[SPOILERS] PBEM 10 Lurker THREAD

[Ituralde]

Just now read in Jappers thread that he settled the Tsingy spot, when he already knew that Suboptimal was advancing. That was a mistake that has given Suboptimal exactly what he needed. A forward base from where he can do his upgrading. Also nice to see, that after things working out for rho21 with exact timing, it was now suboptimals turn with Steel coming in at the moment he needed it most to keep his conquest!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Will suboptimal's minor naval advantage finally be enough to break the stalemate? His science rate is slightly ahead of rho's now, and both players losing their coastal cities will hurt a lot.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I agree with the Archduke here - not sure why suboptimal abruptly abandoned his steady attack on the Greek coast to go chase after frigates. He himself noted that there were several more cities, Kongolese and Greek, that he could raze - why not polish those off? Even rushing to try and catch the frigates before they upgrade to battleships is not guaranteed to work, and it costs him time he could have spent raising hell along the east coast.

[Cornflakes]

Completely agree, huge missed opportunity if he calls off the attack.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

This really goes to show how essential navies are in the late game. It's much easier to gain naval superiority than land superiority, and it's looking like that's going to be the deciding factor here - suboptimal got to Battleships a little bit sooner than Rho did, with a slightly larger navy, and it's making all the difference.

That said, I don't know how much damage losing those cities is actually doing to rho. It hurts, for sure, but will it be enough for the Aztecs to pull ahead decisively?

[Cornflakes]

I’m not sure why rho didn’t try for a religious victory earlier. With God if the Harvest he’s been producing a decent amount of faith. Since Suboptimal doesn’t have a religion he wouldn’t be able to fight back immediately except with normal military. With some focus and planning I think he would have been able to put enough religious pressure on Suboptimal to convert him. At minimum a backlines attack with missionaries and apostles would have forced Suboptimal to withdraw military from the front.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I do question some of suboptimal's latest maneuvers. 

1)His policy of not shooting "because that incurs war weariness" - surely Japper/rho would incur more, right? If not, then the WW system is seriously messed up. I just can't fathom how it's not worth it to damage enemy units when you have an advantage because the simple act of doing so harms you more. He also did the same with his battleships earlier, avoiding shelling. 

2)His settler on city #20 didn't grab a specific resource, and it doesn't look like there's too much to chop there. Now, he took, I think, 3 city-states, 2 Kongo cities, and 2 Egyptian cities - which means that that was settler #12 at least, which cost nearly 400 production. How on earth will that city ever justify its cost? I dunno, it just seems wasteful to me to keep pumping settlers when the game is so late and new cities have such a hard time getting started. That same 400 production, for example, grabbed rho the Oracle easily - with 110 production left to spare, and that could end up letting him grab a key Great Scientist here in the future.

[Sullla]

I agree with you, Chevalier. This has been a fascinating process of watching someone who effectively won the game in the first 50 turns find ways not to finish off his remaining opponents (with credit to rho for doing such an excellent job of playing from a weak position). I don't want to knock suboptimal too much; I know he's going to read this after the game is finished, and he does a fantastic job of updating his thread on a daily basis. The wildly aggressive opening with the Aztecs was also beautifully done, and suboptimal has improved tremendously from his efforts in the earlier PBEM games. But there's an overarching problem to suboptimal's gameplay here, and I can summarize it in one phrase: no focus on big picture strategy. Most of suboptimal's decisions are perfectly fine when considered in isolation from one another. They just don't add up to any kind of larger goal, and he doesn't appear to have any particular end in mind. He's kind of "doing things" without thinking about where he wants to end up, and that's very dangerous against human opponents. Against more capable opposition it would result in a loss, and in the context of this game, it's taken a winning position and dragged things out for 180 turns unnecessarily.

Let's review the unique situation of this particular game. Suboptimal launched a successful Eagle Warrior rush that took out his nearest opponent and gave him control over roughly 50% of the map. He has two remaining opponents who are splitting the other half of the map with roughly 30% going to rho and the other 20% going to Japper. The edge in land and captured cities should allow suboptimal to outtech and then kill his opponents. However, there are two unique factors in play here. One of them is the Geneva city state, which is in a nearly-inaccessible position in the far north. The presence of that Scientific city state allows rho to punch above his weight in terms of science and keep pace with suboptimal with fewer cities in a way that otherwise wouldn't be possible. The other unique element is the fact that rho is playing as Greece for this game, a civ which gets free envoys every time that its unique Theatre district is built. This makes it impossible for suboptimal to control Geneva with envoys; Greece will always be able to win the envoy race. Without either of these two factors in play, suboptimal would have run away in science and won the game a long time ago.

This wasn't apparent right away, of course, but suboptimal needed to realize the situation and figure out a way to work around it. He did, eventually, but has bungled the steps that would have gotten him out of this predicament. The first mistake was cavalierly declaring war on both suboptimal and Japper, which suboptimal did at an early date. He attacked Japper on Turn 64 because he was trying to get an Eagle Warrior kill against a Kongo scout (a scout which suboptimal didn't even kill, by the way). This was pointless aggression for no reason, driving Japper into rho's arms needlessly. While Japper and rho needed to work together again suboptimal, what's to say that they would have done so? We've seen innumerable games where trailing players failed to band together against the winning power. Suboptimal did the one thing guaranteed to create a 1 vs 2 situation against himself instead of trying to drive a wedge between his opponents. What if he had gifted Japper some money when Kongo was bankrupt? I think that there was a decent opportunity here to neutralize a potential opponent instead of guaranteeing a united and hostile east.

Then suboptimal declared war on rho on Turn 70. You could make a decent case for initiating a state of war to deny the Geneva suzerain bonus to Greece, but that wasn't the logic behind suboptimal's decision. Instead, he seemed to think that he might be able to capture a city from rho... on Turn 70... with two Eagle Warriors, one sword, and one archer... against a human opponent who already had a Great General. That was never, ever, ever going to work and it cemented gamelong opposition from rho. One of the reasons why I don't like casual attacks is that they put humans on their guard against future aggression. Better to maintain friendly relations until you're ready to smash someone with an unstoppable force, as opposed to trickling in a few units at a time and ensuring vehement resistance. Long story short, suboptimal opted into the 1 vs 2 situation when he didn't strictly need to do so and gained nothing for it.

This was followed by a series of trickle attacks against rho, something that became an unfortunate calling card for suboptimal in this game. What the heck is he doing with a sword and Eagle Warrior running around by themselves, unsupported by any other units, to the north of Greek territory on Turn 95? Why did five knights ride off into the Greek back lines by themselves around Turn 103? (I would post the image links but I'm posting from my phone here, sorry.) It was the same bizarre tactical movement as suboptimal did in PBEM6, when he sent a group of horses off into the wilderness for no apparent reason. In each case, suboptimal lost a unit or two to rho before he could extract his forces. He also lost several additional units over the course of the game to barbarians in his back lines, usually by sending a single unit to try to clear a camp. All of those losses add up over time into significant forces. Each unit is incredibly valuable in Civ6 due to upgrading being so much cheaper than training new units. Those swords can become muskets and infantry, those archers can become field guns, those knights can become tanks, and so on. Suboptimal repeatedly wasted units on little probing forces that served no strategic purpose.

And that's really the whole point: there was no strategic goal behind these movements. Suboptimal needed to stop himself and think about what he was doing. What is the goal of moving two units off by themselves in enemy territory? Scouting is one thing, but if there's no possibility of taking territory (and certainly no chance to take and hold territory) then it serves no purpose and shouldn't be attempted. Eventually, suboptimal did realize the correct strategic goal for this map: attacking and razing Geneva. If he could kill the city state, then rho's science rate would plummet and the game would be over. This should have been the #1 overriding goal for suboptimal as soon as he realized that he was in a stalemate. Everything should have been bent towards achieving that purpose.

Instead, what did he do? Launch a naval attack with a paltry fleet of 2 caravels and 2 frigates. That was a pathetically small group of units considering the size of suboptimal's territory. As it turned out, if he had sent even one more ship then he would have succeeded in his quest and the game would already have been over. Instead, rho was just barely able to marshall enough forces to resist in time. But this never should have been close. Suboptimal easily could have built half a dozen quadriremes, upgraded them into frigates, and then blitzed right over the defenses. Suboptimal has far more coastal cities than rho, and he has more unused land than rho where he could plant additional junk cities to chop/harvest out ships. If Chevalier were playing as the Aztecs, I know that's what he would have done. Get 6-10 quadriremes, upgrade them all into frigates, burn Geneva to the ground and then keep burning down every Greek/Kongo city on the coast until the other players surrender. There's nothing that rho or Japper could have done to stop that move since neither of them have much in the way of coastal territory. Instead, we get this sad little attack with 4 ships. Disappointing.

Suboptimal has also made the mistake of immediately researching each new generation of military tech instead of holding them 1 turn from completion to build older, cheaper units for upgrading. Rather than building quadriremes for upgrading, he immediatedly finished Square Rigging and built frigates instead at 2.5 times the cost. Rather than build crossbows, he immediately finished field guns and built them instead. On the most recent turn, he finished Combustion rather than waiting for his knights in the build queues to complete and now he has to build extremely expensive tanks rather than cheap knights. Again, this goes back to his lack of a strategic goal. Suboptimal should have been thinking "my goal is to get half a dozen frigates for a naval campaign, what is the most effective way to do that?" Instead, he's somewhat aimlessly clicking next turn without planning ahead and making simple mistakes. Yes, Civ6's design is stupid in this way, but you have to play the game as it exists and not as it should be.

As a side note, the whole "Diminished" campaign is strategically pointless. There is no reason for suboptimal to pour resources into a battle with Japper over a landlocked city in the tundra. He's invested money into upgrading units to hold that spot that could have gone into naval units. We know by now that naval superiority is stupidly overpowered in Civ6; fighting with cavalry and field guns for a useless bit of territory is wasteful. The new city in the southern tundra is another monstrous waste of resources, with no possible way that it will pay back the cost of the settler used to create it. One more thing: choosing not to attack enemy units out of fear of war weariness makes even less sense to me. You know what's worse than war weariness? Not killing enemy units who are attacking you!

That brings us to the current campaign with battleships. Suboptimal has finally realized what he should have been doing dozens of turns earlier, embarking on a naval campaign of terror and razing the cities of his opponents. But even this has been done half heartedly! Look at how much damage suboptimal has been able to do with a mere three battleships. If he had gone on a dedicated frigate building/chopping campaign and saved his money for upgrades, he surely could have had ten of them by now, and that would have been an instant game over for his opponents. Furthermore, suboptimal isn't even attacking in the correct spot. He should have gone after Geneva again, which remains the single most important target on the map. Burn Geneva, burn the few Greek cities on the northern coast, and the game is finished. After that, suboptimal could wipe out any city within two tiles of the coast almost effortlessly. Nothing can stop 3 range battleships with naval superiority; they remain safely off in the water until they're ready to attack, and then eviscerate anything on land with first strike advantage. You need planes to counter them and no one builds planes in MP. Then there was suboptimal's decision to turn around and sail in the opposite direction mid-attack (!!!) until TheArchduke convinced him to turn around again.

Seriously, it's like suboptimal doesn't want to win this game.

I don't want to be too harsh on the poor guy. I love reading his thread, and he and rho have both done a wonderful job to make this an entertaining game. At some point though, it's simply incredible how suboptimal refuses to take advantage of his dominant position and win this game. He's going to be kicking himself when this game ends and he sees some of the things that he could have been doing differently.

[Ituralde]

Thanks for the anlysis Sullla, I haven't caught up yet in suboptimals thread and was wondering what happened to his early game lead.

It's embarassing how much I find myself in his playstyle though. I would be doing the same things at a far less efficient level. I would go for the cute plays, do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. That's my midgame in a nutshell and the reason why I stick to SP where such a behaviour goes unpunished.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

This wasn't apparent right away, of course, but suboptimal needed to realize the situation and figure out a way to work around it. He did, eventually, but has bungled the steps that would have gotten him out of this predicament. The first mistake was cavalierly declaring war on both suboptimal and Japper, which suboptimal did at an early date. He attacked Japper on Turn 64 because he was trying to get an Eagle Warrior kill against a Kongo scout (a scout which suboptimal didn't even kill, by the way). This was pointless aggression for no reason, driving Japper into rho's arms needlessly. While Japper and rho needed to work together again suboptimal, what's to say that they would have done so? We've seen innumerable games where trailing players failed to band together against the winning power. Suboptimal did the one thing guaranteed to create a 1 vs 2 situation against himself instead of trying to drive a wedge between his opponents. What if he had gifted Japper some money when Kongo was bankrupt? I think that there was a decent opportunity here to neutralize a potential opponent instead of guaranteeing a united and hostile east.

I think it's also worth noting that in Japper's thread, there's evidence that he didn't see the situation as a guaranteed 2 vs 1, either. For example, when Cornflakes asked him how he saw the larger strategic picture, Japper replied:

I feel I'm hitting my stride yes, no looming threats on the horizon; Suboptimal has a direct path into rho and not me, and rho can't afford to turn away from him similarly [note to future destroyed self: This is where you went wrong, you pillock!]. I'm getting close to Guilds which will solve my gold problems forever with Mbanza. I've already taken the lead in GWAM generation (triple rho's now, and that is with stuff still finishing! Subop has none) and am about to take Great Merchants as well with the completion of commercial hubs everywhere. The city I settled will be the last I hard build for at least a while, now comes my favorite part: recovering from REX-ing and actually booming up. I finally get to show off Mbanza, exciting 

Long term goals are grow tall and cultural, maybe suplemented with some wars. I could see a raid on rho being effective here, he is my only real rival in the culture game so if I can reduce his capacity we might see the first RB PBEM Culture Victory. 

So Japper not only didn't see how much suboptimal could outmatch rho if left to fight one on one (he was apparently hoping they would fight so he could pull ahead), he was even contemplating a "raid" on rho himself to knock the Greeks down a bit. Japper is always playing a different game than everyone else, so I can't fault suboptimal too much for not seeing that he might have been able to fight Greece alone, but still. 

Later, Japper wrote:

This pretty much sums up the current climate for the last 30 or more turns:

rho and I have a battle line drawn up facing Suboptimals army and all three of us are upgrading our troops, no-one can move in for fear of ending up on the wrong end of a 2 v 1.

"No one can move for fear of being on the wrong end of a 2 v 1" - in other words, he STILL doesn't recognize that he's already in a 2 v 1! This was sometime between turn 136 and turn 154, so the rho/suboptimal stalemate had already been in place a long time. 5 turns later, Japper again writes:

Honestly I don't see why he thought now was the time, he has ballistics, so why didn't he upgrade to field cannons first? It's only 115 gold under proffesional army, which I know because I also have ballistics and am about to upgrade that crossbow at the front. He'll probably take this city and raise it but does he really think he can take me and rho on at the same time (you can even see rho's knights coming in in the north)? I doubt it.

So basically, Japper was totally oblivious to the larger metagame that was happening. Real missed opportunity by suboptimal there - like you said, Sullla, it just doesn't seem like suboptimal has a coherent plan to push to win the game, instead he's been spinning his wheels for near 100 turns now. 

As a side note, the whole "Diminished" campaign is strategically pointless. There is no reason for suboptimal to pour resources into a battle with Japper over a landlocked city in the tundra. He's invested money into upgrading units to hold that spot that could have gone into naval units. We know by now that naval superiority is stupidly overpowered in Civ6; fighting with cavalry and field guns for a useless bit of territory is wasteful. The new city in the southern tundra is another monstrous waste of resources, with no possible way that it will pay back the cost of the settler used to create it. One more thing: choosing not to attack enemy units out of fear of war weariness makes even less sense to me. You know what's worse than war weariness? Not killing enemy units who are attacking you!

I think at conception the idea made sense - Japper's army was sighted around the northern pass, and he didn't know that rho would be willing to send most of his mobile units to defend Kongolese cities, so he tried to strike through an undefended area. I mean, of course this ignores the fact that Japper could swap his army over to that front far more quickly than suboptimal could, going the long way 'round (I'm trying to avoid sounding too pretentious here by using words like "interior lines," but really, it's a textbook case), but it was worth a gamble to try and break the stalemate. 

However, once it became apparent that Japper and rho would fight to defend Japper's core, he would have been better off just razing Dimininished, content to cost Japper a settler, and then pulling back to his defensive position. The game is going to be won at sea, but if he does launch a decisive land campaign, I feel like it's going to be an armored push across the plains at Xenocrates, and he should be preserving units for that. I guess he wanted the city as a forward base? But the rough terrain around Kapsalon makes that a wretched place to attack. 

That brings us to the current campaign with battleships. Suboptimal has finally realized what he should have been doing dozens of turns earlier, embarking on a naval campaign of terror and razing the cities of his opponents. But even this has been done half heartedly! Look at how much damage suboptimal has been able to do with a mere three battleships. If he had gone on a dedicated frigate building/chopping campaign and saved his money for upgrades, he surely could have had ten of them by now, and that would have been an instant game over for his opponents. Furthermore, suboptimal isn't even attacking in the correct spot. He should have gone after Geneva again, which remains the single most important target on the map. Burn Geneva, burn the few Greek cities on the northern coast, and the game is finished. After that, suboptimal could wipe out any city within two tiles of the coast almost effortlessly. Nothing can stop 3 range battleships with naval superiority; they remain safely off in the water until they're ready to attack, and then eviscerate anything on land with first strike advantage. You need planes to counter them and no one builds planes in MP. Then there was suboptimal's decision to turn around and sail in the opposite direction mid-attack (!!!) until TheArchduke convinced him to turn around again.

Seriously, it's like suboptimal doesn't want to win this game.

While Geneva is the ultimate goal, I think hitting the undefended coast was a fine idea. Agreed, he brought too little force, and he seems curiously unwilling to use it - I don't know why it took him so long to bring along some land units to capture the undefended cities, I don't know why he abandoned it halfway through to chase frigates, I don't know why he didn't push quickly on either Bryson to the north or on the remaining (I think) Kongo city to the south. I would have brought along a smaller army, stuck to the coast, and taken or burned every city in that area. Then, once I know Perseus is rho's last shipbuilding facilities, I send my navy through the narrow passages towards Geneva, probably accompanied with a land push down the coast if it doesn't expose my own cities to attack - that will prevent any last-second rescues by rho. Starting with Geneva is certainly more decisive, but it's also more risky - rho's paltry navy is there, and could make a stand in the narrow waters (though it's really hard to defend at sea - whoever gets first strike, wins), and losing his (too small) navy would put subotpimal right back where he started. 

But yeah, nitpicks aside, your analysis is dead on. suboptimal is too unfocused and he's using too little of his decisive advantages to push to win the game. 

I do want to praise him for some creative moves, though. I really like his use of the spy on the coastal campaign - that cost rho a unit when he thought he was safely out of the battleships' line of sight. The siege tower being used as a watch post, and his use of it in the Geneva attack, was clever. And the ambush of rho's battleship was huge - I think he sank damn near half the Greek navy, and rho can't build more frigates to upgrade. He's stuck slowbuilding battleships at Perseus if he wants more, and his lone ship won't be able to stop even the small Aztec navy when it comes calling.

Suboptimal SHOULD have this game in the bag, but that's been true for the last 100 turns. I hope that this time he's finally willing to press home the decisive blow.