WP-09-Diplo [Ben Franklin]: I accept your defeat! Date:Sun, 07 Aug 2011 06:46:23 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== Ivan and David - Your terms of surrender... are acceptable! Well fought! Although I'm tempted to suggest that we back up about 14 turns and see if you two could've come up with a better counterstrategy, I'm also at the point where I'm happy to have a bit more time each week for other pursuits! And, of course, at some point we need... Tournament 2012! As Ivan noted, I'm on vacation with family in Paris (through August 20). We saved up for 10 years to be able to do this trip (it's sort of a belated honeymoon and this year is our 10th anniversary), and we won't be back for a very long time, so we're trying to soak up as much as we can! I can make small comments though, since we do have WiFi in the place where we're staying and the kids (and grandparent who is with us) tire out faster than I do... that won't be true of the kids in 5 more years, but it's true now. Personally I would really like to hear how Ivan made his regions so powerful, and why David didn't pursue a strategy of investing in improving his production further... WP-09-Diplo [UniNet]: Disagreements... Date:Sun, 07 Aug 2011 13:47:14 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== Bob, Personally, I disagree - the terms of our surrender are not agreeable, however they are necessary! :-) Bob and Dave I don't think it would be right to step the game back, despite the temptation - but if you were to think on that I'd like to back about 30 or 40 turns (maybe more???) to when region crisis events split my forces into three distinct but separate armies incapable of backing one another up! I was supposed to have had another 400 armies during that last major battle for OFF LIMITS, but they were cut off! I ended up having to use an expeditionary force, retreated from it's intended target of Bob, to defend my capital regions. I really thought at that point, with the map I had and the disposition of my forces, that I had a chance to actually win! Oh, I knew where Barry was coming from!!! But, as I said to Barry, that's part of the enjoyment of the game - if I was only in it to win, not for the enjoyment, I might have agreed with him (no offence Barry!) - but no, this was a part of the game I had accepted and I still had a chance to recover. Note that I spent a formidable number of forces into situating you two to be at borders where I wanted you! Twice I sent about half my forces on 'mapping' expeditions. Specifically so I would be able to "watch" where the fighting was happening and adjust my tactics based on that information! The stands and retreats made by those brave sprites, once I had seemingly overextended myself, were designed to put large numbers of enemy armies in proximity of one another! My capital region was always pretty isolated. There was only once during the game where I actually feared it might be in danger. There was always a core of regions around it with never more than two exits, but typically only a single exit to the war zone. Even now this core region, 6 nodes, produces 49 armies per turn. I used two methods for creating production; direct production purchases (strategic, build first where most internal links exist) and creating internal links. I was also quite tactical in my purchase approach. Improvements to my territories were rarely due to needs and desires for those improvements, they were typically designed for active army control! I bought more expensive stuff when my armies appeared to be more powerful than I wanted. My capital region always produced enough armies that I set up a defence force at the perimeter and then consolidated production. That way I could produce waves of outgoing units which either continued to wash the shore or be held at strategic points. There were a number of these points; the region formally known as Symantec was one! OFF LIMITS was another - holding off and allowing Bob to take it first was difficult personally, but easily understood in game terms! OFF LIMITS was interesting, because for whatever reason David held onto that territory emotionally. There was always a good number of his forces there, or in transit! No offense Dave - but it became obvious to me Bob's strategy when he started making token attacks against my weakened forces. I could see it, but I was bound and unable to directly say it - even as obtusely accurate as I tried to be (staying inside our set boundaries) I knew what Bob was doing and that he'd won if your attack continued. (It also appears that he, also knowing what he was doing, accurately understood what I was saying! :-) ) I made two major mistakes in the later portions of the game. The first was attacking after my forces were divided! Roughly 800 armies were declared fodder and allowed to die for little result - they should have congealed to two single points and waited, that number of defenders is VERY significant! The other was not to attempt an agreement with Dave earlier to transfer troops to him for the defence efforts and potentially offensive advances. Inside the rules we had agreed upon there existed the possibility (especially because I think Bob would have allowed it but insisted the deals be kept!) of a loose agreement where we could have become legitimate (albeit short lived) allies earlier. But, it's been a particularly weird year so far! And, speaking specifically about the year - congrats Bob - ten years, nice! Paris, way cool! I've never been to Europe, despite Kate's ancestry to England. Pass on the congrats to your wife as well!!! Considering the circumstances - this IS the Tournament '09 game and this IS August '11 - this was a hell of a game!!! I'm pleased to have been part of it; thanks guys!!! Glad to hear your thinking of an '12 Tournament Bob!!! I have a strategy I'd like to pursue. I'm sure there will be a lot more to be said over the next couple of weeks. ;-) Ivan (PS - Bob, take your time where you are; we can wait until you get back for an accurate post mortem! We're over two years on this game so far, so a couple of weeks is not to much! ;-) ) WP-09-Diplo [Sunshine]: game Date:Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:20:00 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== Yeah, I'll admit that I was the one who screwed this up, so I'd better explain myself. First, regarding Bob's query of why I didn't improve more: it wasn't until sometime in 2010, I think, that I understood how the industry calculation worked. I think there was an explanation in the Time Vortex game when that started where it made sense. I hadn't been part of the development, so I always just kind of guessed at things. I think that the delay before the production increase showed up was what confused me (i.e., if I connect a 5-production region to another region and the connection shows up on my map on turn 7, the production increase won't show up on my map until turn 8). It's obvious in retrospect, but at the time it just seemed kind of random to me, so I didn't think too hard on it. I also get bored quickly with diplomacy and stuff, and so like to get into early wars, and once I'm in a war it seems like it makes more sense to take an extra 20 units and send them against my enemy, hopefully winning a new region and getting more production that way, than using it to improve production in the midst of a war. I've learned that this is not correct, but at the time it made sense. Regarding why I messed up and didn't defend my capital (which I consider to be much more of a blunder than taking Ivan's region): I had decided that the war was essentially unwinable. Thus, I was quite happy to teeter ever closer to the edge with each change of power, to see how things went. During the most recent shift, when Ivan attacked me, it took very little to turn the tides, and I imagined things would be similar for a while yet. Essentially, I figured that Bob wouldn't make his move until he had roughly as many armies as Ivan and I combined. That time was coming up, and I *had* started to move armies into position for the inevitable shift, but my regions were, as Bob pointed out, relatively crappy and distantly connected. Four more turns and I would have been ready. So, why did I press the attack on Ivan if my units weren't ready? It looked to me, given the numbers, that we could bounce back relatively quickly, and I'd have a counter-attack ready. My thinking was that I would give Bob the largest temptation possible, and then see what came of things. When it happened, I was concerned, but not distraught. Things had been worse before. I had clearly miscalculated how rapidly Bob would be ready for such an attack--I knew he'd be planning it as I was planning to defend against it, but I had imagined that it was still a few moves away. There were two major events that I had not considered. First was the successive loss of multiple capitals. By this point in the game my capital had changed so many times (you both moved through my regions a lot, and I never was lucky enough to get an internal capital) that I had no idea where my capital was. I know how stupid this was, given that I could just go down and look at where it was, but there it is. Anyway, I did have a relatively internal region that I expected to become my capital if I lost the current one, but apparently I was not remembering correctly how the capital assignment went. That also is my fault--I have the e-mail where Bob explained it somewhere here, and I imagine it's also on the website, but I didn't worry too much about it because, again, I had filed this game under "unwinnable, but fun to play with friends." So, army numbers and counter-attacks didn't actually matter, because I was dead in the water for a number of turns. My cousin's wedding and Ivan's hiatus also made counter-attack relatively impossible, and soon Bob had more armies *and* production than Ivan and me combined. Don't get me wrong--I am not blaming the loss on us being gone. At that point our chances of pulling out of the loss were slim to none anyway. Bob's win is entirely due to his own good planning, strategic sense about when to attack, and my miscalculation of how difficult a win would be. I'm just saying that those were the final nail in the coffin. Regarding my emotional attachment to OFF LIMITS. Yeah, that was just 'cause I thought it was funny, nothing strategic about it. It's a fine region, but it really wasn't that important at all. So, good game, Bob! Sorry, Ivan, to have let you down in my sloppiness--I deserved to lose, but you didn't. But, don't worry, I'm planning to win 2012! :) -- Dave