Game Discussion IV

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Hot_Enamel


I actually dont think you would of invaded us. We had a NAP remember. The GS honor code and all that. You even had to "twist" the NAP agreement to make us attack you first in the South.. just so you guys had a clear conscience.


Also remember.. even though ND refused to allow you any presence on Bob, GoW did offer you it.
The offer was .. you can have 1 city on Bob, if GoW can have 1 city on Estonia.

You guys wouldnt even consider allowing us a city on Estonia ... for the eaxact same reasons we didnt want you on Bob


{Edit} - also remember.. yep, we asked you to stay out. But what we wanted to do was ally with you against Lego straight after. You would of got us to agree to a bigger piece of Lego or anything really. Of course.. Lego was also our ally and we didnt really come out and say we want an alliance against Lego...just in case you guys leaked it out to them.

Yes, well, it would not have required all of our knights to convince GoW to break the NAP against us, as you did.

The way the chat went was... whoever can get whatever RP cities however, gets them.

Didn't it just rot your socks that RP gave us the cities through diplomacy?

[notyoueither]

And here our diplomacy sucked sooo thoroughly.

[Aeson]

On the "what if" Bobian war line of thought...

If GS had invaded ND directly, would GoW have used the NAP to block GS movement (by unit or city/culture)? (Or is that a rhetorical question? )

[Hot_Enamel]

Originally posted by Aeson
On the "what if" Bobian war line of thought...

If GS had invaded ND directly, would GoW have used the NAP to block GS movement (by unit or city/culture)? (Or is that a rhetorical question? )

Good question.
GoW would of broken the NAP in a flash if we had to.
We did not have the GS honour code hanging around our neck

However, iirc, ND would of seen you coming. They didnt have cities on the east coast. Their core & GA would of allowed them to build up a defense far quicker than GoW. GoW had everything south.

ND & GoW were strong allies... but I dont think GoW would of mind seeing ND in a little pain..peg them back a little.
But if it caused the RP war to falter, or if GS got a foothold, then GoW would not have thought twice about breaking a NAP.

[Hot_Enamel]

Originally posted by notyoueither


Yes, well, it would not have required all of our knights to convince GoW to break the NAP against us, as you did.

The way the chat went was... whoever can get whatever RP cities however, gets them.

Didn't it just rot your socks that RP gave us the cities through diplomacy?

RP was screwed. I would love to see the negotiation, but I doubt it took much effort to convince RP to hand over their cities.

We were quite amused by the letter RP sent us. They knew they were facing death, but still wanted us to backstab ND. And the border treaty they offered in the next paragraph still gave them the bulk of Bob.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Aeson
On the "what if" Bobian war line of thought...

If GS had invaded ND directly, would GoW have used the NAP to block GS movement (by unit or city/culture)? (Or is that a rhetorical question? )

Naw, we should have done what DeepO planned. Upgrades and invasion of GoW. They would have had little or no warning.

The first stack of knights in a Spanish city got them to break the NAP.

From there our hands were untied.

Alas, I ****ed up.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Aeson
On the "what if" Bobian war line of thought...

If GS had invaded ND directly, would GoW have used the NAP to block GS movement (by unit or city/culture)? (Or is that a rhetorical question? )

Interesting question.

We'd have to weigh in whether respecting NAPs was worth having our closest ally destroyed.

No brainer

[Aeson]

RP was screwed. I would love to see the negotiation, but I doubt it took much effort to convince RP to hand over their cities.

GS was only holding those cities for RP. Seriously. The best-case scenario in our eyes would have been RP keeping everything they had before the war, or almost all of it at least, and taking about half of ND's land. That's what we decided to offer to RP if the war went well. GS figured that if we could do our job, keeping RP alive and thriving on Bob, that would mean we'd have a chunk of ND and all of GoW to call our own, and an ally strong enough so that GS+RP would have the advantage over Lego+Vox.

You see, GS wanted an ally. That's what we got from RP, and what was blatantly obvious we couldn't get from ND or GoW after that chat. The cities RP gave us were more a liability for us than helpful. They were necessary to be in our hands sometimes for the good of the alliance. It wasn't our foothold on Bob though... that would have been elsewhere if things worked out.

[Hot_Enamel]

Originally posted by Aeson


GS was only holding those cities for RP. Seriously. The best-case scenario in our eyes would have been RP keeping everything they had before the war, or almost all of it at least, and taking about half of ND's land. That's what we decided to offer to RP if the war went well. GS figured that if we could do our job, keeping RP alive and thriving on Bob, that would mean we'd have a chunk of ND and all of GoW to call our own, and an ally strong enough so that GS+RP would have the advantage over Lego+Vox.

You see, GS wanted an ally. That's what we got from RP, and what was blatantly obvious we couldn't get from ND or GoW after that chat. The cities RP gave us were more a liability for us than helpful. They were necessary to be in our hands sometimes for the good of the alliance. It wasn't our foothold on Bob though... that would have been elsewhere if things worked out.

And within the GoW forum, we wanted to ally with GS. But against Lego later... not RP now. We just couldnt come out and say that, because we didnt want Lego finding out.

GS would of had first choice of Legoland. GoW would of been pretty negotiable on that. We feared a GS invasion in our North more than anything.

But GS insisted on having Bob territory, and we couldnt allow that.

[Aeson]

And within the GoW forum, we wanted to ally with GS. But against Lego later... not RP now.

We knew that. (I'm pretty sure GoW divulged this in the chat, though the "offer" about land wasn't defined.) "Ally" really isn't the term for what GS would have been to GoW if we went for that.

[Hot_Enamel]

OK - Good to know that you knew that.

Funny... It makes the Bob war far more satisfying now, knowing that GS was fully informed.

It was hard wanting to tell GS that we'd "negotiate" on Lego, (but couldnt for fear of Lego finding out) if only they would stay out of Bob.


But then again ... GoW probably would of screwed you guys over anyway. It's our nature.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by notyoueither
I'm baffled by why Lego thought a two team Bob and an antagonised GS was less of a threat than a three team Bob with one or both of the fast mover allies seriously hampered by war damage.

Well... it's such a long time since all that happened... but it was quite simple, IIRC. You were victims of your own victory over Vox. And of your economic brilliance, perhaps.

The reasoning was quite simple (at least for me). If GS was able to smash Vox so easily (everybody knew how many immortals Vox had, as almost everybody was to some extent participating in their war effort) and grow so mighty with what little land you had for starters - what would happen once you'd gain more land on Bob? How would another team (Lego) be able to stop you without directly attacking over the sea?

We're builders, as in: non-agressive team. Our units did not fight until the Lego War. We never attacked anyone else first. We weren't looking for a fight, rather to keep the balance of power - even if with only two Bobian and two non-Bobian major civs left.

When things started moving fast during the Bobian War, we saw two possibilities for us. First, we could side with RP (and GS), which would inevitably result in the defeat of GoW and ND (that's how we saw it and that's how it would most probably be) and GS gaining a foothold large enough to allow finishing the Bobians by a blitzkrieg off at a later time so fast that we'd really be unable to do anything. Rather than having to help GoW & ND at a later time against a lightning-fast invasion from GS bases on Bob, we decided to help them right away and prevent GS from getting any bases on Bob.

If it was a good decision or not, nobody can tell now, as we don't know what would happen if we went the other way. Perhaps the game would end with a shared victory of GS & Lego... ...perhaps the game would have been over a year earlier, with GS controlling the whole of Stormia and Bob, Lego being perhaps the only other survivor, but ultimately unable to win because of being half the size of GS. Perhaps something different. We will never find out...

And one last note... as surprising as it may sound, the idea of joining the Bobian War actively on one of the warring sides didn't come from my head. It was during Zargon's term and it was him mobilizing the team. I grabbed the idea and supported it fully, but contrary to what some may believe, it was no personal vendetta of mine...

[Donegeal]

Great disscussion guys!

Voxian Invasion of Bob. Whoa! You had us screwed! Something like 12 Immortals and 2 settlers. I think we'd have put up a fight, and I think that eventually we'd have started to push you back, but beforewe'd have pushed all the way, the Brotherhood of BoB would have crumbled and somebody would have turned.

Estonia War: I knew nothing of the altered screenshots. However, I am wondering how much you guys believed them, or if that played a part at all in your strategy for that conflict.

Bobian War: I remember the first time I saw GS knights on Bob. I only said one word (and I said it over and over and over and etc..), "F*CK!". At the time, all teams involved had gods playing the turns and I seriously don't think that either side made any strategical errors. It was the most well played war I have ever seen. For me, I think that the only reason GoW/ND won was not because of fighting or planing, but because we turned or single greatest weakness into an impossibly unbelievable advantage: GoW did not have iron. We needed iron for our Riders. So we could only build Horsemen. Then we built Leo's and got iron from ND (in deals that we made and cancelled numerous times). Bingo! Instant 3 move knights at half the cost!

Nuke War: I'm not excatly sure when, but shortly after the Bobian War I proposed the the first strike Nuclear option in the GoW forum. However, at the time it was a first strike at where ever Uranium showed up, capitals and Forbidden Palaces (followed by core city strikes in subsequent attacks). I didn't contribute much to the Nuke War, but I just wanted to give myself props for being the first to propose it in the GoW forum.

[ZargonX]

And one last note... as surprising as it may sound, the idea of joining the Bobian War actively on one of the warring sides didn't come from my head. It was during Zargon's term and it was him mobilizing the team. I grabbed the idea and supported it fully, but contrary to what some may believe, it was no personal vendetta of mine...

Heh, that is true. Though, it was no personal vendetta for me, either. Basically, as Vondrack said, I feared the idea of GS gaining a foothold on Bob. They had demonstrated that they could take a little bit a long way, and the idea of them seizing any portion of the Bobian continent would only mean bad news for Lego in the long run. In addition, at that point, we had excellent relations with GoW and pretty terrible relations with RP due to (apparently) some diessention within their own ranks.

Those factors combined, plus a desire to show that, yes, we were builders, but that didn't mean we couldn't play a part on the world stage, led me to encourage our course of action. Was it the right one? Who knows... the possible outcomes are so varied it's impossible to say.

[Aeson]

Estonia War: I knew nothing of the altered screenshots. However, I am wondering how much you guys believed them, or if that played a part at all in your strategy for that conflict.

We didn't do any planning based on the screenshots. GoW's reputation with us at the time was not good enough for us to trust anything they said.

We did hoped for some good information from the screenshots, but weren't going to put ourselves in any sort of risk of the unknown based off of them. We were planning for the worst case, our estimates of how many Immortals Vox could have at that time being 20-25 at most.

I think it was the second or third turn of the war where we knew at least some of the screenshots were faked. Immortals of numbers, experience level, and with names we hadn't seen on the screenshots were in areas where they (or more likely the Warriors heading to be upgraded in Dissidentville) would have had to have been seen on the screenshots.

(Not only were the screenshots faked, but GoW sent less of them than they agreed to... )