Thermopylae at A9

[nbarclay]

My post is in the Vox daily war report thread.

[Velociryx]

Couldn't resist adding a reply.....bravo!

-=Vel=-

[Theseus]

If we are not going to defend A9, I *absolutely* want Vel to post something / anything.

We are f*cked if and when Vox gets to Arashi 2... the only thing we will have going for us will be the uncertainty due to the 'veil' of units in towns.

Maybe having Vel chime in can create further FUD. We should think about what further PsyOps actions might be useful.
__________________________

Beyond mind-games, however, guys, I am so uncomfortable with this...

I am a TOTAL team player, and, given the quality / experience / expertise of all, fine, we'll pull back to Arashi.

BUT: You all honored Arrian and I by making us the Generals.

The two of us are sort of similar, in a way, I think; we are not the most analytical of players, but we have our own kind of 'gestalt.' I can't speak for Arrian, but I 'see' it, the play of battle around Arashi and Monsoon, including the bends and boughs of the RNG... and I have felt A9 to be the crux.

Regardless, we shall prevail.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by nbarclay
My post is in the Vox daily war report thread.

helluva post nathan, helluva post.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Thanks NYE....as to being wrong....::shrug:: I haven't played PTW yet (but I will get a copy and upgrade to the patch we're using so I can participate on the team), but I will, and see how it goes.

The one bit of good that came out of it I suppose was that it lead me to the discovery of EU2....

Civ still has a place in my heart tho....

-=Vel=-

Note the wink.

Civ is... irreplacable. On that we agree. That's enough, I think.

[Velociryx]

Amen, brother NYE!

And Theseus! You and Arrian, our stalwart Generals, are as noble as they come. You are right....we will prevail. Of that, I have no doubt! It is a fine Empire you guys have crafted, and now, methinks our Generals will have plenty to do!

They call us arrogant? What is life if you lack the confidence and gusto to live it?

IF we fall, it will be because the full weight of the rest of the nations unite against us. This Voxian army is indeed a toy. It lacks the stamina and staying power to do more than hold one city, and that, they shall not have.

And once our army matches the bearing of our infrastructure and economic strength, there will be nothing short of the entire world standing united against us that can stop us from pushing the Voxians into the sea, and claiming each of their cities as our own.

We can....and we should.



-=Vel=-

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Theseus
Beyond mind-games, however, guys, I am so uncomfortable with this...

I am a TOTAL team player, and, given the quality / experience / expertise of all, fine, we'll pull back to Arashi.

BUT: You all honored Arrian and I by making us the Generals.

The two of us are sort of similar, in a way, I think; we are not the most analytical of players, but we have our own kind of 'gestalt.' I can't speak for Arrian, but I 'see' it, the play of battle around Arashi and Monsoon, including the bends and boughs of the RNG... and I have felt A9 to be the crux.

Regardless, we shall prevail.

You are correct, Theseus. I was thinking on this earlier. We certainly do need to accord you and Arrian the latitude of your office. OTOH, it was established that the heads of the Scholia would advise the Poobah. When opinions are split, it falls to the Poobah (player) to find the best path based on the arguments and his own overview of military, production, and diplomacy.

That being said, yes. A lot more deference is due to you and Arrian, as I said to begin this post.

And you bet, we gonna kick some!

[nbarclay]

Thesus, your big mistake was bringing in Vel. It's hard to call in someone you regard as an expert and then expect people not to listen to him.

Seriously, I think your read that we could have held Arashi 9 is probably right. But there was a non-trivial risk that we could have failed to hold there, which would have cost us most of our mountain-capable forces in the area. With the choice we ended up making, we take a significantly higher chance on losing Arashi (at least if Vel is wrong in his expectation that Vox will attack it rather than bypassing it). But even if we lose Arashi, our military will be intact, and we will have bought time, and Vox's chances of penetrating farther will be essentially zero.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Something that's been nagging at me this turn just crystalized. Does anyone want to bet against Vox's reason for landing their immortal so far north being that they went back to pick up additional forces?

[notyoueither]

That is what I am concerned about.

They are in for a nasty as our fleet lurks at sea, out of reach of them on any given turn, but easily able to engage them if they attempt to close.

The GrLH is great for MP, much better than SP.

[Arrian]

Yeah, I'm hoping our galleys can find and sink theirs, and then maybe scare the crap out of them (hmm, does GS have troops on those galleys?).

I really hope this plan works (which means Vox's forces are defeated and we do not lose Tempest), but like Theseus, I preferred to hold A9. Still, we really should win either way... I'm just worried about losing a city that's worth something (read: just about any city besides Monsoon).

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Oh sh*t, it just occurred to me...

Aeson, what was the bug the you experienced in the Intersite game?

Do we have to assume that Vox knows our entire map and troop disposition?

[DeepO]

Just got up to date here... Again, I'm impressed at how quickly Vel can whip out an extra 20 posts to his PC (for those of you not into the joke, for a while there was a contest over at CB to see who could post the most meaningful spam, and Vel won that one by a truckload )

As to defending Arashi instead of A9: I can certainly see the reasons for doing it, although my intuition would also have warned to try to hold there, instead of letting them so close to our city. We really need more cats, because they would be relatively safe just to take A9, and wait until sufficient reinforcements have shown up to progress donw the spine. I think EotS is one of Vox's prime targets, but they would need to try to clear a path down there, as long as they are in our cultural borders, their units can't heal, and they are open to harrassing attacks.

Further: reinforcements East: I thought everyone agreed that most likely, 2 more immortals were to appear there next turn, or at the latest 1 turn later? Why else would they have dropped of that 3rd immortal behind the first one, instead of on top of him? I wouldn't even be surprised if they are moving a second galley in range, our 2 galleys could have a difficult time keeping Vox away.

Monsoon is, for all I care, lost, as is Sandstorm. Arashi we should try to keep. Also, if possible, we should keep Tempest, as it would seriously damage our long-term growth. Remember, there are a few teams waiting for us to shrink, instead of expand slower then up to now.

Vox maybe does not know the full situation nor our WM, however they know quite a bit of info. The moment they move onto A9 with one unit (and there is no reason why they wouldn't do that), they'll see the mountain ridge going down, and possibly the presence of a city (Tempest) in one of the bordering tiles. However, they won't be able to see its name, size, or be able to investigate it.

Investigating cities: I said before, and I still firmly believe it, that Vox still has cash to spare. If I had enough cash, and see a mountain city defending, the first I would do is to investigate it. I can not believe Vox, with their experience, to not do that. They will know our forces, we have to assume that, they will not attack Arashi simply seeing 1 pike.

As to the money, and the question of sponsoring: I haven't seen any comments to my analysis that Vox had at least 900 gold before upgrading warriors, part of which comes in gpt instead of in one-turn payments. That's enough for 22 immortal upgrades. Add to that that they are currently getting some 40 gold each turn, they can easily pay for their immortals, and have some cash left. This is without any direct sponsoring by other teams, so whatever we assume on Vox, we have to think they have all the cash they want, and could use. Stealing a WM certainly is possible (if this can be done with only an embassy), investigating cities each turn is also possible.

BTW, it doesn't matter if they can see EotS on F11 or not, they will see it on the map. They know where it is, they know the terrain directly border its city radius in the FoW, including Tempest 3. If they want to go for EotS, they know that T3 is their closest mountain to EotS, so that could very well be the goal of their little expedition.

Last question: Iron. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they still don't have it in their capital, but we see a road up there, no? Which means that the moment they given us their map, they had iron connected (logical, they had just upgraded the most of their forces), and I think one turn later we noticed they didn't had iron. If I were Vox, and I was convinced that I had enough forces to start a decent war, I would pillage the road near Elipolis. This would mean that Dissidentville can be a upgrade city, as it still has the iron connected, while all other cities can happily produce warriors for as long as they want. The only downside is that it will take the Northern warriors 1 extra turn to get to D-ville. (plus upgrading takes another turn if not done right). They can keep this scheme going for as long as they have access to D-ville, so disrupting the iron road towards that city is as important as taking out the connection to the North (as there currently is no connection).

DeepO

[DeepO]

BTW, what about temporarily changing Arashi's name to "Eat this!"? Could only force them to be more careful, leaving us more time to build more forces

DeepO

[Aeson]

(good job on the save guys, sorry I missed the last part, but my satellite link was out due to a storm)

Just the regular 'load from in another game' PBEM bug. With how much handling of saves goes on in a PBEM game, I wouldn't be suprised if it has happened several times. It's just an easy mistake to make. (especially when swamped with SP saves )

It is easy to get that data in more purposeful ways. If they are willing to cheat, I wouldn't doubt that at least one person on each team has the technical capabilities to look at the entire map/units/cities... even our passwords. (If you read this Soren, the passwords could seriously use any sort of encryption...)

I've had people send me PBEM saves to make sure that the starting locations were at least somewhat even. They didn't include their passwords... Took me all of 5 minutes to get a view of the entire world map (future resources and all) and everyone's starting location, it's just not that hard to do. I noticed the passwords in passing through. I doubt any team is willing to go that far, but I could see an individual looking at it on the side to give better advice to their team.

Another possibility is... I had a thought back when Nathan accidently sent the save to us instead of to ND, posting that the screens were sent out at the same time. Since then I sorta kept it in the back of my head that everything we have is known to the rest of the world already... ND might have gotten those screenshots.

There's really no point in worrying about it. If people are going to cheat, they are going to cheat, and nobody can stop them. Sometimes it's possible to tell that they are doing so, at least to a very high degree of certainty, but usually there won't be much if any evidence of it. Luck and cheating have much the same signature in this game.