[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[WilliamLP]

Ichabod razed the city, logged out, and hasn't ended turn. I'm assuming he's waiting for me to accept or deny some diplo peace deal to play the rest of his turn and act accordingly but I'm not going to log in and give him that information. And I at least want the dignity to clean up whatever wounded unit punished me for being dumb.

I'm seriously thinking about offering Commodore the two island cities for peace now. We won the moral victory, we can't get the units over there back, and I'm pretty sure those cities won't contribute before he can raze them with rifles.

Also Bacchus is starting to whip a lot, and it's not a mystery what that means. One nice thing about Retep being alive is that the pincushion of protective archers which were harmless attackers was a great barrier to Bacchus.

Anyway, Ichabod staying peaceful for a while was our main chance to elevate our standing in this game. Now there really isn't anything to play for but to make it difficult for him. This will be Bacchus's golden opportunity to take some of that south land.

Also, I don't think I'm going to have the desire to debate much about the remainder of this game or make reports as detailed as I've been doing. I think we put on a decent showing but in the end we started 7 tiles away from a guy hell bent on killing us, and are against 3 current opponents, including the guy whose only hostile concern is us, and started on a marble plains hill with craploads of really nice land to peacefully expand into, a completely secure coastal bordered empire, and an early conquest (albeit with poor land) who didn't put up a very good defense.

I'll probably get Optics now since it's 1 turn away, and might mean we can tear up some of Ichabod's nets, I hope. Maybe there's a trick we can pull somewhere with an unpromoted GG pike and a W2 mace.

[WilliamLP]

Also, if I were dictator of RB, misclicks are part of the game, and we'd play the board without reloading. Don't let your daughter bang on the keyboard during a war turn. This "raze the city and pause plz" diplo is pretty bullshit.

[Mardoc]

I can see why it's annoying, but I don't agree that it's diplo.

But yeah, no reloads for 'I miscounted tiles/culture and left my stack in range of your stack where I thought it was safe', seems equivalent to no reloads for 'I meant to click the other button and I forgot'. There's such a spectrum of possible mistakes. But...I'm not the dictator of this game either.

[WilliamLP]

I can see why it's annoying, but I don't agree that it's diplo.

The right way to handle it is that misclicks happen and shut up and play. Reloads are for game bugs and such.

The second way to handle it is pause and wait and see if Brick thinks a reload is appropriate.

The wrong way is for someone to offer to make in-game actions to try and counter another player's in game actions and negotiate which player will make which (legal) in game actions when. Negotiating in-game actions is diplo.

Also: I definitely want this game to end now as soon as possible, so my future posts will be colored as such.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Also: I definitely want this game to end now as soon as possible, so my future posts will be colored as such.

This is definitely because you want to focus your attention on a huge, crazy new RB mod pitboss game, right? Sorry, I know it sucks playing out the string at the end of a lost cause game. Keep on battling!

[WilliamLP]

I know it sucks playing out the string at the end of a lost cause game.

Really, you've experienced something like that before?

But yeah, Ichabod may have found a hanging bit of foundation I left exposed in this house of cards. And we're soon going to have rifles coming from two sides and an increasing tech disadvantage, from two players with absolutely secure borders and nothing to do other than take land from us. And then there's another guy who hates our guts to the south, lol.

We're forced to sacrifice even more future economy and game interest to stay alive a little longer here. Pressing on this is absolutely the right thing for Ichabod to do, though it doesn't make for fun turns. (And I maintain that I wish he'd just do this cleanly without clock bullshit. I.e. not playing in the second half for the first 170 turns, and then suddenly making sure he logs in and makes a move in the middle of my turns before postponing the rest for later, when I always play as soon as I can.)

Still it's probably not fair for game balance to start playing 5 minute turns.

And this game is going to go on for quite a while. Scooter doesn't want to quit, and with Plako's position I'm pretty sure he's going to want to play it out too, and he may have a legitimate chance if he can catch up in tech and maybe eat Bacchus (and then some of us) while Mack is busy with the rest of the world.

And I love the idea of PB18 but I get a premonition I'd get gang-attacked from 4 sides on turn 20 or something. So I really don't think I can take another game until this one is over.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Fair enough, but you don't have to invest an hour per turn in the hopeless endgame unless you're a compulsive player (like me). For all the ill said about Kuro's game in PB11, he got the hopeless endgame right. Log in, whip everything, log out. He lived far longer than he should have and without having to invest much time playing out a boring position. Yet he did justice to the game balance. You recall the price it cost to finally kill him off and how long that took. He did the game balance justice in denying you his lands for as long as he did. You can't really ask much more than that for someone in such an irrelevant position. If you get completely jaded on playing out the turns here (and your faithful dedlurker/warmonger Mindy doesn't want to take over), there's nothing wrong in my opinion about deciding to strangle your economy and embrace the whip hand. Log in, whip/draft, end turn, log out. If someone wants your land they'll get tiny cities after they kill everything to clear it.

[disclaimer]Since I'm globally lurking, this post comes with the disclaimer that this advice is not a specific recommendation for you in this game based upon your position or the possible actions of your rivals. It is a general point of view for anyone playing out the string who doesn't want to abandon the game or upset balance, but who doesn't want to waste tons of time playing out an unfun game. We play for fun, if it isn't fun, don't waste your time (just don't ruin the fun for everyone else). [/disclaimer]

Preview edit: And yeah...for previous examples me playing out the string, see every game in my signature line. One day maybe I'll play a game where I'm still in a competitive position when the game is decided.

[Ceiliazul]

[disclaimer]Since I'm globally lurking, this post comes with the disclaimer that this advice is not a specific recommendation for you in this game based upon your position or the possible actions of your rivals. It is a general point of view for anyone playing out the string who doesn't want to abandon the game or upset balance, but who doesn't want to waste tons of time playing out an unfun game. We play for fun, if it isn't fun, don't waste your time (just don't ruin the fun for everyone else). [/disclaimer]

Preview edit: And yeah...for previous examples me playing out the string, see every game in my signature line. One day maybe I'll play a game where I'm still in a competitive position when the game is decided.

great post Xenu

[WilliamLP]

So let's look this mess:




The only relieving thing is that I thought I might have left open a lane for two-movers into Don Giovanni and let him raze a hill castle city for nothing. He razed Boheme which was relatively poor after recovering from its last fall.

The larger part of his army, including his siege is SE of Don G now. I expect the victorious stuff to retreat and eventually merge with it.






My aim in defending was to make him trade down in hammers if he wanted the city.

He lost 8 knights and a horse archer, and killed 8 pikes, 1 elephant, 1 spear. So we did at least get the better of the hammer count by a little bit.

I wish I'd had knights in position to counter-attack but they were centralized to react to any of three possible directions.

Ichabod has lots of EP on us now, presumably he has courthouses everywhere now. There's no way we can get graphs back and he probably has visibility everywhere that matters.

I decided to adopt Mindy's preferred style of dealing with Commodore:




Begging for mercy... The reader can decide if this is bad mannered to the rest of the world, but I'd like to get the units back from the island, Comm's blockade ensures we can't do that without assembling a force of caravels, and we don't have time for that. And the two cities won't be useful until Comm has rifles arriving anyway.

Do I think this will stop him from shipping rifles to our west coast anyway, since it's his best play for additional land? Hah, no.

The lacking army:




I'm still going optics, because if I were Ichabod I'd find caravels emerging from ocean fog and ripping up my nets to be rather a pain in the ass.

Unfortunately he killed our GG pike. I would have loved to have had him on a boat for a dismount and morale-move trick. Our W2 quechua will promote to a mace and look for a 2-move forest trick at Ich's new city, but I'm not optimistic.

2 turns before we can go back to Slavery / Vassalage.

[BaII]

You do realize that Caravels cannot pillage nets?