[NO PLAYERS] PBEM 7 Map Making & Lurkers

[MJW (ya that one)]

War weariness was actually not that bad. The main problem for England is that they have blown their load and will lose control of the seas.

singaboy/sullla's would have won if it weren't for that dumb city plant or without getting mind crushed by the VA but as it is; it's a draw.

singaboy/sullla admit to not going all out for the VA like CMF/Woden did. So it wasn't a coinflip it was making the right call. 2x production >>> everything

Don't have much to say but expect I cannot wait until sullla trashes the VA.

[Japper007]

I wonder if the face of the game will shift radically again once choppables run out. Doesn't look like any particular party will close out the game before then.

[Cornflakes]

It looks to me like the "bugged" vision that CMF has on Roma might be coming from the German spy that just succeeded in stealing gold.

[suboptimal]

My experience with spies in SP is that they have a vision range of two from the city they are placed in. CMF seeing what the spy sees is probably an MP bug. However, that region is much larger so something else is going on.

I have to wonder if some of the weirdness being experienced right now is patch-related. I believe we've seen instances in other games here (and it has been reported elsewhere) that saved games that cross patch version experience anomalous behaviors.

[T-hawk]

Maybe the spy sees everything that the city and its tiles see? That latter might add up to what Chevalier is seeing?

[suboptimal]

That doesn't fit -- one of Roma's tiles (the iron) is in the fog, city borders have visibility range of 1 and there's nothing above that horizontal road. We'll see what happens if Archduke moves the spy (and reports it).

[Cornflakes]

Spies are sent to the respective district associated with their mission. The steal gold mission takes place at the commercial hub, and all tiles that are revealed are either within 3 tiles of the commercial hub, or hills in the 4th ring from the CH (and the vision rules reveal hills that are an extra tile distant than normal vision allows). The tiles in 2nd/3rd ring to the commercial hub which are NOT revealed have line of sight blocked by the two mountains in the area.

[suboptimal]

Just looked at the screenshot again -- the spy's 3-tile vision and the Nubia ironclad just visible at the top of the screenshot takes care of visibility north of the road.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Just finished reading through the lurker thread. I wanted to respond to a few comments, mostly on the final war and my plan to hit Genova. Note that I'm not saying I was correct, just saying what my thinking was. 

Is CMF map as bad as he said? Man i know i would quit right away when find this, from what he said he got a very bad map compare to others...Was that hard to gave him some rivers and some strategic resources? I understand the RB ethic the one which play the hand you were dealt but seems he got no hand, but a punch in eyes...I remeber in pb2 , the one with sulla and spearker, that there were as well teams which practicaly had no rivers and very few grasland while SS team has lots of them and  a very good land,I didnt said much then as i was  a begginer here but the diference between theyr lands and Nakor for example was huge, the only team whci had something comparale was  Atheletes team. If teh difernce is that big between CMF and other like in that game thats huge...

No, it's not as imbalanced as I made it out, I was just venting. Partially Woden and I had a communication issue - I never pushed him on that river site north of my capital, for example, and I could have planted a city there. This was a weakness of mine all game long - I rarely talked with Woden about internal civ development, because I'm just plain not good at that aspect of the game (as demonstrated here). Which is especially dumb, because Woden is a really solid builder! I should have been asking him for help and advice a lot more than I did!

Most of the strategics didn't matter - I had iron/horses enough via trades with Woden, but I did lose out on the improvements I could have done. And all my cities had to be on the sea, because I only had fresh water for 3 (plus the 4th that Woden had pinned)! The lake near Valetta was useless since it was entirely surrounded by desert, so I had the single river and lake to settle all my cities around. And, of course, no natural wonder nearby, but you can't help that. 

I'm still bitter that Rome got 3 coals in one city while I had 0 across my entire empire, though. 

I think the optimism from cmf/Woden is that they would be happy with a 20% chance given that they feel like they might have no shot.


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Basically, yes. About turn 90 or so Rome/China took a pretty big lead over us that we were never able to catch up on, at that point my game was trying to be to stay within striking distance and hope for an opening.

The naval battle is probably going to come down to who gets the engage honestly, which if he plays it right, should be CMF. From personal experience, you would be surprised how much frigates (especially those buffed with GA's), can do to next gen ships. I don't have a good sense of the numbers though, so all things being equal, I call it for Sullla. But, CMF should be able to win with a slight numerical advantage and first strike. 

The land battle I don't have enough data, probably Sullla and Singaboy. 

I don't think they'll make progress fast enough to be unassailable by the time Archduke comes for them though.

Sorry I messed up the first strike. :/ The sea battle was close enough that not losing half my fleet in the first blow would have been enough to tip things my way, I think.

It's interesting CMF thinks he will be able to attack Genova as soon as the war starts. Sullla has a decent number of ships in the canal, and unless Sullla just leaves them in there b/t now and the start of the war, it could be a bit hairy.

Really looking forward to seeing how the attack on Nan Madol plays out. True, CMF's culture output will be crippled. But if Sullla can't get in and out quickly, depending on CMF's numbers in the area, Sullla's strike force could be in a dangerous position. If CMF can eliminate Sullla's strike force there as well as the one currently hiding in the canal, Sullla will be hard-pressed to get any ships into play, and CMF would have free rein to blast away at opposing ground forces. Also...

One idea I wish CMF would bring back is the attack on Lisbon, which he briefly flirted with a long time ago. Sullla doesn't seem to have vision of the waters off Firenze's coast, so CMF could sneak through and do massive economic damage to both Sullla and Singaboy by razing Lisbon. It would go along with CMF's stated goal of "hurt Sullla as much as possible".

--

also, this is unrelated and in the past, but I think it's worth mentioning that when Archduke made the decision to ally with Sullla/Singaboy, the way Emperor K had been playing had not given Archduke a lot of psychological support re: their chances vs Sullla/Singaboy. 1), Emperor K's economy seemed to really drag the whole game. (Maybe this was unavoidable, I don't know.) 2), when the global situation was most fraught, Emperor K seemed to just defer to Archduke on everything without offering a lot of analysis or ideas. 3), when he did offer his opinion, he wholeheartedly supported attacking Woden. I'm not trying to hate on Emperor K here, just noting psychologically Archduke feeling like he had to do the majority of the heavy lifting may have factored into his unwillingness to take on Singaboy and Sullla while waiting for Woden and CMF. (Note both of them constantly calling Sulla and Singaboy "team vet/vet", which iirc Archduke started.) So when CMF and people in this thread were putting the responsibility for the situation all on Archduke, I think some of it needs to be passed toward Emperor K.

--

And about frigates vs battleships: I didn't look too carefully what happened in PBEM4, but iirc a group of 4 or so of Woden's battleships were caught out of position by a horde of oledavy's frigates and annihilated. I can imagine Sullla making small tactical blunders, but I feel like he's careful enough not to lose 4 battleships at once? or are CMF's frigates simply going to be too fast for Sullla to ever have a good tactical position? I feel like the extra range on the battleships will make a difference if Sullla keeps his ships massed.

I mentioned this a bit in my thread when Woden brought it up, but there was basically no time for a Lisbon strike - I upgraded to frigates just before the war (about when I estimated I'd run out of gold to upgrade quadriremes and swapped to slow-building instead), which didn't leave me time to get a strike force to Lisbon and back again. 

By the time war breaks out I'll have 4 caravels, 24 frigates, and 4 Sea Dogs, with another wave of 4 frigates and 4 sea dogs shortly finishing. 

I will have 16 frigates and 5 ironclads here at the time that combat begins on Turn 146.

Not as big of a numerical advantage as I was expecting. This is definitely coming down to which ever side lands the first good blow, especially with the promotion advantage Sullla holds

Yeah, note that at the time I finished the VA I had only Actium founded on the sea to be fought over. That mistake had been made a long time in the past, though. 

Even 5 more turns would have been enough to finish chopping out at Midway and Lepanto and I'd have had an even bigger advantage. I went as fast as I could, but it wasn't quite enough.

With the English movement advantage, would it not have been better for CMF to try and completely avoid Sullla's first strike? He could have massed his ships in a big block just northeast of Sullla, then on the turn before DoF expires CMF runs everything the 5 (of the 7 possible) moves away from Sullla where there's no possible way for him to get everything into the combat. Sulla with his 5 move ships would only be able to get a single line of units to attack, but doing so would put him within range for devastating counter attack. If Sulla keeps everything in place on T1 of the war then CMF with his 7 moves has enough to cover the space retreated over, plus attack for the first strike. If Sullla retreats on T1, then CMF first sacrifices a ship to scout out the location, and then moves his ships forward until they are within 5 tiles. Sullla might retreat for a couple turns, but eventually will get pinned against the coast. A few ships could escape down the canal city, but the rest I think could be caught within 3-4 turns of slow advancing. 

Sullla would have the opportunity then to upgrade to Battleships, but the turn of upgrade allows CMF the chance to first strike, and after Sullla retreats out of Nan Madol water on T1 of the war he's only got a few water tiles in his culture where he could do the upgrades.

I've noted this in my thread, but my initial conception was to hit Genova, THEN face Sullla's fleet. I thought he'd be far enough away that I could strike the city and then have time to redeploy. Obviously the main goal was to win control of the sea, but if Sullla could replace his ships just as fast as I could (via canal), then I'd have no advantage at all. my thinking was that if I went for the fleet first, then the city, not only would my losses be roughly equal to Sullla's, but he'd be replacing them just as fast from his southern cities and bringing new ships through Genova, so I'd never reach the canal. So, to try and cut off future ships, trying to hit Genova right away seemed like the right call.

I probably wouldn't have gone for the city in the face of the fleet coming up behind me - I expected either I'd have to slug my way through it, or else not have to face it all - but my instructions to Woden were unclear. 

Remember, I had a tiny timing window to hit. If I waited too long, then Sullla would unlock Steel defenses and the city would have been basically impregnable. 

What can I say but well played Sullla, excellent opening turn   

I'm disappointed by CMF. Between going on a trip and playing in other games, I know he's not playing his best here and it really shows in that opening turn. I wish they had paused the game while CMF is away so that they could actually get a good fight. Sullla should have had a lot of trouble landing a first strike, instead, he gets half CMF's fleet in one go. 

Just goes to show how big a role morale can play in this game. CMF was defeated a long time ago, and the resultant burn out and inattention turned what could have been a competitive battle into a likely slaughter.

Well, the mistakes were made before I went on the trip, although I did play turns 141-145 in a hurry (especially 145, which was played a few hours before departure). I'm sorry to disappoint you nonetheless. D: 

(although, hey, I wasn't defeated mentally! I was gloomy but I still was trying my hardest to win as best I knew how!)

Chevalier thought he needed to blitz Genova as fast as possible.  He never thought otherwise.  And my guess is that giving Sullla time to reach battleships would make it a lost cause.

I think Chevalier has been playing fine.  It's not his fault that every metagame crutch broke Sullla's way: weak neighbor to eat, first strike in every war because turn order, the visibility glitch on the Sea Dogs.

(Should we tell Chevalier about that last?  Seems unfair for the game to tell him his units were invisible when they weren't.)

Unsurprising that I would endorse this, given that T-hawk's defending me here, but this is basically right. I needed to hit Genova before Steel, and slugging my way through the Roman fleet would have made that impossible. My thinking was that failure to take Genova would turn the battle into a coinflip, and if Rome could still replace ships, then its tech edge would eventually win out over my numbers. 

notice that Singaboy was down to just one or two ironclads at the end, when he finally pushed through my last fleet elements. If the battle hadn't been so one-sided to start, my plan would have worked, I think. 

I'm not sure there's a lot Chevalier could do different in his position. None of us knew how Civ 6 gives away the position of invisible units, so we can't fault him for trying to put his sea dogs as he did. (That line where Sullla revealed the game no longer shows where he can't move when at war makes it even more absurd that you can see them at peace!) I don't think there's enough space in the ocean for the movement advantage to really play out, because Sullla had taken a central position in the ocean. 

If it was me I would not have pressed as hard for Genova at the beginning of the war, and tried to land a heavy first strike then gone for Genova -- but I'm not sure that would is better, because there's no guarantee in either way of playing it.

I considered this [first strike -> Genova, instead of Genova -> first strike], but a)I thought that Sullla's fleet would be further away, giving me more time (1-2 turns to hit it), and b)that if I waited, Genova would get Steel defenses. 

Also, good job to point out how small the ocean was - my ships crossed it in only 3-4 turns. I was already basically pressed right up to Jutland's borders when the war broke out, so I was running out of room. If I hadn't held at Nan Madol so long, I probably could have done a better job positioning - but Sullla also could have pressed forward more aggressively, sooner. 

With the English movement advantage, would it not have been better for CMF to try and completely avoid Sullla's first strike? He could have massed his ships in a big block just northeast of Sullla, then on the turn before DoF expires CMF runs everything the 5 (of the 7 possible) moves away from Sullla where there's no possible way for him to get everything into the combat. Sulla with his 5 move ships would only be able to get a single line of units to attack, but doing so would put him within range for devastating counter attack. If Sulla keeps everything in place on T1 of the war then CMF with his 7 moves has enough to cover the space retreated over, plus attack for the first strike. If Sullla retreats on T1, then CMF first sacrifices a ship to scout out the location, and then moves his ships forward until they are within 5 tiles. Sullla might retreat for a couple turns, but eventually will get pinned against the coast. A few ships could escape down the canal city, but the rest I think could be caught within 3-4 turns of slow advancing. 

Sullla would have the opportunity then to upgrade to Battleships, but the turn of upgrade allows CMF the chance to first strike, and after Sullla retreats out of Nan Madol water on T1 of the war he's only got a few water tiles in his culture where he could do the upgrades.

I think you're right. Going for Genova has been disastrous. Like Sullla just mentioned, cities are replaceable, and the naval battle is all, something only he seems to have grasped (not even us lurkers realized how poor a decision going straight for Genova would be). Like you say, CMF should have A) been massed in a huge block and B) been just out of range / just barely in range. Pre-war efforts should have been to keep Sullla as closely pinned to the coast as possible, before backing off at the last possible moment.

EDIT 2: Also this game is over. Tanks will push through former Khmer; Battleships will savage CMF's coast. Singaboy just has to hold the line against AD, which he can with Steel cities and Battleships, until Sullla can bring some of the Roman navy over to support him.

How would I have kept Sullla pinned to the coast? He got first strike, so I had to keep out of HIS range, not him out of mine. Given that he could chase me all over, it seemed like keeping Nan Madol safe, then using my superior movement to flee out of range just before war broke out was the right play. 

note that that worked, I got most of Nan Madol's defense force out of range. The part that didn't work was I deployed my main fleet too far forward - I thought I was out of range or just within range of the edge of Sullla's forces, I certainly didn't think I'd left 10 ships in range to be sunk on the opening turn. 

Shimomo - Sullla and singaboy have both put an amazing amount of effort in to this game so the win is well deserved, but saying Woden and CMF should have done better out of their weak neighbours is forgetting who took over the neighbour they could realistically attack.

Yes, I think it's worth pointing out that Sullla attacked an undefended frontier first, then when he came back had knights and crossbows against Ngaos, while Woden had to slog through thick jungle against a swarm of knights and crossbows. We had a lot steeper odds to face in our war, which is partially on us in terms of preparation but Cornflakes also did a great job chopping out an army. 

Chevalier knew the naval fight was everything.  He decided he was doomed to lose the naval fight if Genova existed as a canal for Sullla's southern navy to come through.  He decided his only chance to win the naval fight was to nail Genova to prevent Sullla's fleets from merging.  He may still have been right in that principle, even if the execution failed.

T-hawk describes my thinking exactly, again.

-The first attack on Khmer, Cornflakes and I where both surprised he didn't push on after raising that city, he could probably have killed at least Cornflakes outright if he hadn't peaced out to quickly.

I disagree with this. We would have been pushing with warriors and archers through thick jungle towards the Khmer capital, where we could expect to face walls. You had Ngaos on the way, which would have kicked my warriors' butts and neatly countered Woden's archers. Pushing on MAYBE could have worked, but it would have cost us a lot and left us open to the other teams. 

Just looked at the screenshot again -- the spy's 3-tile vision and the Nubia ironclad just visible at the top of the screenshot takes care of visibility north of the road.

Yeah, I think I proposed that it was a spy in one of my last posts. Dumb that you can see the vision, but not the unit itself.

[Shimomo]

With the English movement advantage, would it not have been better for CMF to try and completely avoid Sullla's first strike? He could have massed his ships in a big block just northeast of Sullla, then on the turn before DoF expires CMF runs everything the 5 (of the 7 possible) moves away from Sullla where there's no possible way for him to get everything into the combat. Sulla with his 5 move ships would only be able to get a single line of units to attack, but doing so would put him within range for devastating counter attack. If Sulla keeps everything in place on T1 of the war then CMF with his 7 moves has enough to cover the space retreated over, plus attack for the first strike. If Sullla retreats on T1, then CMF first sacrifices a ship to scout out the location, and then moves his ships forward until they are within 5 tiles. Sullla might retreat for a couple turns, but eventually will get pinned against the coast. A few ships could escape down the canal city, but the rest I think could be caught within 3-4 turns of slow advancing. 

Sullla would have the opportunity then to upgrade to Battleships, but the turn of upgrade allows CMF the chance to first strike, and after Sullla retreats out of Nan Madol water on T1 of the war he's only got a few water tiles in his culture where he could do the upgrades.

I think you're right. Going for Genova has been disastrous. Like Sullla just mentioned, cities are replaceable, and the naval battle is all, something only he seems to have grasped (not even us lurkers realized how poor a decision going straight for Genova would be). Like you say, CMF should have A) been massed in a huge block and B) been just out of range / just barely in range. Pre-war efforts should have been to keep Sullla as closely pinned to the coast as possible, before backing off at the last possible moment.

EDIT 2: Also this game is over. Tanks will push through former Khmer; Battleships will savage CMF's coast. Singaboy just has to hold the line against AD, which he can with Steel cities and Battleships, until Sullla can bring some of the Roman navy over to support him.

How would I have kept Sullla pinned to the coast? He got first strike, so I had to keep out of HIS range, not him out of mine. Given that he could chase me all over, it seemed like keeping Nan Madol safe, then using my superior movement to flee out of range just before war broke out was the right play. 

note that that worked, I got most of Nan Madol's defense force out of range. The part that didn't work was I deployed my main fleet too far forward - I thought I was out of range or just within range of the edge of Sullla's forces, I certainly didn't think I'd left 10 ships in range to be sunk on the opening turn. 

Yeah Nan Madol complicated things. Ultimately, idk, maybe its protection in the prewar turns was overvalued. And like you said, you were in range by mistake.

The pinning Cornflakes is referring to is the idea of staying out of range, or with maybe one line of ships in range of only one line of Sullla's. Assuming you'd set up like this, Sullla on the first turn of the war could attack with a single line of frigates, which he'd then lose all of. Or he could back off a couple tiles to stay out of range of you. But he couldn't keep backing up forever; you just would move up the corresponding couple of tiles, turn by turn, until he backs into the coast.

The pinning I was suggesting was to use your ships during peacetime to prevent Sullla from massing his ships in open water, to set up the maneuvering Cornflakes suggests.

Shimomo - Sullla and singaboy have both put an amazing amount of effort in to this game so the win is well deserved, but saying Woden and CMF should have done better out of their weak neighbours is forgetting who took over the neighbour they could realistically attack.

Yes, I think it's worth pointing out that Sullla attacked an undefended frontier first, then when he came back had knights and crossbows against Ngaos, while Woden had to slog through thick jungle against a swarm of knights and crossbows. We had a lot steeper odds to face in our war, which is partially on us in terms of preparation but Cornflakes also did a great job chopping out an army. 

-The first attack on Khmer, Cornflakes and I where both surprised he didn't push on after raising that city, he could probably have killed at least Cornflakes outright if he hadn't peaced out to quickly.

I disagree with this. We would have been pushing with warriors and archers through thick jungle towards the Khmer capital, where we could expect to face walls. You had Ngaos on the way, which would have kicked my warriors' butts and neatly countered Woden's archers. Pushing on MAYBE could have worked, but it would have cost us a lot and left us open to the other teams. 

So I was thinking more about this and ultimately couldn't reach a conclusion, but it just felt like Woden never got enough out of Nubia, specifically the Pitati archers. Maybe it was impossible due to the team situation, but given Nubia's kit, it just theoretically seems like Nubia should have been able to do more earlier on. And when I say earlier on, I mean before the whole situation where Cornflakes had to take over—I agree Cornflakes did well; the terrain was difficult; and so on. Earlier in the snowballing process, I speculate more could have been done. But again, maybe not.