The Whore of Babylon Speaks - GoW Official Statement

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Kloreep
ND and GoW might have followed the exact same course. Can you say that of other teams?

Of course I can, because in neither case the other teams would have found out about it. It had to be secret, whatever alliance be it a shared victory or a kill-everyone-and-fight-ourselves. Had we made it public, the ones on the receiving end of an alliance would've been us.

If Trip had said no way, this is illegal, or that it's ok but you have to make it public, we would have never signed it. Only in this scenario could I admit that things would have been very different.

But as it is, any type of alliance between GoW and ND no other team would have ever found out about it, so the course of the game would have been exactly the same.

[Hot_Enamel]

Originally posted by Aeson
Just wondering...

Did Vox have any units warp to Estonia by giving up the city on Bob?

I can honestly say ... Got no idea.
Dont recall anything about it in the GoW forum.

I assume they took the same galleys they used to land there.

[Master Zen]

I find it rather ironic that despite now being accused as the epitome of cheese, GoW actually voted against most of the exploits which Lego and GS were adamantly in favor, particularly that borderline-cheating tactic which is F1/City Arrows (which IIRC has been banned from every other demogame).

GS and Lego's excuse: that it permits a broader array of strategies like hiding builds and last-minute changes, etc.

Of course, since both actively wanted to use such a trick to cover up wonder builds it was... well... not deemed "cheese", it was deemed "strategy".



And yet in an interesting change of terminology, GoW and ND's grand strategy of winning the game together is now labeled "cheese".



Double standards

[Aeson]

So I take it GoW didn't "What's the big Picture" to swap prebuilds for tactical nukes the turn Space Flight finished?

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Aeson


I wouldn't call it flawless... If you had nuked Elipolis 1 or 9, instead of Elipolis itself, you could have taken out GS for all intents and purposes that first turn. Nuking the city directly eliminated any possibility for a blitz on your part.

No idea why you didn't try to get a rolling invasion on GS. At worst, if it had looked like it wouldn't work, you could cut the roads by Elipolis.

Problem is we didn't have any settlers. Our settlers were built next turn and embarked on a transport which was built in Surfer's Paradise or one of those cities and which was only to join the main stack later.

We could have tried attacking the 3-tile-spaced cities with our 3-movers. We knew you had a plethora of tanks and mech infs and it was possible that they would have blunted any attack from the cavs, let alone the riders if for a bad stroke of luck they'd be in one of the cities in our way. Of course we could've gotten lucky and those cities just been defended by 1 mech inf for example which means we might have actually taken them. The problem here was that unless we found and destroyed where GS was marshalling its army we would have been subjected to a counterattack which would have placed the invasion in jeopardy despite the fact it could have been a death blow to GS.

Perhaps if ND had invaded that same turn we would have attempted such a thing since you couldn't have successfully counterattacked both our armies (kind of a repeat of the Lego War), but we had no clue when ND was going to be able to land.

Moreso we also figured that our advantage should have been overwhelming enough that we would have inflicted the killer blow eventually and with lesser casualties. Part of that reason was why we landed where we did: we knew that you would be insane to attack a stack of 40+ Mech Infs in a mountain tile. A mountain hopping strategy - despite being longer - would threaten practically every city in central Stormia including EotS.

So it was all a matter of playing it safe instead of rushing in for a possible-yet-uncertain kill. In the end we didn't lose a single unit in the invasion and you razed practically every city in our path (and even some that weren't in our path). For all our intents and purposes, that was flawless.

-MZ

[Aeson]

Problem is we didn't have any settlers.

Then that was a flaw in planning, wasn't it?

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Aeson
So I take it GoW didn't "What's the big Picture" to swap prebuilds for tactical nukes the turn Space Flight finished?

Only because it was voted in favor.

And for the record GoW never before that invoked the F1 trick because I had failed to read the poll and assumed that it didn't pass. it was only when H_E reminded me that it was allowed that plans changed.

It was also a sort of "give you a taste of your own medicine" move. If you and Lego had voted against such an exploit you could have had a chance at stealing the tech and perhaps the war would not have been so easy.

I think there is no better proof at just how unstabling an exploit it is than what we did on that turn. Take it as a lesson for next time and vote against it

-MZ

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Aeson
Then that was a flaw in planning, wasn't it?

Why? You're assuming we wanted to swarm through Elipolis instead of striking closer to your core and dare you to counterattack us.

Just because we didn't do what you would've done doesn't make it a flaw.

[Aeson]

The attempted tech steal shows very well how GoW's invasion was seriously flawed. GS had a dice roll to get up to 8 tactical nukes that we couldn't have gotten at all if GoW had "rolled" (or even consistantly nuked the Uranium).

Luck determined that wouldn't happen, not GoW's invasion. If GS had gotten those Nukes, there would have been a whole lot of GoW and ND casualties.

[Master Zen]

To be honest, I had no clue that it would be so cheap to try and steal a tech (you said something like 1,600g?) or that you'd actually have that many gold to do so.

Last time I actually tried to steal a tech in Civ3 was probably over 2 years ago and I recall it being quite expensive.

Because of this the possibility of GS attempting such a thing never crossed our minds or else we definitely would have nuked the Uranium every 2 turns.

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by Master Zen
Of course I can, because in neither case the other teams would have found out about it. It had to be secret, whatever alliance be it a shared victory or a kill-everyone-and-fight-ourselves. Had we made it public, the ones on the receiving end of an alliance would've been us.

I'm not talking about the secrecy of the GoW and ND pact, I'm talking about shared victories being possible in the first place. Not quite the same thing. So far as I know, F1, unit chaining, and all the other examples you cite have all been brought up in the public forum so that all teams know about it, and can exploit it if deemed acceptable. The idea of a shared victory pact never was. Granted, bringing it up would have defeated the point, which sucks, but this situation we ended up in anyway rather sucks too, at least from my PoV.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Master Zen
I think there is no better proof at just how unstabling an exploit it is than what we did on that turn. Take it as a lesson for next time and vote against it

I'm not the one whining that it was used. I think it's perfectly valid to use, GoW, GS, Lego, whoever. I just wanted to point out that GoW is trying to have it both ways. Using the tactic, and maligning others for using the tactic.

It was never against the rules. It's commonly accepted in some communities, outlawed in others. If you want to look at it as cheesey, feel free. It has nothing to do with whether or not calling shared victory is a double standard though.

A double standard is when one applies different reasoning to their own actions as the same actions of other people. That is what you are doing MZ, not what those calling shared victory cheese are doing, as they did not claim shared victory.

It was also a sort of "give you a taste of your own medicine" move. If you and Lego had voted against such an exploit you could have had a chance at stealing the tech and perhaps the war would not have been so easy.

We did get a chance at stealing the tech. Yes, the war would have been different if it succeeded, but the end result would be the same regardless.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Master Zen
To be honest, I had no clue that it would be so cheap to try and steal a tech (you said something like 1,600g?) or that you'd actually have that many gold to do so.

Like I said, a flaw.

[Hot_Enamel]

Originally posted by Master Zen
Because of this the possibility of GS attempting such a thing never crossed our minds or else we definitely would have nuked the Uranium every 2 turns.

I recall telling MZ that I think we should do this.
One of the forum pics showed that GS had reconnected the uranium with a worker.
I think I caught MZ on chat, and told him to nuke it and keep nuking it.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Kloreep


I'm not talking about the secrecy of the GoW and ND pact, I'm talking about shared victories being possible in the first place. Not quite the same thing. So far as I know, F1, unit chaining, and all the other examples you cite have all been brought up in the public forum so that all teams know about it, and can exploit it if deemed acceptable. The idea of a shared victory pact never was. Granted, bringing it up would have defeated the point, which sucks, but this situation we ended up in anyway rather sucks too, at least from my PoV.

Perhaps if you had been in GoW or ND's situation you would have thought differently. I've already mentioned a gazillion times that it was history which made us take this decision and that had we been in Lego's or GS's position we might not have (well perhaps in GS's case yes but only if Vox hadn't invaded) because the geopolitical situation never warranted it.

Maybe if people actually bothered to step in our shoes for a change instead of arguing everything from the Lego or GS perspective they'd be a tab bit more receptive of our point of view.