic/productive process. I have often read of the importance of expansion, and this is surely true for SP, but under the conditions of the last game it seemed to be more of a drawback. What do you think about it?

EDIT - Oh, sorry for the long post