[PB70 Mjmd] STAND AS ONE!

[Mjmd]

It's always hard to know when to pull the trigger

I mean I think I had over a 50% chance if I pulled the trigger T179 and T184 respectively. Couldn't give you an exact percent. 

However, 40 turns is a LONG time for me to keep improving my position. Their whole preface for the original dogpile is I would just out tech them, and now having done very little damage they are going to let me out tech them? Call me confused, but I'll do that I guess? Obvious goal is oil based navy just to wholly eliminate that threat. Won't put me far from assembly line.

[Commodore]

I do apologize to Commodore. You maybe should just see if people are willing to start the big game. Not like early turns are much and with map set up ect shouldn't be too bad.

 Can you guys at least swap to simultaneous with the Always Peace settings?

[Mjmd]

Evidently the thing keeping them from conceding was they wanted to kill Charriu first?

I WON!!!



So ya don't know if I should have been working on before 40T NAP, but I had a 4th GA in the bag, with natural GP production if needed..... AMERICA NERF PLEASE. That was with me using a merchant on a trade mission. Plan was to put two merchants in Mandalay (and if I didn't get free merchant to put another two risky scientist in then if needed time wise) then could obviously use National Epic in Roots which is just behind Braw sailing currently to pop either an artist or eng. 



Even though tech is on steel was going to education then economics once I had gold saved. Was afraid SD would switch tech away from rifling so wanted to do it in one sprint.

My goal this game was to get America nerfed and I hope that is the case. I want to stress most games players never get to a 4th GA at all let alone this early in the game. I'm not even sure a 4th GA was the ideal set up. I probably should have just spammed merchants, but I really wanted to easily demonstrate how easy America makes GP planning.



Shout out to Bing for his help on multiple deals and SDs early help as well.

[Qgqqqqq]

Any reflections on the game? Anything you'd do differently?

[Mjmd]

I evidently didn't convincingly show off the America UB enough for some people so I consider that a great failure. I didn't report on it very much which is probably part of it.

I do think people avoiding org religion for so long this game was a big factor this game. I played a builder game and yes part of that was the nature of diplo game, but no one else really seemed to push this vector as much. Its hard to know how much of this was just getting 3 GAs early, but I do think this was a factor.

[pindicator]

Congratulations on the win!

[Mjmd]

Thanks and thanks for keeping me focused; especially early.

[scooter]

I’ve finally been reading through this, but before I get to The Stab, one comment.

I haven't really been updating, but to be fair not much has been happening. Despite being in a GA for past 22 turns I seem to be behind Scooter in tech. Even with my deviations to top of tree and engineering I would expect not to be THAT far behind in tech, but somehow I am. I'm behind education and phil. IE he is researching lib right now, which I KNOW because I have a huge courthouse advantage, which again begs the question on how I'm so far behind on tech.

It was interesting to see that live you thought you were far behind in tech. In terms of raw completed beakers this was probably true, but in True Tech it was not even close to true, and I think the 40 turns that unfolded after this post is evidence of this.

My game was very burst-y. You probably know this now, but I bulbed a ton of stuff on this path including a double bulb of Education, plus my Monk Economy focus already put me down the center of the tree - such as Paper for Sankore. You can see in my thread screenshots of my tech showing the hilarious number of staple techs that I skipped for ages. CKNs and Rep happiness allowed me to totally skip Construction/Calendar, for example, let alone anything behind them. It was a paper lead, not a real lead, basically.

[scooter]

I’m not gonna go line-by-line on your pages of justifications for your move. I thought for awhile to just not come in here, but I think this is all incomplete without some actual thoughts. A few comments.

First, it’s noticeable that you neglected to talk in your thread about how I came at you with a much softer offer like a week before.

Scooter FINALLY brokered a discussion that basically went something like this:
Scooter:
Here is the deal, you give me and charriu NAPs, I guess you can take on Charriu 20 turns from now. I'll eat Bing and then when you declare on charriu I'll also take some of that (this last part I'm guessing at). 
Mjmd:
What if I let you take on Bing now and I take on Charriu
Scooter:
My way or I raze your coastal cities
Mjmd:
Some grumbles and minor adjustments to the deal

This is not what actually happened. Awhile before this I proposed we split Superdeath, which I admit was mostly just feeling you out about willingness to cooperate. You said a pretty flat no to this. About 1 week before this I came to you by offering this:

Mjmd:
What if I let you take on Bing now and I take on Charriu

That was my first offer to you. You were super noncommittal and unwilling. What that told me is you had every intention of interfering with my invasion of Bing, otherwise why wouldn’t you agree. I viewed that as an intent to declare war on me (either formally or informally) the minute I went at Bing anyway, so I needed to secure a deal another way. The fact that you portrayed it in here as poor little you getting bullied by big bad me is sort of wild to me, especially given that you were dead even with me on Astro tech despite not burning 3 bulbs and Liberalism to get there. In general your unwillingness to deal made me quite concerned the game was already at a 3v2 with SD and Bing on your side.


There’s a lot of back and forth in here. To summarize, you seemed to want to make the argument be about legal norms or something weird like that. I don’t really understand all the litigation you engaged in. I sort of wish you had just owned it and said “I think this is a potential game winning move, and it’s worth the rep hit” because that’s an argument I could sort of get even if I think it’s lame. But you seemed to think you were stabbing while also claiming some sort of weird moral high ground. Very weird. I dunno man, I went over this in my thread and struggled to think of a dirtier play in a previous game. I’ve seen NAP-stabs, but I’ve never seen someone agree to a NAP that they were planning to rip up from the second it was signed. The argument here isn’t whether or not you had the right to stab. Of course you did, it’s a game, and we do not enforce it as a rule-breaking measure. However, you implicitly agree to a reputational hit. You seemed to not get this part, from my reading of your debating in here. Good luck in future diplo games, basically is what I’m saying.



Finally, the actual justification is sort of weird to me too! First off, I think it was pretty clear from my diplo with you that I did not actually want to attack you. If I did, I would have just done it! Why on earth would I give you like 3 turns warning if I was wanting to attack you? That would be insane. What I wanted was to invade Bing without you propping him up and/or possibly even shivving me from behind. I felt from our diplo interactions that you were highly likely to do this, especially when you showed a lack of interest in my first offer of you take Charriu, I take Bing, no interference. Why wouldn’t you be interested in this? So I felt like I had to threaten it and use that to secure an invasion window. I think I was very clear in my words to you that I did not want to actually attack you, but if you weren’t willing to stay out, I would have to retaliate.


The other thing is as has been said a lot… you could have just said no? If you had said “I’ve got Astro too, so no thanks” that would have quickly moved the conversation back to our original deal. You’ve spilled a ton of virtual ink in here arguing for some sort of legal defense of your position, but I think you knew all of this. You knew you could have just said no and countered given your position was much stronger than I knew, but you wanted to decapitate your only serious competition in the game, so you worked backwards from that. Motivated reasoning and all that. You’ve portrayed yourself in here as punching back against the bully, but I think when I came in with a bluff, you were pumped to call it, which is clearly true given how lightning fast your plan came together. Clearly you were already planning to push out a bunch of Galleons. I sort of wish you would have just admitted all that instead of whatever this thread turned into.


I don’t have much else to say about the actual stab that I haven’t said elsewhere, and I’m definitely repeating myself a bit in here. But I sort of think you missed the forest for the trees with your arguments in here. I also think it’s a shame that this will be remembered as the game that largely hinged on a NAP-stab serving as a cautionary tale for playing diplo games, and not the game where you played incredibly well and scored a well-deserved win (which you absolutely did).

[scooter]

I'm curious about Scooters landing WAY up here in this configuration; it is odd. Was he hoping for Charriu reinforcements? Did Charriu say no? Something else?

I explained this a bit in my thread. But if you didn’t see, I was aiming for the tile next to your city. I was just sort of hoping you didn’t have enough Frigs to block the path. When you did, it was either retreat or just drop them wherever possible. Basically, there were like 3 open fronts on you, and none were succeeding, so the only chance was a YOLO 4th front. Once it became clear you had everything covered and were gonna mass-wipe the various stacks, there was little point in carrying on.

I do apologize to Commodore. You maybe should just see if people are willing to start the big game. Not like early turns are much and with map set up ect shouldn't be too bad.

 Can you guys at least swap to simultaneous with the Always Peace settings?

Oh THAT is why Mjmd offered to swap back to simultaneous. That’s pretty funny. Commodore, I think this post directly caused the concession to be finalized.