Strat Forum PBEM 3: Game Report

[alexman]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph


I had completely forgotten to take in account the brutal corruption setting of the AU mod, and was reminded of it only after it was already too late. In this game I developed a deep grudge against this mod and never used it again, neither in SP, nor in a new PBEM, where I vehemently refused to apply it. That's probably a stupid move to reject a whole mod only for one setting, but... that's a very important setting for me. I hate corruption and waste. Others like it, but I effing hate it. I can't help it. And I just can't stand if the only legal means to fight it (switching to Republic + building Courthouses) are hurt in a mod, leaving only "illegal" - read: exploitative, not intended by game design - means like RCP (which wasn't yet known when this game started), "distant capital" and a palace jump. So, /RANT now.

Sir Ralph, do you realize that the AU mod's only change to corruption is a 10% reduction of the OCN for Republic? Distance corruption is unchanged. This is hardly noticeable, in my experience. Anyway, hopefully in C3C the governments will be more balanced and such changes will not be necessary.

As for my side of the story for the game, I lacked focus in my goals, and I paid the price. I will try to make an AAR soon.

[Arrian]

It goes to show, by the way, how big a deal it is to have many neighbors, as opposed to being isolated.

Dominae had wonderful land (I know, lack of hills, but overall you can't really quibble with rivers & grassland galore, can you?) and went all-out as a builder and yet found himself way behind in tech. Granted, I'm sure Dave's GA had something to do with that, but still! I look at Dom's explosive growth and development and wonder how he could have lost... until I remember he had only 1 contact for most of the game.

-Arrian

[jshelr]

Dom Wrote: "Anyway, unpleasantness was avoided when a few brief and very cordial dialogs with jshelr revealed that China was not interested in war so early on in the game. I may or may not have convinced him that trading was probably best between our nations, but I'm think he figured that out for himself. jsehlr's decision not to attack me was indirectly also a sign that we were probably alone on our continent, or more probably that he had simply not encountered another civ yet."

This is correct. With six players, and strongly suspecting that China and Carthage were alone, a victory over Chartage would have been pyrrhic (spelling?) for China. I needed a research partner in order not to be left far behind.

However, since China started as a warmonger, and then failed to pull the trigger, we were left far behind on the Rex front.

[jshelr]

By the way, I'm not sure Dom was going to lose this game if it were played out to the bitter end. "We" had the advantage of two FP's and two palaces to maximize efficiency. And if Dave completely took over "his" continent, he would have had a tough time not being beaten in the extended tech race. It might have ended up in an interesting nuke contest, but would have taken a long time with routine play to complete.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
What also was clearly visible: I completely, full 100%, suck at diplomacy. All I can do are "fair" trades. If somebody starts to nag about a price (ring, ring, Dominae...), I'm inclined just to say "screw you" (with better, more polite words of course), than to continue to haggle like on the fish market.

I feel that I am the same way at diplomacy, which is why my efforts to make a tech deal go through end up more like nagging than haggling.



However, I'm still not sure why you did not accept some of the trades I was offering. Basically my stance was: "DaveMcW is offering me X Gold for such and such tech, would you care to beat that price?". I ended up giving him over 1500 Gold on his bargain-basement prices, which is not that great when you're earning 300+gpt, but nothing to scoff at.

I guess I could also ask the same question of alexman. In the face of a very strong opponent, the France/Ottoman alliance might have been stronger had they been more willing to let Carthage help them. Had I seen the World Map I would definitely have traded DaveMcW less.


Dominae

[Dominae]

Originally posted by jshelr
By the way, I'm not sure Dom was going to lose this game if it were played out to the bitter end.

I disagree. With alexman's eventual defeat, DaveMcW would have had 6 of 8 Luxuries under his control, and about 2/3 of the world's land mass with which to build up economically without fear of aggression.

I think what we would have seen is some interesting non-standard strategy, such as the use of Espionage and Marines. Ultimately, though, I doubt jshelr and I could have prevailed.


Dominae

[alexman]

Not even a diplomatic victory?

[jshelr]

Carthage and China were not that far behind on tech and might have caught up while alexman gallantly defended his position. Consider what would have happened next, assuming only that China and Carthage could each research industrial era and modern techs in less than 8 turns. Even if Dave could do 4 turn techs, he would lose ground in the tech race and have to resort to military action, which he doesn't seem to mind doing very much.

Unless I'm wrong, these games are like bike races where being ahead is not necessarily a good thing if the racers behind you cooperate.

[Arrian]

Throw in just one Great Leader for Dave in his wars against Ottomania & France, however, and victory for him was all but assured. A rushed FP/Palace move which made most or all of the main continent productive for him would have left you guys in the dust, I think.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

I forgot to post this:

[Arrian]

Ouch. That's to be expected, though - once you punch through a human player's frontline defenses, you're going to gut them fast, especially with RR's and Cavalry. Humans will not have the 2-defender-per-city defense the AI uses (because that's stupid).

-Arrian

[alexman]

Well, I don’t have time to post a detailed AAR, but here’s my short version.

My land was as good as Dominae’s, except that my capital’s only food bonus was a grassland wine (+3). I build a granary there anyway and expanded conservatively, dedicating an early city to pumping veteran warriors for upgrading. The barbarians were a big pain for me early on.

[alexman]

Before this game, I thought that in order to do well in an MP game you had to cooperate, rather than fight, with your closest neighbor. Early warfare between humans is costly and slows both parties down while others cooperate (little did I know that Dave would make us all look like the AI, proving me wrong). So when I first met Sir Ralph and we agreed to fully cooperate in research, I was happy.

Then we met Nor Me and DaveMcW, who initially were not very willing to communicate their intentions, so it looked like it was going to be the two of them against the two of us on the continent.

But Dave suddenly (apparently using the GA that Sir Ralph granted him) upgraded a bunch of Warriors to Swordsmen and rushed Nor Me. I’ll leave the details of that war for them to describe, but after the dust settled, Dave had sole possession of the northern half of our continent, including the Pyramids (probably from a leader) and the Great Wall. He was way behind Sir Ralph and me in tech, not that this mattered much, since we were dumb enough to sell him our technology for cash.

Meanwhile back in France everything was peaceful, and we were happily building, REXing, and researching. If DaveMcW had decided to continue his rampage south though France, he would have met hardly any resistance at all. Even the barbarians were almost more than the French army could handle. These peaceful ways did not make for a good chance of an appearance from a French leader, so I jumped my palace to the northeast corner of my land, after having built the FP in the southwestern corner.

[alexman]

I took a detour away from the main tech tree to discover Navigation and discovered the other continent. They were more backwards than I had hoped, so they didn’t have anything to offer except for some luxuries by Dominae. So I can’t say my decision to research Navigation was a good one.

I had invested lots of effort researching, so I was not willing to sell them my techs for less than a fair value. My silly mistake was not to realize that if I did not give them my techs, DaveMcW would, and he did, for peanuts.

So Dave not only had his own double empire (he had also jumped his palace to the former American lands at the same time I jumped my palace), but he was getting cash from the western continent as well. Clearly, this was not good news for anything other than an Egyptian victory, we made loose plans with Sir Ralph to attack when he gets enough Sipahi, and I enough Cavalry.

In another moment of stupidity, I lost sight of the urgency of our military goal (the fact that our initial 4-turns-per-day slowed to one-turn-per-4-days didn’t help) and switched to Democracy (since it’s better in the AU mod). My 7-turn Anarchy hurt my horseman buildup big time.

A few turns after I became a Democracy, Sir Ralph discovered Military tradition, and I gave him the cash he was missing to upgrade all his horsemen to Sipahi. I sent some Musketeers to harass Dave, hoping that he would give me a GA. A few turns later, I joined the war with about 20 Cavalry.

Dave defended his border towns very well, building walls, and filling them with about 10 musketmen each. The joint Franco-Ottoman offensive turned into a war of attrition. Dave had a huge number of horsemen running around, which meant that he had lots of units but not enough cash to upgrade them all. When he finally got enough cash (with help from the west) and discovered steam power, it was all over.

Here's a picture from from the early part of the war, just before I upgraded all my horsemen and joined Sir Ralph.

[alexman]

Congratulations to Dave, who played a brilliant game, militarily, economically, and diplomatically. He made us look like the AI, and he deserved to be declared the winner

However, I agree with jshelr that it would not have been easy for Egypt to get anything other than a histographic victory. The tech rate for this game was at Regent (by accident), so it was easy to get a 4-turn tech rate. Dave and I were already at that point. Not sure about the others, but eventually the western continent would be discovering 2 techs every 4 turns, which would not be able to be matched by the single civ eastern continent.

[Arrian]

Hills + walls + forification = 9 defense for musketmen. Ouch. Still, with a large number of Siphai & French Cavalry, I'm surprised Dave was able to hold.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Very interesting to see a western player's perspective. It's amazing how much MP play is defined by your assumptions of other players' intentions.


Dominae

[Rhothaerill]

I find this whole thread very interesting. In most AAR's there is only one player's viewpoint (since the AI doesn't have a viewpoint ), but in this we have the viewpoints of several players. I like it!

[vmxa1]

It would be interesting to see what would have happen if you had not switched to Demo at that time. A bunch more Calv could have put some pressure on.

[Rhothaerill]

Now we just need to see NorMe's AAR and hear from DaveMcW on his strategy.

[jshelr]

A couple of points:

(1) Clearly, the remarks above about Dave's willingness to sell tech cheaply and the advantage to him are correct. We've done a good thing in the Balanced game to introduce the no tech whoring agreement.

(2) I think Dave demonstrated the value of early war in PBEM and also that the combination of RR and cavs introduce a short window of turns that dramatically favour the offense. I don't think either of these demonstrations change the general rule that defense is strong most of the time and he actually demonstrated that as well with his walls plus muskets defense. Build those frontier cities on hills.

(3) I would be interested in knowing about relative build levels. China had banks and some universities in the first ring and was near the FP with markets in the second ring. Both China and Carthage had a golden age left in thier future, by the way.

Also, I'm thinking as hard as I can about it, but I remain clueless as to how Dave could outresearch the combined team of China and Carthage even if his economy and land area was twice as big? The four-turn tech limit prevents land size from being translated into victory through research. And if we got infantry and arty in time, landing an expeditionary force on our continent would have been non-trivial. (Not that I would bet against Dave winning!)

[vondrack]

A truly enlightening thread to read. Being a less then frequent visitor to the Strat forum, I am glad I clicked on it during one of my scarce detours from the demogame forums.

to everybody involved. Both for interesting AARs and for the efforts spent on putting this thread together.