All soldiers but a pawn, and all generals but an expendable commodity. As long as the nation triumphs, others are secondary to the cause.

I'm sure EoJ will see that the war between Venice and the Turks is a real one. Big dip in military for bandito next turn, unless his Economy really is as big as he promises.

At first I was going to dismiss the e-mail as improbable fiction, but then I suppose Bandito's Xanatos Roulette must be able to come unstuck a little at certain points, if not all of them. Still gonna have to take the taking of Turkey for me to come round to thinking this isn't staged

Just for fun I made a version of this hotseat with me playing as all of the people. Here is a screenie of what the map currently looks like:

I may have said this before but...

no pics => it didn't happen

On a less flippant note - Huzzah for Venice

I'll try my turn this evening hopefully - I got it a little too late yesterday. Oh, untill then, I sank Bandito's other fleets, err and his capital city. AND THE SUN! muwhahaha, oh it's come back up again.

O sorry I didn,t realise that I shouldn,t post pics.

This reminds me of chess by mail.

A lot of people play correspondence chess.

On a side note I wouldnt be surprised if Venice and The Turks did a dual attack vs Sicily.

[This message has been edited by JuBuOrangie (edited 08-03-2009 @ 05:32 AM).]

This reminds me of chess by mail.

A lot of people play correspondence chess.

I have to agree with you there.

On a side note I wouldnt be surprised if Venice and The Turks did a dual attack vs Sicily.

Y'know what? Neither would we We just hope those boats that are being sent round hugging the coastline can land on Egypt before hell breaks loose.

On to Bandito to see what evil he plans.

Evil? Eeeeveeeel? Dear Swampy, my "evilness" is nothing compared to what Hoppy just did to my entire fleet. All kisses and alliance on one turn, and bam! Betrayal on the next turn.

Lets see, I lost 3 stacks of my most elite troops, which means I have very little Jihading troops left (the six stack rant was just a bluff), and even if I can train them, I have a grand total of 3 ships out of 14 I had. The chance of me taking Sicily is now close to nil. I said "close to nil" because it is a Mongol's nature to never give up the target even after a bloody loss. However, the losses were entirely due to Venice's back-stabbing so let me say something to Hoppy first.


I am very sad, my dear treacherous neighbor, and I am not grieving over my loss. I thought I could save you last in this game, since you were doing such dismally on the other hot-seat. Apparently you did a Pearl Harbor on me when I fully put my trust in you. Since I despise those who attack an ally without warning most of all, I will devout the rest of my turns to hound this blight known as Venice and will never give you a moment's respite. A traitor will meet a lonely end.


That done, let's see what I can even do to Venice, now that he has clear advantages over me in every aspect. He is clearly defeating Russia and further enlarging his coffers and no doubt sending his elite Templar units over here from Italy. The challenges awaiting me are insurmountably ecstatic.

Now where are my smilies?

[This message has been edited by el_bandito (edited 08-03-2009 @ 09:57 PM).]

Quoted from Bandito:

nothing compared to what Hoppy just did to my entire fleet. All kisses and alliance on one turn, and bam! Betrayal on the next turn.

Tisktisk Bandito - did you forget the bit where you're meant to pretend not to know that everyone knew you were working together with Venice? At least now though we can rest at ease knowing that you are well and truly at war with Venice rather than the fake war that you've just admitted to.

Gaaaaahhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!
All this plotting is giving me a headache!
Can't we all just pick on the AI .

[This message has been edited by Monty501 (edited 08-04-2009 @ 03:04 AM).]

Hah! That little slip of the mask means that things ain't going well! You've got what, couple of stacks? Nothing swampy can't handle

I would seriously like to know peoples opinion on the picture.

It's interesting. In theory England should be the superpower, but I suppose different play styles have stopped it slightly.
Still, the logical place for England in that picture would be Germany, and would gobble it all up. Luckily in my Spain I've got Bern, so I can join in the fun

I thought it was interesting to see how differently the Turks and Venice came out on your version to hotseatA - that's probably showing that Hoppy and Bandito (well we all know Gagonite set him up nicely and he's just been following a script) have done quite well and/or people like me haven't pressured them enough from the back.

Your map had Spain looking south rather than north-east as EoJ mentioned, I think the northerly approach has benefitted Spain over your map. That said, Sicily was probably better off not going west and looking to Egypt instead.

Flatterning HRE and looking north probably would have been better for Sicily too. So many lessons to learn...

Hah! That little slip of the mask means that things ain't going well! You've got what, couple of stacks? Nothing swampy can't handle

"Slip of a mask"? I'm literally tearing off my face here! Things are now as dismal as I predicted if Hoppy chose to betray me. The war is real.
Sicily is welcome to invade me any time. Two to tango, three's a party. Taking Egypt is one thing, holding it will be a totally different story.


BTW, Selifator is now off to France, yes? Should I send the game to Glacy?

[This message has been edited by el_bandito (edited 08-04-2009 @ 08:42 AM).]

Yes, that's right I think.

My comments above on egypt etc related to Monty's alternate version of the game posted a page or so ago.

Save sent to Glacy...or not. It is taking forever to attach the files.


Hoppy, remember these names.

Crown Prince Mustafa the Scarred

Baybars of Tabriz

Uthman Gezman

I will engrave them on your lands, viper!

[This message has been edited by el_bandito (edited 08-04-2009 @ 11:04 AM).]

Ok, after a whole night of Yahoo mail acting dumb and not attaching my file, I finally managed to send the save to Glacy this morning.

Evil? Eeeeveeeel? Dear Swampy, my "evilness" is nothing compared to what Hoppy just did to my entire fleet. All kisses and alliance on one turn, and bam! Betrayal on the next turn.

Kisses and Alliances? What the devil gave you that idea? We're at war! Not to mention you took the village of Caffa from me... If that isn't gearing up for war then I don't know what is.

Evil? Lets see, I lost 3 stacks of my most elite troops, which means I have very little Jihading troops left (the six stack rant was just a bluff

I find that hard to believe since you seem to have a half stack garrisoned in virtually every single city of yours in the Holy Lands, not to mention that nasty little full stack of yours hiding off the coast of Iconium.

I have a grand total of 3 ships out of 14 I had. The chance of me taking Sicily is now close to nil.

3 ships out of 14? Hardly. I believe I sunk at least 14 ships. 3 ships left? I didn't know you disbanded that 9 ship fleet of yours off Iconium that has FOUR war galleys in it...

[This message has been edited by Hoppylyte (edited 08-04-2009 @ 09:46 PM).]

Save sent to EoJ.

When I was playing the alternate hotseat A I noticed a few things:
- First was how hard it was to be agressive with Venice.
In most of my campaigns as Venice, I target Egypt (see my AAR for an example) but here I thought I might try taking on Byzantium. I won, of course, but it take so so long to get then troops ready for something like this, and to march them there that it didn,t seem so. Now I have three full stacks to take on Hungary with (one of which just took sofia) but it will take a while before I break through them.
- Also I thought that this was the first time I was realy able to do well with the Turks. Before It has taken me ages to capture all that land.

Thought this might have been of interest to perhaps one person on this planet?

What can I say Monty, I'm an aggressive player.

(In reference to the fact that we will start close to each other in hotseat F) Gulp!
Yay 500th post in this thread!