[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Krill]

Mandrake was irrelevant to any defense you had. At most it would have been a lightening rod.

I had 4xp galleons and 13xp swords and maces, one per turn. The best you could ever do is cram units into cities. You never had any defence that was viable against me except a diplomatic one, and you had nothing I wanted.

Even if I had taken and consolidated all of China, why would I still want to attack you? Why did you think I wanted to actually taken anything you had?

[Bacchus]

Mandrake was irrelevant to any defense you had. At most it would have been a lightening rod.

A lightning rod would have been just fine. The point wasn't just that you could raze any of our cities if you applied yourself to it, the point was that with Mandrake in your hands you could have done it with surprise.

We never thought you had any immediate plans on our land, but longterm with Mandrake in your hands any of our efforts on other fronts are basically pointless, we would be living under constant threat of an unstoppable 1-turn alpha strike. So, whatever we were doing, we would only be allowed to do as long as it helped you win, as soon as that stopped to be the case, you would have slaughtered our core. What were we meant to do, accept that "Well, if Krill ever wants to kill us, he will always be able to, that's just life"?

Also, if we have no defense against you, as you say, doesn't it make sense to fight you to the death and immediately, before your machine is quite switched on and fully in place? Why delay the inevitable, if the time is only working against us?

[GermanJoey]

Mandrake was irrelevant to any defense you had. At most it would have been a lightening rod.

A lightning rod would have been just fine. The point wasn't just that you could raze any of our cities if you applied yourself to it, the point was that with Mandrake in your hands you could have done it with surprise.

We never thought you had any immediate plans on our land, but longterm with Mandrake in your hands any of our efforts on other fronts are basically pointless, we would be living under constant threat of an unstoppable 1-turn alpha strike. So, whatever we were doing, we would only be allowed to do as long as it helped you win, as soon as that stopped to be the case, you would have slaughtered our core. What were we meant to do, accept that "Well, if Krill ever wants to kill us, he will always be able to, that's just life"?

Also, if we have no defense against you, as you say, doesn't it make sense to fight you to the death and immediately, before your machine is quite switched on and fully in place? Why delay the inevitable, if the time is only working against us?

But if you guys had Galleons, then you also had Optics. You stick a single Caravel behind Mandrake and zap, the surprise vector is gone.

Also Krill had like, no units when you invaded. Him thinking that he's immune to invasion despite this is one thing, but how the hell do you expect him to attack you in that situation?? You gotta actually look at the facts on the ground and not just what the map looks like zoomed out in world-view with culture lit up.

[Krill]

So basically, having 1 turn of warning lets you move units that are...somewhere on the map, into your coastal cities? Is that really enough?

Maybe it's a psychological safety net but any coastal invasion that isn't just razing cities wouldn't care about it. I don't buy that as a rational reason, otherwise we end up in a place where we alphastrike every opportunity.

[GermanJoey]

Why on earth would you attack someone and then just expect them to say,"ho hum, ok, I guess I'll take this loss."

Actually, perhaps I'm misremembering that part. In any case, long-term it was obvious that you had to be taken down for victory to be in sight, there were no avenues for expansion that would have yielded growth large enough and rapid enough to catch up with you. Our collapse in a war against Krill gave dtay the hope of such expansion, but even that was pretty difficult and in the end not quite reachable for him. A more realistic option for us was some kind of dogpile against Greece, from which all of Inca, Zulu, Carthage and Mongolia stood to benefit quite a lot.

I mean, ok, if you're going to win you're gonna have to beat every other player eventually, but why would attacking me *then* be a good idea? I think you're underestimating how difficult it is to invade someone over sea in the pre-modern era. I mean, for context, dtay and I razed of, IIRC, 8 or 9 cities of each others' in total? But this is with something like 200 frigates+ironclads and maybe 30 galleons full of rifles, cavalry, cannons, and even infantry. I mean, hell, to boat and raze a city with a single D1CG3 longbow I would allocate 3 full galleons of drafted rifles, because it'll take 3-4 to kill the longbow and 4-5 to kill the drafted rifle that'll pop up when I get close enough to spot.

[Krill]

Also, castles work well, add in muskets and no worries, have to wait until frigates to bomb them down, and at that point SoL can block and counter. And maybe OB and, you know, some form of positive reply.

[RefSteel]

While I'm amused, how did RefSteel manage to conclude that we razed two Chinese cities? I think he mistook an unpause with China having queued whips for this, and I suppose they never had contact with them... not going to tell him, though, because only this way can we get blamed for ruining everyone's game in some manner. :mischief:

Hilariously, I considered this later in some other context and never connected it to these imaginary razes. I remember doing the C&D really lazily and poorly apart from some really obvious stuff early; I'm not actually sure if Ventessel even planted enough cities for you to have razed two of them! I was certainly confused about the logistics!

[GermanJoey]

Also, castles work well, add in muskets and no worries, have to wait until frigates to bomb them down, and at that point SoL can block and counter. And maybe OB and, you know, some form of positive reply.

Castles turn out to be insanely good if Free Market isn't a valuable civic, which I think wasn't on this map only because a lot of players were keeping OB much closer to their chest. The econ merchant still being there around T200 (and still feeling like it was a tough decision as to whether to just grab it) isn't something I can recall ever happening in any multiplayer game on this site.

[Bacchus]

I think the biggest misunderstanding is that our worries regarding Krill were tactical. They weren't, they were strategic. So we didn't "expect him to attack", and we were not worried about defense capabilities in the medium term, dtay was a much more prominent threat at that timescale. The particular timing of attack was simply in response to Krill not yet enjoying the massive dominance that he was sure to (and that we couldn't stop whatever we did). It was never "can we coexist with Krill the next 30 turns", in fact if anything at that timescale we wanted Krill as an ally, mentioned somewhere in the beginning of this thread. It was more a question of "and then what".

Would the extra 1t warning provided by Mandrake be relevant for defense against a coastal raid? I would say so. Firstly, it's at least a couple of turns -- Mandrake is taken, units get loaded back, boats move. Secondly you learn a lot about composition, direction, etc.

Blocking Krill's attacks with SoL is bullshit, the balance of productive capacities on that sea was such that we were never blocking any attack navally, Krill would always have the brute force to overcome it.

[Krill]

Actually Mandrake as a lightening rod is a red herring. It's better to just blast past it and attack mainland cities and come back for Mandrake at leisure. In that case it's actually just information gathering but provides no other benefits. Like what happened when you did capture, I then ignored it, dismantled your navy, took all your other island cities and then killed everything in Mandrake.

Sorry Bacchus, but I'd say that keeping me pointed at China is a better defense than Mandrake. You might have lived.

In terms of strategic advantages...why were you worried about me when dtay was there? I don't buy that reasoning, dtay was just better off in tech and power and you were worried that in 40 turns I would behave threat? That just seems like... long-sightedness.