RBP2 Lurker Discussion Thread - No Players!

[Darkmantle]

Perhaps this is unfair to Speaker, but am I the only one who wouldn't be surprised that if the tables were turned and India had a chance to pillage improvements in neutral territory of a rival, they would take the opportunity in a heartbeat, even if they had a NAP?

My guess is that they would think about it and the final decision would come down to, "do we want to continue this NAP and what tone do we want to set for future relations with that team". Kathlete really wants India to sign a NAP so he can at least start building up and getting back into the game. What he has actually done, is piss India off and cut roads and improvements that won't make any difference if there was a war.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah despite some of the hate you received. You did alright Be proud of yourself.

[Jowy]

-->More spears in your stacks....but attacking with spears sucks

Agreed. We were alarmed by this when we found out India are gunning for horsearchers.. and incredibly fast. I whipped/built 2-3 extra spears, I think one of them made it to the main stack and the other two ended up in my second stack.

-->The Ottoman stack got spotted my India in Greek land and tipped them off about the attack...unit visibility is another thing I'm willing to cut slack on when it comes from cultural tiles or in neutral land or whatever, but not when the future enemy walks a unit into your land. I know it was tough because it was your land and Kathalete's stack, but not relaying the movement of the India scouting unit was a critical error. This could be solved by just telling the Ottomans every turn where every Indian unit you could see was.

This was 100% my mistake. I did take note of where the warrior was and made sure it was never near. However, what I didn't notice that it had woodsman II promotion so it gets a double-move on forests. I think he was 2E of Argos, then moved 1NE of Argos, then to 2N of Argos and spotted the stack. Nevertheless still an error that could have been prevented.

I don't know if you've read this thread's comments during the war turns, but despite how angry S+S got a lot of us here didn't view the attack as having much chance the change the course of the game pretty early, and totally wrote it off one the Roman Praets mis-moved. I think you will find some of your allies still view the attack as a partial success, but the hammer numbers really don't bare that out. The tough thing is that you guys succeeded in achieving strategic surprise and building solid stacks. That's the hard part! If after having done that you all had just picked a single tile to end up on in a single turn (let the Praets come later since they were so far away) and used the power of the enforced turn split to move between cities and deny the enemy the power of control-a, a lot more than 1 city would have been lost.

I really thought it was closer than that. At the end, regardless of the praet mishap, we would still have been threatening 5 cities and 1 copper. I was sure a city would fall. My new stack, about as strong as the first one, was threatening Chance and I sent a few troops to nearly abandoned Hampton. Dantski's first stack and our leftovers from our first stack were between Gettysburg and Chance, threatening those two. Dantski's second stack and HRE's stack were near the copper and threatening the city there (I don't remember the name) and Rome's praets would soon join in and threaten the coast city. I haven't read spoiler threads yet, but from my point of view everything was going well at that point and we would soon be able to take atleast two more cities. After that it'd be just a matter of time until the rest of the cities fall. Or so I thought anyway.

[Darkmantle]

From the perspective of the lurkers, we knew Spulla was about to get catapults and with that all of your stacks would have been destroyed, albiet with some losses taken by their units.

So from our perspective Dantski's defection wasn't jumping ship in the middle of a successful campaign, he was saving his units from total destruction.

[darrelljs]

I don't get the NAP between India and the Ottomans. They have a great tech advantage in Knights, I don't know why they wouldn't leverage it. The next big advantage would be drafted gunpowder units, but that's quite some time away.

Darrell

[Twinkletoes89]

I agree Darrell but I think they have two reasons for doing it.

1) Safety first so that their other border is safe and stay ahead but not too threatened - this is probably a case of 'once bitten, twice shy' regarding the first dogpile. Also included is the fact that they don't want a long war against longbows - even though they are strong. They like their wars as Blitzkrieg.

2) If they stomp Kathlete it might as well be game over and I think they know that. Better to give the players an apparition of the game still being winnable for Kathlete and Nakor than to remove all doubt and end the game early.

[Axiis]

Re: Spullla's new great artist, what do you guys think?

My guess is that he'll either culture bomb the Kathlete border to get some protection. I think Speaker mentioned that he was concerned over the proximity of the borders, and a culture bomb would give them a strong strategic position there. It might be a waste if they're not planning more offensive wars, though, so they'll probably just settle him.

[Darkmantle]

The other possibility that I thought of was a possible golden age. Maybe for an education run.

[Shoot the Moon]

The other possibility that I thought of was a possible golden age. Maybe for an education run.

Using a GA for a GA?

[Twinkletoes89]

Maybe keep him back for the next inevitable dogpile? A Golden Age would be very profitable in that circumstance.