MP: Morla MA noob game (running)

[shatner]

Originally Posted by triqui

My mistake was not building solid NAPS, with at least one of my neighbours. Assuming those NAPS would had been respected, I would be facing an easier midgame and my plan would be working better. However, it didn't work, so I will have to change my way to fight and face both of you, struggling to survive. That's life.

Or undeath, as the case may be. I am deliberately trying to play differently in each MP game I am in, just to get a feel for the MP experience. In my first MP game ever (which is still ongoing) I'm playing as EA T'ien Ch'i and being super-honorable. In this game, when Jotunhiem and I agreed your empire needed a haircut, we decided to sow a little misinformation along the way.

That said, I was deliberate in never offering nor accepting an NAP from you. When you smelled BS and demanded one, I came clean instead. I used weasel words and deliberately left some truths out when dealing with you but I am not, nor ever will be, a pact-breaker. For example, Marignon and I have a fairly long NAP agreement in place. I will not be crossing his border in any way (troops, remote attack spells, even anonymous attack spells) while that agreement holds true. And given how busy I'm likely to be for the next umpteen turns, I'm not likely to want to wage war on Marignon even then.

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Before all the warring and the scheming, back during an innocent time of murdering indies, I was trying to hire cheap researchers, build castles and expand with cheap-but-effective archer+tower shield troops against the indies. Then Marignon showed up with water blessed Knights of the Chalice and ruined both of my expansion armies. It would have been 3 or 4 turns of frantic research and expensive re-arming before I would have had a chance of even slowing those guys down so I ran with my tail between my legs and cried "peace!" And when Marignon said "sure, for another three of your provinces" I said "Sure!" because keeping peace between me and Marignon at that moment was about the most important thing I could do unless I wanted to completely de-rail my early game booming.

Diplomacy can suck when you are at a disadvantage and the other guys knows that, but it is often better than the alternatives.