First of all, congrats to Lord Parkin for the well deserved win - he played the game from what I can say excellent in any aspect - build-up, tactic, strategic, timing, diplomacy, etc, etc.
Thanks. I'd still prefer to play on, but I guess this means you're no longer interested?
Second thing I can say it seems that 2 coordinated and determined players can easily outplay and defeat by military 6 not-so-well communicating and coordinating otherwise not-so-bad each on his own players without a hope.
I still think with a bit more planning and coordination you guys would have seriously screwed us over. I mean, come on, you had something like 40,000 gold stockpiled between you - that could have bought you well over two dozen nukes (not even counting manual builds in high-production cities) before we could have ever built SDI. Dropping 30-40+ nukes on us a turn or two after an early Manhattan completion would have seriously screwed us. If you'd thought ahead you could have had Ecology ready for the cleanup when we started counter-dropping a much smaller number of nukes on you too. I really don't understand why most of you gave up hope before this stage; we were seriously worried, nukes were the huge looming threat you had over us, and then you seemingly just gave up and let it slide when your moment of glory was potentially just on the horizon.
I also never understood why you guys mostly stopped putting espionage into me from 50+ turns before the end of the game. Sure, I was generating a decent amount, but if I'd had to spread it evenly over all of you, there's no way I would have been able to counter all of your points, and I would have lost visibility in a lot of places. That would have made my military planning a whole lot harder (and would have disabled some of my ability to warn and direct Elkad to impending threats too).
Third, we lost the game in the moment we all lost our fleets - first Irgy's and BCLG's
For the record, BCLG never lost any ships at all to me. His fleet of 30+ boats (most Transports) is still sitting around to this date in his territory.
( just to chilly a bit the congratulation speech will mention once again the suspicions about the fairness of the way it was achieved, LP)
Let's get one thing very clear. The issue was only regarding the blockading of cities, not unit combat. I never attacked any units that were out of range.
and then mine (yes, it was lame - I did scanned the surrounding 7 tiles from my port, but cant prove anything)
Dude, that's just low. Clearly you didn't "scan" completely enough. By this point of the game we were playing in separate parts of the timer, and you could see through Civstats that no-one from our side ever broke that.
My ships were resting 8 tiles east and 6 south of your city with the Destroyer stack, for your information. (Yes, you can move 7 tiles next to the city in question and then unload units from a Transport in the same turn.)
And for the record, I actually kept hoping every turn beforehand that you'd move that Destroyer stack OUT of the city. That would have given my Missile Cruisers tonnes of experience, and probably another Great General for the empire. You were actually better off the way it played out, if your alternative was to try to make a stand with the Destroyers. I'd carefully planned it so I had 1-2 more MC's than you had Destroyers there, so there was no way you were keeping even a single unit if it came to a fight.
That was another mistake, actually - you continued to build Destroyers (on auto-build, from what I could see) in several cities long after Battleships were available. Not quite sure why.
It also seemed at times that your Workers were on automate, for instance when I caught half a dozen trying to road the same exposed coastal forest tile one turn. If that's the case, it's probably another thing that could have been improved (there were lots of forests and jungles I would have chopped earlier if I were you).
And last, but not least, Irgy was building the MP long before me, then I lost my fleet and some fights with Elkad, then I saw what masses of army you guys have and decided to go for nukes to leverage your advantage a bit at least at tactical level. I was able to finish it faster than Irgy from that point and started to build it, and then we had some idea of tricking you to not use huge amount of hammers carried over from another projects in to immediate IMDBs. I though this warning to have some reason by the pedantic way you seems to play your turns, so I delayed it once again, then we stop even communicating with Irgy, who was the last active player of our alliance and somewhat our captain (ai-ai captain
).
This was a reasonably perceptive move, I guess, although I think you didn't realise quite the extent of our pedanticness.
Yes, we'd been watching and had prepared overflow in most cities on the turn we first expected you to get the Manhattan Project. But then, when we saw you were delaying it, we still kept up the overflow in our cities from turn to turn - building the cheapest units that wouldn't result in hammer wastage (quite a lot of missiles, which were needed at this time anyway, but also more expensive units). So regardless of when you completed it, we would have had overflow prepared. You could have more than countered this by having overflow prepared yourselves, though - especially since you also had the advantage of that 40,000+ gold treasury between you. I still maintain that if you'd known all the facts, you really should have built it on the first turn possible.
Then I saw parts of spaceships being built and I knew the game is over by a surprising way - I always though the game will be a bloody massacre to the end and I was preparing for this and to sell my life costly.
So why not finish Manhattan and do the most damage possible before the end? It still doesn't make sense to me why you let it sit for so long.
Well, I am not disappointed from the end of this game and as I just recently finished a game, where we dropped quite a few nukes (our alliance crushed the opposition, but again a space ship was launched, by a player who happened in the end to have NAPs with all the others, so he won by good diplomacy; kudos for him building ALL the necessary parts in ONE turn btw)
Well, good on him. I would have built all the parts in one turn if I thought it necessary to avoid espionage sabotage, but I was almost positive that no-one would have a Spy on our continent after this many turns of patrolling the waters. Anyway, no-one had even close to enough espionage to sabotage parts anyway, and it was impossible to both generate and use thousands in one turn. So I went with the more efficient route of building the parts in two sets, which allowed me in the meantime to build more ships and troops that devastated your coastline (amongst others), further enhancing the defence of our continent. Also, for the record, I believe building in two sets got the Spaceship in the quickest possible time (which building parts in 16 cities wouldn't have done).
I'm glad you're not disappointed, but I am a little. We didn't play in this other game of yours, you did. We're talking about this game here.
and I had enough of nuclear wastelands, I vote we just to call it a win for LP.
Well that's a shame, I haven't had that experience and was looking forward to playing around for at least a couple of turns with nukes for the first time in multiplayer. But if that's how you feel, I guess I can't convince you to stay...
