[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Ginger()]

The Redentor for renter?

[Miguelito]

I'm increasingly frustrated.  Amica has been manipulating me (Rusten wasn't involved in getting manipulated,  aside from arguing for the war) at every turn.
I can accept them helping Picc in the Fusion/Internet race while simultaneously recruiting us for war against Picc. That was their only road to winning the game,  and I have to recognize that there's some beauty to this scheming,  even though it feels bad to be at the receiving end of it...

The peace with Picc however... they are absolutely in the pole position in this game. I have been rush buying nukes, and still the power ratio is moving against our favour rapidly. They have twice our city count,  and are just beginning to grow. We have nearly all of our army over at Picc's, while they are launching a new onslaught on Lazteuq. The war with Picc is terribly costly; I have spent close to 10k on rush buying already,  and Picc now has an ICBM (more on that later; rush bought , because the lurkers let him have it  ) that will surely fall on our heads before the war is over.

So Amica expects us to throw everything into it - because that's what it takes - for them to then be the favourite to win,  and still bag in a pile of gold. Ffs they even have the nerve to haggle over Mining resources while we're fighting their war for them

I think we can stop that spaceship (although Picc keeps pulling new tricks), but the question is really,  do I want to? Of course there's still a chance we could withstand Amica and get our spaceship out first, and I'd love to prove it, but honestly it seems like a longshot. And do I care more about preserving an off chance to win than about not being Amica's tool?

I'd like to demand 10k gold and flip the table if they refuse, but alas they don't have as much, having just finished Plastics. I should have demanded 7k 2 turns ago, but I was still processing it and not angry enough yet.

[Rusten]

I'm not up to date, but if Amica is acting poorly just let Piccadilly win. Best way to punish them.

[mackoti]

The dynamics have been interesting to watch, but you do have the short end of the stick here... If Amica keeps doing what he is doing and you manage to stop Piccadilly, what would you say your vs his chance to win is?

I'd make a suggestion but the RB lurker rules are so restrictive...

OH , but its alowed to say nuke him to the ground   .

[Miguelito]

I'm not up to date, but if Amica is acting poorly just let Piccadilly win. Best way to punish them.

Or maybe an even better punishment would be to chain them to the management of their 150+ city Behemoth empire for another couple dozen turns ?

(Seriously,  their turns are taking like 7 hours.  even assuming pauses it must be exhausting.  maybe their peace with Picc was also a way of saying they don't care if the game continues? Whatever,  to be clear,  I will of course not seriously aim to cause RL miserymisery a player because of annoying in game behaviour)


Thrawn, I'd rate it as something like 80-20 in Amica's favour? But I have not seriously assessed yet how long it would take us to get to space. Also Charriu is a decent ally... but at 21 cities ultimately it doesn't matter too much.


mack, I can promise as much as that there will be nukes.

[Rusten]

You should follow your heart, but personally I would not accept someone just sitting back and reap all the rewards. That's the last person I'd want to win the game. Nothing personal towards Amica, just a game decision.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for keeping up the reporting so late in the game, and for all the excitement!  As always, venting frustrations in your thread is Standard Behavior, but I did want to comment on one thing:

rush bought , because the lurkers let him have it

I wasn't part of the lurker discussion around this, but the decision was absolutely the correct one.  The "printing money" bug is not being abused here.  Telling a player they could not offer or accept a valid diplomatic deal in case another player's actions might render them unable to fulfill it without going into Strike, or forbidding a player to take other in-game actions in case of exactly the same thing, would be completely unreasonable.  If you contend that the diplomatic deal was not valid when offered, then you are under a misapprehension.  If you contend that Piccadilly is trying to do anything underhanded or exploitive, then again you are mistaken.

If, on the other hand, you contend that Amica's diplo has been manipulative and/or backstabby, and you want to respond accordingly, contend away!

[Miguelito]

You should follow your heart, but personally I would not accept someone just sitting back and reap all the rewards. That's the last person I'd want to win the game. Nothing personal towards Amica, just a game decision.

Mostly I feel like going down fighting. If we can get the spaceship up first, we should be in a way better position to fight than Picc, and look how far he got. But I have decided to give it some time - we have until turn 247 to stop Picc, if we can make it, and we'll see how Amica behaves until then, and what our position will look like. I am pretty sure that we could have razed Picc's capital next turn with nukes and a commando unless he moved it in the interturn, but that just gives Amica free reign. By turn 247 we should at least have SDI finished. At least I want a shot of a movable unit in front of Picc's capital, if I can make it.

I also need to make a serious assessment on how long I expect for the spaceship to take us. I hardly find time after war turns though









On to the report! t242 & 243 (5 left)



Amica, ever gracious:




Aside from the nerve of making demands given the Picc situation, what do they expect us to do? Fight a land war against fairly developed industrial Charriu and infantry recruiting Laz, while the bulk of our forces are still engaged fighting our supposed common enemy, just so that they can then pick up the remains and proceed to sail into our lands?



To my shame, when logging into t 243 for a quick peek I had not thought of having to respond to diplo, and in a knee jerk accepted their offer of 4 resources for 50gpt, up from our previous rate of 10/resource (used to be 3 before our war). Considering that every resource costs about 25gpt in maintenance, this is close to zero sum atm, which I should not accept from Amica (but will from Cairo). I later tried to rectify it with this offer:




And subsequently asking for all resources as a gift. Of course what they make of it should affect my decision on what to do going forward. However, a likely option is just war - they are moving in on Lazteuq again, who has basically evacuated GKC's former subcontinent (the one bordering us). Sadly I did not take pictures. I moved our ships forward, and I would not blame Amica for seeing that as an aggressive move, because it is. The point is, why again are you pushing that front again while you expect me to secure your win for you? I mean, if they just contented themselves with building up an unsurmountable force out of our sight, while they still need us, I guess my annoyance would be far less.



I took some overview shots of Amica, to check for probable nuke whips. Might be interesting for lurkers anyway.

t242:






243:




The city sizes are of course ridiculous, but I don't see a drastic decrease in any city yet, so they let the nukes mature a bit more yet, before whipping.



The looted continent, fwiw:




Probably the reason why I should concede this game. The yet unexploited potential there is mind boggling.





Off to the actual war! Turn 242 was mostly calm. Picc had retreated his units into his core, most of them badly wounded. I razed the evacuated isthmus city of Nianni:




He even let the MechInf standing on the hill, despite still having 4 healthy modern armours in Djenne. Maybe my guided missile exploits have made a bit of an impression.

I am not sure if that turn I had to reconquer Silent once more, in any case that turn we kept it.



Fearing quick ICBMs, I start some preparations:




Sadly I can't find the right moment to build one in Angola É (IW), because there is so much stuff to build. So that might come back to bite me yet.



At the end of the turn I send in the dry rushed nukes, in order to take that unpleasant island:




And I may have done a mistake there. I could have loaded them on the ships and left them invisible. The thing is, they can't hit the city from the ships, but they can hit the sea NE of it, and that should be enough to take care of the garrison. However, Picc can then leave a massive stack W of the city, and then we can't paradrop there unless we clear it with guided missiles (that is, if it's not too massive) .

Anyways, my main fear was him rushing a bomb shelters there. That is because it renders workers in the city near invulnerable to nukes, but workers prevent recently dropped paras from entering, and then he can reinforce the city from boats. Instead he took a different turn:




So. I had double and triple checked that our nukes would destroy his reliably. But. It turns out that ICBMs and Tactical Nukes behave differently, and ICBMs apparently are invulnerable to nukes*, and also prevent a para from entering. Lovely . So now we have the city effectively blocked AND a sword hanging over our heads. 

The picture is from a bit into the turn, and you see that we took Zaria. We also took Raven, and Bilma, where I did something right for a change:




So, I had moved just 3 modern armours in range of the city, mostly because I had seen the opportunity too late into the turn. Picc covered with 5 skirms&axes. So I used the first 2 on healthy skirmishers, then got 2 axes down to 50% with bombers, from where a single guided missile for each was enough (but I had 2 more in store). Then the final MA took the city. It's the first time that I think Picc made a significant mistake. He could either have sent a bunch more trash units into the city, or just wiped the three MAs.
Significant because it let the main stack advance a turn ahead of schedule:



So there it hit me. Under these circumstances, I might actually be able to build a canal on turn 245. And that would mean that we would be able to reach any of his cities by turn 247. And we would not have needed nukes for that. Mass paratroopers and guided missiles would have been enough. Meaning that the 10k gold I spent on rush buys would have been saved, and we would not have Picc's ICBM dangling over our head.

Well, culture recession after a conquest is always unpredictable (at least to me, I am sure Ref would know), and it might not have worked out. Picc might also have played differently. However, I am pretty sure that a better planned campaign would have been further advanced by now by one or two turns at least. Put a heavier focus on the northern coast, advance more methodically through that (Jowy's) subcontinent. On the other hand I was counting on Amica to take care of Picc's original core, because that was what they offered. And I realized the problem with Stony Lake only well into the campaign, and when I did it was 2am and I decided to go nuclear in a snap decision, and I was still counting on Amica to keep Picc's uranium down. But looking at it from now, even then it might have been feasible to take the island with mass paratroops and guided missiles, although paras take a lot of time (1-2 turns building - snap decision, so no overflow prepared, 1-2 turns airlifting, 1 turn move into a city from where to drop, 1 turn drop, 1 turn fight and hopefully take the city - so considering that we researched Fascism t240 we would have taken Stony Lake t245 at the very earliest, and that is just barely enough to get to all of Picc's cities in time, and if something goes wrong it's game over)
I also already mentioned that I am learning modern warfare on the fly, while I suppose that Picc, coming from Civforum, has at least some experience with it. And the usual, RL demands not allowing to plan out everything calmly etc. 

Anyways, we captured one more city, to bring the counter to 4 for this turn:



Defended it with a single mech inf though, as tanks are bad on defense and are needed on the ships. He can have it back if he wants to, and I probably should have razed. The city for once had at least some actual defense in about 5 MGs / Inf.


My plan to break the Stony Lake gridlock is the following:


The mouseover is on Mound City. There's another nuke in Spiro. The idea is to nuke his fleet carrying the reinforcements, or at least block it from reinforcing, then drop 5 paras to take the city the turn after.

Now of course the Ziara garrison is a prime target for his ICBM. In my tests tactical nukes get consistently killed upon the first shot (without bomb shelters). The northern stack is an excellent target for him as well. I am quite unsure what happens if he hits it; it might enable him to wipe the stack completely, although he does not have many hitters and many are badly wounded yet as of this turn. The best case honestly would probably be for him to hit some core city . But I think he's too cool headed for that.
If he manages to get out a second nuke it might be game over. Whom am I kidding, of course he can. He has 1.7k left in the bank, which means he had to generate 180 hammers into a tactical nuke over 3 turns, so that should be trivial.
 
You also see that he took back Wounded Knee from Ichabod. It should not have been without losses. I don't remember precisely, but Ichabod had a significant garrison there, and he had to attack from his boats. He could soften with 4 bombers though. I also had stationed 4 bombers there, sad story. You see a 2 mover stack of ours moving in to take it back. He also went further south:



Not sure what that was about, just XP farming ? Our MechInf cleared a wounded MA that had razed the city there (can he raze his own cities?), and  that artillery unit was also taken care of. Anyways, this excursion has me hoping that he will lack hitters on his boats to retake Zaria in case he nukes the garrison there. By my counts there should not have been more than 18 originally.

Thanks for keeping up the reporting so late in the game, and for all the excitement!  As always, venting frustrations in your thread is Standard Behavior, but I did want to comment on one thing:

rush bought , because the lurkers let him have it

I wasn't part of the lurker discussion around this, but the decision was absolutely the correct one.  The "printing money" bug is not being abused here.  Telling a player they could not offer or accept a valid diplomatic deal in case another player's actions might render them unable to fulfill it without going into Strike, or forbidding a player to take other in-game actions in case of exactly the same thing, would be completely unreasonable.  If you contend that the diplomatic deal was not valid when offered, then you are under a misapprehension.  If you contend that Piccadilly is trying to do anything underhanded or exploitive, then again you are mistaken.

If, on the other hand, you contend that Amica's diplo has been manipulative and/or backstabby, and you want to respond accordingly, contend away!

First off, I am not accusing the players of illicit behaviour. I think Picc was impeccable here: He received an offer that might save his win, saw a possible issue and reported it to the lurkers. I can not fault Amica for trying either. Picc is definitely doing something exploitive - he is litterally using an exploit, and steering his game to maximize it. But it has been sanctioned explicitly by the lurkers, so I really can't expect him to not follow the ruling, and mabye he would not have accepted the deal under different conditions.

I can also see that the decision for lurkers is not an easy one. What would I have done? Ask Ramk if it is possible to cancel the treaty once Piccadilly runs out of money via admin powers**. If it isn't Picc has to take reasonable steps to ensure he pays with real money for as long as possible. It is really not an "in case" question whether he'll go bankrupt. The treaty is now 4 turns old, he is down to 1.7k gold after rushing the nuke, and the reasonable thing for him to do is to spend the rest this turn, because he is definitely in red numbers. I am not saying that he should have had to queue wealth in every city, but not letting him spend the treasury would have been reasonable. Again, strike is a joke at this point of the game.

Or if that is too complicated the deal should not have been allowed. Maybe Amica would have had to contend themselves with Picc's treasury of 4.5k or so. Still better than 30 pieces of silver.

If you look at it from my perspective, the decision as is leaves one of my opponents with a secure rear front, but he does not have to pay for it and instead can spend the money on WMDs to fight us off. Meanwhile the other one gets paid with money made out of thin air, which will likely allow them to take the tech lead over us. And the decision even incentivizes Picc to maximize the bug - spend all his money as soon as possible, switch to production over commerce as much as possible, don't defend commerce cities, because it will not matter anyways.



* when in real life first strike doctrine is all about hitting the enemy's ICBMs in their silos!


** At Civforum they have the rule of having to declare war once somebody can not pay for their credits anymore. Of course that is not easily feasible in this case.

[Miguelito]

Thanks for keeping up the reporting so late in the game, and for all the excitement!  As always, venting frustrations in your thread is Standard Behavior, but I did want to comment on one thing:

rush bought , because the lurkers let him have it

I wasn't part of the lurker discussion around this, but the decision was absolutely the correct one.  The "printing money" bug is not being abused here.  Telling a player they could not offer or accept a valid diplomatic deal in case another player's actions might render them unable to fulfill it without going into Strike, or forbidding a player to take other in-game actions in case of exactly the same thing, would be completely unreasonable.  If you contend that the diplomatic deal was not valid when offered, then you are under a misapprehension.  If you contend that Piccadilly is trying to do anything underhanded or exploitive, then again you are mistaken.

If, on the other hand, you contend that Amica's diplo has been manipulative and/or backstabby, and you want to respond accordingly, contend away!

First off, I am not accusing the players of illicit behaviour. I think Picc was impeccable here: He received an offer that might save his win, saw a possible issue and reported it to the lurkers. I can not fault Amica for trying either. Picc is definitely doing something exploitive - he is litterally using an exploit, and steering his game to maximize it. But it has been sanctioned explicitly by the lurkers, so I really can't expect him to not follow the ruling, and mabye he would not have accepted the deal under different conditions.

I can also see that the decision for lurkers is not an easy one. What would I have done? Ask Ramk if it is possible to cancel the treaty once Piccadilly runs out of money via admin powers**. If it isn't Picc has to take reasonable steps to ensure he pays with real money for as long as possible. It is really not an "in case" question whether he'll go bankrupt. The treaty is now 4 turns old, he is down to 1.7k gold after rushing the nuke, and the reasonable thing for him to do is to spend the rest this turn, because he is definitely in red numbers. I am not saying that he should have had to queue wealth in every city, but not letting him spend the treasury would have been reasonable. Again, strike is a joke at this point of the game.

Or if that is too complicated the deal should not have been allowed. Maybe Amica would have had to contend themselves with Picc's treasury of 4.5k or so. Still better than 30 pieces of silver.

If you look at it from my perspective, the decision as is leaves one of my opponents with a secure rear front, but he does not have to pay for it and instead can spend the money on WMDs to fight us off. Meanwhile the other one gets paid with money made out of thin air, which will likely allow them to take the tech lead over us. And the decision even incentivizes Picc to maximize the bug - spend all his money as soon as possible, switch to production over commerce as much as possible, don't defend commerce cities, because it will not matter anyways.


** At Civforum they have the rule of having to declare war once somebody can not pay for their credits anymore. Of course that is not easily feasible in this case.

Also what irritates me a lot is getting absolutely no sympathy on this.  I mean if lurkers were saying that it was a tough decision,  and they concluded that theirs was the least harmful, I would still disagree,  but at least feel somewhat respected.

But what I've been getting has been more like suck it up lol he'll maybe lose ten irrelevant units to strike and how are you implying there's anything fishy about it the deal was legal as per game mechanics shrug.  After all RB has always been all about finding sneaky exploits especially in MP hasn't it.

I realize that I'm saying that everybody else is crazy and I'm the only one sane,  but maybe my ideas of fair play and the general consensus here are just too far apart and I should see my way out.

[Hitru]

Hi,

I was taking part of decision and I can say it was tough one to do and I definitely see your point of view. And I'm sorry I did not say so earlier, don't want you to feel the way you are. Sometimes I feel we should open up more on this forum and talk more openly.

I agree that strike is complete joke for him but there were also some points that made us go to this direction in ruling. But we definitely as a community should either mod strike to be more severe or discuss how we treat this in future. I laid down few extreme examples in lurker thread which IMO show that we need some decision.