Battle Report - discussion

[Jon Shafer]

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0819287.html

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by DeepO

BTW, where did the name "Stanwix" came from? Or is that classified information as well?

DeepO

We signed an important treaty with the Iroquois

Originally posted by DeepO
Tibi, I've got to say, your defense so far has killed more of our troops than we killed Lego troops... I'm not sure who is most bloodthirsty Last turn, you even sank a couple of our innocent colonists, they don't even carry weapons!

We know your "innocent" colonists! They seem harmless in the beginning, but when you let them settle they start breeding war chickens!

[DeepO]

Aha, thanks. So you're waiting for reinforcements? Darn... I know we should have kept a closer watch on those Spanish troops...

DeepO

[DeepO]

57) Lego 4/4 tank attacked 4/4 GoW tank; defensive bombardment hit our tank for 1hp, our tank won with 3/4

Just a small comment, Vondrack. AFAIK, defensive bombardment always hits 1 hp off when it hits. I've never seen it hitting 2. It might make your battle reports a bit easier to type

DeepO

[DeepO]

Once Vox has played its turn, we're going to include some screenshots. For the moment, they might give away too much info. Patience, please.

DeepO

[vondrack]

****. Our bad. Didn't occur to anybody. Smart play.

Seems I am not going to go bankrupt because of civvin' instead of tending to my business... though, honestly, trying to see the brighter side does not really work this time. It hurts to have two years worth of efforts/time totally wrecked by something like this.

Oh, well.

[DeepO]

We know, Vondrack. This has been the discussion for several days now, in our forum. We understand the investment that went into this game from your side, both in time, as emotionally. But I hope you understand we had no choice... we couldn't take Quanto Mechanico, put our tanks next to your cities, and say "Hey, look where we are now". We had to push on...

And, something Lego will understand, but other teams might not: Fort Stanwix was perfectly safe from GoW's damaged invasion force. Only... it was not calculated to withstand an attack from behind as well. There is a good chance this can become a lot bloodier.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of even more bad news. Please know that everyone in Gathering Storm feels for your loss. You have been a formidable opponent, my hat is off to you!

DeepO

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by vondrack
****. Our bad. Didn't occur to anybody. Smart play.

If its any consolation, no-one on our team nor on GS's side thought you'd build a city next to our invasion stack. Everyone was counting on you guys simply pillaging the area around our stack and turtling at Dye Fields and Jackson. Smart play.

Then again we knew quite well being the force closest to our core we'd be the ones who were to recieve the brunt of your attack this turn as we were directly threatening your two most important cities. Hence our only dropping the barely minimum tanks to ensure our stack would stand and leaving the rest for the followup. Oh well, a sacrifice of this magnitude if the end result more than makes up for losses. And so far it looks like it will.

The Battle for Fort Stanwix will pass to history as the bloodiest battle ever, a body count almost as close as the entire Bobian war. It's a shame that this war did not involve the awsome maneouvers of the Bobian War where turn-by-turn strategy decided the outcome. I for one am a bit grateful since we knew that if we didn't mange to break out on this turn we'd be reduced to a bloody slog which we could well lose (not without bombing your entire East side back to the stone age first though, god bless our carrier fleet). Had GS not broken out we might well have resorted to just building bombers and carriers and leave Lego a waste as our stack could not survive another turn of attack like this one.

On the other hand I feel a bit sad that it all ended up being decided by a single move (what if Lego did not leave its BB resting in port and kept it outside?). A part of me thinks that Lego did not deserve to lose like this and at least deserved to go down only after a long, costly and protracted conflict, something which would equal the effort done for so many months by you guys. But c'est la vie, c'est la guerre, c'est le Civ and if we didn't like it, we'd be playing Quake instead.

-MZ

[vmxa1]

I just want to repeat what DeepO stated, the team was very unsettled by the battle and very admiring of the job Lego did.

[ZargonX]

Ah, combat settlers, the victory of gameplay mechanics over strategy. I do not that mean that as an offense to you, GS, as everyone uses them. They just make it so easy for one mistake to destroy an empire. We tried to defend against them, and we made one oversight. So it goes, I suppose. Good thing we get those two years back, right?

Right?

edit: Not to say that GS and GoW wouldn't have won in the long haul, just that losing in one turn is just so very anti-climatic.

[alva]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I just want to repeat what DeepO stated, the team was very unsettled by the battle and very admiring of the job Lego did.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I just want to repeat what DeepO stated, the team was very unsettled by the battle and very admiring of the job Lego did.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by ZargonX
edit: Not to say that GS and GoW wouldn't have won in the long haul, just that losing in one turn is just so very anti-climatic.

I'm not so sure we could have won given the circumstances. Our plan was to attack en force with marines by threatening enough cities that Lego would be forced to spread their 90 infantries among 7 targets. Lego's unsuspected naval victory screwed that up entirely and as a result we had to land exposed. It was obvious that one of us was going to get hit hard, our hope was that whoever got hit, the other would be strong enough to brake through. We also feared that Lego was going to turtle instead making is bleed for each step. Regardless of our productive advantage, if each turn's losses exceeded our production (and given how bloody modern wars tend to be it could well be possible) then we could not afford to continue. So Lego definitely had a chance though of course the effects of sustained bombing might still have killed off your chances at victory in the long term.

There were many other factors which could have tilted the balance which Lego did not know but which by now should be safe to disclose. D-Day was scheduled to be one turn earlier but GS had to postpone because of production dificulties... which also was due to an earlier tech mistake by us. GoW also suffered from 2 turns of squandered production, the first due to confusion regarding orders when I left the save to Panzer, the other for reasons which I still can't reveal. It is therefore quite concievable that that had we invaded the turn before, had Lego not gotten lucky with their naval battle, had GoW gotten two turns of extra marines, we would have won in one turn on 1265 AD regardless.

So don't feel so bad, it was merely your bad luck making up for our bad luck beforehand.

-MZ

[vondrack]

Thanks for your kind words, guys. No ill feelings against GS or anyone else - we all knew the game allowed for such neck-breaking breakthroughs and did our best to defend against them. Well, sadly, we failed. Game over. It certainly is anti-climactic, but that's how it ended.

BTW... the counter-fort strategy was devised many weeks, maybe even months ago, well before the war even started. Though honestly, we (or I) didn't hope we could still use it, since with tanks enough, a counter-fort would be impossible to hold, thus becoming useless.

This was certainly a sad end to our game, but at least, it was fair fight and we can only blame ourselves for not thinking of all possibilities. From my PoV, in a way, it's sort of an improvement... my first PBEM war/game was lost because of a gang-bang too big to handle (and a rather appaling RNG luck, too), the other because of assuming wrong rules... and finally this one was lost because of my own, genuine mistake.

Yeah, calling it an improvement may be a bit of exaggeration... but surprisingly, it does feel that way...

[Tiberius]

Combat settlers Bleah ... Zargon is so right: "the victory of gameplay mechanics over strategy". A very sad moment for the idea of "CIV", if you asked me.

GS

Vondrack