Gavagai's procrastination bin

[Miguelito]

Plemo in his CF thread pretty much said that the attack was in order to force a draw. Not sure how to judge that; basically it's a play to not lose so I guess it's fair? But of course just destructive.

But I was really surprised you were vulnerable to it,  given that you had been discussing this mode of attack several times yourself. A few turns (or just one?) earlier apparently he was set to commando your cap and Corp HQ and only couldn't because of login order.

And of course attacking me was a bad choice, that land was worthless

[Mjmd]

1) So I only BARELY got to rifles at end of our peace treaty. If you had invaded Vanrober into SD before they could rebuild their stacks I wouldn't have been able to do anything other than take the SD lands I eventually took (because geography was silly). Instead you waited some 15 turns while they rebuilt their forces and I got to rifles. I also don't get how invading Jack land and fighting me solves your finance problems vs invading Vanrober who is close and has less to fight you. And as you noted I wasn't winning at the time and your messages at the time were pretty clear "go attack Plemo".

3) Lets take away he was going for a draw, but just game theory this. His odds to win were 0% if he didn't attack you. You had more cities and were in a late game golden age and a lot of your cities were just coming online. His odds to win were > 0% if he first strikes. Should he just wait at your leisure for you to hit him? No, you strike first at the person who has been doing a late game farmers gambit. T/C also were planning on attacking you as well so they would have a shot to win. I realize you don't like that he did it, but it makes sense.

[Tarkeel]

I'll just sneak in two comments:

Re 1) I think you underestimate the amount of SD land you ended up getting.

Re 2) While we were about to attack Gavagai, it wasn't so much for our own chance of winning, as the obligatory attack on the leader. I do agree that Gav was in the best position at that point though.

[Gavagai]

1) So I only BARELY got to rifles at end of our peace treaty. If you had invaded Vanrober into SD before they could rebuild their stacks I wouldn't have been able to do anything other than take the SD lands I eventually took (because geography was silly). Instead you waited some 15 turns while they rebuilt their forces and I got to rifles. I also don't get how invading Jack land and fighting me solves your finance problems vs invading Vanrober who is close and has less to fight you. And as you noted I wasn't winning at the time and your messages at the time were pretty clear "go attack Plemo".

3) Lets take away he was going for a draw, but just game theory this. His odds to win were 0% if he didn't attack you. You had more cities and were in a late game golden age and a lot of your cities were just coming online. His odds to win were > 0% if he first strikes. Should he just wait at your leisure for you to hit him? No, you strike first at the person who has been doing a late game farmers gambit. T/C also were planning on attacking you as well so they would have a shot to win. I realize you don't like that he did it, but it makes sense.

1) Peace reaty is 10 turns and you had rifles by the end of it for long enough for me to be worried that you can advance a stack of 20 at the end of the peace deal. In the universe where I did not attack you, you would not have to whip out a horde of knights to defend against me, so you would have them earlier and in larger numbers. So, I would need to be able to break both SD and van rober in about 6 turns which was completely unrealistic, as I am sure you would agree. One added point is that I really disliked the idea of bordering SD as I was certain he would attack me the moment he sees the opportunity. By the moment our peace treaty expired the situation changed in a number of ways due to which I thought attacking into van rober would be beneficial. 
Attacking you would alleviate my financial situation somewhat as my baseline plan was to pillage everything to the east of our border city to the ground, including all those juicy cottages. But the point was mostly to slow you down, not to prop myself up as at that point I saw you as my only serious competition. As I said, this evaluation changed pretty much the same turn our war started.

3) I think Plemo's chances to win was above zero in any scenario but more so if he left me be. If you want to game-theory this, it's a game of chicken a little bit where the first two of us three who get into the war lose to the third one.
Also, I am quite a bit annoyed how you call my late-game strategy "lame farmer's gambit". Until the last few turns I did not have access to nukes + subs combo and building military was useless until I had that. So I do not think there was any reasonable course of action for me but building research. The moment I had the necessary tech I switched everything to building military but did not have enough time.
What builds do you think should I have sacrificed to make my military stronger? Research? So that I would have nukes even later? Infrastructure? Most of infra I built was factories / coal plants in high hammer cities where they paid for themselves in something like 10 turns or less. I think there were a coiple of banks I wish I did not build but they would not make a difference. The only serious expenditure that was not Plemo-related military or research, was what I spent on the invasion of Mig and I already said that if there were a mistake on my part, that was probably it (25 Machine Guns built specifically for the invasion, almost all of them lost, ouch!). But you said you liked this move. So I am very eager to learn from you what I should have done differently if not running "lame farmer's gambit".

[Mjmd]

1) so my problem most of the game was I could never have attacked anyone with all my forces. I was forced to stare at Plemos forces until I was forced by you to offer him fish for fish and he got to go kill Amica we were just staring at each other because he had 1 land border. Therefore all I could do was vulture. However, if Plemo in an alternate timeline does honor his agreement with you and marches his stack of slow mostly obsolete 1 movers into my territory and I have 2 layers of expendable cities vs you invading with 2 movers into a more prominent territory. Who do you think I focus on first? So attack someone who can defend vs you or attack a very weakened player? Its not like you HAD to keep going into SD after Vanrober. I think you could have as they were both pretty weak, but you had a free conquest which you just delayed by attacking me. I had known for some time Plemo was ahead of me, so it was a double surprise when you attacked me. Mind you I had city vision and was paying more attention to Plemo so I can understand if you didn't know which of us was ahead, but I'm still confused why attack someone strong vs weak in that scenario as well. Now if you thought I was super far ahead that is another thing, but I clearly wasn't that. Even in your admission you figured that out first turn of attack, so why continue????

3) but you were always going to be one of the two as you had the best shot of winning. Plemo and T/C weren't going to war with each other and they weren't just going to let you win? Its pretty rare people just roll over and do nothing while someone else wins.

I said late not lame. So your main land neighbor me was fighting tooth and nail with the leader / former leader and even if we made peace does it make any sense I would attack the person supplying me with corp resources? Your other two land borders were a long narrow bit of land vs T/C. Build a couple airships to keep an eye out for invasion fleet but still they would have to commit a lot and trust Plemo to do a lot. Your land border with Plemo you controlled the culture so he wasn't doing a land invasion (except for some Mig border cities you didn't care about). So what should you have been building? Navy on sea with Plemo. Army spent on Mig didn't matter how much was lost and I still like that move. What you needed to focus on after was a navy. Keep the transports well back to not threaten Plemo. Patrol with your destroyers to spot subs and keep rest of navy split up into mini stacks. I can't say for sure what you would have had to give up for this, but you had the raw production numbers. Even if we drop the Mig cities out of the graph you would probably were about production of T/C and they were #1 power at the end of the game.

[Gavagai]

1) The way I saw it back then was that I had a short window of opportunity to strike at the neighbor who is about to get crushing advantage over me in terms of military tech but has no sizable military on hand at the moment. If you do not see how it takes priority over a colonial conquest, I do not know how I can help you.
3) Your suggestion that I enter naval arms race with Plemo is completely impractical for reasons discussed at length elsewhere in this thread. Suffice to say that I was building navy almost non-stop everywhere it was practical to do but I did not have many good places for that. My production base was mostly inland of without a straightforward connection with Plemo's sea (this is not the only problem with your plan but the most obvious one).

[Mjmd]

1) But I was a neighbor who couldn't attack you, you couldn't get anything out of permanently, and was opposing the other high score player? I do have to admit to being very confused especially since you said you realized I wasn't ahead of Plemo early on in the attack. You then tried to extort money from me, again despite knowing I was behind Plemo. You then tried keeping the city despite in game messages you knew Plemo was a threat. I obviously wasn't thrilled with this attack and I have to say I didn't like that you replaced over my villages before giving my city back. I obviously kept working with you the rest of the game, but it felt scummy. Despite all this and having rifles you'll note I didn't invade you after! Because again, it didn't make sense to!

[Gavagai]

Well, I also was not thrilled by your desire to get the city back. In my mind it was mine by the right of conquest and as a reward for not forcing you into a losing two-fronts war. I expected you would eventually accept this new geopolitical reality, put the whole issue behind and work together with me against Plemo. I did give you back the city when you insisted because long-term strategic alliance against Plemo was more valuable for me than a single border city but I hoped that you would be the one to adopt such enlightened attitude. Sadly, you were a disappointment in this respect.

[Gavagai]

I think this is the first time in my career when I gave another player a city without a fight and he still finds a reason to complain about me after the game.

[Qgqqqqq]

As someone who didn't watch that part of this game at all, I think you're being a bit unreasonable Gav. Famously, Civ 4 players often complain about / react strongly to small slights. I wouldn't expect a player to he grateful for returning a city taken in a invasion.