Battle Report - discussion

[Master Zen]

Yeah well I lost my first PBEM against a foe with twice my land and terrible RNG luck (a horseman defeated a forted pike in my walled capital and that allowed his army to swarm and practically kill me off), in my second major war I got backstabbed from my neighbor, destroyed his invasion force and ended up destroying his empire which was the largest in the world (moral of the story, don't **** with the Ottomans when they get Sipahis and a GA)... as a result of this my other neighbor RoP-raped my ass. Game over.

PBEMs hurt when you lose, few games involve so much time and effort even if it's not as much as one thinks because it is diffused over such a long timespan. But I can safely say that PBEMs and especially demo games are what made Civ3 so great. Now well just have to wait for Civ4 for the revenge, heck even Lux might have another shot at it.

[asleepathewheel]

Hopefully the gods are watching things like this and cIV can eliminate them, though undoubtedly other exploits will be discovered after enough braincells are expended.

to Vondrack and Lego. Ft Stanwix was a brilliant maneouver, as was the bb blockade, though it failed by a hair to the RNG

to DeepO who has spent literally hundreds of hours in the past six months to basically will GS to this point, regardless of what happens from here out.

[BigFree]

Originally posted by Master Zen
Yeah well I lost my first PBEM against a foe with twice my land and terrible RNG luck (a horseman defeated a forted pike in my walled capital and that allowed his army to swarm and practically kill me off...

[Aggie]

Well played by all sides. Now I can say that there were 2 reasons for my more or less withdraw from this game.
1) was real life
But the second was the fact that the 1st Bobian war was very draining mentally and emotionally. I did not desire to go through that again, but it was obvious that the next major step in the game was going to be the war with Lego and after working so closely with them during the Bobian war, I had a hard time fighting them.

Perhaps this quick victory is for the best. Yes a long term war would be interesting. But the humor so well displayed by both sides would very likely disappear as the war slogged on and the war became desperate.

It is also very unfortunate that a demogame can't be done in the Beta stage of CIV4. If it was I'm sure that many items would be discovered and fixed.
Aggie

[vondrack]

Aggie, your words very much appreciated.

Originally posted by Aggie
It is also very unfortunate that a demogame can't be done in the Beta stage of CIV4. If it was I'm sure that many items would be discovered and fixed.
Aggie

I have to say that this is an idea very well worth keeping in mind... who knows, after all, it need not be all that impossible...


And BTW... to better illustrate what kind of an oversight, or mistake, we lost this unfortunate war so instantly for... what looked like a 2/4 battleship destroyed in Quanto Mechanico when GS took it was in fact not just one 2/4 BB.

It was two 2/4 BBs and one 1/4 DD... had we left them at Q.M. 4... it drives one almost to tears - the whole 2-year game now looks so very absurd to us.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by DeepO
Operation Watergrogged.
2. art bombs 5/5 BB Tipperary (or Karina? only looked after bombing). failed.
3. art bombs 5/5 BB Tipperary (or Karina). Tipperary 4/5
4. fighter bombs BB Jackson. Fighter fails.
5. 2/4 DD attacks BB Jackson. 2/4 DD destroyed. Jackson promoted to 2/5.
6. art bombs 4/5 BB Karina. Karina 2/5.
7. art bombs 4/5 Tipperary. fails
8. art bombs 4/5 Tiperrary. fails
9. art bombs 4/5 Tipperary. Tipperary 3/5
10. art bombs 3/5 Tipperary. Tipperary 2/5
11. art bombs 2/5 Karina. Karina 1/5.

[EDIT]nevermind[/EDIT]

BTW, the 5/5 BB was Karina, 4/5 BB was Tipperary.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by BigFree

I had my revenge in FAM3

[DeepO]

Originally posted by vondrack
And BTW... to better illustrate what kind of an oversight, or mistake, we lost this unfortunate war so instantly for... what looked like a 2/4 battleship destroyed in Quanto Mechanico when GS took it was in fact not just one 2/4 BB.

It was two 2/4 BBs and one 1/4 DD... had we left them at Q.M. 4... it drives one almost to tears - the whole 2-year game now looks so very absurd to us.

I do not know if it is time yet to discuss tactics. If you're interested, just answer this post, and I'll continue. Otherwise I'll do this in a week or so.

Vondrack, I personally, and I know that many more in GS share this opinion, do not think of this as a mistake. Knowing that there were 2 more ships is painful, I agree... because just one 2/4 BB more would swing the odds in your favour, but would still make it possible to break through using transports if the RNG gods smiled on us. 3 extra ships makes it impossible... you can't defeat 5 BBs and a DD with 11 transports.

However, it was no mistake, but at most a wrong judgement. You needed to heal your ships, you can't keep on using them when they are getting this badly damaged, certainly when you can expect some reinforcements from us arriving shortly. However, it looked to us, that you blockaded the wrong point. We could get through the blockade at Abilene relatively easy in comparison with the one near Quanto Mechanico, and so we could use our marines on Abilene too. I know you hoped Abilene was just to be attacked by tanks. This meant, we could possibly take Abilene... at the expense of our entire inasion fleet, marines, tanks, and MI. The counter attack would have driven us off the continent for sure, if we had anything left. So Abilene was out of the question... even without blockade.

To me, the whole difference lays in approach. You were so busy foreseeing all possibilities, trying all combinations, and working from that on, that you did not take enough margins. True, if you count transports as 0/4/5, instead of 1/4/5, your defense was perfect. Nobody disputes that. And so, you worked from that assumption, gambling everything on those points you foresaw, and put every single unit where it was used best, in that specific scenario. You have done that last turn as well, and also near perfectly (the transport-attack strategy was known from last turn, where we would have gotten 9.7% chance of breaking through the blockade of Sandonorico with 7 transports, enabling us to take out the whole of Legoland, not just half of it. But we considered it too much a risk)

This is a difference with the strategy we as GS in general take. Nobody can foresee all possibilities. What you can foresee is the implications one 'mistake', or one lucky RNG can have. We would never have put all our land units in 4 cities (Abilene, Jackson, Dye fields and Fort Stanwix), without at least a token force in cities a bit farther from the front. This would mean we could not have defended all our territory, and would have lost a couple of cities for sure... but it also keeps the effects of an oversight to the minimum.

I have read a couple of times before that you can not defend against settler blitzing... while it is hard, it can be done. I agree, it is a cheesy tactic, but railroads are a double edged sword in this respect. You get the ability to place your defenders anywhere in your empire, attacking everywhere within one turn, but you have to take the added risk as well. If this would have been fought on just roaded Legoland, the blitz would have failed for sure, but you would not have been able to put your defenses down at will, requiring you to turtle, make this a more 'strategic' war, and generally keep on harrassing our army until we were forced to leave. We would have taken territory in the first turns, but I think that everybody agrees that the way you were playing, in the end we had to give up.

Nobody says you are forced to completely railroad your territory, and use their ability to leave all your cities undefended. Think about that, before pointing any fingers at us for using settler blitzing, please.

DeepO

[redstar1]

No-ones pointing any fingers, and noones being a bad loser. It just seems that 2 years hard work lost because of game mechanics is a bit hard to take....

[Beta]

Originally posted by redstar1
.... lost because of game mechanics ....

I hope all those civ4 testers out there are following this.

DeepO - I don't think V is complaining; I read it more as disappointment. Which is valid and very understandable - and in a much smaller way, we can relate.

I think Aggie makes a good point about the good sportsmanship and attitude that has surrounded the recent conflict, and his questioning if it would have survived a long drawn out conflict.

As it is - hats off to all involved. Let's not slip now.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by DeepO
I do not know if it is time yet to discuss tactics. If you're interested, just answer this post, and I'll continue. Otherwise I'll do this in a week or so.

I do not think it's time yet, so I will only comment where possible.

Originally posted by DeepO
Vondrack, I personally, and I know that many more in GS share this opinion, do not think of this as a mistake. Knowing that there were 2 more ships is painful, I agree... because just one 2/4 BB more would swing the odds in your favour, but would still make it possible to break through using transports if the RNG gods smiled on us. 3 extra ships makes it impossible... you can't defeat 5 BBs and a DD with 11 transports.

I believe you misunderstood me. The mistake we did was that it didn't occur to us you could have artillery hidden in your still loaded transports (as it would have been logical to unload it on the previous turn, using it to improve the defense of the stack). That was the smart play I have always been referring to.

11 transports and a 2/4 DD had virtually zero chance to sink 4/4, 4/5, and 5/5 BB. Even if both fighters we assumed to be around tried their luck, it was still as safe as you can get in Civ3. There was margin more than enough. We did know you could throw your empty transports at our blockading ships. But we assumed our BBs would be 3/x to 4/x.

Had we realized the possibility of artillery being able to bombard our BBs, be sure you would find all our ships stuffed at Q.M. 4, no matter how low health. We were aiming for healthy margins.

I can only say you have your post wrong about Abilene.

Originally posted by DeepO
This is a difference with the strategy we as GS in general take. Nobody can foresee all possibilities. What you can foresee is the implications one 'mistake', or one lucky RNG can have. We would never have put all our land units in 4 cities (Abilene, Jackson, Dye fields and Fort Stanwix), without at least a token force in cities a bit farther from the front. This would mean we could not have defended all our territory, and would have lost a couple of cities for sure... but it also keeps the effects of an oversight to the minimum.

You are perhaps forgetting that "leaving a token force in cities a bit farther from the front" would weaken our defenses in the cities directly threatened. We did not really have an abundance of infantry, no matter what you may think. In order to have some margin where it was necessary, we had to use every single infantry right where it was.

Originally posted by DeepO
Nobody says you are forced to completely railroad your territory, and use their ability to leave all your cities undefended. Think about that, before pointing any fingers at us for using settler blitzing, please.

Nobody pointed any fingers at anyone. Extreme combat settling is ugly as hell (that's what Tiberius meant), but is deadly effective, and was completely valid tactics. We knew it and we were setting our defenses exactly with the threat of extreme combat settling in mind. Nobody said it was impossible to defend against it. It's just difficult.

Again - the mistake or oversight that made it possible for you to break through our defenses this turn was that we failed to realize you could have artillery hidden in those transports.

That's it. Let's leave the rest for the AAR.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by redstar1
No-ones pointing any fingers, and noones being a bad loser. It just seems that 2 years hard work lost because of game mechanics is a bit hard to take....

And just to be sure everybody understands me right. I am not thinking we lost 2 years of efforts because of some game mechanics. We lost it because we made a mistake and assumed wrong. The tragedy is that a single mistake like this can wreck one's game in this way. That's what I was referring to when saying the game looks very absurd to us now.

The game mechanics was there since the beginning, we knew about it, and were planning for it. No complaints.

My personal opinion about (extreme) combat settling is a completely different matter. I consider it a design flaw, one of the most game-breaking ones in Civ3 MP. I've seen several cases where extreme combat settling brought an instant end to a game lasting many months and hundreds of turns. I simply strongly dislike something like this is possible in the first place.

But no complaints about this game. We knew what the game was about and we knew the rules.

[alva]

/me buys Vondracek a beer...and another one...and another one...and another one

[Arrian]

This is why, ultimately, I don't play MP or PBEM. Because at some point, either you or your opponent is going to have their empire ripped to shreds.

I'm sorry, fellas.

-Arrian

[vondrack]

And that is why I have been turning down all Beta's proposals to join a new PBEM 'just you, me, and few cool guys' in such a determined way...

I hate seeing my empire ripped apart. And having it ripped apart more than once, I do not really wish to make anyone else feel the same.

Come to think of it, I'd probably have a problem doing it even to the poor AI now...