CRISIS GROGS vs GENESIS 5-player

Started by JasonPratt, January 20, 2018, 05:15:09 PM

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JasonPratt

#30
Between one thing and another I haven't updated our game here in a little while, but I've got some time to mess around tonight so...

GENESIS OF THE GROGS! -- TURN THREE, 1600-1550 BCE
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Here's where things stand after Turn 2 has completed, and about to start Turn 3! (As usual, click back and forth to biggen and smallen.)



For whatever reasons -- I expect for game-balance and, in game, murder -- the Mitanni kings are solid bosses in the game's "historical" setup, at least in the first turns. I am not complaining, since thanks to hormonal rampaging high-maintenance diva prostitutes, my position ended on the edge of disaster last turn.

(...not my fault, I swear...)

Consequently, when my king happened to be the best boss on the map this turn, I exploited the edge in initiative this gave me to declare that I would be going first. Which, clockwise around the board, means Hittite-Dave will be going last (until we all finish our first rounds. Then it's back to the random draw again.) Considering that his king is a verrrry close second for swassity this turn (with 3/3 stats compared to my 3/4), and considering that his superstack is sitting on my border whereas my superstack is stuck off eyeing a Babylonian super-stack on the opposite corner of my empire...

Yeah, I'm not sorry to have first actions this turn.

Fortunately for me, though unfortunately for Rich, Egypt-Barth manipulated the Elamites into eroding off a significant portion of his empire, so I'm not terribly worried about Rich coming after me if I have to abandon my recently claimed Mari to deal with various western problems. Rich has his own mess to clean out. And his misfortune notwithstanding, Rich boasts easily the strongest army in the game so far.

Barth, down in Egypt, keeps being dealt crappy pharaohs by the historical setup, but he endeavors to persevere despite his setbacks -- and you should ignore the Libyans on his border, because I should have deleted them between the turns. He's poised to recoup and start kicking doors all up the Levant.

Hittte-Dave shouldn't have problems striking out in any direction he wants, especially with his hordes of peasants already ready to rebuild, upgrade, and hold territory already! His army is no slouch either, and certainly not his king this turn. Whether he gears down and starts bulldozing over me is a real concern, but he could also take the opportunity of my distractions to leave a token border guard and start super-stacking westward: the Hittites may not have the richest towns in reach, but they have more towns than anyone else and practically no risk of anyone else competing for them! He could become an economic, and thence a military, powerhouse, stronger than any two other players put together. Also it's great for end-game scoring. Oh and also most of the gold on the map is within his reach.

By contrast, Assyria-Larry (in purple to my right) is who I worry about most. His empire is highly constrained from expansion, and he took a bloody nose in his dust-down with Baby-Rich last turn. While I feel a little sorry for his problems, the fact is that I had to denude some forces from my border cities and if he decides to superstack me I don't know whether I can stop him!

Keep in mind, there's a reason why you, my reader, have probably never heard of the Mitanni before. I'll probably last out this turn anyway, but will I be down for the count by Turn 4?

...oh, and everyone else gets chariot tech this turn now. Whee. Although I don't recall if anyone bought any. That includes myself, and I'll talk about why not soon when I work up a report on our first rounds.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

GENESIS OF THE GROGS -- TURN THREE, rounds 1 thru 5
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This round features a lot of bitter choices for me. A lot of my (admittedly new) income was cut off by the dang Canaanites last turn, and while I'm not destitute I am going to have to spend most of my money throughout the whole turn just trying to recover from that nastiness. God help me if the prostitutes march in again, whining about a lack of monuments for them to luxuriate in!

(#ancientpagankingproblems)

That's my first goal for the turn, and I think I can achieve it. Here at the end of my first round, I've accomplished the rebuild of one of my destroyed acquisitions, and also getting Mari fully ready to defend herself against Baby-Rich someday. That's no small feat already. (As usual, click to toggle the biggening.)



In theory I want to combine the reconstruction of that remaining town (down next to Mari) on my 2nd round, plus... well that depends on what Dave and Rich do, and maybe on card events.

Rich fortunately focused on preparing to repel boarders down on the Persian Gulf, so -- as expected -- I don't think I have to worry about him this turn. He's parking a respectable stack bottling up my path beyond Mari, but that's just to keep me honest for now.

Much to my relief, Assyria-Larry (aka ArizonaTank here on the forum) has decided that he would be better off not aggroing me with his feeble king this turn, so he's going to park and perhaps not spend much money this turn, saving up for next time. That's a viable strategy, and he's got plenty of turns in leeway to play that angle.

Much to my also relief, Hittite-Dave (I'm clearly not reporting these in order of play) saddled up a few boys to march his way south to the coast, probably to angle west along the coast from there back toward Arzawa. Unfortunately for Dave, he only brought 3 infantry, and while his king is certainly "mox" (as we old-time MtG players might say, i.e. broken in a good way), he's not really super-stacking. In fact, he had trouble this round punching out the first level-2 city in his way! He needs more troops to make that a lot easier. But he doesn't have a whole lot of troops nearby to spare. He's got the cash to recruit for buffing his stack, but he seems to be saving it for now? I dunno. He isn't juggernauting me, and I have no complaints.

Egy-Barth got Sais finally restored, but otherwise didn't accomplish much; he still needs to consolidate military power for a cohesive northward push. Jerusalem is a good start -- no duh! -- and better in that (as you might remember from a few posts ago) he was able to take it peacefully by card event that, in essence, sent Abraham's family in! (He sent Moses against the Babylonians at one point last turn, too. Barth's Egyptian run has been nothing if not entertainingly ironic so far.  :clap: )

Anyway, Dave drew his own second round as we shifted into random order for the rest of the turn, so he'll get a chance to concentrate effort along his chosen line of advance. How far he'll get, or if he turns around and flattens me after all, we'll see.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

GENESIS OF THE GROGS -- TURN THREE, rounds 6 thru 10
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In this decade, the Hittite-Dave started by continuing his slow grind to and around the coast, although he still didn't quite bring enough troops to make it a cakewalk. This is a case where he should have spent his money (of which he's got plenty) on creating a temporary super-stack to cakewalk his non-player adversaries. He rolled high enough (on both of his first rounds, including this one) that with some judicious recruitment and expeditious play with his king, he could have feasibly taken all the coastal towns south of his main kingdom, westward to the borders of the Arzawa. But we're all newbies to this game and to its subtlties.


That includes me, who draws next for my second round. I do manage to get Terga rebuilt this round (edging up on bankrupting me, although I'm carefully managing my budget so that I'll have enough, barring an emergency, to last out the turn). Had I played my king a little more cleverly, though, for my major move, I could have accomplished this AND ALSO would have been able to hit at Qatna once, for major damage if not an outright win. Not to complain about my luck, since I'm bossing the center of the map, and my worst luck has involved too many prostitutes for my own good  ^-^ , but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if the game spat the Canaanites back at me before I have a chance to pre-emptively eliminate their raiding threats. Worse, they'd have chariots now and I currently don't! -- nor do I have the cash to ensure the Cans can't use chariots against my king'd defensive line.


Hittite-Dave actually pulls his 3rd round during this time, and the comments I made before include those results, which you can see now with my convenient map placement-post! (Click to toggle embiggen back and forth.)




Wait, I forgot Baby-Rich's 2nd round up there somewhere! He had a sequence of unlucky rolls and accomplished almost nothing. But at least he isn't in too serious danger, as long as no one (else) pulls the Elam event card again. (If he gets them, he can suicide them off in clever ways, muahahaha.)


Egy-Barth ends out this decade consolidating his position a little in what will come to be called southern Palestine (by the Romans), and getting his kingstack ready to finish acquiring control of Rabbah.

What he doesn't know yet, is that the Sea People have been exercising hard and are preparing for their return...!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

GENESIS OF THE GROGS -- TURN THREE, rounds 11 thru 15
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As the fourth decade ends and the fifth decade starts in this generation, the Hittites have just been chillaxing while the rest of us do our best to catch up to their glory.

This is relatively hardest for Assy-Larry (aka ArizonaTank from our forum), who thanks to bad luck in his first two turns, is running low on cash to accomplish much this turn. Although, I should mention what I totally forgot for two-and-a-half decades now: he dang well MADE the first constructed town in the game, back on round 1 this turn! You can see it now, on the map, between Ninevah and my Nisibis. (You can see it on the prior snapshot, too, under his kingstack, if you squint closely.) It doesn't give him victory points or even income between turns -- I don't even think he can recruit from there. It's only an extensive fort (two levels of wall garrison, plus whoever he has camped there) as a buffer in case I'm dumb enough to try attacking him at all. But it's his, and he's the only one so far to have it!

But anyway. His main problem is his lack of expansion options in the face of strong defenders (and in Rich's case, aggressive counter-attackers for expansion, which Larry also has to defend against). His most feasible option now, or least difficult, is to work his way north to Tushpa, then to Ishuwa, and from there either to my Ergani or to the Hittites by another route. This will require me to spread out my defenses farther when the time comes, but he rolled very badly on his 2nd and 3rd rounds so that time will be delayed. I still feel sorry for him, but I still have no complaints.


I also forgot to mention last time that Baby-Rich pulled a "Dagon Event" card, which didn't directly affect him yet, but which between turns will give him +1 on his roll to increase manpower. Rich already has the best logistic tail in the game, and it it wasn't for Elam's surgence last turn he'd probably be beating both me and Larry with each hand. (Whereas Larry, if I recall correctly, had his manpower maximum reduced by plague. Like Barth, if he didn't have bad luck he'd have no luck at all...  :'( )

As it is, Rich has decided to slowly expand behind the Elam invaders, and meanwhile wait for attrition to wear them down somewhat between turns, before attacking. I think. This early in the game (only Turn 3 out of 10) that's a very viable recovery strategy, which might end up wiping Elam off the map as a threat permanently.


Round 14 was my own 3rd round, and I DANG WELL REMOVED THE CANS FROM MY CORNER OF REALITY!



All their cans are belong to us. Or half their cans, but they're more likely to bother Egypt's expansion for now.

Orrrr... rather half their cans did belong to me, but as you might notice from that mapsnap, the Sea People returned, and Egypt-Barth was who got to activate them. The smart move was to play them against me, invading through Arvad on the coast -- not one of my towns (yet), but as a level-1 city it didn't even count as a speed bump on their way to my recently acquired Kadesh. I chose not to intercept them at Arvad when they landed, basically gambling that Barth would stop with destroying Kadesh, too (he did) and that I'll draw my final round before the Seaps draw theirs (we'll see), which would give me some potential opportunities to improve my chances against them. Still, that's 3 econ, and 3 victory points, I won't be getting this turn, since there's no way I can win through to rebuild that city, much less afford to do so before Turn 4 sometime.

I'm not fatally crippled yet, though, which compared to my worries at the start of the turn, I can accept!  O0


On Barthheart's actual 3rd round, as Egypt, his pharaoh finally took Rabbah, but rolling badly and kind of sucking he wasn't able to continue onward into southern Canaan. We'll see if Barth can pull that off on his final round; meanwhile he lacked the late-turn cash to do much more than that.

The final years of Turn 3 are on the way! (But not anytime soon, because we just reached this point.  >:D )
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#34
GENESIS OF THE GROGS -- TURN THREE, final rounds
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At the start of this turn I was seriously worried that by the end of this turn I would be effectively (if not yet literally) out of the game, thanks to various setbacks. This concern was not entirely alleviated by having the Sea People launched upon me by Barthheart! -- nor by having my king freaking assassinated (since the previous entry) by... it's probably just as well for whoever it was, Rich or Larry, that I can't recall who it was.  :knuppel2:

Nevertheless, here at the end of Turn Three, I've managed to recover and even expand a little; my Canaanite foes are in no position (currently) to rise again; and I've punched the giant stack of SeaPs so hard that they only have two infantry remaining. One of which (at least) will die from attrition thanks to having to camp in a destroyed city (that they themselves destroyed), and their king will die with the rest of us between turns. So I'm not grossly worried about being able to take back my conquests pretty easily on Turn 4.

Glory in my central king of the hilliness! (As usual click to embiggen and back again.)



...except without a king for now. But I'll be spawning a new one soon. Will he be awesome, average, sucky? I have intentionally avoided checking the king sequence to find out.

Let me point out a subtlety, in that I have also lost Terga next to my Mari fortress (and economic powerhouse). This isn't too bad for me, since as long as no enemy "chits" are in Terga (which there aren't) then the little no-name king of that city will be glad to let my trade route go through it. So while I won't get the income and victory points (and tribute) from Terga, I still do from Mari. This situation was a bit of genius play thanks to Rich, whom I wish to draw notice for appreciation of his tactic: he threw a "local insurrection" on my peasants there, not only costing me a peasant unit, but also a slave unit (which ran away once unsupervised, understandably) and Terga itself. Had the rules been a little different, this would have cost me my income and VPs from Mari, too!


Assyria-Larry (i.e. ArizonaTank here on the forum) and Babylonia-Rich, ended the 5th decade tied at 17 points. Rich was unable to root out the Elam horde from Uruk, which is costing him income (and points) from no less than four towns and cities; but other than that he's still got some expansion options and also the largest standard army by far among all of us. So once he starts to expand again, he has plenty of options. Larry, by contrast, is kind of screwed: he has no good expansion options, and his manpower limit is weak. Although they're currently tied, AzTank is definitely in last place right now, and he's going to need some genius, patient play, and good dice rolls, to come back.


Egypt-Barthheart, by comparison, has had some genius, patient play, which has rewarded him with expansion into the southern Levant (what will eventually be southern Israel), and a home territory better secured against Lybian interruptions. But his luck this game has been atrocious, particularly on the dice rolls -- including at least one Libyan invasion, and one Seap invasion! But he has outlasted his ongoing bad luck, and has throve. ...thriven. .......um..... thrived.  O0 I shudder to think what he'll be like when-if-ever the dice start turning his way. He's up to 21 points now.


Hittite-Dave has still staked an edge past Barth, at 24 points, thanks to picking up some choice indy towns, not least the mighty Tarsus, on his southern border. The two silver near his capital are his plunder from Tarsus which he has forgotten to pick up yet -- and his income beyond that will be no joke! He has a good chance of squeezing more income next turn out of tribute, too. How he'll apply that money I don't know, but next turn Arzawa will start being a potential (and in all likelihood an occasional) threat on his western border. He's got me bottled up at a nice choke point, although I know he remains nettled that I have gotten Charchamesh first (and I'm still holding it). He has plenty of options, including starting a serious war to cripple me out of the game! -- possibly in conjunction with Larry and Rich (if not yet Barth).


Being king of the hill has its problems. At least I wasn't bothered by prostitutes this turn (they went after Barth instead, ha.) 27 points and a clear lead over my next closest opponent (Dave at 24 points) is not one of those problems.  ^-^ Being spread out with not so great logistic manpower, however, is one of those problems. The moment those other three guys decide they're tired of me existing on the board, my life will grow very interesting and short and brutish. I'm doing my best not to antagonize them. (But being 10 points ahead of both Rich and Larry might count as "antagonizing" them.  :hide: )


We're not very far from being done with the start of Turn 4, and I'll be back to report on our adjusted starting situations with the next generation at that time!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

GENESIS OF THE GROGS -- final thoughts!
------------------------------------------------

We've decided to call an end to the game for various reasons:

1.) Turn 4 would only introduce one more minor kingdom -- the most powerful in the game but not anything different really -- plus the eventual probability of higher chariot techs -- which are also not anything different really. In other words we've seen everything the game has to offer by now. The event cards wash through quite quickly, and we've seen most of them, and some of them several times.

2.) It has taken us this long to complete 3 turns, and very probably we've got 7 more turns to go.

3.) Relatedly, while the game would seem to move along reasonably fast on a table, even with 5 players, by asynch multiplayer the game is ponderously difficult and unwieldy. It has passed being fun for some of us and has become a bit of a chore.

4.) Summer is near and we've got various projects (work and home) which will reduce our time and energy for even asynch multiplay.


We're still looking into a much faster game (literally!  :D ): Thunder Road! Which happens to also be much better for asynch play. And we're looking into a deeper game again for autumn, but one more suitable for asynchronous play. (I'm pondering whether REPUBLIC OF ROME can be haxxored into being feasible. It helps that it's more of a card-placement game, and that the interactions can largely be worked out in chat rather than in the Vassal logfile.)

But for GENESIS, the game is now done. Nominally I won, but had we continued I would have been ganged on quite soon. So I have no complaints.  :bd:

ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!