MB4 - GOTM24 Redux [civ3] Roster A

[Sir Bugsy]

One of the things, I've been kicking around is my decision to invade the Baejke when I did. I think if I had held off and allowed Alan to start the invasion 10 turns later with a larger invasion force, we wouldn't have gotten kicked off the Han peninsula the first time. A better plan would have saved about 10 turns.

 

[cracker]

I should add a well deserved congratulations to you all on a very entertaining and well played game.

In all games, the ultimate measure of success is a combination of three things:

1) how much you enjoyed what you did and what your teammates did while it was happening.

2) how well do the specific memorable events stand up over time and draw you back to remembering how enjoyable the game was.

3) How much did you take away from the game experience in terms of skill enhancement and closer ties to players around you.

Again, a hearty well done to you all for taking the playability of this game design to a new and enhanced level of excitement.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I just compared Jason scores estimating team B's current trajectory. If they finish in 1585 They win by 20 Jason points. If they win in 1590 we win by 1 point. Yes, this will be a nail biter. It might be fun if peanut could give a play-by-play of his turns.

 

[AlanH]

@Cracker:

Thanks, and thanks for making the game possible. I agree with your criteria for success, and on that basis this game ranks among those at the top of my admittedly limited experience. I'd like to win as well, of course

I hope you will continue to provide your welcome support to this kind of venture. I think SGs like this will help the hard work you put into your classic games to live on and teach more lessons.

@The Team:

I think we did a lot of things right and could have improved a few. Here are some lessons I've taken away. I'm sure there are more that I can't remember

- We slowed our local rivals down well by provoking wars in our own back yard, and as a result we extended the value of our UU. I think we could and should have slowed the Han down better in the other continent and kept them better balanced with their local rivals.

- We chose our early targets well. I noted during SG23 that I considered our choice of early war targets to be better than the other team, contributing to our early victory date, and I think this applied here as well.

- Yes, Sir Bugsy, we bit off more than we could chew when we invaded Baekje, and I was all for it when we discussed it. But the "error" was in thinking the Han would stand aside and let us do it. If we could have controlled the Han in some way we'd have been able to damage Baekje and consolidate a big chunk of real estate there while we prepared our final onslaught for the Han. I don't think ten turns delay would have made it different - the Han would still have intervened and we would not have been able to hold. Baekje could have been subdued by cavalry, but the Han's Infantry needed tanks and/or a rubber pillage. Once Karasu and Smackster started the final invasion the former Baekje lands fell to tanks in a very few turns.

- We were probably damaged by our loss of rep early on, though as a result we felt free to be ruthless in our peace negotiations, so our earlier loss of bargaining power may have been more than compensated for by our later treachery. However, treachery is always an option, so it would have been best to have kept our rep until we *wanted* to lose it rather than losing it accidentally.

- I think I understand more about the scoring mechanisms now, and if we were playing a similar end game again I'd try harder, from earlier, to maximise territory and happy faces.

- Pillaging was worth spending time and planning on. Karasu's effective use of RoP rape to achieive it is now carved on my remaining brain cells. But now I also know you can't just pillage the capital. You have to go for the strategic resources as well. If we'd taken out the Han's rubber in the same turn we might have finished a few turns earlier.

- Smackster's combat settlers are a new weapon in my armoury, together with Sir Bugsy's attention to detail in planning their moves.

- There's a comment in one of the GOTM threads that our play was not optimum and a top player could have finished this game with Cavalry. Clearly there's room for some improvement, with examples above. But I'm not far sighted enough to see how we might have conquered the world that much sooner, so it would be interesting to speculate on how we could have changed our play to do so.

PS I too would consider it an honour to play another GOTM SG with this team. And a big thank you to Mad-Bax for making this one happen and keeping it on the rails.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I was thinking of the rep being shot at first - another Bugsy move - and at the time I was kicking myself. However, as the game progressed, Alan is right, it brought out the ruthless side of us and enabled us to make and violate a lot of peace treaties. In the long run, I think I would have preferred not ruining our rep.

I think if we had played with LK or RB rules, the PTW team would have been right in the mix, and the three teams would be very close.

 

[AlanH]

Gentlemen. We are invited to a rematch based on 14 ...

 

[AlanH]

Just a warning, the fat lady hasn't sung yet.

Having taken the liberty of wandering over to the PTW war room I see they are thinking of milking for score. I estimate they need to score at a rate of about 45 points per turn to match our Jason score, which is about 25% higher than our rate for the last 100 turns. So it may be achievable if they reduce the final rival to one city, stick below the domination limit, milk for maximum happy population, and conquer in 2050. This, plus an early finish by the B team, and we could finish bottom of the heap

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Even so, it was still a blast playing the game. It is up there in the top three games I've ever played. Which one is which is hard to say.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
Even so, it was still a blast playing the game. It is up there in the top three games I've ever played. Which one is which is hard to say.

No question. GOTM25 and SG23 are my other two, with GOTM21 and 20 not far behind.

But competition gives extra spice to all these games, so it's nice to win as well

 

[smackster]

I think the spirit of this should be to win it as quickly as possible, sure maximise the score while doing that, but milking to 2050, 10 turns each at a time is crazy.

On our game, I also had that early Shimazu attack that got rebuffed. But it is very hard to tell when an attack at times is going to work. I think for these kind of invasions, when the other civ has had time to build their forces without many wars, you should concentrate on staving off their early counter. In that Shimazu attack we had two defenders, and they were killed very quickly and then so were all the Cavalry.

I wonder what effect cutting off Beijing had, Han did seem to go down pretty quickly. Based on the comments about winning with Cavalry I'd love somebody to play this again (from the approporiate point) and see if they can win with Cavalry, and then how difficult it is to attack Han if we do not do the pillaging turns. Based on my available time, it wont be me doing this, but I'd love to know who it would work out.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I think you'd have to be of the caliber of Sir Pleb or Qitai to win that early. You certainly won't see me winning like that.

I just hope the PTW game doesn't end up like the Sul5b game.

 

[AlanH]

Re. the Beijing pillage. It's effect in retrospect was to remove three lux from their cities, so they'd have to spend extra on lux tax to compensate, and that would have reduced their tech rate. In the 15 turns or so that we took to close them down they never reached tanks or flight, and that might be down to this, plus the fact that they were in Communism. It's interesting that they went for Amphibious War before Motor Transport - I guess it's cheaper?

As I said, I think we should have pillaged the rubber as well, or maybe instead if we had limited capacity. That would have stopped their modern land unit production in its tracks and you'd have met rifles and bowmen after their first Infantry defences fell. They'd never have produced marines either. Fifteen turns could have reduced to ten or fewer.

Re. a Cavalry finish I think you'd have to start from scratch and see if there's another way to develop:

- Maybe our early city placement was not as good as it could be. It was in difficult terrain that worked better for us once we had rails and productive workers, but was not ideal for medieval growth, perhaps we should have built the FP somewhere further from the core?

- We might have been able to use settlers more to shorten the early wars, as you suggested.

- If we had built the Lighthouse we might have been able to do more to interfere with the other continent's development.

- We waged war continuously, and were in Monarchy for most of the game. Should we have used short periods of representative government to build bigger forces and so reduced the lengths of the wars? I argued against it one point because in my experience Republic has never paid off in short intervals between or during wars, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

While our early city placement wasn't perfect, I think the decisions that were made were excellent given the hand we were dealt.

I think using our religious trait more and switching back and forth between republic and monarchy for producivity may have helped.

I don't think we could have influenced the other continent a whole lot more than we did. Maybe help prop up the Gogury and Koreans more, but the Han had a strong position with fertile land. Hindsight is always 20/20, but even if we had started a dogpile on the Han, we may have ended up with a different strong civ there. I think the Han were given a high level of agression, because in my solo attempt I was sneak attacked by them twice.

I think one of the strengths of our game was the order we selected opponents. As cracker pointed out in the PTW thread, but going after Tokugawa first, we were able to secure some of the richest land on our continent for our second core. The fact that I didn't place our palace in the best location probably didn't help there.

I wonder how many turns you could take off if you factor in all of these ideas.... 10, 20 ? I certainly wouldn't go much beyond 50.

 

[Karasu]

Mates.
This will indeed remain as one of my favourite games ever. It was a pleasure to play and exchange opinions with you all, and I am glad it's not over, with SG GOTM 14 and 25 waiting for us.

Of course, I'd love to thrash the other teams' socks this time too, to make two in a row, but the competition was there to give spice to the game, and 'winning' or 'loosing' doesn't really matter that much now.

I missed a good part of this game, but I heartily agree with the idea of a "lessons-learned" part of the thread.
For what I could see, the key points of our game have already been pointed out:

- Loosing our rep was probably negative, as it prevented us from taking full advantage of the trading opportunities. We might (but we would have to verify this) have had a faster tech pace, and therefore a faster victory with more trading. On the other hand, practicing ruthless tactics was just delightful...
- Yes, switching governments more often to take advantage of the Religious trait would have probably been wiser.
- And harassing the Han. I think the game was set up for them to become powerful opponents, but we should have tried every means to slow them down as much as possible.
- And the pillaging. I had in mind that pillaging the capital was enough. Now my remaining brain cells too have this information permanently written: pillage BOTH the capital AND the resources.
And with that very nice RoP rape that we did it would have been really easy...

But again, I just LOVED this game no matter what we might have missed. Let's go on with the next one!!! :jump:

 

[mad-bax]

This game has now been completed.

The final scores are shown in the first post in the thread.
Some individual scores are not shown as they were not reported in the thread (or else I couln't find them).

I will remain subscribed to threads for a while in case there is anything that arises that needs my input.

Thanks for a great game everyone.

 

[AlanH]

Thanks Mad-Bax. A great time was has by all. Onward and upward to #14!