Rah's saturday game II

[Makahlua]

??? What does GS have to do with it, if we're connecting via direct IP? /me confused

[joncha]

kbarrett's works for me

[Dominae]

kbarret's works for me.

[snoopy369]

it's a DNS address that resolves to an IP address, yes.

Try kbarrett (24.20.175 .133 ) most of us are there.

[MasterDave]

Herc enter this the rest of us are in : 24.20.175.133

[Hercules]

I did enter and had an enjoyable game and learning experience . Thanks to everyone.

Next time I'll try and contribute to the chat more. :

I just wonder who won in the end.

[kbarrett]

I'm glad you enjoyed yourself.

If you had more time, you might have considered continuing ... my S.O.D. started to run out of steam after taking two cities from you, as it was the usual late medieval stack ... a large number of obsolescent units plus catapults.



If I was facing a human at that point, I would have cut a deal, declared peace, and built a more modern S.O.D. to rip cities from Mak.

[Hercules]

It was also a case of being quite shattered.

I really hadn't planned such a stint. In fact I didn't even know if I could get access.

Having said that, I am so used to SMACX/Pbem over 2 years, that the speed was thrilling.

Now I just need to practice more.

Now bitten.

[kbarrett]

And here is my "Nanook" start:



Heh.

[Pinchak]

I'd freeken cry if i had a start like that.

[kbarrett]

I didn't do too badly ... I did have to site my first five cities way south ... The game altered the fat cross under my start location to barely usable.

That is one thing about far north starts ... don't go moving yer settler looking for better terrain, it just gets worse.

[Pinchak]

Yeah, upon second examination the capital itself is pretty sweet... lots o' food plus plains hills.

No doubt you would want to settle further south however. Perhaps get courthouses installed asap.

[Dominae]

With a starting location like that, you could have called for a restart. If you wanted to play it out, though, I would have beelined for Bronze Working and seen if I could conquer someone else's capital.

Speaking of which, it's too bad rah was eliminated so early. I marched a 3/2 XP Warrior into his lands to cause some havoc and he tried to remove it with his 2 Warriors. I won the first battle, quickly upgraded it for the free healing, and won the second. I believe he could have slaved a defender, but the next turn I found his capital empty. I briefly considered a diplomatic solution, but I felt this would better as a lesson learned. 2v1 my seem like good odds, but really you're just opening the door for disaster when trying something like that.

I cannot stress enough how important early defense is in MP. It's a big risk to found a second city with only Warriors for defense (as I believe Yaguar did), and even Archers are often not quite good enough. Same goes for that early Wonder. That said, there are times when you need to take this (calculated) risk, when for instance you have neither Horses, Copper or Iron within 10 tiles of your cap (as I did). However to reduce the threat of disaster I made sure to build a bunch of Warriors and Scouts for scouting duty (as opposed to exploration). And this is also why I attacked rah so early: by keeping him busy with a (very mild) choke I was hoping to buy enough time to hook that Iron up.

My war with Yaguar long and drawn-out, but fun. He want on the offensive a couple of times but didn't really bring enough troops to survive my counter attacks. When marching into an opponent's land you really have to bring a lot of units because they often have 3+ more turns than you to rally more troops, and they have the first-strike advantage with siege units (which is huge). Also, Yaguar threat analysis was a bit off: he kept on building Crossbowmen after he saw my Axemen stack even though he knew I could also build War Elephants. A few Spears (with Woodsman I) would have helped.

My strategy in this game was to abuse Philosophical in combination with the Great Library and National Epic. It worked quite well: I settled almost every Great Scientist I generated in my capital, generating quite a bit of science that (I believe) is not counted by Demographics/GNP. I never got a Religion of my own, so I couldn't throw Pacifism into the equation (just as well though, I had a pretty big military).

I must admit I didn't expect to be boated by snoopy - well done! I had so many Cats though that he was only able to pillage a few more tiles with his 12 Musketmen before I took them out. The thing about boating is that you have to spend so many Hammers on the transports that your military is bound to smaller than your target's. So I wasn't really worried about losing anytime soon. Later MasterDave also tried to boat me a couple of times (with one success) but I had Cavalry by then so I could defend anywhere pretty easily. I've officially learned my lesson re: boating though!

MasterDave and I decided to call it quits at 3am or so, because his plans to attack me were thwarted by a vassal agreement resulting in snoopy's AI declaring war on him. I lost two size 12+ cities but was still ahead in score, and my economy was in great shape. It's hard to tell who would have won, but it would have been a long game because MasterDave and I were at opposite ends of the map.

gg everyone.

[kbarrett]

I get offended by all the restarts I have seen, especially in the HOTW games.

I treat it like golf ... if the ball is in a bad spot, play the damned thing.

I'll keep your advice on early attacking a capital in mind ... I always go for Bronzeworking early as a matter of habit anyway.

[snoopy369]

That explains why your GNP was so low... I had wondered Though my GNP was pretty high in that game, I had a million cottage/towns.

That boating accomplished roughly what I'd hoped - pillaging your towns. I realized after I unloaded that I'd made a stupid mistake and sent all at one city, I could've razed at least 2 cities guaranteed if I'd tried, and possibly three depending on how long your reinforcements took. However, razing the towns was really half the point.

I was working on cannons at that point, hoping to land them near one of your southern cities and try to get myself into a defensive (aka my first strike) siege battle, just keeping a point on the map and bombarding you like crazy while teching up myself. The distance was the real bummer in that one...

We really need to work on playing some of these games either as teamers, or on smaller maps. There are lots of maps that play well even when small - great plains, for example - and decreasing the size makes them much more competitive. It's certainly nice to play some builder games, but it would be nice to sometimes have a faster paced game also