[SPOILERS] JR4 and RefSteel have a plan

[Mr. Cairo]

(I do want to rant for a moment though:  Anyone who thinks we were too passive has no understanding of this map.  Attacking from a position of weakness when your target has three other neighbors who are also in a better position than you is not a way to get out of having too little land; it's a way to entertain lurkers, create false hope, and get further behind - as we actually demonstrated on multiple occasions.  We could have played each of our wars better, but not to the point of escaping the hole we were in, and it wouln't have helped us in any way to build and throw away a bunch of units, pretending it would magically help us, during the years when we instead remained at peace.  I understand other players wanting us to help them win by attacking someone else, but anyone who imagines that we actually would have improved our position with attacks they were imagining and/or hoping for is merely mistaken.)

I don't think it was your willingness to attack for your own gains that people were questioning, but rather your unwillingness to really commit to stopping me, even after others had attacked. After all, it's not like I did much conquering, in fact, my only offensive wars ended terribly for me, and I still won But I do remember waiting in vain for any sign you would join in the dogpile against wetbandit. What would it have taken for you to join in on that one? Him losing most of his army?

[Old Harry]

I hope you don't take all the Monday morning quarterbacking too seriously JR4 and Ref - none of us had the same amount of information that you had about this game, and it's easy for us to know exactly how to win a game when our plans will never get tested.  

That said, you seemed to make and then back out of a lot of aggressive plans and were very reluctant to join the various dogpiles (which seem to be the best way of making gains on a low-water map like this), which is different from your play in your previous game where you rolled right over someone. Any idea why you had the change in approach this time?

[JR4]

I hope you don't take all the Monday morning quarterbacking too seriously JR4 and Ref - none of us had the same amount of information that you had about this game, and it's easy for us to know exactly how to win a game when our plans will never get tested.  

That said, you seemed to make and then back out of a lot of aggressive plans and were very reluctant to join the various dogpiles (which seem to be the best way of making gains on a low-water map like this), which is different from your play in your previous game where you rolled right over someone. Any idea why you had the change in approach this time?

Okay, let`s start with the map. It was fair and balanced and I don`t think that our starting land was significantly worse than anyone else`s. It was rather unfortunate that our Empire had access to both seas but the one that mattered (the big sea to the SE of our core) we had exactly three ports. And that includes a filler. Compare that to Wetbandit and Mr. Cairo who both had more than double that amount of strong ports on the same sea and you`d understand just how hard it was to compete in a naval buildup. And surely, lurkers who followed my thread in PB 39 will know by now just how much emphasis I put on ships and naval technology.

Our first real attempt at gaining more land was when Cornflakes tried to instigate a dogpile against Superdeath in the semi-early game. That was probably an opportunity missed as Superdeath`s territory could be shared between us and Cornflakes for mutual benefit. I declined to commit our troops to war as I had some sort of tunnel-vision on Knights. When we researched Guilds and were ready to strike, Cornflakes had turned around and hit Elkad instead. Elkad in turn was the other player that could in principle help us out but he was of course busy dealing with Cornflakes (and Wetbandit for that matter). Our Knight attack was a glorious failure and even in Caste, Superdeath managed to get to Pikes in time to stop the attack.

The other time where we could have made some progress was when Wetbandit`s Empire seemingly was falling apart. He got hit by Cornflakes, Donovan and Mr. Cairo and surely we could have secured some land for ourselves plus the elimination of Wetbandit if we had piled on. The only reason why I was reluctant to commit was that I feared that it would have handed the game to Cornflakes. Cornflakes already had a ridiculous amount of land back then and if he had grabbed Wetbandit`s capital then it would have been a matter of time before everyone would have conceded imo. I don`t think Wetbandit would be in the mood to let us have Napcakes (The Great Lighthouse city) and then peace out. If we`d gone to war it would have been an all-out attempt to get more land.

It`s very hard to plan ahead when you realistically need support from a third party (preferably going in first) to secure most of the spoils for yourself. I guess that the diplo needed to engineer those dogpiles is not my strongest trait.

[JR4]

(I do want to rant for a moment though:  Anyone who thinks we were too passive has no understanding of this map.  Attacking from a position of weakness when your target has three other neighbors who are also in a better position than you is not a way to get out of having too little land; it's a way to entertain lurkers, create false hope, and get further behind - as we actually demonstrated on multiple occasions.  We could have played each of our wars better, but not to the point of escaping the hole we were in, and it wouln't have helped us in any way to build and throw away a bunch of units, pretending it would magically help us, during the years when we instead remained at peace.  I understand other players wanting us to help them win by attacking someone else, but anyone who imagines that we actually would have improved our position with attacks they were imagining and/or hoping for is merely mistaken.)

I don't think it was your willingness to attack for your own gains that people were questioning, but rather your unwillingness to really commit to stopping me, even after others had attacked. After all, it's not like I did much conquering, in fact, my only offensive wars ended terribly for me, and I still won    But I do remember waiting in vain for any sign you would join in the dogpile against wetbandit. What would it have taken for you to join in on that one? Him losing most of his army?

As I said to Old Harry, I was rather afraid of Cornflakes just winning by concession if we`d piled on Wetbandit. Still not sure if that was a good call as chances to gain more land were few and far between on this map.

We did commit a turn or two after Wetbandit moved in. It was all about trying to make someone else do the hard lifting. I was really worried about our stack being collateraled down as we didn`t have enough modern units to take a big hit. If we`d just marched on SE from YeeHawdists, wouldn`t it be worthwhile for you to just wipe our stack while Wetbandit was still moving in your territory? It would perhaps be a little bit risky as you`d need to get down to Yokel Haram in time to fend off an attack but I think that taking care of our stack first would have been the right play.

While Wetbandit spent all his gold on upgrades and had a very good army, we went for Flight instead. At some point we had more than 10k gold and perhaps there were a better use for that stockpile of gold than getting Fighters ahead of everyone else. I did have some hope of getting to Bombers before everyone else. Bombers are brutal and we`d have had a decent window to secure more land if your culture attempt could have been stopped. And if we could somehow find enough gold to get to Radio. Also, we had a very bored Merchant/Scientist pair sitting around in Thaliard. That was probably not the best use of them.

[JR4]

Thanks for sticking this one out with great reporting all the way to the end!  There were several things we could have done better (I don't think we really played Phi to the hilt, and there were a number of other, individually smaller things) and I don't think either of us ultimately had as much time as we each hoped to have (at least at one time or another) for this game; it was a lot of fun in spite of that, and in the end, I think Mr. Cairo absolutely earned the win!

(I do want to rant for a moment though:  Anyone who thinks we were too passive has no understanding of this map.  Attacking from a position of weakness when your target has three other neighbors who are also in a better position than you is not a way to get out of having too little land; it's a way to entertain lurkers, create false hope, and get further behind - as we actually demonstrated on multiple occasions.  We could have played each of our wars better, but not to the point of escaping the hole we were in, and it wouln't have helped us in any way to build and throw away a bunch of units, pretending it would magically help us, during the years when we instead remained at peace.  I understand other players wanting us to help them win by attacking someone else, but anyone who imagines that we actually would have improved our position with attacks they were imagining and/or hoping for is merely mistaken.)

I don`t think we got enough benefit from PHI either. The map didn`t really have a ton of food (and also had a severe lack of health resources) so we weren`t able to hire enough specialists. Our trait and civ is somewhat anti-synergic with Pericles wanting to run lots of specialists and Aztecs wanting the whip badly. We actually spent less time in Slavery than I thought at the beginning of the game.

Oh, and did I mention that losing the Pyramids by a single turn was a severe blow to our chances of winning? That was terrible indeed as we took a big gamble on building them and still fell just short.

[Charriu]

That said, you seemed to make and then back out of a lot of aggressive plans and were very reluctant to join the various dogpiles (which seem to be the best way of making gains on a low-water map like this), which is different from your play in your previous game where you rolled right over someone.

Mh I wonder who that someone was.   



About those health and food resources. It was not my intention to make this a low food map and I don't think it was. But what remains true is less health resources. I think there are two things that led to this problem. First this game went deep into the modern era and in that era you accumulate a lot of unhealthiness by design. The fact that we rarely play in that era might have contributed to the problem.
Secondly I intentionally designed the map so that everybody was at least missing one health resource and one happiness resource. If I remember correctly I tried to give this missing health resource to a player, who did not border that player, and give the missing happiness resource to at least two of your direct neighbor. All of this was done to promote trade between players and strengthen diplomatic relations.

[BaII]

About those health and food resources. It was not my intention to make this a low food map and I don't think it was. But what remains true is less health resources. I think there are two things that led to this problem. First this game went deep into the modern era and in that era you accumulate a lot of unhealthiness by design. The fact that we rarely play in that era might have contributed to the problem.
Secondly I intentionally designed the map so that everybody was at least missing one health resource and one happiness resource. If I remember correctly I tried to give this missing health resource to a player, who did not border that player, and give the missing happiness resource to at least two of your direct neighbor. All of this was done to promote trade between players and strengthen diplomatic relations.

I think the intention to give 1 less health resource is not a bad idea, it's just it's important to keep in mind some health resources are much more valuable than others. For example missing a grains resource is more hurtful than missing a pigs resource since granaries give +1 health for grains resource while pigs get their +1 health from supermarkets.

[Charriu]

That's true and it's one thing I didn't account for back when I created the map.

[superdeath]

Oh, and did I mention that losing the Pyramids by a single turn was a severe blow to our chances of winning? That was terrible indeed as we took a big gamble on building them and still fell just short.

Its alright, Cornflakes Morale-boosting a mounted unit razing the mid's was a severe blow to my chances of winning as well.

[Charriu]

I know this was a hard blow to you, but at the same time it was a highly entertaining move by him.