Ming, Berz, Bird, Xin Game

[Bird]

Why can't War4 step in for Matt in the other game? If he's not up for that, we should start something new b/c rah's been a good sport, but he'll be out of luck for at least another month.

[War4ever]

i am around and available tonite and Saturday nights for thenext while as i quit my second job just to civ well not exactly but things have opened up time wise... i guess i am managing my time better now eh Ming

[Xin Yu]

Actually War4 was in that game and Berz was his sub. I remember Ming and Matt, Rah and War4, Bird and I were three sides. How about let War4 took his old nation and Berz sub for Matt?

[Bird]

Looks like around 8:15 for me.

[berzerker]

Xin - that makes sense...

[Xin Yu]

Last night was fun. Artillary rules.

Thanks for this game, I found that artillary is the only 'early' unit which has hp2 and fp2. Better than even Armor and almost as good as bomber. Even Ming's alpine troops and partisans on mountain top could not stop them. Think about that Armor is still several techs away, artillary is really good.

[Ming]

Yeah... it was lots of fun
Why don't you pick on somebody else

The artillery was pretty effective. But the lag time problems led me to believe that you had lost more than 2 on the first try... silly me.
Without artillery, I wasn't in a position to counter attack your alpine units that were sitting on mountains, and defending the land you had just taken.
I just can't wait until the next session
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ming (edited June 01, 2000).]</font>

[Xin Yu]

And my alpine paired with explorer just scared Ming's engineers away .

[Ming]

It wasn't the explorer that did it

It's really too bad. A few more turns, and you would not have been able to pull it off.
(or at least you would have needed a few more artillery)
I was just starting to crank out vet alpine units to take those defensive positions.
Bummer...

[Xin Yu]

Ming: All my cities have almost all improvements (including university, stock exchange, barracks, and supermarket.) and they have grown to the largest possible size. I have tons of taxmen to collect money for me that I can buy units as fast as one per every two turns. If I want tech my research will be two turns per tech, but I chose to fight a pre-armor war so my science rate is zero now. I think your mini cities will not be able to keep up with my productivity (you haven't been able to build many factories, so the HD had minimum effect, right?).

Now answer your first question: Artillery works on land not water, and your cities were closer to me, so I attacked you. Plus, I had peace with Bird and Berz was a lot nicer than you. And hopefully I don't need to fight all three civs, for you are the host and once you're gone the game is over.

[Ming]

Yeah... you never offered me peace.

But even with your advanced production, I would have been in a position to better defend myself in even just a few turns. Yes, I can't produce like you can, but I can do a pretty good job.

You must be loving this. The number one civ pounds on the number two civ while Bird and Berzerker just look the other way. I'm sure this is a winning strategy for them

[Bird]

In a no alliance game like this, when someone jumps out to a big early lead (not mentioning any names Ming ), you can rest assured the focus will be on that civ. Ming had a huge early lead (ok, mentioning names)and, lest anyone feel sorry for him, still has all the happiness wonders, hoovers, more cities than anyone else and more land area than anyone else.

IMO, in that type of game, you know you're going to be a target. Once the map is settled, it's hopeless to try to win pre-railroad by conquering opponents who have any sense or reasonable cities/terrain. By the time you devote enough resources to that war effort (even if you eventually win, you'll still be on crusaders or something), the other civs will be long gone tech wise. You'll get no techs from the conquered civ b/c all its efforts will be focused on gold and defense.

Maybe you can pull something off once railroads are around, and certainly if you get nukes first, but it's just too damn difficult to pull a big offensive off on a settled map with bad terrain without killing your position relative to the other civs.

In this game, Ming, you were consistently aggressive to my civ. Xin was doing well on the powergraph, but EARLY ON that was pretty much solely a function of population (he had pyramids). You had a big advantage, as best I could tell. Frankly, I thought I was in a pretty good position. I had/have several good wonders and, although behind in pop, am 2nd in land area (you never saw so many mountains). (Now that I think about it, I belive xin was first in pop, you were first in cities and land area, and I was first in techs) You attacked my settler in the first session when it stepped out of the black next to your city. I was willing to back off and try to make a border, but never got the chance. An annoyance, but not a major setback to the long term for my civ. Then you took my outpost city (granted, I was extraordinarily stupid, but I had not been aggressive toward your civ) without provocation. Again, not a "major" setback, but what that did was force me to stop competing with Xin techwise and start focusing on defending against you. In short, your civ's aggressive acts towards my civ took away from me any realistic hope of winning this game. It became a bipolar world and you didn't offer me any scotch or beer. Not that xin did, but at least he didn't break the bottles.

Obviously that's part of the game. My point is simply to raise for discussion the issue of whether, as a long term strategy, your civ would have been better off, ONCE THE MAP WAS SETTLED, settling in and either focusing on the space race or trying to get the tech lead to allow you to start nuking and paradropping OR using the other civs' railroads to really wreak havoc.

Sorry for the tome. All in all, I think it was a very difficult map to be an early conqueror. All mountains and hills. Yuck.

And truth be told, I still don't fully believe your tale of woe Ming.

[Ming]

HA HA HA HA! Bird, you fell right into Xin's hands from the start

Yeah, I had the best "start" and did get the happiness wonders. But Xin was leading on the powergraph since day one, and has only expanded the lead every session. If you have an embassy with all the players, you know he is also just killing us on techs.

Yeah, I attacked the city you dropped right in the middle of my empire. I had cities on all three sides of it, and the ocean is to the south of it. You would have done the same

But I do find it frustrating that everybody was helping out the real leader while buying into false truth that I was leading. The powergraph has been very clear since our first session, and people were actually helping him

I'm more than willing to conceed defeat at this point. There is nothing I can do to stop his attacks. With you guys sitting on the sideline watching the fun, all I see is a few minute turns for the three of us, while he spends a half hour to an hour a turn eleminating me. Neither of you stand a chance against him either, once he gets my wonders and cities...

So I'll do whatever people want if you all want to play tonight. If you want to go through the motions... fine. I'm more than willing to take my lumps... just like I did last week. But I can see the hand writing on the wall... and I lost to a great player who caught me with my pants down

[Ming]

Oh, and one last point Bird... you wonder why I didn't concentrate on the space race or sciences... It's pretty hard to do that when all you are trying to do is defend yourself from Xin's advancing hordes. I may have had the most land, but I had serious borders with all the players in the game, including the ferrerts, but they don' count I knew I had to defend my self... I only wish I had done a better job of it.
I actually thought I was in a position to stop his attacks... I've been building units, and laying in defenses... but alas, I was too late. Once he got artilary, school was out.

Oh... and I will be available around 7:15 est. I will be home much earlier, but I have to pick up my daughter at 6:45!

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ming (edited June 07, 2000).]</font>

[Bird]

Hmmm. I'm in a rush and will have to respond later, Ming. I'll be home around 7:30 or 8:00 latest tonight (EST) and will do whatever you guys want: continue or start a new one.