I appreciate that, and I respect that that was your opinion. I do think that your experience of what I was doing was largely based on my forum posts and you need to realise that that was only the public arm of the whole effort. I filled my inbox and sent box playing this one game with at least 70-80 messages sent and received. I was talking to multiple nations and there was some optimism about the effort. The Seleucids were coming, with their shock army alone containing 12 elephants and 12 horse archers (their land power was something like 900), but the Saka winning against Bactria and the second Mauryan invasion seemed to delay them indefinitely. The ptolemies were with us but couldn't risk a war that wasn't already going in our favour (i.e. before the seleucids invested the levant) The Avernii were willing to cross the sea if the Romans could hold out a few more turns. The Armenians were seen as likely to join us because of their alliance with the Seleucids. The combined resources and military power and axes of attack would put us in a favourable position.pnoff wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 10:16 amJust expressing my opinion, in case somebody out there was interested.
I'm sorry if you were offended, but I want my view to be represented.
upd. A clarification: I wasn't meaning to beat down on you just for the sake of it. In my opinion, you diplomacy/propaganda (whatever you want to call it) caused a lot of unnecessary doom and gloom and made other players to act irrational and break character. Unfortunately, I was not able to counteract it due to irl business, which is a source of my frustration. So I was not snapping on you because I wanted you to be offended, but because I wanted other people to see your strategy and overview of the game to be "overthought and overcomplicated", which is still the opinion I stand by.
I will write longer post on my diplomatic outlook later.
We were all playing to win. Even nLysimachos who was willing to jump in early to cause a distraction draw troops until the alliance could be ready. We imagined that if we banded together and won the war we could divide the territory between ourselves. Unfortunately Rome (and this was in part my fault) didn't hold out as long as we hoped so the Avernii could bring an army, and the Seleucids got delayed again leaving lysimachos alone and meaning ptolemy would not join. I was hoping to drop the army in Macedonia just to distract you and sacrifice them to keep the Lysimachos in it for longer. We had built an alliance that very much could win, but it was poor timing for most of the members and the surprise attack on italy meant we had to organize everything quickly.
All of us saw an opportunity with the invasion of italy. As long as rome survived at least for a while and pulled 4 armies into the peninsula (that may very well become trapped there or be destroyed), we had an ability, all of us to knock out two of the strongest players and divide territory between allies, ensuring our survival, removing two major threats, creating strong alliances and giving everyone territories that they wanted. This was our strategy it did require complex negotiations and it had many moving parts, but it was fairly simple in essence; everyone piles on the antigonids and then splits the spoils. This is usually how I play most games, with this game i underestimated how long it would take to bring together, misjudged how quickly the seleucids would arrive and made some tactical mistakes and/or overestimated romes ability to survive. Just because i made these mistakes doesn't mean the whole theory is wrong, or that i'm hysterical necessarily, that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. Because it ignores the fact that it came very close to succeeding and the idea was far more potentially lucrative than any other course of action, and theres a risk reward calculation to be made.
The only alternative strategy would be to split you and the antigonids up, and no one seemed to particularly believe that was possible, or desirable (because no one really knew what happened with epirus so there was that trust deficit there), if it was they would have suggested it, I was not the only one with a voice in the alliance. If that was a better play for them you needed to convince them of that, if you wanted to turn on the antigonids and wanted their alliance then I don't think they knew that. From our perspective it seemed like a strong alliance that might last until most powers with the ability to resist were eliminated. The ambitious nature of the Italy invasion seemed like it was proof of that.
And for perspective, Macedonia and the Antigonids were powerful enough to deal with their enemies head on and one on one. Their borders and countries were relatively were stable and contiguous making it easier to co-ordinate. We didn't have that luxury, for the rest of us nothing short of 6 player alliance would give us the advantage. In that situation not banding together and drawing a line in the sand is just as dangerous a strategy, as to let Rome fall might indeed leave us with one less ally, which is one more ally we have to find, one more army we have to raise, and our enemies will not be distracted in a bloody invasion when we finally do.
I understand there may be flaws in this opinion, but its not ridiculous and it was obviously not entirely unconvincing. I'm happy to hear your opinion, but stop implying because it didn't work in this particular game that i'm some sort of raving moron who's 'high on his own supply'. It's just rude. Let's just discuss our various opinions and leave it at that.
