[SPOILERS] scooter's PB53

[The Black Sword]

GG Scooter.

Sorry about that last attack on you, reading the thread you seemed to take it pretty hard.

From my perspective, I needed to try something to change the path of the game. Sitting and staring across the border at Cornflakes' and Cairo's armies just sounded like a slow death. Attacking either of them was MAD, so I felt you were the only option. I thought you were the clear leader at that stage, and I wanted to slow you down and get Cornflakes pointed at you instead of me. I also thought it might be possible to get a city out of it. So it seemed better than doing nothing.

[scooter]

GG Scooter.

Sorry about that last attack on you, reading the thread you seemed to take it pretty hard.

From my perspective, I needed to try something to change the path of the game. Sitting and staring across the border at Cornflakes' and Cairo's armies just sounded like a slow death. Attacking either of them was MAD, so I felt you were the only option. I thought you were the clear leader at that stage, and I wanted to slow you down and get Cornflakes pointed at you instead of me. I also thought it might be possible to get a city out of it. So it seemed better than doing nothing.

Hey no worries. I haven't read any of your thread yet, so I haven't seen much of your thought process, but your plan clearly worked pretty well actually, so maybe I was wrong? Mainly I think you and I had different reads of the balance of power between myself, Commodore, and you. You seemed to view me as further ahead of Commodore than I did. You put me in a 3v1, so that meant I had to take one of the outs, and it was always going to be the most lightly defended one (Commodore's front due to your 2v1), so that's a big part of why I was so confused by your play, which made me take it a bit harder. It was hard for me to find a rational explanation for it, even though I knew there had to be one.


Also, did you not have vision on what Cornflakes was doing? That was the part I was most puzzled about. Cornflakes was deep into my land and you were still passing up cities that had been sitting empty for a half-dozen turns. Or did you know, and you were just stretching it as long as possible hoping we would clash first? That's what ended up happening, and that was probably a game changer for you because I eventually wiped out the majority of his army.

[The Black Sword]

I figured if there ever was a chance of you collapsing, and you needed the units defending vs me elsewhere, then I would always be willing to peace out for the front city. I probably didn't take into account properly that you were more likely to just give Comm a better deal instead, but it still doesn't seem like a terrible cost to me for the potential benefit.

For the most part I had a chariot with Cornflakes' stack and could see what he was doing.

It depends really how much he was playing to spite you. I was assuming that there was a good chance that if he saw my stack turn around and set up to stab him, then he'd just turn his stack around too.

After you peaced out with Comm, there wasn't much advantage in pressuring you anymore, so I thought I might as well turn around and try set the stab up. If he doesn't turn around great, if he does, well that's turned into a neutral outcome. Also at that stage he'd know something was up just from me sitting outside your city and deciding not to attack. After that I pretty much moved as fast as possible, but I still had to move my Knights from 1 side of the empire to the other.