[No players] Big epic lurking - PB74

[Gavagai]

That reminded me of a thing I wanted to post. I was thoroughly disappointed when I learned that Commodore attacked Plemo not because of any in-game considerations but simply because he played, in Commodore's opinion, too slowly. I would regard it a very poor sportsmanship even if Commodore's grievances have not been ungrounded. But the turn-pace in this game has been remarkably fast in general (a fact noticed even by lurkers) and I find Plemo's reasons for any (small) delays he caused to be perfectly justified. Commodore, therefore, just completely fucked the dude over because he was hearing voices in his head which I regard as scumbag behavior.
It was even more concerning for me that none of the lurkers spoke against it. Commodore never tried to hide his reason for going to war, he practically bragged about it and everyone accepted this as a normal thing to do. Frankly, this by itself could be a reason for me to never sign up for a pitboss here again, if I did not have many others.

[scooter]

I'm sorry but I think it's downright laughable to believe they were ever going to catch you economically. Your empire was better in every single way, as evidence by the fact that you defeated a coordinated attack from player 2, 3, and 4, and it was never even all that close. Basically everyone - lurkers and players - were calling this game as over 3 months ago. You had clearly won the game, and the dogpile struck me as 20T too late.


I think you believe this simply because it was incredibly annoying to play against. Which I understand completely.

[Mjmd]

So they knew you had offered THEM an NAP. They did not know that you had offered anyone else an NAP. Its pretty reasonable to think you would use an NAP to go conquer someone else, even if you had no intention of doing so. I'll note that even if they joined you in conquering someone (as you suggested you might do in PB66 if the other started collapsing) that doesn't actually give them better odds to take on you because again they are down an entire army/navy that could have helped them.

And ya you a great economy (good job btw).

[Gavagai]

I'm sorry but I think it's downright laughable to believe they were ever going to catch you economically. Your empire was better in every single way, as evidence by the fact that you defeated a coordinated attack from player 2, 3, and 4, and it was never even all that close. Basically everyone - lurkers and players - were calling this game as over 3 months ago. You had clearly won the game, and the dogpile struck me as 20T too late.


I think you believe this simply because it was incredibly annoying to play against. Which I understand completely.

I disagree, and I think "laughable" is a bit of a strong word given that I tracked trends in demographic data every turn - something you specifically could not do as a lurker - and probably have more knowledge of the actual game situation than anyone else. I saw plenty of claims that I was completely unassailable both in lurker threads and player threads but I never saw any data to support it. I was a game-leader, of course, but I was never so far away that catching up with me would have been impossible. Miguelito in particular had a terrifying amount of untapped potential for internal development and Commodore could have doubled his territory at any moment without much effort. The most obvious evidence for what I am saying is that Pindicator gained a lot of ground on me during the war - and he was the weakest and most backward of my opponents when it started, also probably with the least room for improvement. And it's not that he was not building units - he was simply smart enough to industrialize first and build an army later. Mig and Com decided to build their armies and attack me before industrialization and most of the difficulties they had during the war could be traced down to this one decision.
Their attack failed not because of any resource disadvantage but because they made some concrete strategic and tactical mistakes and I had a defender's advantage from fighting close to my home bases (against Com and Pindi). In terms of resources their superiority has always been completely overwhelming, they just chose an exceptionally bad way to use it.

[Gavagai]

So they knew you had offered THEM an NAP. They did not know that you had offered anyone else an NAP. Its pretty reasonable to think you would use an NAP to go conquer someone else, even if you had no intention of doing so. I'll note that even if they joined you in conquering someone (as you suggested you might do in PB66 if the other started collapsing) that doesn't actually give them better odds to take on you because again they are down an entire army/navy that could have helped them.

And ya you a great economy (good job btw).

I think the idea of me conquering Com or Mig is completely unrealistic given the resources I had. I was not certain I would be able to conquer Piccadilly until Tanks.

[Mjmd]

Oh I'm not saying you would fully conquer, but taking away ports like you were would be easy enough and # of ship building cities was pretty key this game. Plus vision centers for airships.

[Gavagai]

Making myself a powerful enemy in the late-game spacerace situation for the sake of airship vision sounds like one of the ways in which I could have lost the game.

[Commodore]

I'm sorry but I think it's downright laughable to believe they were ever going to catch you economically. Your empire was better in every single way, as evidence by the fact that you defeated a coordinated attack from player 2, 3, and 4, and it was never even all that close. Basically everyone - lurkers and players - were calling this game as over 3 months ago. You had clearly won the game, and the dogpile struck me as 20T too late.


I think you believe this simply because it was incredibly annoying to play against. Which I understand completely.

It is very annoying to fight in this era, honestly it felt better once battleships got online...interesting how Destroyers/Airships are the longest range era, and once fighters/battleships come out the distances get a little shorter.

[scooter]

and Commodore could have doubled his territory at any moment without much effort.

Yes, and I'm sure you would have happily allowed this to happen and/or made 0 counterplays of your own...? You literally had the easiest expansion paths possible of the remaining players.

The most obvious evidence for what I am saying is that Pindicator gained a lot of ground on me during the war - and he was the weakest and most backward of my opponents when it started, also probably with the least room for improvement. And it's not that he was not building units - he was simply smart enough to industrialize first and build an army later. Mig and Com decided to build their armies and attack me before industrialization and most of the difficulties they had during the war could be traced down to this one decision.

Was that because he industrialized, or was that because he had, at most, 1/3 of your attention and would have been squashed like a bug in a 1v1.


I've never seen someone survive a dogpile this massive and say "actually if they simply let me keep snowballing they might have won."

[Gavagai]

and Commodore could have doubled his territory at any moment without much effort.

Yes, and I'm sure you would have happily allowed this to happen and/or made 0 counterplays of your own...? You literally had the easiest expansion paths possible of the remaining players.

The most obvious evidence for what I am saying is that Pindicator gained a lot of ground on me during the war - and he was the weakest and most backward of my opponents when it started, also probably with the least room for improvement. And it's not that he was not building units - he was simply smart enough to industrialize first and build an army later. Mig and Com decided to build their armies and attack me before industrialization and most of the difficulties they had during the war could be traced down to this one decision.

Was that because he industrialized, or was that because he had, at most, 1/3 of your attention and would have been squashed like a bug in a 1v1.


I've never seen someone survive a dogpile this massive and say "actually if they simply let me keep snowballing they might have won."

1) The easiest expansion path was for Commodore / Pindicator, Piccadilly was much harder to kill than Plemo and Tarkeel combined.
2) Yes, I would have allowed this to happen and I let them know I would. This was the gist of my offer of NAP to Com and Mig: "let's divide the world between ourselves".
3) I would never be able to squash Pindicator because of the distances involved. A big part of my success in war was that I fought close to my borders.
4) You can laugh all you want but you never explained what is wrong with what I am saying. I cited a lot of evidence from game data in other threads, you so far cited none and just offered your free-floating opinion.
It is certainly possible to outsnowball a leader in the late game under right circumstances. In PB66 I did to Plemo exactly that and Plemo had more advantage over me than I had over Mig and Com in this game. 
You simply assume that dogpile is always the most effective way to deal with a runaway leader and proceed to conclude that if that didn't work, nothing else would have worked - that's your argument as I understand it. The assumption is wrong, however. The war allowed me to effectively utilize many of my advantages while squandered their's. In an indirect competition the balance of factors would be much less in my favor.
They also chose the absolute worst timing possible, when I was on a relative production peak due to factories and power plants. At the very least they should have build up their production first and then consider attacking.