Chevalier and Incurian's Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny PBEM Reporting Thingy

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

So I am discussing the game but apparently unlike other people I have a day job and a family, so I can't obsessively post over the game after running endless simulations. Instead, we'll have to rely on pure theory to carry us through. While also explaining the basic dynamics of multiplayer to Incurian. 

Well, I'm sure it'll be fine! 

Anyway, I'm assuming thrawn will play Norway the way I would play Norway and attempt to strangle all of us to death while Krill builds in peace to win decisively at Frigates. I'm also assuming Woden and ljub know this and will try to help bring him down. 

The trickiest thing is we need Cothons/Holy Sites to match Norwegian shipbuilding, but those require an initial investment. Once we have two Cothons out, in theory we should match Thrawn's domestic production of longships with biremes, while the other civs and me should outweigh him. So IN THEORY we should be able to drive the longship deathball away from our shores and build up a domestic economy.

In practice, I expect detached wolfpacks of 2-3 longships to feast upon every single city-state on the map using their superior mobility and to build up a base of 10+ cities to endlessly spam doom upon us, and I don't see what we can really do about that other than trying to get a navy out to defend the local waters.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

So, trying to think through at work. 

The biggest danger I see is Norway killing city-states. Consider:

If thrawn is building cities on his own, he's not building longships to come kill us. So, he won't do that, he'll build longships. Figure he'll get the first, maybe two settlers out, and be building off 3 cities. Even 3 Norwegian cities can't build more combat ships than 18 combined English-Gallic-Portuguese-Japanese-Punic-Indonesian cities. Now, those 18 cities won't be able to coordinate or concentrate ships against him, while he can bring the full force of his navy to bear on any single civilization. He'll be able to maneuver and strike at will over the ocean while we will have to crawl along the coast to counterattack. 

But we must counterattack. A passive defense won't work against Norway, as he can swoop in to pillage and loot and then pull back to the ocean to heal. Furthermore, if left alone, he and Sumeria can concentrate on one single team, knock out their coastal cities, and eventually keep the choke in place long enough to invade and capture (or jsut burn the coast and move on to the next target, more likely). To prevent that, you need to get Norway to divert ships to home defense. Menaces to his own cities will take pressure off our 'allies.' 

Once he starts capturing city-states, though, this becomes a very difficult strategy. Early in the game 2 longships can effectively capture a city, and thrawn will be running a thousand simulations and workshopping the most efficient possible way to capture as many CSes as possible. Each CS is effectively a free base for more Norwegian longships, and even two city-states nearby to us will be a rat's nest of pirates to clear out - maybe even impossible to clear out. Norway alone can't choke the rest of the map, but Norway with 12 conquered city-states might very well be! 

So, uh, Kaiser, any chance we could get NO city-states on this map? 

Anyway, that's what I see as our probable lose condition. Each team will have to first, defend his own coast, THEN, push and defend nearby city-states, and finally counterattack on Norway's coast - while also building ourselves up AND keeping up with booming Sumeria AND keeping an eye on the other teams. It's a fiendishly difficult challenge and I think the field is very likely to lose. 

Inc and I need to get out at least 2 Cothons and holy sites apiece (obviously HS for me, Cothons for him). Each HS is a trickle of faith that lets me buy more ships down the line and Jongs will be our earliest hitters capable of taking a city (although we know jongs lose to galleys, pound for pound). That might be doable to protect ourselves...but what do we do to protect the city-states or our neighbors?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

But that means all conquerable because one of the map settings on which I chose Norway was that CSs were not going to be overly defended, and I certainly would have chosen someone else otherwise.

And if anyone is concerned about another matter from 19, I invite you to try a single player game and see how fast you can find, let alone conquer the CSs on a large map. It's not at all easy and in the beginning you are even stuck to the coast and have to backtrack or do big going rounds because there are large oceans in the way.

As if there was any doubt about the gameplan. 

PBEM19 is my model of how this game can go pearshaped. If thrawn were to do a 'conventional' game, like, say, Woden in PBEM20 - using the longship and pillages as 'nice to haves' but not centering his gameplan on them - then I'd not be worried. I mean, I will probably be outbuilt by everyone since I haven't nearly the time and energy to devote to this game that they have, but at least we can have a nice long match into the Industrial age again. It's a promising game like my Zulus that gets aborted due to a crazy UU and wacky city-states that I want to avoid. This game being decided in the first 100 turns would be a disappointment.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Oooh, spice in the tech thread. I tried to calm things down. 

Woden is right, thrawn's constant stream of requirements to Kaiser is a bit grating, but that's just who the guy is. Read any of his previous three threads and you see obsessive gameplanning and wringing every bit of knowledge he can out of the map. He will have constructed vast walls of text proposing the exact build order and initial movements of his longships and hell, Krill's warcarts too for all I know (I am not worried about the warcarts because if you lose control of the sea you lose regardless and if you don't lose control of the sea then warcarts are irrelevant), BUT it'll all be map dependent. So of course he's going to want every bit of information on that from Kaiser in advance. 

That said, pressing Kaiser to make the map more one way or more another goes too far, I think. Let the lurkers craft the best map they can for an entertaining game and not put their fingers on the scale too much, knowing and accepting that they'll miss some things (like the Central Powers' weak terrain in PBEM20, my total inability to build canals in PBEM7, thrawn's posts on the PBEM21 starts).*

*I'm still going to bitch at you around turn 100 or so, Kaiser. You know I don't mean it. <3

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Jesus, what a stupid argument. 

I really struggle playing games with the Grand Admiral's control freak nature.

[Sullla]

Thrawn is exceptionally talented at turn-based strategy games and his report writing is a joy to read (he had a long history of dominating in our Master of Orion events before swapping over to Civ6). Thrawn is also the guy who ruins every D&D session by arguing with the DM over rules interpretations and absolutely insists on explaining, in great detail, why the Player's Handbook ACTUALLY supports his version of events. I would not want to face him in a Multiplayer game for both of these reasons.

(I'm sorry when you read this later thrawn; the constant posts in the general thread trying to engineer map settings in your favor are really annoying.)

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

He's extremely talented, and I'd really like to test myself against him. Him as the rules lawyer is a perfect analogy - no one denies that the rules lawyer is really good at DnD! But his need for control and his burning desire to win pushes him to use all the levers at his disposal, including hectoring the mapmaker, instead of just taking what's been rolled and going with it.

You kinda just have to take the breaks, y'know? If I had gotten first pick Norway was my choice since way back in PBEM20 (still regret taking Australia with #2 and hoping Norway would fall), and I would have plotted a massive CS-sweep and longship deathball while my teammate built in peace.

I guess I need to think about how Inc and I will attempt to win, but I have 6 different lesson preps this semester so my time is mostly limited to commenting on tech thread drama. Way less brainpower.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

The map seems to have died down. 

At least I put the potential of a Norwegian runaway snowball purely from their UU + citystates on the radar - like I said before, my worst fear is a repeat of PBEM19, where I felt like I lost not because I played poorly, but because I never had a chance from the beginning. 

Been thinking over some more about how we can use our two civs to best effect. Anyone hoping for a jong rush is going to be disappointed, though - I didn't take Indonesia for the jongs, lurkers! I know better than anyone how easily countered unsupported jongs can be. They'll be part of the puzzle, but only part of it. The real task is getting the biggest, nastiest combined fleet into the water and putting it in the best possible place to succeed. That's what Indonesia and Phoenicia, alongside Norway, are pretty good at. 

(Japan or Germany or even Brazil had we not banned Work Ethic would ALSO be good at it).

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

never mind we're still having this stupid argument

Let's offer thrawn to swap him Indonesia for Norway, I think Norway is the single strongest naval civ and would love to pair it with Phoenicia (again).

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Hey, Kaiser, thanks for making the map. I really do appreciate how much work you put it into it - I didn't expect my "don't make the exact same map as PBEM20, only a similar one" would cause thrawn to fall into despair, but in retrospect I should have, as something similarh appened before, well, PBEM20.