[No players] Big epic lurking - PB74

[pindicator]

Gav, you're forgetting to look at why people bordering you couldn't develop their economies. There's a very simple answer

[Gavagai]

Gav, you're forgetting to look at why people bordering you couldn't develop their economies. There's a very simple answer

Do I need to repeat for the fifth time I offered everyone NAP? I even offered Piccadilly fish for fish when I had a chance  If people wanted to be secure from me, I was willing to grant it to them freely.
I would like to refocus the discussion though. Assuming the dogpile was the right thing to do, was there ever any chance for me to avoid it? What exactly could I have done differently (except, obviously, playing worse)? When was the point when the war became inescapable?
It is not often when a dogpile of this scale gets coordinated, so I think it is interesting to ask what were the conditions that made it possible and what can be done by the leader to break out of these conditions.

[Krill]

Gav you had five players land.

The next best had about 2.5.

This wasn't what would be considered close.

[Gavagai]

Gav you had five players land.

So did Mig.

[Krill]

4 players land at that after the split with Pin.

[Mjmd]

Its not always about the amount of land (although that helped). Civ basics dictate that you want short decisive wars and the earlier the more time you have to develop them. You can literally go down the list of living players going into factories and the farther down the list the more painful and usually longer their wars. Gavs had multiple conquest wars which were short and he won them rather easily and most of them were fairly early. Only the Piccadilly war wasn't and it was late enough it didn't matter as much.

To answer Gavs questions, the first place person usually gets piled on IF they are leading by enough. So yes the only way to avoid is to do worse. Again, your opponents didn't know you had offered NAPs to all the major powers. I agree that if they knew that going after Tarkeel probably would have made sense. They didn't.

[Qgqqqqq]

Well, the other point is that it was good play on their part to dogpile you. Often secondary players don't.

[Mjmd]

Gav reminded me of a question I wanted to ask more broadly when the game was ended.

How would the players have felt about Gav giving cities back to Greenline?

A) via liberate mechanic
Or
B) via taking them and then gifting them back.

The lurker consensus at the time was somewhat ok with A, but it wasn't a strong consensus.

[superdeath]

Im not a huge fan of it. At absolute most 1 city once, would be my choice.

[Hitru]

I think via liberate mechanic it could be ok. Should be discussed at start of the game with other settings though