[SPOILERS] PB9 Lurker Thread

[MindyMcCready]

Are you referring to this?

Bigger offered me a straightup tech deal of education and gunpowder for constitution and optics, so I took that.

Looks like a legitimate offer.

hehe. thanks tt for giving me the most fun turns to play .


i just offered this. at was researching education so my timeline was running out. now at least i can offer him liberalism, if he ever discovers something again I don't have. he accepted while i was doing war manuevers.
I think he could have picked up a city or two if he joined in the war. I did at least make him waste some gold partially researching education (at least 3 turns at 100%) so there's that. he's working on banking now, which I can't give him anyway (NTT).

[NobleHelium]

OK never mind then.

[MindyMcCready]

For a second I thought that AT was going to surprise me and declare on Cornflakes. Looks like he took the sweentener from Cornflakes instead. Its not clear that he realizes how much he's propping up Cornflakes with this move. Still banking for a spare iron would be pretty hard to pass up. Wish he would say more about his metagame thoughts.

So about Bigger/TT,....he captured one city and was offered 3 more. Should he be taking peace while his army if fully intact or pushing Cornflakes hard. IF he manages to take Apocalypse he's going to have a tough time holding it once CF gets cannons.

So,...few....comments for a lurker thread that's possibly seeing a rare successful dogpile.

[BaII]

really most of these dogpiles are not successive? Then again, Spullla did manage to hold of a 5 man dogpile, so maybe it's not as easy to pull one of as I think......

[Krill]

If you know what you are doing, defending is stupidly easy. Settling disposable front cities, flanking HA/knights/cav, sentry chariots, correct use of whipping...use of choke points, not settling so cities can be forked (or ensuring that you have enough units to destroy any fast mover stack that tries to do it). And all you have to do is ensure 1 player that attacks gets nothing out of an attack to make it unprofitable for him, so a smart player backs away. Stupid players carry on and lose their stack and get nothing, falling behind one of the other dogpilers who got more cities and lost less units from the war.

[MindyMcCready]

Yeah, even Jowy, technologically behind, fewest cities, forests throughout his territory, no catapults and no mobility survived a 2:1 and a 3:1 and deterred a 4:1. Sounds pretty unbelievable but it happened this game.

One of the complications in this game is that TT and AT almost came to blows over the capture of Jowy's city of Rannoch. So lots can happen to save the defender.

[thestick]

The game technically allows AT to declare war on Cornflakes to cancel the Iron deal, right? Letting him walk off scot-free with Banking? That seems very abusable if 'declare war on X' shopping is thrown in. Yes, eventually it'll get to the point where no one trusts 'lump sum for resource/GPT deal' and the point will be moot.

[MindyMcCready]

Wow, still anyone's game.

I'm a little surprised that AT is not happy with his deals with Cornflakes. How much land would TT get if Cornflakes couldn't make Knights and soon cannons?

He won huge diplo there from Cornflakes. TT is now the favourite to win were he not entering the world of grudge match with Cornflakes and AT is sitting at #2 score with a solid research advantage. AT's also getting close to the infrastructure level he'd want before making a push to acquire more land. I would have assumed that that would be Jowy's land, but he's talking about Cornflakes.

AT's pretty much sitting where he'd want to be. Keep banking on Cornflake's goodwill, watch TT and CF batter each other senseless over Azzaland, keep an eye out for Commodore while taking Jowy's land.

Can't wait to see how 2metra mixes it up now that TT's the new #1. Likely another feather in AT's cap in my opinion.

[teleh]

When I read the threads yesterday Bigger/TT had 7GPT at zero percent research. They've been taking a lot of cities... hopefully they know what they're doing because apart from capgold/razegold they don't seem to have much of an income. (Or didn't, yesterday.) (<-- yay indiscernible emoticons )

[teleh]

ok, he's getting iron from AT. what can I do about this? what are the spy rules, can I "destroy improvement?"

This asked in-thread but I can't see an easily accessible ruleset in the main threads - also interested to know.