WP-TV-Diplo [Anachronism]: Test Message Date:Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:12:49 +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.) ====================================================================== Just seeing if this new microphone thingy works... WP-TV-Diplo [Red Claw]: random thoughts Date:Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:33:12 +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.) ====================================================================== Yup, it works--thanks, Bob! It turns out that I didn't have a huge amount to say, but I still think that after a game lasting two years it can be fun to debrief. One thing that I alluded to in my last message was how close things were to ending in other ways. I was down to just over 400 units very recently (I hadn't remembered how recently until I looked back through some of the history), and obviously would have been extinguished if Anachronism had chosen to go after me instead of BoldlyGo. Also, I was very close to losing my capital (Mahakala) during one of his invasions--he took it but I got lucky and re-took it with reinforcements on the same turn. He had previously taken Neasden, and I was very unhappy when Mahakala became my base. Nearly the same thing happened with Temujin's invasion: I had just enough units in Mahakala to hold his invading army off, but only because the game gave me the benefit of reinforcements on that turn before he invaded. Had my reinforcements not gotten there, they would not have been enough to dislodge him on their own. That was a particularly lucky turn for me, as the opposite happened when I took a critical region of his (I think it was Sheffield) only because my armies got there before his reinforcements did. Had those two battles gone the opposite way, that might have been a turning point, because I would have lost a turn right when he had momentum and my new capital would have been quite exposed. Any time I whine about bad luck in this game, I'm going to have to remember how things went this time! One other thing I wanted to remark on--I was much more concerned with Temujin or I winning this game than I usually am (though, of course, I am always overcome with despair when I lose!). It seems that it has been harder and harder to get battles started in these games, and I usually seem to always be the one who gets impatient and starts them. Temujin and I were the first to go to war in this game, and I was glad to see that we ended with the last large empires. I really wanted to demonstrate that war early war can still be a path to victory! -- Dave WP-TV-Diplo [Temujin]: Very random thoughts Date:Thu, 27 Sep 2012 09:58:31 +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.) ====================================================================== Following up on Red Claw's comments. I lost my capital several times in the end-game. I would then get a new capital in the worst location, and so had to shift my entire strategy to protect the new capital. The loss of a turn is a killer. It would be great if you could choose your new capital. I am glad that Red Claw was the winner. I had no problem being the first to attack. I am playing a young Genghis Khan, aren't I? I also appreciated the behind-the-scenes feel that Anachronism brought to the whole thing. Who was he? Was he behind this whole world? I got disappointed when the whole background story seemed to fall apart and it ended up being just a slugfest. I found it more difficult to keep up the character chatter. This was my first campaign from scratch. I had started playing in the Player Forum so that I could get a feel for the game. Bob was very helpful there in giving me some pointers. The one area in which I have a lot of difficulty is the opening game. I don't understand how people are getting twice my output at the early stage. It takes a lot of units to build up production or to open new routes. I'd be happy for any advice. I basically agree with Red Claw on the combat comments. I've assumed that the only path to victory is through battles. I look at this game as a variation of Risk and Diplomacy. If you aren't here to fight at some point, then why are you playing? There are no rewards for sitting alone and slowly building up your areas. I'd like to hear if anyone has a different take on the game. Maybe I'm missing one of the main ideas. I love the pace of the game. I'm sure most of players have full, busy lives. Sometimes I find even twice a week is too much. Finally, I hope others don't mind too much, but I don't like to reveal much of my real self on the Internet. I don't participate in any social media. I prefer to stay in character during the game. I don't mean to offend anyone by not participating in out-of-band discussions. WP-TV-Diplo [Red Claw]: random thoughts Date:Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:55:08 +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.) ====================================================================== Temujin, I totally agree about Anachronism adding mystery in a good way. Also, he really demonstrated (to me, although I think BoldlyGo had used a similar strategy in an earlier game) the value of building up a strong central core. The reason that people are able to get twice your output is that you have to think both about how much a particular region produces, but also the regions that it connects to. Creating internal connections is, in some ways, cheaper than creating new production, at least once you have a good deal of production. For example, if you have a region that creates five units per turn, but has only two connections, you can create another connection relatively cheaply--30 units--whereas it would take you 55 to bump production up to 6 units. Now, if you connect this region to another, that will give you another unit of production in that connected region, and might be enough to bump up your production in this region as well. Maybe that's not a very clear explanation, but if you go to the webs of power web page (www.websofpower.com), go to the historical archives of the Tournament 2012 game, and scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll see "rules." This has a list of all of the equations that you need to figure out what your production will be. If you're playing in that tournament, you'll notice that three players are in a race for production, because they're all ramping up both production and connections. Imagine having a central core of 6 regions, each of which have 5 internal production, and each of which is connected with each of the others--each region will produce 10 units per turn, and you'll have 60 production just from those regions! Now, this is very expensive to do, but the payoff is large. The payoff is especially large if everyone else is just sitting around losing units to attrition because they've maxed out. Anyway, it's just something to think about. The danger of this strategy is that you are likely to be very weak while you're building. My general strategy in older games had always been to lash out and try to get a lot of regions while other people were building, but I don't think that's a very good strategy anymore. Oh, and no worries about not giving personal information. I don't mind disclosing, because I've interacted with the other two guys left playing this game for something like 14 years, when I met Bob, who was organizing the epic Warlords II World Tournament. BoldlyGo also helped organize that tournament, I believe. I have a lot of fun playing this game, but I'll admit that I also keep it up just so I don't lose touch with the last of my W2WT friends! I do have to tell you that I became Facebook friends with BoldlyGo, and I'm probably not disclosing much if I say that irl, the dude is Gandalf. WP-TV-Diplo [Red Claw]: one last thing Date:Sat, 29 Sep 2012 12:47:47 +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.) ====================================================================== Oh, one last thing and then I'm done. I have always figured that a single player could likely be stopped by two players even after the single player had some dominance in both units and production because the team had a pretty big advantage in turns (even if they had a disadvantage in coordination). Other people have probably realized this already, but what hit me after I struck out on my own was how incredibly powerful the random Assault-Capture-Reinforce discovery action is when you're alone. No longer having to worry about accidentally pissing off a friend, and with the game generally giving me one or two new external links per turn via region losses, I got to have seven moves rather than five. Even better, random attacks sometimes bring your armies into enemy regions far from the from the front. My advice to players fighting a lone enemy: scout regions with external borders every turn that you can, just to reduce the number of potential borders that can be sneak-attacked. Thanks for an exciting game, everyone! WP-TV-Diplo [Anachronism]: Sequential Thoughts Date:Sat, 29 Sep 2012 14:27:48 +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.) ====================================================================== Sorry for not writing in sooner, but my week has been insane. I also want to apologize for letting my roleplaying slip. I had a major life event about a year ago and since then I have had far less time for this game than I wanted. I wanted to write something substantial about this game because it revolutionized my way of thinking about strategy games, at least this one! I've played in many Webs of Power games over many years. I won't give out names, though some of you might guess... This was one of my favorite ones, partly because I developed a totally new and successful strategy, and partly because I finally had the courage to fight a long multi-front war... and even though I lost, it was a thrilling experience! I've generally been like Red Claw and pursued a rapid-expansion strategy, since that's sort of how we're "programmed" by other strategy games. But you know, we've been doing that for a long time... So when I read the rules bit about 20 turns of protection for new players, I got to wondering, "What would happen with a slow-expansion, high-investment strategy?" Then I got to wondering where all those independent regions come from and realized that if I went scouting after everyone else was done, I wouldn't be able to connect to other players, and the game would probably be forced to link me to independents. I might be able to snag more independents and come out with a LARGER overall nation! Because in this game, the "land" resource is created and destroyed, it isn't static like on a traditional map-based boardgame. That was exciting. What could I do for a while while waiting for everyone else to finish scouting? And then I thought, well, what if I built up a large core production and then invested in a number of EXTERNAL (not internal) connections? Internal connections are more expensive, and an external connection to an independent (that you're expecting to own anyway) can turn into an internal connection. I knew from past experience that the game won't let other players connect to you if you own 7 regions or less, but does it count independents in your "7"? I suspected not. So, I wanted a small high-production core with tons of unexplored external connections. Then, I would start scouting and assembling a "shadow nation" of independents that I could capture quickly. After that, with 20 turns to build up defenses after meeting another player, I could invest in production in the peripheral regions while building up to "fighting strength". One of the most joyful parts of the game was lurking at the bottom of the rankings for turn after turn, something like 45 turns, and then blasting out and pulling up to second in the standings within just 5 or 10 turns. Another interesting feature is that when you build a lot of external borders, you eventually have tons of links to the other nations in the game. Again we're conditioned by games such as Risk to think of borders as being a liability, because one can be attacked in so many places. But when you get to know everyone in the game, you also have many more opportunities. If anyone were to drop out, I would be able to pick up a few regions. If anyone were to make a foolish invasion of someone else, I could choose sides and profit. And so on. As long as I didn't have more than a few borders with any one player, I could put 3 large armies in the field against any one enemy and still fight well. My danger was if the rest of the world were to gang up on me, so I sought to make friends and isolate enemies. My biggest fear early on was Karameikos. He and I had several borders, he had allies, and because of his early wars and subsequent consolidation, he was still stronger than I could be. It was depressing when he got enraged about the randomness of the Vortex and just dropped out; what an epic war we could have had! Instead, though, he left me with a few choice regions to pick up, and that left me with the strongest nation, with nearly twice as much production as the next guy (Red Claw and Air Marshall). My second worry was that Red Claw would overrun Temujin and become too strong. So I resolved to aid Temujin. Prior to that I had found a way to give shelter to some of Queen Elizabeth's last remaining regions. I also befriended Past Master. Here are production standings for Turn 78: 1. Anachronism 166 2. Red Claw 87 3. Air Marshall 85 4. Temujin 60 5. Past Master 53 6. Queen Elizabeth 33 With Temujin, Queen Elizabeth and Past Master unlikely to fight me quickly, I really had only two enemies: Red Claw and Air Marshall. Somewhere in here I realized that I had so many borders with Air Marshall, I could probably overwhelm him in a few turns, even though he was pretty strong. And with Red Claw in a hostile state with Temujin, he wouldn't be able to send his whole army after me. This is where I broke my longstanding code of not betraying anyone or launching sneak attacks. I thought I had a really good chance to run the table! If I could absorb Air Marshall before anyone else came after me in strength, then I could fight Red Claw and win outright. What a coup that would have been! Unfortunately, Air Marshall's defenses proved stronger than estimated, particularly because his nation had a long "tail" of regions that were hard to reach. I repeatedly had to "marshal" additional armies to go and take him down another notch. Again, we're programmed to think of armies being static, but with 5 percent attrition every turn, and with substantial enemy production and long lines of supply, it's not that easy to wage an offensive war! Oh well, that and one other change of fortune it made the universe far more interesting!!! What I didn't plan for was for BoldyGo and RedClaw to join the war so early. RedClaw was too wise for a slavering dinosaur!! That was a problem! Fortunately Temujin held firm as my ally or I would have been dead. I decided to concede regions to Boldy and RedClaw so as to eliminate Air Marshall, since his defeat gave me a solid rear area from which production could be generated, and allowed me to bring all my forces to bear against the remaining two. This was when things really got entertaining! BTW, in addition to Red Claw's suggestion that if you can scout-attack, you actually have 7 moves per turn, I want to add one more: if you keep an inventory of regions with free internal connections, you can get huge advantages from strategically linking a large army with a threatened area, and save multiple moves in the process. This is a hidden advantage of being the largest player: the Vortex was always taking regions away from me and shattering connections, but I found that I could reap large tactical benefits from reconnecting. Another advantage I gained from this was in linking my highest-production regions together. I'd learned from Air Marshall that it's incredibly difficult to capture a series of high-production regions, and then I figured out that if I had about 30 or 40 production all closely linked, I could rapidly regenerate my combat armies without consuming large numbers of moves. The high-production regions were mutually-reinforcing in terms of trade as well, so a group of four 5-production regions wound up with nearly 30 production! Also, if one of those high-production regions was taken by the Vortex, it would scatter some of the surplus production into my other high-production regions, making them even larger. This was how I came to have regions like Dial of the Sun with over 12 production (not including trade production) at the end of the game. The battle with Red Claw and BoldyGo was fantastic. We went at it for something like 30 turns before I was able to eliminate Air Marshall. Even after, I was still losing ground to Red Claw and Boldy for ten turns before I could concentrate my firepower again. It was really Temujin who agained turned the tide of the war. When he entered the battle on my side in a 2-vs-2, it was all over for Boldy. Red Claw held out, though. What I didn't expect was that Temujin would so quickly invade me. I thought the plan was to eliminate Red Claw and then go mano-a-mano. But of course I had earned the betrayal when I'd sneak-attacked AirMarshall!!! When he invaded, at first I thought I was doomed, but he overextended himself, and I was able to swing a few armies in behind his assault forces using side routes, and trap them! That was wonderfully fun to see how that played out. With Temujin's forces in disarray, I thought I would be able to win by concentrating all my firepower on RedClaw while Temujin licked his wounds, so I went all-in against RedClaw. This was when my good fortune ran out. I had Red Claw on the run, I had shattered his nation into about five pieces, but I just couldn't destroy his capital. My own forces had to be divided to guard each of his pieces, which meant I didn't have enough to guard my borders with Temujin. In the end Red Claw held out too well and Temujin recovered too quickly, and the tide turned. When the tide runs against you, you can implode really quickly, especially if you have too many borders with too many enemies. I shared Temujin's later pain ... repeated loss of my capital prevented me from moving effectively. This time, for the first time, I couldn't muster an effective defense. I hoped that they might still distrust each other, and that as I got smaller they would get to fighting with each other, allowing me to stabilize and then recover. That was how things had played out in Tournament 2009. But this time, Temujin's loyalty and Red Claw's sense of honor proved my undoing. Apparently I was too much of a threat to be left alive... And the rest you know about. Congrats to Red Claw!! WP-TV-Diplo [Red Claw]: Hats off to A! Date:Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:34:04 +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.) ====================================================================== Anachronism: That is absolutely awesome! I was quite a bit shocked by your meteoric rapid rise--it had never crossed my mind that you could have seven regions attached to independents and not link to others. And, I have to say, when I first ran into regions like Dial of the Sun and Ping, I was blown away. It was like finding Atlantis: "How is this place even possible???" I will tell you that when I saw those regions, I knew I was totally outclassed. There is just no way in the world that a game as simple as this one that I have played since the beginning should still have new strategies to learn! Anyway, my hat's off to you--brilliant strategy that came within inches of success on it's first execution. Very, very nice.