[SPOILERS] Rusten and Hitru laugh off any and all mistakes as bad RNG

[Rusten]

Honestly looking at it now, those DZland cities were key. There's nothing like having a few worthless cities to allow an emotionally cathartic war to no effect. Sucked in a few muskets from us, and the Gavagai eating them->feels better->emotionally satisfied sequence was decisive.

 

At the time we were looking for a knockout blow, and we also knew your economy was far better than ours. (Pyramids was just amazing for you guys!) We knew it was down to the two of us and that we had an opportunity to go for your capital while you were not aware of a threat. Unfortunately we didn't think about you having sight on naufrager's cities until the ships were halfway through his lands. I think Commodore even identified a route after the fact that would have let us still move through undetected by city vision, but by then it was too late.

OK that makes sense. I thought it was hard to evaluate who had the upper hand at the time. You had more land, but ours was greener+PS. You'd get access to PS yourselves with military science though, it's easier to access in this mod than the base game. That's why we assumed you'd go for this tech before the all-in play.

edit: And drafting was incredible for the map at a mere 3k beakers cost

[shallow_thought]

Congratulations! Was caught a bit by surprise by the sudden end there.

[Gavagai]

A great game, Rusten. I have a few questions.
1) What would happen if instead of going for reconquest of my territories I would throw all naval and land units you saw at your Forbidden Palace city and/or your Nationa Epic city at the very start of the war? Do you think I would succeed in razing them? How would you react?
2) Would you accept white peace with Commodore at any point of the war? What were those points, if any?
3) How much you were really hurting from the war economically?
4) If you got white peace with Commodore for some reason, would you go after me, try to recapture cities? Would my ability to threaten your FP/NE factor into that decision?

[Gavagai]

The thing is, I never much worried much about you winning because I believed that I can always kill your Forbidden City if there is any threat. Commodore was always much more a concern. Given how it all ended, we can safely say that I outsmarted myself

[Rusten]

Then I think you've severely underestimated our chances for a long time, because we've felt like we were in the driver's seat (or at least even) for almost the whole game.

1) I don't think you'd succeed, we had most of our navy on the northern/NW side of the island we were battling Commodore on so we'd be within range of counterattack after 1 turn of movement. We had ~60 frigates total at the time so I think it was a little too late, but I don't remember exactly how many ships you had in the area. There where a lot of galleons nearby to reinforce so simply landing units would not be enough. You could probably raze the other cities in the area if you absolutely wanted to (at the cost of losing cities of your own), but I think we'd be able to defend our NE and FP cities. Can't say it with certainty though.

In the event that you had succeeded (or even tried) I guess we would've aimed to raze your cities near the area before going after more of Commodore again. We would not forgive and forget, so for your own self-interest it would not be that great. But this is getting very hypothetical. Happy to give up the DZ cities, but no more. Those cities we did consider "yours", and only made a play for them due to ease of execution and having frigates when you did not.

2) No. When the war started we already had nationhood for drafting and police state, so we knew this was the best time to attack him before he got those 2 things of his own. This was our timing. I'm surprised you thought Commodore was doing so well given our extra hammers from drafting and police state and being 500k power ahead in the demos. We even had G3 units to help city taking.

3) The religious wonders kept our economy going just fine. We had 100+BPT just from the UoS. I saw a comment in your thread that we were only getting 100 GPT at 0% during our GA, but that was during the 5 turns we were running pacifism to ensure back to back golden ages. Maybe that worked in our favour and you underestimated our economy as a result. Unit costs were abnormally high at the time.

4) Hard to say because I don't think white peace with Commodore was ever an option, we saw him as our main threat to win the game. You were on the up, but IMO it wouldn't materialize until it was too late and we'd be too big for it to matter.

[Gavagai]

OK, thanks. I totally understood "not forgive and forget" thing, this is why I did not do it during the game. I still thought that I have a very small chance of winning. MoM was three turns from completion and I hoped to get Infantry and draft before you had any counter. A pipedream, most likely but I felt I was obliged to try. My starting position was terrible, second worst after Donovan's, I think. It would be totally epic if I managed to win from it. But for this I needed weaker opponents than you
If I didn't think I had a shot at winning, I would just play it as Commodore's bitch and happily go after your cities

[Rusten]

Understandable, and I agree that you had the 2nd worst starting position.

[superdeath]

Understandable, and I agree that you had the 2nd worst starting position.

So how'd my starting position factor in?

[Rusten]

To be honest I forgot you were in the game, it's been so long and we never met! Your starting position wasn't that bad from a map perspective, but considering the civ that started next to you was a giggling and skirmishing Commodore with prior history it was pretty rough. I don't think early rushing was inevitable with different players/leader combos, and you had good islands within reach.

[superdeath]

To be honest I forgot you were in the game

The feels.