PBEM #1 - General Thoughts

[Ruff_Hi]

It appears that we have finished. I'm starting this thread so that everyone can post general thoughts about the game ...

- start
- turning points
- critical moments
- biggest blunder
- biggest success

[Ruff_Hi]

Ok, I will start. Firstly, ...

To provoke discussion, I rate the starts on a micro level (capital and resources nearby) as follows:

1) Sooooo
2) Dreylin
3) Athlete
4) Ruff (swapped because I couldn't get to the gold, initially)
5) Mostly_Harmless

And on the macro level (warring and long-term expansion/space) as:

1) Mostly_Harmless
2) Sooooo
3) Athlete
4) Ruff
5) Dreylin

Guess land quality was secondary to these types of MP games.

DeTOG (Dreylin / Ruff Alliance)
I would rate this as the #1 factor in the game. It secured Dreylin's and my border and enabled us to defend against attack from only 1 direction. Our corroboration was (imho) vastly superior to the other team.

Paper Tech
There was a stage in the game, pre DeTOG where we were discussing techs and who was getting left out and who wasn't ... as it turned out, Sooooo suggested that I research Paper because there wasn't much left. This gave me the early lead on Education which springboarded DeTOG to Liberalism.

Steel Tech
DeTOG lightbulbed this and Dreylin took out Athlete with cannons. I guess the total mix up between athlete and mostly harmless really helped Dreylin here. Removing Athlete meant that the other team was constantly playing catchup in tech.

The Right GP at the Right Time
I got a Great Engineer just after discovering the tech that opened Mining Inc. Perfect timing (and luck) in that this one element of my game (and some bonus resource trades from Dreylin) enabled me to out produce Sooooo and eventually wear him down.

At the end of the game, I was #1 in Land and Production.

Splitting Sooooo's Defense
I feel that my jumping Paratroopers at his capital forced him to not bring his full resources to Sparta. It also helped with Dreylin threatening his coastal cities and my bombers shredding his land.

[Krill]

Key moment was when Dreylin planted Bursa...with m-h having the atrocious start that he did he needed to settle south and take someone out asap.

[Dreylin]

I've got to agree with Ruff that DeTOG & our general game-long collaboration was really the key thing in the game for me.

Next I would have to put the skill/judgement/luck that saw mh sign peace with me the same time athlete declared war. That mix-up/falling out of my two Western neighbours really gave me the opportunity to grab some territory which probably wouldn't have been there if they'd been working together.

My only other well-executed military campaign was the preemptive naval strike which cleared mh's presence from the coast and gave me control of the ocean.

Of course then on the downside we have: every other military campaign I ran against mh. Ahem, I don't really think I need to go into more details, do I?

Another positive for me I think was the early Scouting - aided by a couple of Hut pops. That let me quickly dotmap out my neighbourhood and prioritise settling of defensive choke points ... and particularly beating mh to the Bursa location (even though it originally would have grabbe the pigs).

[Ruff_Hi]

Any comments on the map? I don't think it was that equal and I certainly felt hemmed in once I had reached my limits at Death Valley. Not getting my gold and iron sucked big time but I got there eventually. Actually, having that city there enabled me to war against Sooooo with fighters and bombers.

[mostly_harmless]

Regarding the map, I must say, I was disappointed by my lands, especially seeing the other civs maps (later on). But what most struck me as, lets say odd, was that Sullla after complaining that much about the Apolyton Demogame map and PALs strong positioning in the center of said map, created a similar situation, in which Dreylin sits in the middle and sooooo and me were so removed from each other. A long time I was sure the map would connect up in the north (kind of an inland sea map). That island was only reachable by three civs really.
And sinc I am at it, the distribution of late game resources was poor, and I suspect was not touched/modified at all. With soooooo being the only civ without access to coal, and a very funny Aluminium distribution.

Just pointing things out from my perspective.

mh

[Dreylin]

I've just finished reading Sullla's long post about the design of the map, so I'll pop in and offer some comments before going back to the "no players" thread.

I think my early exploration helped quite a bit in giving me an early understanding of the lay of the land, and thus what would be necessary for my long-term survival. i.e. strong alliance with one neighbour.

I don't have any comment on the relative strengths of the starts, but it did surprise me just how few choke-point connections there were between the civs. I had expected there to be a connection between myself and sooooo up around where Sarmatian ended up, as well as a secondary connection between mh/athlete in the far West and Ruff/sooooo in the far East (although the lakes were intended to serve that purpose. As the initial settling shape defined it, athlete and I were the only pair who had a border in more than one location, while sooooo and I ended up with no border other than by sea.

As for this:

I don't think it's particularly obvious that that section differs from the rest, right?

I'd twigged that there had been some jiggery-pokery with the map in my area because the river which runs past Ankara actually goes the wrong way - away from the main lake, from North to South! Ooops.

[mostly_harmless]

Some comments on critical moments:
- athlete and me both researching Monarchy, and only getting reduced value out of it that way was one of the early mistakes in the game. I contribute this to equal amounts to our bad diplomacy.
- My bad, bad, bad luck with not getting my early religion spread to my second city in ages and therefore getting the stones hooked up way too late. Of course one should not count on the RNG for strategy, but I think there is a ~10% chance of natural spread per turn. I don't recall how long it took in the end but it was very annoying.
- Settling of Bursa, while I thought we were still in negotiations was an important event. In the end I got my revenge by razing it with a bold attack.
- Not quite sure yet, whether athlete deliberately delayed his support at Vienna in the first HRE-Ottoman war. He came late by one turn, otherwise we might have put a bigger dent into Ottoman progress together.

mh

[sooooo]

It's hard for me to rationalise what happened in this game. From my perspective it was just things happening after other things. I'm not sure of the whys.

I think my start position was quite good, though long-term it could be tricky with few prospects for expansion due to only 1 chokepoint and also no coal or aluminium. If I'd have been first to the island that would have been better.

I think that the DeTOG was dominating, allowing them to grab liberalism and steel and also allowing Ruff to keep up in tech despite being below me in GNP. However, playing against such a strong pact, neither of whom were willing to betray each other despite it often being to their advantage, was no fun at all to play against!

Spies were clearly very good here and ruined a specialist economy.

I didn't draft enough riflemen, preferring to stay in bureaucracy, and that forced me to lose the first war and abandon Corinth. Should have realised that drafting is still broken and the best way to raise an army.

Mining Inc was very nice and probably won the second war.

I was positive that Dreylin had won easily before Ruff ran me over. I was wrong about that.

[Dreylin]

I was positive that Dreylin had won easily before Ruff ran me over. I was wrong about that.

Never underestimate someone's (my) ability to self-sabotage....