Quote:
Originally Posted by pyg
The Devas were defeated by diplomacy. If this game had been non-diplomacy we would have been ceded the game >5 turns ago. In order to win against 12:4 odds you need to have had a much larger lead than we ever did. For me, the diplomacy aspect of the game is the thing that bothers me most about losing.
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I have to say these kind of statements annoy me. We all knew going in from the beginning that the Devas were (far) the strongest team. Hinnom is *banned* from most games, due to strength. There is no way to beat hinnom without ganging up on it. So I find no value in complaining "we were ganged up on"
Had this been a no diplomacy game, and *if* Hinnom was still allowed, no, we would not have conceded 5 turns ago. We would, however, have had to use a lot of different tactics.
On the turn that was not played, we were doing a 600+ gem arcane nexus. It would have been higher, if it were not a team game.
We would not have let Gift of Heath go to another player; and we would have had to expand as rapidly as possible, against the blesseds and the mysterios.
There were a lot of factors that went into the game: it was very unbalancing that the devas were able to expand against two people that staled for 5 turns. Even so, we were able to intervene each time at critical moments (caelums kings, the invasion of TC's capital, the melqarts running rampant) to stop the game from unbalancing.
I think the next critical factor was that you guys attacked all three teams- how can you not expect them to gang up? For the first 20 turns cooperation was almost non existent. More than 80% of the cost of all the rain of toads, locust swarms, and calls of the wild were *solely* done by team achoo.
Now, I admit, I provoked DrP in an effort to get him to attack team Achoo; strategically I didn't want you to take out Lanka, Kailasa, Yomi etc. And it worked out.. I think that was a mistake by you guys. But if you had not attacked us, we would have attacked you anyway... and you would have been involved against formoria etc.
The way the game was going, time was on team achoo's side. We had 3 of the 4 research leaders - which would allow us to compensate for giant SC's.
So, all we had to do was not lose. This was why our armies (mictlan and sauromatia) didn't attack. So long as we tied up the big Hinnom and Niefle armies - and prevent them from being used... things were fine.
So sure, if the game was different - we would have had to use different tactics. But I thought we were very effective in raiding Niefle early game; in cutting down the number of niefle jarls, and in preventing Niefle from getting a strong blood economy going (early goals).
Even the choice of Niefle (and not Hinnom) was strategic. We wanted to be able to be able to point to Hinnom's success and say... look.. look at Hinnom! we have to unite! Hinnom is the