Battle of the Sexes - AAR

[attitudes]

With the loss of the final two Maledomia supply centers, the game ends with a solo victory to Matronia in Fall 06.

Congratulations to Phatality.

Thanks to dcaibal for being my Second Eyes. Excellent job.

Thanks to all the players, especially those that took on the chore of Wittchia (I can't even remember them all).

I'll reserve any comments until the players have all had a chance to write an AAR.

Final map:

BattleSexes_F06.gif (91.61 KiB) Viewed 3298 times

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[b]Builds[/b]
Amazonia         ... 10 SC ...  9 units ... 1 build
Matronia         ... 12 SC ... 10 units ... 2 builds
Paladinland      ...  0 SC ...  0 units ... 0 builds
Testosteronia    ...  0 SC ...  0 units ... 0 builds
Ultramagicfiords ...  0 SC ...  0 units ... 0 builds
Wittchia         ...  8 SC ...  8 units ... 0 builds


[Willie900]

Good game all, I had lots of fun.

As for my AAR, here goes:

I started by trying to do some communication with my neighbors, and Shibabalo of the Ultramages was more communicative, so we had some good discussion about what to do with our border, eventually we DMZd both the SC and normal space between us. This gave me the ability to throw the full brunt of my force against my southern neighbor.

As for my communications with allies, we collectively agreed that Matronia and Amazonia should crush Testosteronia while Wittchita holds against the other two until we got there. So my plan was to blitz my southern neighbor, then turn around and smash the Ultramages.

Honestly, that was really the extent of my diplomacy--after I stabbed the Ultramages, the only diplomacy I had was quick updates with my allies, which is one problem with the map (more on that later).

Anyway, after defeating Testosteronia quickly, I realized I would have trouble, since Matronia managed to take the Fortress of Dicksburg, which I knew would be very useful to have in order to solo. letting Matronia have it was definitely my biggest mistake. I turned around to stab the Ultramages, which went pretty well, but the going was slow, which put another nail in my coffin. I suspect the tag-team of players for Wittchita slowed their advance into the Ultramages, helping me get to their center center before Wittchita, but alas I still didn't have enough (exactly 1/3 of the centers, in fact)

Anyway, while I really like the premise of the game, I feel the map is fundamentally flawed. The symmetrical setup with only two neighbors drastically restricts diplomacy, so there was little opportunity for cool strategies and stuff. There is really no reason to communicate with the opposite-sex nation on the other side of the board, and communication with my allies was limited. After my first truce with the Ultramages, I really had no more diplomacy to do.

I believe an asymmetrical map with more than two borders per player would make a much more interesting version of this concept.

Anyway, good game all, and congrats to Phatality (honestly, 2nd place is better than usual for me )

[samuri]

It turned out that my lands in testeronica were finished from the start, my NMR putting the final nail in their coffin. Once I realised this I made my plan for the rest of the game, I thought (rightly so) that the person that grabbed my central sc would win so I thought that Matronia and Amazonia would keep squabbling over my corpse for long enough for me to take the central island and support team male. That plan lasted one turn when Amazonia let Matronia march straight into my land and take the game. From thereon my position just diminished, as my remaining fleet searched in vain for an empty port to take. The fedomia players used fog of war nicely to make mincemeat out of us stupid males. I agree with willie that the map had its faults but I really enjoyed the game.

[attitudes]

Anyway, while I really like the premise of the game, I feel the map is fundamentally flawed. The symmetrical setup with only two neighbors drastically restricts diplomacy, so there was little opportunity for cool strategies and stuff. There is really no reason to communicate with the opposite-sex nation on the other side of the board, and communication with my allies was limited. After my first truce with the Ultramages, I really had no more diplomacy to do.

First off, I didn't create the map so feel free to disparage it all you want. My feelings won't be hurt.

Of course, the intent of the symmetrical map is to make sure that all players have an equal chance of success.

What about making the center of the island passable and a supply center? Might create some more excitement if multiple armies were convoyed to Concordia(s).

I do think though that you might have over-simplified the notion that there was no more Diplomacy to do. Would you have taken the last Ultramages home center had you known that you were down two centers to Matronia? I hope the answer to that question would be no in which case you and Wittchia could have then kept Ultramages alive until such time as one of you were the leader of supply centers.

I'm thinking about the rule that states you cannot attack a member of your own tribe. In the end game, I think it would be important to be able to do this in an attempt to overtake the leader if you were keeping the last center of the other tribe for last. And the leader might want to make an earlier attack on a tribe member just to prevent such a scenario from happening. In the early game, it makes logical sense that you wouldn't attack your tribe mate but in the mid to late game, it makes sense to have a no holds barred situation.

Any thoughts on that?

[Phatality]

I really enjoyed playing this and had a lot of fun (this was my first fog of war game, and I was actually kinda confused about the rules at one point). I don't think the map itself is flawed (I think the map is awesome), but I think the 3v3 allied premise is. Perhaps a FFA or 2v2v2 would be better. Or maybe something as simple as opening the central Concordia island would work too. I think I was really lucky with how everything turned out in general more than skill or diplomacy was involved. I believe if there were less NMR's (and not FOUR Wittchia's over the short course of the game ) this game almost certainly would've been gridlocked.

I was really surprised the ballsy "Go for Dicksburg" plan went so well as it was really just steady growth after that until I squeezed off that hard win in the back end of the game. I actually never exchanged any messages with my enemies believe it or not, but I was consistently trying to get info from my allies in the discussion. Myself and Willie (Amazonia) had an awesome breakthrough against Testosteronia early on that gave us both huge advantages. Willie supported me into Dicksburg was a move when I think we were both thinking about the alliance succeeding rather than long term effects. Testosteronia was a slight nuisance in Concordia and the gulfs after we took his home centers, but not a big one. Paladinland was harder to break through, but he was going at it with Wittchia so I could slowly make progress. Paladins snuck one fleet into my home center to steal it at one point but abandoned it to defend his home centers.

At the point I knew I was ahead, I was constantly trying to get reads from Wittchia's Fingon, LOL, sinny and XerxesPraelor with how the front with the Paladins was going. Sinny at one point linked her map to us which helped me out a lot to strategize later, so I knew if I really wanted to get Castle of the Straight Paladins I would need as many as 4 units. At one point I even supported Castle of the Straight Paladins to hold so I could get the last unit in place, just in case Xerxes was about to take it.

I tried to be transparent with my allies for a long time until finally there was one point where I started faking some unit results to make it look like I had two less units than I did. Willie joked about it being funny if we all ended up with 10 centers, and I thought that was a very real possibility but I didn't play it up either way. I was kinda scared about sneaky fleets from my allies but I had enough info on how they were doing from Ultramages (though they became less and less open about their play as the game went on) to give me leeway before deploying fleets in the outer seas.

If this is to be played again here's a conclusion I drew: armies will get you centers at the beginning, but near the end I would've destroyed all my armies but two for fleets if I could've as fleets are much more flexible.

Excellent GM'ing by attitudes, thank you to dcaibal for 2nd eyes and it was great playing with the rest of yall you guys were awesome players.