2014 Steel Championship, Game #156

[VballMichael]

(RA) As a couple of players alluded to above, there was some early teaming/ganging up in this game. I don't like gang-bangs and big alliances at the start of a game. There was an early alliance here and I had 4 visitors all at once, all working together to take out one opponent. So that is why I dropped a free game. I know it will sound like sour grapes, but I am really not interested in that kind of game. So, back to the anon games (no gang-bangs) and team games (where the intent is to have teams). I am glad the 3 winners were not part of the gang-bang group. Congrats to the podium finishers - nice job. 

[Lord Thanatos]

(DW)

I started with a 20 turn NAP with both GI and WA - never heard from either of them again!

The RD wanted the location of the portal so he could attack the GN - I happily obliged.  Furthermore, once I found the Staff of Disdain I set a standing order to denigrate GN in Runnimede.

The WI was pushed out of NM by the GI/EL, but asked for me to attack the EL in R2. I was planning to go to 7 to assist the RD more directly but agreed to assist against the EL.  The WI abandoned me there and the EL and I skirmished for a while, with the EL beating me soundly.  But I knew he couldn't take my 80k capital town (although he took Hammerhold) and I hunkered down to do all that I could to make certain he couldn't win because I would never be eliminated.  At this moment I heard from the BL . . .

BL knows how I feel about 3 v 1s and I told him I would put aside my desire to prevent the kingdom that attacked me from winning the contest if he could work out peace for me with both the EL and UN. [I thought this was an impossible task!]  The BL accomplished the Herculean task I had set and so I prepared to move against the GI and, in good faith to the BL, assisted the EL where I could.

I didn't think the EL would be able to take R2 because I believed he had an agreement with the GI.  Nevertheless, he managed to do so by raising his census to tip the nearly 50/50 balance in the region between EL and GI.  I fully expected the UN and AN to duel to the end for a status point victory.  I was rooting for the AN because he had not kidnapped all my agents and emissaries.  By insisting upon the return of my emissaries as a condition for peace I was hoping that status point impact would assist the AN.  I also sold my remaining artifacts to the AN because I needed the gold and didn't want the UN stealing any more of my trinkets..

All-in-all an interesting contest.  I did more diplomacy than usual for me but found that everyone I made an agreement with essentially left me to my own devices and pursued their own goals.  I will have to make certain I pay more attention to this in next year's championship contest (provided I am fortunate enough to be asked to participate.)

I was very pleased to see the EL kingdom win a contest - it was way over due.  Congratulations to TheRealThalion, who played a masterful game and earned the victory against very tough competition!!

CHANCELLOR - DuPont (BL) I thought he had no chance to accomplish the demands I made;
IRON WILLED - Mauler (WI) He had too many guests, too early in the contest - but survived to the end;
INFAMOUS - VballMichael (RA) There is no reason to drop a Championship contest (even though I share his disgust with gang-bangs).

[Jumpingfist]

LT thanks for listing the player and position for the awards. It is rather time consuming when only the position is listed. For the Infamous vote please remember I can only give awards to players that finsh the game. I do make one exception to this rule and that is for iron willed if someone played to there kingdoms end I do not view that as a drop.

[HeadHoncho]

When I opened my turn I found that the GI/WA had landed on me along with the TR and the RD. Well, I knew the GI was funding the RD and had assumed he'd turned him into his catspaw and of course the TR was responding to my attack. But I was just disgusted by this massive gang-bang. Especially in the championship game – the GI knew full well where my groups were – had he come alone without the WA, he'd have certainly been able to still take my region and I'd have had respect for it – I was well aware that I was vulnerable in 10. But this Powell Doctrine pile-on – I had and have nothing but contempt for it.

I like you a lot personally and respect you as a player, but I have to disagree with you strongly here on a number of points.

1) In a full-diplomacy game, everyone knows exactly what they're getting into.  And if you make a deliberate choice, as you told me, not to make NAPs, then that is your right.  And if you don't respond to certain e-mails, then that is also your right.  But the concept of personal responsibility would suggest that you also ought to take the bad along with the good on that.

2) If your style of play above makes it so that you don't really care for the various quirks of full diplomacy games -- and that's not an uncommon viewpoint -- then by all means, play anonymous.  And in complete fairness, I would even venture a suggestion that the 2015 Championship should be whichever style (full diplomacy or anonymous) has more individual game starts in 2015.

3) GI's attack on you was exactly like the immediately prior attack on DE, which is two publicly declared allies making a highly coordinated two-on-one attack on an available target.  I didn't know anything about TR going in as well, but quite frankly we neither needed nor wanted his assistance, my understanding is that it was sheerly an opportunity that he took on his own initiative.  We could have covered Vanasheen as well, very easily.

4) You were already engaged in a "hot war" with RD, and sometimes when you engage in a hot war abroad, you run the risk of opening up your home region or regions to invasion.  That's the balance we all have to figure out, in full diplomacy and anonymous games.

5) There's also a mechanism on the table to prevent Kingdoms like RD from being fed and supplied by other Kingdoms, and that's the elimination mechanism.  But I seem to recall you're highly opposed to that mechanism.  So you kind of have to take the bad with the good on that point as well, yes?

6) To your credit, you did EXACTLY what you ought to do, in my view, when faced with invasion, and that is to fight and rally allies.  I was the "one" in a one-on-four situation once, and my response was not to decry the injustice of what was happening to me in a wargame, but rather to turn that one-on-four into seven-on-five.

7) Finally, to speak up in favor of my ally, I'd like to point out that GI did not lose one single pop center in R2 to enemy action. The sole reason I believe that he missed out on the Rex to EL was because of census issues (EL overtaking GI in R2, and abnormally high census in certain non-controlled pop centers in R7).  Had GI's population margin in R2 been slightly higher, and the census distribution in R7 been slightly different, he would have had four regions this very turn, and the win.

But it didn't work out that way, census is a key part of the game, and EL took a huge victory.  Again, many congratulations to Cipher.  I had an absolute blast, and offer thanks to Rick for this generous free slot, and hope there are no hard feelings with anyone here.

[DuPont]

I've said everything I've had to say about this game and while my feelings certainly haven't changed, I will add that I don't carry grudges from game to game. If I did, I'd start every game looking for Dusi's capital to fire-bomb it.

[HeadHoncho]

LOL!!! Thanks for being such a good sport, then. I earnestly appreciate the opportunity to exchange viewpoints.

[kevindusi]

I've said everything I've had to say about this game and while my feelings certainly haven't changed, I will add that I don't carry grudges from game to game. If I did, I'd start every game looking for Dusi's capital to fire-bomb it.

Hey, I gave you back your king!

[Lord Diamond]

Game details attached. This being a Championship Game, all status points were awarded at 150%.

[Thalion]

(EL)
This game started shortly after the changes to the EL position and the bad press highlighting that the TR/GI has an easy trip through Oakendell and the Elves. Not sure if the changes deterred that, or if the TR/GI had other designs from the get go, but once NAPs were secured with AN/TR/GI/WA through the first 10 or 12 turns, the Elves turned their attention to ESOs and improving their best asset - the political corps. With the High Council issues being split between the EL and UN (no coordination at all at this point), at the end of turn 10, the EL is sitting with a 20.4 influence, Prince, Duke (3), Count, Baron (4), Gov, Amb (2) and Envoy. Keep in mind that each of these would be operating with the EL bonus to all political actions.
We extended our original agreements while keeping mum with the WI/DW, since the plan after securing peace with the immediate threats was to expand across the north. Again, at the end of turn 10 we were Friendly in the Northern Mists and had some of the court listed above at the city, a town and 3 villages in the Mists. On turn 11 the Mists went uncontrolled and we were feeling pretty good.
However, unbeknownst at the time it seems the WI had struck a deal with the GI to move out of the Mists and into the Steppes. So there was no defense from the Witchlord and effectively a race between the EL and GI to take over PCs in region 2. We abided by the NAP and did not take anything from each other, but what looked like good coordination between the GI and WI around the starting WI capital gave the region to the Giants. The regional division was close, but I was glad that the Giant was the one with the region so the Elves didn't jump out to control 2 regions so early.
Our plan was to take a turn or two to consolidate and then move on to the Mountains, but the Dwarven move into region 2 accelerated that. It happened that most EL politicals were already on the eastern side of the Mists, and I had already learned of the DW PCs in region 3, so I let the DW make gains in region 2 while the EL moved into region 3, largely vacated. Since the DW was going after a little less than half of region 2 and I was going after almost all of region 3, seemed like a good move.
The DW had raised the defenses of both Hammerhold and his starting capital to 80k or so, but was only defending CU with a brigade of recruits and no politicals. I teleported an invisible division to CU, wiped out the group and moved in 2 Princes to the city. With my group there, no other emmies could move in and I worked the High Council and king orders to get off of Hostile in the region. Turns out the Dwarf had the staff of disdain, so getting to Suspicious was proving to be very difficult. However, getting control of the region by taking enough other PCs did the trick, and with a 22+ influence and the Elven bonus, I took several shots at 320'ing the city and eventually got it. Getting control was just as tough however, and after it occurred to me that 470ing region 3 was pointless, but that it was also pointless for the DW to keep denigrating me there, I started denigrating the DW in region 2 and fighting him there. Eventually between the HC and stabs at enamoring 3 (and the UN stealing the Staff), we were able to get to Tolerant and capture the city.
I was surprised that the Dwarf didn't hire a governor into Hammerhold as soon as the Princes showed up...
Controlling the city happened on turn 20 and I was feeling good with the position in 2 and 3 and messaged the Dwarf to see if he was interested in terms. A bulky set of demands came back, and somewhat put off I, dropped that idea.
At this point the original extension of the NAPs were up and we renewed them and a path to possible victory appeared. While a non-aggression agreement existed between the EL and GI, there was no agreement on division/ownership in the Mists, and starting on turn 22 I started increasing food and gold production at a PC in 2. With the last turn (26) there had been 14 such orders and 3 spells to raise census cast in the Mists. This adds up to 28,500 additional census, which turned the region. I didn't know when it might happen, but given 2 invisible groups (army/div) and the slew of EL emmies marching into 6, I figured that I could hold 6 while waiting for 2 to flip.
It happened in the other order, so there was some heartburn on the last turn with the GI and I not agreeing entirely on the meaning of NAP, but to his credit we stuck to the basic NAP terms through the last turn.

It also happened that the Black approached the DW and I about peace and coordination against the GI. The BL and I had several back and forths about what happened and while I didn't really see what the GI was doing as that big a deal - the BL had attacked others that were attacking him after all, but that is a hot button issue for LT, so he settled for less in agreeing to peace so that he could move on the Giant with the BL. I advised I could not participate due to the NAP, and didn't hear much more after that.

Overall, I was lucky in being left alone early, getting into an interesting GI/WI situation in region 2, leapfrogging over the DW into 3 (and getting some help from the UN in liberating the Staff) and being able to get enough additional census added in the Mists while make a quick run into the Steppes.

[Jumpingfist]

(GI)
The early game as the GI is always tough if you want to survive you need to do a lot of diplomacy in the early game. I got an agreement from the UN that we would not cause trouble for each other and I would help him with his secret agenda if the time came. That never happened so we did not talk much except for an occasional mission which I paid for in prisoner currency. I had a long NAP with RD/DW and a short NAP with AN/TR/EL. I learned from DuPont to use NAP to manipulate the board the way I wanted it to go. The WA and I would be game alone allies. From my setup I saw that I could get all 5 of my kingdom brigades on Viperhead by turn 2. So I decided R2 would be where I was going. I would leave the WA all of Amberland expect my starting stuff. But he would help when I ended the food/gold. After T1 WI figured out I was in R2 we talked I offered to let him keep substantial but I would get control. He counter with an offer to split Amberland. Ah well guess we are fighting then. Before T2 was due WA had worked out a deal so i would get what I asked for with an additional clause I would help him get R6. We learned the RD sold both of us his village in R2, ah well nice one . We came up with a plan I would attack R6 first to draw the DA fire and burn his resources while WI got ready to fight a battle, WA would sit this one out and build mages. It started out perfect. DA bit hard on my attack and denigrated me many time. I took PCs close to R5 and the city. 3 turns later the WI moved in. I still stuck around for a while to help him retake what the DA was taking back. I was allies now with the WI as a well. We were keeping that somewhat on the down low. R3 was going very slow with the WI busy in R6.
The first round of naps were running out we remade our TR/AN nap into a 2 turn notice GAP, this would be the last I heard of from TR or AN for most the game. The EL extending the original terms which the WI was not part of. I did ask the WI not be attacked as I already had an agreement for R2. The next turn the EL swarmed R2. I had a large substantial share so just needed a little bit more to gain control. I moved my Prince to the WI capital and WI would take the R6 city from me and make it his capital. The next turn I got control of R2 as the WI 240ed the old capital. I also got my ESO and an additional 2 GI brigades. Up until I got control of R2 my resources were very tight and I was not able to really build as much as I would have liked, but my leaders we strong and moral high from the give and take with the DA.
To his credit the DA put up a great fight costing us a lot of time. Around turn 16 or so the WI agree I was done with my part of the deal in R6 he just had a bit more mopping up and would find something to get into knowing I had his back if push came to shove. We could not all three go around starting fights with people.
As R6 winded down I had divined all the DE PCs and the WA and I scouted most as my groups got into position. We found a rattle snake ready to strike. Her capital had 6 or 7 princes and another PC had 4 demon princes and an army 33 brigades strong. I went after the high defense capital with all the tasty prisoners while WA did his think vs the other town. WA suggested a delayed city attack basically funneling all the prisoners that did not get caught and any Demon princes that did not burn from the nukes into the second city where I would meet them again. This work perfectly after taking the DE capital three times most everything had been captured. We felt the DE dropped so I did not kill the last demon prince. I would trade all these princes slowly to the WA over the remain turns.
Now getting around turn 20 the EL NAP was about to expire. I had control of R2 and R8. The EL proposed that we are likely the top two kingdoms with a chance to win at this point and we either weaken each other and let someone else catch up or we extend out NAP to games end and each work to claim our own victory. I was not aware of a need for regional clauses to me NAP means you do not mess with each other. I have no desire to be all lawyerly in a game, I will simply just not work with those that require that level of deal making. The EL would later build his census high enough to take control of R2 from me. I did not go blasting him in the forums I talked to him about well sort of talked more accused. But I could tell he in good faith felt he was not breaking our deal so even though I fully did think he did I continued to honor the NAP. I did privately ask around and most seemed to think grey area others yes he broke the nap. I also asked he not mention it in Valhalla but he did so I am giving my side as well. I have no desire to debate this in this thread.
Backing up to finishing off the DE and planning our next strike. WA and I had already mapped out that R10 would be next I had all BL PC divined noted a few in R4 and the enemy/ally declarations between him and TR good they are fighting in R4. Good for us. The RD contacted me a turn or so before that explaining he was just a military at this point and only had some kingdom brigades at 60% moral. I gave him some gold and food to get him in semi fighting shape and let him get back in the fight with BL. Really I could have used the gold to increase my political corps but I knew the RD brand would cause a great stir in R7 keeping them occupied. Since UN GN and BL had all beaten him down earlier I fully expected GN to likely aid the BL after we launched our attack. Then just before we launched I had told Wynand (TR) that I was going to help him vs the BL weather he liked it or not at the end of a phone call for our team game. He figured out I must be talking about R10 and said he was moving his TR group to the city this turn. I said fine but nothing else R10 is mine. I would have rather he was not there let alone actually working together. R9 was actually are final target my groups were positioned to hit R9 in full force then next turn. The results show up and suddenly I am the bad guy organizing a three on one attack of the BL. So then I message the TR for the first time since our GAP agreement letting him know I am pretty sure DuPont is talking about us in his forum blast. I tried to shoot an email to DuPont but no dice he was not interested in hearing anything about it. I was also telling the TR I was looking at R9 I kind of had to because of our GAP but was not calling it off more looking if his battle with the SO/RA was room for me to finish them off and take a 4th region. He assured me no room and I should look else where. So off to R7 I go. I purposely only turn two of the PCs in R10 neutral so I would not control 3 regions yet. Now to R7 for the win. This is when stuff started to get fun. The GN had fully invaded R8 mostly just my PCs and his group met one of my smallest armies at UM only 40k vs PC. The PC also had aprox 30k+ defense I am guessing the GN did not know that part when he attacked. DuPont had moved into Amberland and sent a prince to one of my villages. With all my emmies mostly in R10 they knocked me out of control. We agreed DuPont noticed my weak region and those Amberland armies were not there for the WA they were heading to R2. So WA sent 4 6+ wizards to R2 and the other 3 to R8. I would have the WA nuke my old PCs I did not get a group on or strong Emmy into.. With the BL on two PCs in R2 this was the turn the ELs calculated control efforts would pay off. Both BLs groups were had double domes on there PCs so none were lost but the EL still gained control. I had taken back or nuked enough in R8 to take control and took control of R10. I was planning to claim the same turn the EL did for the win. I would likely not have gotten the win even without the EL taking the region because by now DuPont had rallied the DW against me and he was moving into the region. So likely causing enough trouble over the next few turn before the game ended I would have not been able. R7 would have fallen but I do not know about keeping R2. In the end I had an Army group in R2 on its way to help where I could without violating my nap in R6 and two more full armies heading toward R2 and R6 respectfully.

Sorry for such a long post from a loosing position but wanted to spell out how things went from my perspective since DuPont decided to publicly attack me in the forum.

Awards:
Chancellor: Head Honcho (WA). Incredible ally and really help keep level headed.
Infamous: Thalion (EL) no matter how you cut it getting a REX victory in a shortened game with this class of players is a great feat.
Iron willed: Lord Brogan (GN) seems to really hang in there vs the early RD attack and even come back strong enough to take a region away from me for a turn anyway.