[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I've only skimmed a few portions of the thread from times when I specifically met up with you two, but I object to Woden's characterization of DoF-blocking:

That is something that has always been an accepted part of PBEMs here! I can think of instances of it happening in PBEM2, in PBEM4, in PBEM7, in PBEM8, in PBEM12, and PBEM13 off the top of my head - and those are just the games I was involved in. 

It's part of the risk/reward balance when deciding whether or not to take a DoF - you secure yourself from attack, but also open yourself to moves like that. The alternative is fuzzy, hard to judge, and frankly just as unbalanced - what, I'm just supposed to watch helplessly while an enemy gets stronger? I'm not allowed to do anything about it, even though the mechanics of the game clearly allow me to, just because...? Nah. 

Woden called me an asshole or something then, and I get emotions run high in games, but c'mon. That's totally unfair. It's a legitimate tactic, I never agreed not to do it, and I do not agree not to do it in future games. Keep it in mind if I ever offer you a DoF and remember it's part of the calculation - I certainly do!

[williams482]

First off, after reading through your thread I am 100% certain I made the right call to concede. I had nothing left in my northern fleet that could crack cities in a reasonable timeframe, I was nowhere near Fascism or nukes, and I was a desperate laggard in both research rate and strategic resource generation, without control over my own home seas. I had no plan for how to win that game, and none have come to me since that don't require you guys to make the sorts of major mistakes you are highly unlikely to fall for at this point. You did have a plan, a good one, and although it would have taken time and may even have left me with a renewed glimmer of hope in the t210-t225 range as your fleet failed to regrow the way it did post-Diomede, I was never going to be able to prevent or survive the oncoming nukes. 

Very well played, both of you. 

I am seconding the endorsement of your retrospective, Ljubljana. Pretty much everything there is on point. 

I do want to emphasize how impressed I was with your tactical-level maneuvering throughout the game. I consistently agreed with your assessments of what to do (and what you wound up actually doing) in the vast majority of discussion here. Your problems almost entirely stemmed from being too risk adverse in a few places, but when you committed to an engagement you executed brilliantly. The second war against Archduke was a perfect example of this: as I said in the lurker thread at the time, you kept your fleet massed in a dangerous position as you should have (although as stated, there were definitely more dangerous positions you could have gotten to earlier) and even anticipated a very clever play where Archduke could have used his überclad to pin you while still delivering a first strike... the only problem being that Archduke never even conceived of that play, and instead committed a significant tactical error which you struggled to believe had actually occurred. Woden, to his credit, persuaded you to push in anyway, and once ships were actually firing at each other you did pretty much exactly what you needed to do to win. 

I mentioned your dismantling the Aussie fleet as a major triumph in my thread, deservedly and unreservedly so. I failed to give proper credit to your subsequent careful positioning to protect your high value ships from my privateers, and ultimately force through my intended kill zone with units I couldn't quite kill. The two of you successfully anticipated what I wanted to do and how I was trying to do it, and set out from there to make it as impractical as possible to the point that I could never find a profitable time to pull the trigger. I think this whole theater could have gone very differently if Australia had managed keep backpedaling and delay that confrontation for just a few more turns, but instead you got the hanging breaking ball you were looking for and knocked it out of the park. If you don't pounce when you did, or you aren't able to tear up the Aussie ships so efficiently, we're probably still playing this game. 

Diomede was the one place where I think you made a major tactical error, but it was a very subtle one: You needed a unit, any unit, to make sure your eastern flank was two ships deep all across the board. That partial gap and the fact that I had exactly two privateers who could ignore ZoC (something I was actually completely oblivious to until I was playing that turn, so I would likely have made the same error in your place) is the only reason I had a chance to break your lines. I was so ship- and tile-limited that even an embarked warrior would have been enough. Otherwise, as I said in my thread at the time, your deployment was excellent. If I can't break through that gap then all I can do is chew through a couple caravels in the front ranks, you kill a few ships in return, Woden slams into my rear, and my entire navy is trapped and ground to nothing Cannae-style in the Diomede straits. What a different game that would have been. 

As for what we in the Motherland call the Battle of Finnmark, the big mistake I see there was pulling back to take cities on t197 and letting me get in another first strike. The logic there makes some sense, hold back just a bit to get +5 from home defense (clever!) and another +5 from Fascism not long after, but the fact of the matter is that the first strike makes up for a lot of bonuses. I was also grossly misinformed about the composition of your fleet, thanks in no small part to your very well crafted ZoC screens blocking my scouts, and believed I had the edge in a slow exchange of ranged fire when in fact the complete opposite was true. I'm pretty sure your best play was essentially what I did against Norway at Diomede: accept the gauntlet I threw down, sail right up in front of me, and preserve the health of your frontline defenders by not attacking with them, just body blocking for the battleships which will open up on my own destroyers. You do that and I'm kinda stuck, even if I don't know it: you have way more ranged firepower in play, and to hit them I'll need to either break through a screen of healthy, well-supported destroyers, or move my precious few battleships up where I can hit yours from behind my line (and where they will be savaged by your reinforcements in return). You would have ground down my destroyers without leaving me much avenue to replace the lost HP, until they got weak enough that you could crash through and basically wipe the board of dangerous units in one swoop. 

With all that said, Woden on t199 100% made the right choice to sacrifice the Norwegian fleet to take out my battleships. If Norway withdraws I turn around and go back to blasting at (W)Odin, still believing I can win the game (because with a real ranged contingent still in play, maybe I can). With those city crackers at the bottom of the ocean, I had nothing. Excellent decision there.  

I was amused to see that you two were also tripped up by what, exactly, boosted city strength, and many of the other bizare glitches which plague this stupid game. I at least understand now that the game isn't smart enough to bump up city strength when you merge units, but why did Hieratic have 70 base ranged strength? 

Finally, your discussion on combat odds starting here was extremely illuminating. I was operating under the same misconception about the combat formula as you were, and although that was clearly good enough to win some battles taking full advantage of the correct break points and the "rule of 12" is clearly beneficial. I'm at a loss for how to update my spreadsheet though, as none of the obvious variations on those proposed formulae actually fit the data. Frustrating.

[ljubljana]

Lots of very high praise in there - thank you! Risk-aversion is a good way to put it...actually choosing a time and place in which to take engagements is something I'm going to need to put some hard work into from here on out

In Australia, I agree, the timing margin for an attack was very tight there which was why I tried some moves that were, frankly, a little desperate. I am still wondering how close Australia was to upgrading a fleet ironclad and finishing Reformed Church research for WoR when the attack came. Those two were my biggest fears at the time and they seemed imminent, as my science tracking suggested roland was already researching Steam Power when the attack took place. An upgraded IC fleet would have totally stalled our attack on Australia and probably limited our gains there to a costly siege of Illmatic, at best. I also wonder if you might have devoted 5 caravels to keeping my Great Admiral trapped forever in Phoenicia after I foolishly exposed it after Diomede. Perhaps that didn't feel sporting? I would have been okay with it though having had no prior discussion of that kind of thing, and it would have been awfully effective at limiting Australia's losses.

Relatedly, your team made great use of Valletta suzereignty, wow! I am going to make sure to burn them down ASAP next time I see them in a game, that's for sure

On Diomede: hah, I knew I shouldn't have merged those unpromoted caravels! It felt like the wrong decision at the time and now I know why - I was never going to hold the front line with corps, what was more important was keeping SOME ships between you and the frigates for as long as possible. I am not too sure the line holding for a turn would have made that much of a difference, though - we would get in a strong counterattack, yes, but only against your abundant melee ships, and after you did breach my line on the subsequent round, you could flee north and kite Woden's ICs for as long as you pleased. Really, I think I had no business engaging there at all and should have built more walls, fewer caravels, and prepared to slug it out in my cities with frigate fleets. Then Woden could have gone through with what turned out to be the post-Diomede buildup without, you know, needing to replace a whole bunch of promoted ships we lost at Diomede

On Finnmark, yes, I think that would have been the best play. Interesting thought about not attacking with the destroyers, and during some earlier battles I think I had the barest inkling of this principle - attacking with melee ships is not always worthwhile, especially (duh) when your opponent has you badly outmassed in melee ship numbers. These naval battles seem to be almost always decided by which side can hit the ranged ship core of the other side first and hardest, which usually boils down to keeping your melee screen alive for as long as possible and hoping your foe fails to do the same. I also love the idea of weakening your destroyers slowly then finishing them all at once, that never even occurred to me and would have totally neutered my fear of you simply trickling in upgrades to replace any modern ship losses we might inflict.

I still don't have the faintest idea of why Hieratic had the extra ranged attack strength. At the time I only briefly noticed it and am only now thinking through the implications, but in retrospect I definitely needed to report that in the tech thread right away as a possible bug as it may have gotten me a frigate fleet kill there on t180 or at Abugida earlier (I forget if I ever killed one there) that I didn't deserve. My sincerest apologies for that, as every sunk frigate represents a major swing in game state and if you had 4 frigates left after Finnmark at the end instead of 2 things may well have turned out differently. Even in retrospect, I am still not sure where the problem might have been - 70 is the base strength that Woden's cities should have had at the time as he had upgraded a field cannon corps, so the only thing I can think of is some crazy team game-exclusive bug related to that?

[roland of gilead]

Lots of very high praise in there - thank you! Risk-aversion is a good way to put it...actually choosing a time and place in which to take engagements is something I'm going to need to put some hard work into from here on out

In Australia, I agree, the timing margin for an attack was very tight there which was why I tried some moves that were, frankly, a little desperate. I am still wondering how close Australia was to upgrading a fleet ironclad and finishing Reformed Church research for WoR when the attack came. Those two were my biggest fears at the time and they seemed imminent, as my science tracking suggested roland was already researching Steam Power when the attack took place. An upgraded IC fleet would have totally stalled our attack on Australia and probably limited our gains there to a costly siege of Illmatic, at best. I also wonder if you might have devoted 5 caravels to keeping my Great Admiral trapped forever in Phoenicia after I foolishly exposed it after Diomede. Perhaps that didn't feel sporting? I would have been okay with it though having had no prior discussion of that kind of thing, and it would have been awfully effective at limiting Australia's losses.

Relatedly, your team made great use of Valletta suzereignty, wow! I am going to make sure to burn them down ASAP next time I see them in a game, that's for sure

On Diomede: hah, I knew I shouldn't have merged those unpromoted caravels! It felt like the wrong decision at the time and now I know why - I was never going to hold the front line with corps, what was more important was keeping SOME ships between you and the frigates for as long as possible. I am not too sure the line holding for a turn would have made that much of a difference, though - we would get in a strong counterattack, yes, but only against your abundant melee ships, and after you did breach my line on the subsequent round, you could flee north and kite Woden's ICs for as long as you pleased. Really, I think I had no business engaging there at all and should have built more walls, fewer caravels, and prepared to slug it out in my cities with frigate fleets. Then Woden could have gone through with what turned out to be the post-Diomede buildup without, you know, needing to replace a whole bunch of promoted ships we lost at Diomede

On Finnmark, yes, I think that would have been the best play. Interesting thought about not attacking with the destroyers, and during some earlier battles I think I had the barest inkling of this principle - attacking with melee ships is not always worthwhile, especially (duh) when your opponent has you badly outmassed in melee ship numbers. These naval battles seem to be almost always decided by which side can hit the ranged ship core of the other side first and hardest, which usually boils down to keeping your melee screen alive for as long as possible and hoping your foe fails to do the same. I also love the idea of weakening your destroyers slowly then finishing them all at once, that never even occurred to me and would have totally neutered my fear of you simply trickling in upgrades to replace any modern ship losses we might inflict.

I still don't have the faintest idea of why Hieratic had the extra ranged attack strength. At the time I only briefly noticed it and am only now thinking through the implications, but in retrospect I definitely needed to report that in the tech thread right away as a possible bug as it may have gotten me a frigate fleet kill there on t180 or at Abugida earlier (I forget if I ever killed one there) that I didn't deserve. My sincerest apologies for that, as every sunk frigate represents a major swing in game state and if you had 4 frigates left after Finnmark at the end instead of 2 things may well have turned out differently. Even in retrospect, I am still not sure where the problem might have been - 70 is the base strength that Woden's cities should have had at the time as he had upgraded a field cannon corps, so the only thing I can think of is some crazy team game-exclusive bug related to that?

months away from an iron clad or reformed church

[ljubljana]

According to reddit the ranged strength bug is related to Bastions, which causes the base DS to display as 5 points higher and a +5 modifier to be added on top of that. What I do not know is whether the bugged displayed strength corresponds to the actual strength used in damage calculation, but I suspect it does as this seemed to be true when I tested other cases where displayed vs real strength might disagree, as in the turn our military alliance lapsed. If so, that would make Bastions, already a strong policy option that both our teams got great mileage out of, into a horrifyingly strong choice that effectively turns all your cities into city fleets on offense! 

[Woden]

I've only skimmed a few portions of the thread from times when I specifically met up with you two, but I object to Woden's characterization of DoF-blocking:

That is something that has always been an accepted part of PBEMs here! I can think of instances of it happening in PBEM2, in PBEM4, in PBEM7, in PBEM8, in PBEM12, and PBEM13 off the top of my head - and those are just the games I was involved in. 

And it is something that is bitched about in every game where it occurs. I have argued for both sides of this and come to the conclusion (for me) it shouldn't be allowed. It is abusing the system as it has been implemented and is poor sportsmanship. Play better, don't exploit the system just because you can.

It's part of the risk/reward balance when deciding whether or not to take a DoF - you secure yourself from attack, but also open yourself to moves like that. The alternative is fuzzy, hard to judge, and frankly just as unbalanced - what, I'm just supposed to watch helplessly while an enemy gets stronger? I'm not allowed to do anything about it, even though the mechanics of the game clearly allow me to, just because...? Nah. 

You can spin this around and say that not being able to "do anything" is part of deciding to sign a DoF and one could say it is more in the spirit of a DoF. You want to interfere with another war to prevent a run away, join it. Don't abuse the stupid 1-unit per tile rule.

The game also allows me to queue up a bunch of units needing resources to empty my stockpile, then faith buying the older units, after which I can clear out the unit builds and fill my stockpiles again so I can upgrade all that I bought the following turn, all in the same turn and not having to put actual production into any units. I could get twice the number of units out of the same resources stockpile, as long as I had the faith for the older units and gold to upgrade them. Is that part of the game, or an exploit of how the system is implemented? If not an exploit, then you gave all the faith generating civilizations a boost.

I know MJW kind of dismissed my example here but I don't think he understands the utility of it. But maybe an example will help. In PBEM18, right about when I unlocked tanks and oil, I decided to faith buy chariots but needed to put enough units in production that took all my niter and iron into production (this is where I discovered this exploit). Now, I actually built those units (instead of actually clearing out the queues) while being able to faith buy chariots. I merged the chariots and upgraded them to tanks when I had the oil. Now image if I just slotted the units and cleared them out each turn. I can get a bunch of corps chariots in the industrial era that I can cheaply upgrade into tanks and instead of building actual units, I could have spent my production on infrastructure and improved my position more. All using the systems as they were intended but it doesn't mean it isn't an exploit.

Another example would be if we ever played in Apocalypse mode, the Great Bath/soothsayer exploit where you build the Great Bath and intentionally flood the Great Bath river with your soothsayers to gain +1 faith to each floodplain tile on the river every time it floods. You can gain enormous amounts of faith, especially if you have a long river with lots of floodplain tiles. Technically, everything there is how the game is supposed to work but I guarantee it would be considered an exploit once it was tried once.

Woden called me an asshole or something then, and I get emotions run high in games, but c'mon. That's totally unfair. It's a legitimate tactic, I never agreed not to do it, and I do not agree not to do it in future games. Keep it in mind if I ever offer you a DoF and remember it's part of the calculation - I certainly do!

Calling you an asshole is a heat of the moment comment, doesn't mean anything but if it hurt your feelings, I am sorry! But as for legitimate tactics, I have to disagree and will need to go back to my no DoF policy that I tried to implement in PBEM14 and 18.

[ljubljana]

I do think we may want to have a broader discussion on upgrades too, as from the lurker thread it sounds like we were not the only team that deliberately used one team member as the niter bank so the other could keep building quads and upgrading them in the discount policy. In an FFA game it is also possible to pull off essentially the same thing just by being careful and always upgrading a frigate whenever you go over 10 niter but before you hit 20 (so no quads upgrade in the queue). I think efficient resource management was key to many of the naval battles here (as CMF predicted) and it would be good to establish some kind of consensus on what is and is not okay there.

[roland of gilead]

I do think we may want to have a broader discussion on upgrades too, as from the lurker thread it sounds like we were not the only team that deliberately used one team member as the niter bank so the other could keep building quads and upgrading them in the discount policy. In an FFA game it is also possible to pull off essentially the same thing just by being careful and always upgrading a frigate whenever you go over 10 niter but before you hit 20 (so no quads upgrade in the queue). I think efficient resource management was key to many of the naval battles here (as CMF predicted) and it would be good to establish some kind of consensus on what is and is not okay there.

Yeah i did that. Never even considered it might not be ok and it was open to everyone. We did it poorly though in fairness and not sure we really got any advantage out of it. 

Agreed ground rules would be ideal

[roland of gilead]

i thought though that as soon as you had the resources the build upgraded. so cancelling production ques would just see the upgrade produced.

IIRC that happened to us. when niter was transferred back.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I've only skimmed a few portions of the thread from times when I specifically met up with you two, but I object to Woden's characterization of DoF-blocking:

That is something that has always been an accepted part of PBEMs here! I can think of instances of it happening in PBEM2, in PBEM4, in PBEM7, in PBEM8, in PBEM12, and PBEM13 off the top of my head - and those are just the games I was involved in. 

And it is something that is bitched about in every game where it occurs. I have argued for both sides of this and come to the conclusion (for me) it shouldn't be allowed. It is abusing the system as it has been implemented and is poor sportsmanship. Play better, don't exploit the system just because you can.   

It's part of the risk/reward balance when deciding whether or not to take a DoF - you secure yourself from attack, but also open yourself to moves like that. The alternative is fuzzy, hard to judge, and frankly just as unbalanced - what, I'm just supposed to watch helplessly while an enemy gets stronger? I'm not allowed to do anything about it, even though the mechanics of the game clearly allow me to, just because...? Nah. 

You can spin this around and say that not being able to "do anything" is part of deciding to sign a DoF and one could say it is more in the spirit of a DoF. You want to interfere with another war to prevent a run away, join it. Don't abuse the stupid 1-unit per tile rule. 

Woden called me an asshole or something then, and I get emotions run high in games, but c'mon. That's totally unfair. It's a legitimate tactic, I never agreed not to do it, and I do not agree not to do it in future games. Keep it in mind if I ever offer you a DoF and remember it's part of the calculation - I certainly do!

Calling you an asshole is a heat of the moment comment, doesn't mean anything but if it hurt your feelings, I am sorry! But as for legitimate tactics, I have to disagree and will need to go back to my no DoF policy that I tried to implement in PBEM14 and 18.

We're going to have to agree to disagree here. From my perspective, I -was- playing better. I don't see it as abusing the system nor is it poor sportsmanship - what exactly is unsportsmanlike about it? The other party knows it can happen and they can do stuff about it. We've seen quite clever workarounds! It's using the rules of the game, not trying to read designers' minds about what's 'intended.'

Similarly, I have absolutely no issue with one teammate hoarding resources so the other can build cheaply and upgrade. Why would I? Seems perfectly legitimate to me.