10-06-2005 02:16									#91
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Yes, Lego thought it was cheese too and that's why we were glad to get it with wonders. Apparently didn't stop us from putting it in, though.

	10-06-2005 02:35									#92
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I thought we had agreed not to do the warrior-GA thing? Ah well, so goes memory...

	10-06-2005 03:38									#93
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Yes, we agreed to at some point. But since that was included in the treaty, I'm imagining it was after the Voxodus.

	10-06-2005 06:25									#94
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO Well, that's why I would have welcomed an attempted invasion right after Lego. We were stronger than you on our home ground. Against two opponents you can't win, but this would not have been a stroll in the park, it would have cost you. DeepO

It was impossible. We needed to send most of our transport fleet to the east, plus our carriers, plus most of our navy. In fact, we still didn't send the fleet because of the threat that Lego's ghost navy still presented to us, it was only until Lego disbanded their fleet that we started sending the navy east.

Just fyi, on the exact turn we attacked you and RP, our last two carriers got within striking distance of RP. That's how long it took.

As for the transports, we sent 10 IIRC from the Lego veterans, and built 3 more in the east during that time (note that we have very crappy eastern coastal cities). It was all timed so we'd be able to invade RP and then land in Stormia ASAP. It's quite suprising just how little this invasion took in terms of preparation. Nothing like that against Lego with specific timelines and movement paths, this almost seemed improvised yet the execution was flawless, of course, we would've prefered to land at Dissidentville had it existed.

	10-06-2005 06:32									#95
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Also, another interesting thing, GoW and ND never conducted joint planning in this war other than in selection of targets for nukes on the first turn strikes, ND simply asked us not to hit certain cities since those were supposed to be their targets.

That's why there was no joint invasion, ND had yet to achieve naval dominance in the south sea and they didn't think they could land at the time. And given that we were ready, we decided to go for it alone.

The only other useful bits of communications were simply ND's spy in GS which they used to provide us with GS's troop strenghts (tidbit: we tried every turn to plant a spy in GS and failed miserably each time ) as well as sharing pictures of the naval situation.

	10-06-2005 06:42									#96
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quote: Originally posted by Master Zen (tidbit: we tried every turn to plant a spy in GS and failed miserably each time )

Since the game is over, I suppose I should tell you that chances of failure following the loss/plant failure of a spy are very high, and you have to wait several turns for your chances to approach normal.

Hence why we risked going for someone's spy (GS, I think) at the beginning of the invasion. It was a gamble... but if it worked (which it did) we knew we'd buy at least several turns of GS inability to investigate cities right when they were forcing us to try to balance our city defenses vs. Marines.

	10-06-2005 08:24									#97
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quote: Originally posted by Beta Yes - very different. If that is in fact the timing of the 'shared victory agreement' then IMO, I would say victory by any team is null and void. If GoW, ND, or Trip had come forward and said, btw, "It has been determined that a shared victory is possible", can you honestly tell me you don't think that would have changed the course of the game. C'mon. As it is - two teams knew it was possible, and everyone else played on under another set of assumptions. Can someone please confirm when it was 'deemed' that a shared victory was possible? Did it pre-date the Lego invasion?

MZ - can you please confirm when the 'shared victory' was deemed possible?

	10-06-2005 08:29									#98
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In 1030 AD when the treaty was shown to Trip who gave the ok. Had he deemed it illegal we would've scrapped the plan, plain and simple.

	10-06-2005 08:37									#99
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As to whether "two teams knew it was possible, and everyone else played on under another set of assumptions." honestly I think that's a weak argument.

Every team had to play under the assumption that X and Y teams could possibly be allied against them. It changes nothing that the two last standing teams simply decide to not fight and share the victory.

I still have not heard a shred of conclusive evidence that this game would have been any difference from a shared victory or a "ally until we destroy everyone else and then duke it out among ourselves" which apparently would have been a valid strategy as far as most arguments here are concerned.

This is the main reason I honestly don't understand why all the complaining. The shared victory changed nothing since ND and GoW would have followed the exact same course, getting rid of every team one by one until we remained. Then we either would've duked it out, played a space race or left it to any survivors to decide on the winner via a UN victory. We simply decided that should we reach that point, we'd do nothing.

If any team should be whining it should be GoW and ND since niether can now claim a full victory. The fact that we are perfectly happy with the result is all the more ironic given the responses of those who played in teams that lost.

	10-06-2005 08:47									#100
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO UnO, PR because of the forum? No... you still underestimate what kind of effect the forum had at the time. Not a single friendly word, only threats, taunts, and flame wars whenever we made a post.

I never said a single word against GS until the NAP. And I still stand by my stance that you broke it in spirit. You knew our plans, you purposely blocked our path, you were warned continuing to do so would be seen as an act of aggression in violation of the NAP, you continued to do it, and you sent a written declaration of war to our ally, who you KNEW we were allied with in the war. If that is not breaking it, I don't know what is.

I came out in support of you when everyone was *****ing about you being elitist. I didn't care about you being the Strat forum gurus. I didn't care that you would deny members, or at the least encourage them joining other teams. I said so publicly. I came out in support of you during and after Vox. I made it a POINT never to say anything bad, and to say when I agreed with you.

Yes, there were friendly things mentioned. Go back and look. They may have been drowned out.

	10-06-2005 08:47									#101
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Just on this point...

I proposed that we made Trip our official game umpire many many months ago.
Almost everyone rejected the idea.
It happened soon after the Bob war.
GS was already using the F1 exolit.
They also warped cats to RP.
We were talking about the invasion of Lego, using ship chaining.

I think GoW was one of the few teams who wanted these tactics classed as exploits.




Trip had no authority to deem the GoW/ND treaty as acceptable or not.
We tossed the idea at him , and I think he said that he could not stop us if we wanted to follow through with the idea.

And since GoW needed the treaty to be kept secret. He would not be allowed to "report" it to the main forum.

	10-06-2005 08:48									#102
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ND and GoW might have followed the exact same course. Can you say that of other teams?

As I said, the only reason I'm not angry about this is you say you would have simply stuck to the kill-em-all pact with ND if not for the shared victory treaty. Fine. In that case, things would play out exactly the same. But if the thought of shared victory had entered my head as a valid treaty, I would have been screaming to make offers when we got cut off on tech in the Ind.

	10-06-2005 08:53									#103
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quote: Originally posted by Master Zen It's quite suprising just how little this invasion took in terms of preparation. Nothing like that against Lego with specific timelines and movement paths, this almost seemed improvised yet the execution was flawless, of course, we would've prefered to land at Dissidentville had it existed.

I wouldn't call it flawless... If you had nuked Elipolis 1 or 9, instead of Elipolis itself, you could have taken out GS for all intents and purposes that first turn. Nuking the city directly eliminated any possibility for a blitz on your part.

No idea why you didn't try to get a rolling invasion on GS. At worst, if it had looked like it wouldn't work, you could cut the roads by Elipolis.

	10-06-2005 08:55									#104
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Just wondering...

Did Vox have any units warp to Estonia by giving up the city on Bob?

	10-06-2005 09:14									#105
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Of the various threads in this thread, I'd just like to say that I always thought UnO was pretty straight up... he calls'em like he sees'em, both for good and bad. He *can* be a bit unruly at times... but what the heck.

And I have a personal confession (again, not the team, just me): I still don;t think we technically broke that NAP, but we sure bent it into a pretzel. I was not happy about it then, I'm not now, and I'll not repeat same in any of the individual or team PBEMs I am in now or in the future.

* Theseus thinks: That damn honor code. Hmmm...

	10-06-2005 09:49									#106
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quote: Originally posted by Kloreep ND and GoW might have followed the exact same course. Can you say that of other teams?

Of course I can, because in neither case the other teams would have found out about it. It had to be secret, whatever alliance be it a shared victory or a kill-everyone-and-fight-ourselves. Had we made it public, the ones on the receiving end of an alliance would've been us.

If Trip had said no way, this is illegal, or that it's ok but you have to make it public, we would have never signed it. Only in this scenario could I admit that things would have been very different.

But as it is, any type of alliance between GoW and ND no other team would have ever found out about it, so the course of the game would have been exactly the same.

	10-06-2005 09:51									#107
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quote: Originally posted by Aeson Just wondering... Did Vox have any units warp to Estonia by giving up the city on Bob?

I can honestly say ... Got no idea.
Dont recall anything about it in the GoW forum.

I assume they took the same galleys they used to land there.

	10-06-2005 10:15									#108
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I find it rather ironic that despite now being accused as the epitome of cheese, GoW actually voted against most of the exploits which Lego and GS were adamantly in favor, particularly that borderline-cheating tactic which is F1/City Arrows (which IIRC has been banned from every other demogame).

GS and Lego's excuse: that it permits a broader array of strategies like hiding builds and last-minute changes, etc.

Of course, since both actively wanted to use such a trick to cover up wonder builds it was... well... not deemed "cheese", it was deemed "strategy".



And yet in an interesting change of terminology, GoW and ND's grand strategy of winning the game together is now labeled "cheese".



Double standards

	10-06-2005 10:20									#109
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So I take it GoW didn't "What's the big Picture" to swap prebuilds for tactical nukes the turn Space Flight finished?

	10-06-2005 10:30									#110
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quote: Originally posted by Aeson I wouldn't call it flawless... If you had nuked Elipolis 1 or 9, instead of Elipolis itself, you could have taken out GS for all intents and purposes that first turn. Nuking the city directly eliminated any possibility for a blitz on your part. No idea why you didn't try to get a rolling invasion on GS. At worst, if it had looked like it wouldn't work, you could cut the roads by Elipolis.

Problem is we didn't have any settlers. Our settlers were built next turn and embarked on a transport which was built in Surfer's Paradise or one of those cities and which was only to join the main stack later.

We could have tried attacking the 3-tile-spaced cities with our 3-movers. We knew you had a plethora of tanks and mech infs and it was possible that they would have blunted any attack from the cavs, let alone the riders if for a bad stroke of luck they'd be in one of the cities in our way. Of course we could've gotten lucky and those cities just been defended by 1 mech inf for example which means we might have actually taken them. The problem here was that unless we found and destroyed where GS was marshalling its army we would have been subjected to a counterattack which would have placed the invasion in jeopardy despite the fact it could have been a death blow to GS.

Perhaps if ND had invaded that same turn we would have attempted such a thing since you couldn't have successfully counterattacked both our armies (kind of a repeat of the Lego War), but we had no clue when ND was going to be able to land.

Moreso we also figured that our advantage should have been overwhelming enough that we would have inflicted the killer blow eventually and with lesser casualties. Part of that reason was why we landed where we did: we knew that you would be insane to attack a stack of 40+ Mech Infs in a mountain tile. A mountain hopping strategy - despite being longer - would threaten practically every city in central Stormia including EotS.

So it was all a matter of playing it safe instead of rushing in for a possible-yet-uncertain kill. In the end we didn't lose a single unit in the invasion and you razed practically every city in our path (and even some that weren't in our path). For all our intents and purposes, that was flawless.

-MZ

	10-06-2005 10:36									#111
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quote: Problem is we didn't have any settlers.

Then that was a flaw in planning, wasn't it?

	10-06-2005 10:36									#112
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quote: Originally posted by Aeson So I take it GoW didn't "What's the big Picture" to swap prebuilds for tactical nukes the turn Space Flight finished?

Only because it was voted in favor.

And for the record GoW never before that invoked the F1 trick because I had failed to read the poll and assumed that it didn't pass. it was only when H_E reminded me that it was allowed that plans changed.

It was also a sort of "give you a taste of your own medicine" move. If you and Lego had voted against such an exploit you could have had a chance at stealing the tech and perhaps the war would not have been so easy.

I think there is no better proof at just how unstabling an exploit it is than what we did on that turn. Take it as a lesson for next time and vote against it

-MZ

	10-06-2005 10:38									#113
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quote: Originally posted by Aeson Then that was a flaw in planning, wasn't it?

Why? You're assuming we wanted to swarm through Elipolis instead of striking closer to your core and dare you to counterattack us.

Just because we didn't do what you would've done doesn't make it a flaw.

	10-06-2005 10:40									#114
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The attempted tech steal shows very well how GoW's invasion was seriously flawed. GS had a dice roll to get up to 8 tactical nukes that we couldn't have gotten at all if GoW had "rolled" (or even consistantly nuked the Uranium).

Luck determined that wouldn't happen, not GoW's invasion. If GS had gotten those Nukes, there would have been a whole lot of GoW and ND casualties.

	10-06-2005 10:48									#115
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To be honest, I had no clue that it would be so cheap to try and steal a tech (you said something like 1,600g?) or that you'd actually have that many gold to do so.

Last time I actually tried to steal a tech in Civ3 was probably over 2 years ago and I recall it being quite expensive.

Because of this the possibility of GS attempting such a thing never crossed our minds or else we definitely would have nuked the Uranium every 2 turns.

	10-06-2005 10:53									#116
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quote: Originally posted by Master Zen Of course I can, because in neither case the other teams would have found out about it. It had to be secret, whatever alliance be it a shared victory or a kill-everyone-and-fight-ourselves. Had we made it public, the ones on the receiving end of an alliance would've been us.

I'm not talking about the secrecy of the GoW and ND pact, I'm talking about shared victories being possible in the first place. Not quite the same thing. So far as I know, F1, unit chaining, and all the other examples you cite have all been brought up in the public forum so that all teams know about it, and can exploit it if deemed acceptable. The idea of a shared victory pact never was. Granted, bringing it up would have defeated the point, which sucks, but this situation we ended up in anyway rather sucks too, at least from my PoV.

	10-06-2005 10:55									#117
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quote: Originally posted by Master Zen I think there is no better proof at just how unstabling an exploit it is than what we did on that turn. Take it as a lesson for next time and vote against it

I'm not the one whining that it was used. I think it's perfectly valid to use, GoW, GS, Lego, whoever. I just wanted to point out that GoW is trying to have it both ways. Using the tactic, and maligning others for using the tactic.

It was never against the rules. It's commonly accepted in some communities, outlawed in others. If you want to look at it as cheesey, feel free. It has nothing to do with whether or not calling shared victory is a double standard though.

A double standard is when one applies different reasoning to their own actions as the same actions of other people. That is what you are doing MZ, not what those calling shared victory cheese are doing, as they did not claim shared victory.

quote: It was also a sort of "give you a taste of your own medicine" move. If you and Lego had voted against such an exploit you could have had a chance at stealing the tech and perhaps the war would not have been so easy.

We did get a chance at stealing the tech. Yes, the war would have been different if it succeeded, but the end result would be the same regardless.

	10-06-2005 10:58									#118
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quote: Originally posted by Master Zen To be honest, I had no clue that it would be so cheap to try and steal a tech (you said something like 1,600g?) or that you'd actually have that many gold to do so.

Like I said, a flaw.

	10-06-2005 11:00									#119
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quote: Originally posted by Master Zen Because of this the possibility of GS attempting such a thing never crossed our minds or else we definitely would have nuked the Uranium every 2 turns.

I recall telling MZ that I think we should do this.
One of the forum pics showed that GS had reconnected the uranium with a worker.
I think I caught MZ on chat, and told him to nuke it and keep nuking it.

	10-06-2005 11:02									#120
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quote: Originally posted by Kloreep I'm not talking about the secrecy of the GoW and ND pact, I'm talking about shared victories being possible in the first place. Not quite the same thing. So far as I know, F1, unit chaining, and all the other examples you cite have all been brought up in the public forum so that all teams know about it, and can exploit it if deemed acceptable. The idea of a shared victory pact never was. Granted, bringing it up would have defeated the point, which sucks, but this situation we ended up in anyway rather sucks too, at least from my PoV.

Perhaps if you had been in GoW or ND's situation you would have thought differently. I've already mentioned a gazillion times that it was history which made us take this decision and that had we been in Lego's or GS's position we might not have (well perhaps in GS's case yes but only if Vox hadn't invaded) because the geopolitical situation never warranted it.

Maybe if people actually bothered to step in our shoes for a change instead of arguing everything from the Lego or GS perspective they'd be a tab bit more receptive of our point of view.