MP: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76

[WraithLord]

Even at the cost of starting a war you cannot win and surely losing the game?

[Calahan]

I'm with Ex as well WL. I hate province poaching as both the attacker (in most cases apart from as a rusher) and the defender (in most cases and especially as rush defender).

As the attacker (but not as a rusher, as rushing has special conditions) it means someone is basically saying to me "Oh hi there, you've done all the hard work in killing that guy, so do you mind awfully if I help myself to a few provs by joining the war at the 11th hour and denying you of some spoils?". That's like an action movie where the Cavalry arrives just as all the fighting ends and the movie is fading out to the closing credits. With in this case the Cavalry expecting to take a share of the glory.


So if I was in clean-up mode in a RAND game, and someone suddenly poached a few provinces, especially if they were well out of their zone, then I'd likely react with potential hostilitiy as well, and do exactly as CY did. Capture the poached provinces /only/ and see if the poacher wanted to make anything of it. As if I wanted to start a war, and had the capability to launch a huge first strike, then /only/ going for the poached provinces should send a pretty clear message of my intentions IMO. As if I had really wanted a war then I certainly wouldn't have started it in such an underwhelming fashion, and for that reason my actions should be fairly clear in that I was only (re)claiming provinces that I felt I had a very strong right to, or very strong need for (eg. empire split in half without them. Or precious resource, such as Astral mage for non-Astral nation)

If the poaching was just of some stray provs well inside the poachers borders, meaning it was just a border straightening excercise, then I might turn a blinder eye. But otherwise no. Far too many players are opportunists when it comes to pinching others prey, and innocently think there's no harm in grabbing a tiny slice of the pie for themselves. Never the case in my experience.


And as defender I hate it even more, especially in rushes. In two RAND games I was fending off a powerful nation when poachers turned up to make my life harder (impossible) by squeezing my income and cutting off my counter attack options, which did nothing except make the attackers life easier. The theory is that you're depriving the rusher of extra provinces should they win, but I'm fully convinced now, after being the unsuccessful rush defender twice, that this is just BS.

As the rusher is likely happy to have a few less provs to reduce the effect of the leaders tag his rush will have, and so reduce the chance of a ganging. (I know I've been happy to see poachers when I've rushed). Plus as the rusher a few less provs means less time needed to clean-up and move-on, and less provs for the defender means less resistance and so easier to take down. And whenever I see this happen, a few less provs from the rusher has never once weakened the rusher, as if they've had the capability to rush someone, then when they want more provinces they simply declare war on their next target and take them. They couldn't care less if their rush netted them only 10 of the original 12 provs their target had. The capital is all a rusher really cares about, and making sure they take it asap so that they don't get bogged down in a prolonged first war. And often the rushers next target is the poacher themselves who conveniently moved their borders closer to the rushers force sitting in the newly aquired capital, and doing so allows them to reclaim the poached provicnes as well. Two birds with one stone, how convenient

Too much poaching gets done as an automatic responce to seeing a neighbour going down. Once again showing Dom players are generally poor at making strategic decisions, and often act well in advance of doing any actual thinking (RTS syndrome perhaps). The only thinking they tend to do is after the game in hindsight "yeah looking back now I shouldn't have done that obviously stupid thing. I really should have thought more about it at the time, but I just thought what the heck".

[Calahan]

@ Twobits.

Lol, at one point I was getting so frustrated with the position that I started to convince myself that the original player had some clairvoyancey skills and knew that I would be taking over for them at some point, and so initiated a cunning plan to get back at me for something With my fixation in particular being on the S5 Oracle.

As the only reason I could see for S5 was to piss me off with being so close to being a gem Wish caster, and yet so far without being able to get my hands on those precious artefact boosters. And the only Level 9 hit was Alt, to further dangle the S5 non-Wish capable Oracle in my face! If S6+ then perfect, S4- and I wouldn't care. But S5, S-fecking-5!!!

I felt like a donkey chasing a S9 carrot

[WraithLord]

Ok. There's a lesson I learned the hard way. I'll make sure no to make the same mistake again.
Basically I misjudged CY's reaction and over-reacted to it.

Now, to some fun guessing game. What would have happened had me and Eriu hadn't gone to war?

Who would've attacked Ulm first?

I know I was afraid to do so b/c I didn't know whether the others would join me or attack me instead.

[rdonj]

Well, had calahan still been playing, he seems to have been well in favor of heading in. I don't know what blanketthief was planning, but I read the "dossier" (longer it was than gandalf's beard!) calahan passed on to him, and let's just say that there were strong hints leveraged within that an attack on ulm would be the most prudent course of action.

It seems like the fear of being the first to attack the leader in the YARG series has been a pretty constant curse... everyone knows who the leader is, but is afraid to go in first and get smacked around for their trouble. Of course, that's a pretty natural fear. But it's interesting to see how many times the same scenario plays out. It probably doesn't help that even in diplo games, there's always that one nation that thinks it's a good idea to attack the guy who's trying to bring down the leader.

[WraithLord]

The charts put Eriu a close 2nd place to Ulm. So I assumed he will attack Ulm first.
The longer Eriu didn't attack Ulm the more suspicios I became of his intentions towards me.
Talk about making your fears come true.

[Calahan]

I think it, as always, comes down to having some faith in, and knowing, your fellow players. And being able to id them well before this point in the game (which is a big part od RAND format). When I subbed in and checked the unrevealed player list I immediately saw.. (no offence mockingbird and Curious Yellow, I've played less/no games with you guys to be able to predict your actions)

WraithLord
Executor
don_pablo
TwoBits
Slobby

...were all still playing, and since I know all of these players are also multi-game vets of RAND games (besides whatever other playing skill and intelligence they possess), I had strong faith in them following suit if I initiated a leader attack. Didn't know which nations these guys were playing, but odds were high they would be playing the main remaining nations (or at least the majority of them). If those fives names were replaced with five unknowns, then it would certainly cause me some hesitation. I might well attack the leader anyway, and if someone then attacks me then that's the way it goes, and I'll just have another name to add to my idiots list after the game.

But given the names of those remaining, I doubt if any attack on Ulm in this game would have resulted in the attacker being seen as a sudden target. Wish my resolve hadn't been shaken on turn 68 now, but oh well, honestly doubt Ulm could have been stopped by that stage. Delayed probably, but not stopped. (and think it would have been a shame if Ex had not won due to being delayed and quitting with MM overload)

[WraithLord]

I wanted to attack Ulm from very early on, I even gave the attack orders twice and aborted them right before sending the turn. It all came to blind trust issues my thoughts were:
A - why is Ctis turtling? Is he waiting for the right moment to attack?
B - why doesn't Eriu attack Ulm already? Is he planing to "grab" one more nation before that?

Next time I'll jump the leader re. Of consequences as Calahan suggested

[TwoBits]

Originally Posted by Calahan

@ Twobits.

Lol, at one point I was getting so frustrated with the position that I started to convince myself that the original player had some clairvoyancey skills and knew that I would be taking over for them at some point, and so initiated a cunning plan to get back at me for something With my fixation in particular being on the S5 Oracle.

As the only reason I could see for S5 was to piss me off with being so close to being a gem Wish caster, and yet so far without being able to get my hands on those precious artefact boosters. And the only Level 9 hit was Alt, to further dangle the S5 non-Wish capable Oracle in my face! If S6+ then perfect, S4- and I wouldn't care. But S5, S-fecking-5!!!

I felt like a donkey chasing a S9 carrot

That cracks me up

S5 Oracle? Well, that was probably the end result of my debate as to whether to go with an awake SC or uber-scales, as a way to get decent expansion w/ Indies-9. Probably had some leftover points or something

Besides, if you're willing to blow 100S gems on Wish, what's 60 more for Empowerment?


Oh, and like others, I wanted to go against Ulm earlier, but I also was hoping someone else would go first

[Calahan]

@ TwoBits

I would only have been wishing for gems so that I could manipulate the gem stocks. So not blowing them. But I did consider empowering in Astral though due to the reason you gave. "It's only Astral gems"

In the end though I decided to check out Const 8 first in the hope of some S-boosters still being there, and upon hitting I found the Forbidden Light hanging around to solve the problem??! (@ All, seriously what the hell was the Forb Light doing being still available?)