The West Tower

[slaze]

It's all done on IM. We're a little late for that party

 

[Hercules90]

I didn't contribute much (my comp went down aug 2010) but I thought you guys faught a great fight and still doing so.

 

[whb]

I suppose I need to build spies fast to sit in defense and delete useless warriors to save money.

Wow... does this mean that even though we've been plastered with spy attacks for goodness knows how long, we've not built any defensive spies? Also, we seem to be losing money at 0% science.

Have we got any idea what the terms of the other team's trade deal was? If it was "until Mav/Merl are eliminated" (seems likely) then that suggests it's in some teams' interests not to invade our island and take us out completely (thus ending the agreement they like). They've taken so long to kick us off the mainland that I'm beginning to think we could be around much longer than originally expected.

If so, could we realistically push Mav towards a cultural victory goal, using Merlot as its research engine?

 

[slaze]

Well, no... a cultural victory is unrealistic.

And the whole spy thing is very much tied to our destruction. If they can spy us down off the tiles we support our always increasing unit costswith, then we will go on strike and be forced to disband - less units to kill and stripping us our ability to tech any further.

And they now have cannons, I feel it's coming soon enough.

 

[whb]

And the whole spy thing is very much tied to our destruction. If they can spy us down off the tiles we support our always increasing unit costswith, then we will go on strike and be forced to disband - less units to kill and stripping us our ability to tech any further.

Yes, of course that's the case. But why "always increasing unit costs"? Given we can't afford the army we've got, why have we been exclusively building units, no spies, and putting up with a low tech rate that has kept us from getting near Astronomy and Rifling which seem to be the two techs we needed to stay in the game.

Actually I'm not convinced cannon are that significant a new development (unless they are playing very badly) -- frigates, cavalry (60% retreat chance), and some rifles to defend the stack should already have been plenty to take us down even if they didn't bother to include any trebs. If they had a good plan for invasion, we should be long since dead by now.

 

[slaze]

units costs always going up because we keep on building units. And that was my plan. It is our numbers that's keeping us alive, detering their invasion for the time being. If we were focused on getting to rifling/astro, there would be a huge window where they would have those techs and we wouldn't. With the lesser army required to tech there, and it would still be slow with the 4 cities merlot has, we would be very vulnerable.

I have beaten a stack of 27 rifles of like 40-50 total troops with slightly more numbers of muskets, knights and 17 cats (although in that case they were spanish, triple promoted cats.) There's a similar situation brewing here - our army is large enough where they would need to land like a 60 unit stack to survive and absorb our army. That's not easy to create - it takes time. In the mean time they've prioritized espionage in the hope of wittling us down (or at least stunting our army's expansion) 40 hammers for a spy is cheaper than the 80 we have to pay for a musket

Money wise, yes the last turn shows the worst of it (capital worker no tiles due to unhappy) but so long as the spy situation lets up a little, we can handle the unit costs. the next turn was at -9 gold (i have yet to post it of course) and the one i have to play in the next 2 hours should be better. Ther is also ~90 gold with mav, it should be a while before strike is imminent.

 

[SunTzuWarrior]

Personally I'm between both of you, I agree with Slaze that our #'s alone are keeping us in the game. With that said, I think we are at the moment where a couple of spies are essential for defense.

Slaze I understand what you're saying about diplomacy but I dont think anybody really wants to put forth the effort required to take our mainlands out in fears of the other alliance members. This is where we conspire with one regional alliance against the other, allowing them to get a jump against the alliance members on the other side of the map. We tell them point blank that they dont have to give us techs, that way we're never a threat to them. We can also assist them militarily anywhere they need. I think we find the two teams who are the closest and make them two our target, they will be most open to working together.

Another main point, even if they dont agree, atleast we get teams thinking about working with us. We need to start planting seeds of doubt and suspicion among the alliance members.

 

[whb]

In the mean time they've prioritized espionage in the hope of wittling us down (or at least stunting our army's expansion) 40 hammers for a spy is cheaper than the 80 we have to pay for a musket

Possible. But it's also possible they've just been taking advantage of their tech agreement to run a lower tech-rate. (There's little incentive to maximise your tech rate if you have to share everything anyway). In which case they'd want to keep us weak but never invade until it looked like someone else was going to.

If they were to invade, given all our cities are coastal, I'd imagine they'd not land a stack but attack one city at a time amphibiously and raze -- that way they only have to hit less than 1/4 of our army (as they can pick the weakest city) and we can't pick off their injured survivors cheaply as they've all stayed safely in their boats.

 

[slaze]

No doubt about the spies, SunTzu - they were added to top of queue two turns ago, didn't yet whip one due to possible HR next turn (I'll explain in played turns) and closest is built 2 turns out.

I'm not on the same page as you with the rest ... but, are you willing to lead the way with any of that?

whb, I am a little curious as to why amazon feels it needs to run such a strong espionage on us; I'd think the line with us is pretty well won for them and they would be more involved with their standing post-Team Merlot, but maybe they're still fighting all-out. However, if their strategy is that post-merlot world is to keep up espionage as their main "economy" then it is very much in their interest to keep up espionage at full bore. My comment to that is Medival espionage is much easier to pull off than modern, but who knows, maybe they end up with first in the turn order. Medival espionage ambivilantly wants last in the turn order, modern espionage desperately wants first. That result will be greatly tied to amazon's fate.

And yes, razing is very much an option; it's been on my mind for centuries/months in-game/out. However, I am fully sold on the impossibility that there'll be any action on the dutch/amazon border, fully freeing them up to concentrate to their SE, whether that means us, CDZ, both or whatever. They only freshly got rifles/cavs so I wouldn't expect too much in the near near term, and then there's the discussion about how they'd go about it. If we maintain the defense we've been doing (slightly staggered but even spread, then if I were them I'd start with the occasional amphibious (they do have like 3GG and cha) and once they killed enough landing a stack could probably absorb enough and proceed - recently I put that number at a stack of 60 units at least, but honestly it could be closer to 45-50. That said, I'd say amazon has at least 6-7 galleons that I know of , which means that number could be 10-15+. also, it might be a good time to remind that we have two cities on hills and two not. I have at least thought about grouping everything en mass, which, if they catch my out of position in the spread configuration and due to the fact that they may easily run amok after a taken city (the non-gems cities have yet to earn any culture) I hope I don't regret not doing that (grouping) in the future.

 

[SunTzuWarrior]

No doubt about the spies, SunTzu - they were added to top of queue two turns ago, didn't yet whip one due to possible HR next turn (I'll explain in played turns) and closest is built 2 turns out.

I'm not on the same page as you with the rest ... but, are you willing to lead the way with any of that?

whb, I am a little curious as to why amazon feels it needs to run such a strong espionage on us; I'd think the line with us is pretty well won for them and they would be more involved with their standing post-Team Merlot, but maybe they're still fighting all-out. However, if their strategy is that post-merlot world is to keep up espionage as their main "economy" then it is very much in their interest to keep up espionage at full bore. My comment to that is Medival espionage is much easier to pull off than modern, but who knows, maybe they end up with first in the turn order. Medival espionage ambivilantly wants last in the turn order, modern espionage desperately wants first. That result will be greatly tied to amazon's fate.

And yes, razing is very much an option; it's been on my mind for centuries/months in-game/out. However, I am fully sold on the impossibility that there'll be any action on the dutch/amazon border, fully freeing them up to concentrate to their SE, whether that means us, CDZ, both or whatever. They only freshly got rifles/cavs so I wouldn't expect too much in the near near term, and then there's the discussion about how they'd go about it. If we maintain the defense we've been doing (slightly staggered but even spread, then if I were them I'd start with the occasional amphibious (they do have like 3GG and cha) and once they killed enough landing a stack could probably absorb enough and proceed - recently I put that number at a stack of 60 units at least, but honestly it could be closer to 45-50. That said, I'd say amazon has at least 6-7 galleons that I know of , which means that number could be 10-15+. also, it might be a good time to remind that we have two cities on hills and two not. I have at least thought about grouping everything en mass, which, if they catch my out of position in the spread configuration and due to the fact that they may easily run amok after a taken city (the non-gems cities have yet to earn any culture) I hope I don't regret not doing that (grouping) in the future.

I'll assist anyway possible in diplomacy. I hope you dont take my constant urging for diplomacy as a knock at you, I think you've done an excellent job. I just have the opinion that none of the alliance members really want to put forth the effort to take our mainlands, if they do attack our mainlands the sheer numbers required will stretch them thin against the other alliance members.

I believe we'll be seeing a fresh Rifle stack soon with probably a GG to soften us up and to test how we will defend.

 

[whb]

Am I mistaken or has the world not turned in a hundred years or so? (There've been no turn updates for two weeks.)

 

[whb]

(Sound of tumbleweed blowing past)

 

[whb]

Thanks for posting the update slaze. Sounds like very interesting turns ahead!

 

[Snaaty]

@ slaze:great job so far, keeping us alive for so long... ...time for what remains of us mavs to finally face the unevitable

 

[slaze]

by the way, I'll be on vacation from saturday april 30th to thursday may 5th. Anyone care to play the merlot turns then? (as mav will be dead)

 

[whb]

@ slaze:great job so far, keeping us alive for so long... ...time for what remains of us mavs to finally face the unevitable

Thanks and congrats to Indiansmoke and Slaze. A year of honourably and competently patiently playing out a losing hand.

We did make a few missteps along the way. Being too slow / unapproachable in our early messages when the alliances were forming was probably the killer (as it's the game-breaking alliance decision that killed us). Depending on the nature of that alliance -- we'll find out soon -- we might also have just "baited the tiger" by taking out that first stack or not apologising for doing so.

It seems we've inadvertently achieved one of the objectives people were suggesting after we discovered the alliance. By killing the one invading stack and then losing miserably to the other, I suspect the Mavs have "picked a winner" on the western side of the map. The other team will find our invaders tough to dislodge.

 

[Aivoturso]

Well, since it seems to be all over for Mavericks, would it be worth it to try one last ditch diplomacy effort? Dutch have now advantage over other teams, so if East allies do not have finishing stack already on way, there might be some potential for a deal there. We could also emphasize the fact that dikes are just around the corner now.

I would also like to laud our Monarchs for the noble effort and excellent gameplay. I agree with sir Whb that the turning point was in the early diplomacy. Unfortunately due to the ridiculous map design plus tech trading, it cost us the game. I don't think that it mattered much that we went after the first stack, since we already controlled Mavericks at that point. We really had no negotiation options left at that time.

 

[Fktor]

by the way, I'll be on vacation from saturday april 30th to thursday may 5th. Anyone care to play the merlot turns then? (as mav will be dead)

I've just returned to Civ after a 4 month hiatus, but if no better informed person is available, I can play it I would need some instructions though, still don't have much multi experience.

 

[slaze]

Thanks, Fktor. I'll post in the log in thread how to get in and leave detailed instructions in the turns thread for the last turn I play: It'l be the turn for my Friday evening/Saturday morning. I would say there hasn't been much major movement on this side for some while, though definately some in the form of guarding coastal farm building and some minor reshuffling of the defense. That said anything can happen in an instant, so all I can ask is to do your best. I'll try and get pretty detailed for my last turn.

And then I'll be back on Thursday for the my Thursday evening/Friday morning turn. So It looks like you'll only have 2 turns to play.

Thanks again. Good looking out

 

[whb]

BTW, if we're about to go into strike, why are we still whipping muskets?