[NO PLAYERS] Witnessing Democracy Inaction

[NobleHelium]

This came up in another game that is just starting up: why is the turn limit so low (127 turns)? What do we do when we hit the limit?

[Sullla]

TheHumanHydra has a long post over in the Menagerie forum, too long to post directly here. It essentially boils down to the question of what they should do about the Pirate city of Tortuga, and how they should handle their diplomacy with the Pirates team going forward. THH makes a lot of comparisons to past games that I was involved in, so I'll go ahead and post my thoughts here so that he can read them later after this game is over.

Obviously my perspective is influenced by having perfect knowledge of the situation, with the ability to read all team forums. That should be kept in mind. Nevertheless, putting myself in the shoes of team Menagerie, I would argue that the situation is most akin to the one that Speaker and I faced at the end of our first war against Jowy in Pitboss #2. In both situations, the other party faced a serious military defeat (Tortuga about to be captured by Menagerie, Jowy's capital about to be captured by Speaker) and had been set way behind. Since this game is also a No Tech Trading game, I would approach the situation in much the same way. Pirates are effectively crippled at this point; they will lose their second city, and their civ development has been enormously set back. Pushing on to try and take the Pirates capital (which is on a hill and has 40% culture defense bonus) is not going to happen until catapults arrive. There is no point in continuing the war. Better to sue for peace now.

Of course, having invested so much in early military, Menagerie also needs to get something out of their war, and razing a city isn't enough. In their position, I would go ahead and capture Tortuga. That is non-negotiable. The city is rightly theirs. I would then offer peace to Pirates, and try to work out some kind of longer-term peace deal. If they insist on fighting, so be it. Defend at Tortuga and force them to go on the attack. We all know that defending in Civ4 is infinitely easier than attacking; if Pirates insist on going pure military with two cities of small size, go ahead and let them. Call their bluff! Defend, tech upwards, and kill them later on. But it's much more likely that they are simply bluffing for diplomatic reasons. They have a smaller army, less population, fewer turns of worker improvements, and so on. Going on the offensive is not really in the cards for Pirates. They will likely back down... and if they don't, then that's fine too. Menagerie will shortly be ahead 4 cities to 2. I wouldn't be too scared of that.

Anyway, that's what I would do. Capture Tortuga, make a generous peace offer, and if they refuse, then screw them. Don't try to invade further. Defend, tech to better units, and come back later to wipe out their sorry asses.

[timski]

Cornflakes has started musing on a post-war plan for the Pirates.

Research back on for pottery, put up granaries.

Hurrah! Inca's core advantage hinges on Pottery and Granaries. Those neon lights are shining brightly.

There's no way we can tech to pikes or maces before they could come at us with elephants so if we want to have some fun we need to strike before then.

Yes, and er, no. Yes, Pirates' GNP is on the floor, so the team aren't going to be out-teching anyone any time soon. But no, you're not going to strike before then:

• It is not certain that Menagerie will come with Elephants: Having been delayed by the first war, a second would be undesirable. And in a full diplo game, the Pirates have non-military options for preventing an Elephant invasion.
  
• The next significant step up from Axes are Catapults, which tech-wise are on the verge of Elephants. In practice another bout before Elephants means Horseback Riding, which I should add are relatively easy to defend against at Tortuga, the only place the Pirates are realistically going to be able attack.
  
• Not only does the defender generally have the advantage, but Menagerie's economy is significantly stronger than the Pirates. On like-for-like units/tech, the Pirates will lose on both accounts.
  
• Tortuga, the only part of Menagerie's empire the Pirates might conceivably capture (because Stonehenge greatly bolsters the capital's cultural defences, making a pre-Catapult attack rather suicidal) is a lacklustre city. Retaking Tortuga will not turn-around Pirates' game.

The outcome of Cornflakes' analysis of "the elephant problem" cannot be another early war, and therefore must be the survival option, however unpalatable that is short-term: Bury the desire for vengeance, and make and maintain peace. Negotiate a NAP that extends deep into the War Elephant era, precisely so the Pirates don't have to worry about that unit. If that means a border settlement that favours Menagerie so be it. That land would be lost anyway is Menagerie turn up with War Elephants and Catapults.

The Pirates desperately need to accept that they've lost their opening war, and the only way they can recover for the long-term is a protracted period of peace. With so much of the map still undeveloped, peace is a very viable option.

settle a city SE of horses ...and... another city 3S of Barbados looks alright for a high food/hammers location to crank out an army of axes

Here are the locations:




Both locations assume a very generous peace deal with Menagerie. But even then the problems are numerous:

• The (purple) Horse city will be culturally challenged from the outset by a Menagerie-owned Tortuga, unless the Pirates can settle and chop out a Granary there very quickly. While both Fish and Horse are secure, the city would be exceedingly difficult to defend. If one's entire game plan depends on Horse Archers, the plan will be in tatters the moment such a city falls.
  
• The later (blue) city demonstrates a continuing aversion to the use of the Financial trait, once again throwing away beautiful Cottage-able riverside grass for (effectively) nothing other than a border site against Menagerie.

By following this plan they're completely ignoring relatively safe and economically more productive sites to their east, such as a solid Horse/river-side grass location - a decision apparently driven by a desire not to yield territory to Menagerie, almost regardless of how good the territory being secured is. Border obsession? In highly tactical games such things can be important, but in Civ it is often far more important to settle worthwhile site, since one's early economy and development is more important than Zerging one's opponent.

forget about cottages and mine those hills ...and... build lots of HA's and axes and see if our hoards can overrun M3

Forget about... what?! Horseback Riding costs 325 Beakers, while the entire Pirate economy generates 11 surplus (at 0% research) a turn. With no Cottages down, research isn't going to get any quicker. Hoards of Horse Archers won't be taking the field before turn 100, which would seem to be far too late to overrun anyone.

This isn't just a case of acknowledging when and why you've just lost a war, and why long economy is not a luxury. There is a need to recognise that one does not need to fight out of a corner at this stage of the game. Not when half the map is unsettled, including some of the best economic sites. The one thing the Pirates need right now to stay in the game long-term is sustained peace.

Cornflakes, at least, has the wrong mindset: I fear that even if they can negotiate a peace, they'll proceed to squander it on another war, continuing to trash their own game in the name of securing a single city that wasn't even great at the outset. Why? I think they are pre-occupied with borders and warfare: They're playing a tactical wargame, not a Civ-style strategy game! Unfortunately in Civ, the wargame is what you do immediately after gaining strategic advantage, not the other way round.

[timski]

And Krill that's ("Settler up front or nothing.") not enough input. Are we going to Troll the game away or are we going to take a legitimate stab at playing? If we're Trolling we don't accept. If we're going to try we do accept.

Because we haven't agreed to the deal as yet, but I mean I feel like it's just me here now, and that's not really what I signed up for.

TEAM are now in the same camp as the Pirates and Menagerie were, with so little "team" engagement that the game stalls at the slightest problem. If Novice hadn't had the foresight to pause the game, Lewwyn's connectivity problems would have forced another reload, in spite of Lewwyn posting a day before that someone else needed to play the turn.

Krill has apparently checked out of the game in the worst possible way: Vetoing diplomacy with the Trolls, without being prepared to engage in alternative discussion. All the pressure is now on Lewwyn to do everything (a commitment that they rightly acknowledge wasn't implied when signing up for a "democracy game"), while Krill still hangs there like a sword of Damocles on key decisions. Worse than Lewwyn playing solo.

Lewwyn should have just done what they implicitly concluded in their own posts: Ignored the unproductive "team" roadblock, made peace with the Trolls on not-great-but-ok terms, and tried to win the game. This turn the Trolls will make further commitments to war (whipping another Axe), so are going to be even more reluctant to make peace immediately.

Seriously, this game is so boring.

I have a lot of sympathy for Gillette, who are unfortunately the only team not engaged in any sort of military action, so have nothing to do during the BC era that they couldn't have planned out months ago. With turns now taking weeks to play, I'm amazed Gillette aren't also imploding. I know I've moaned about this game's glacial pace throughout, but honestly, something is badly wrong here, and it is not just organisational issues or unconventional (early warfare) play. I'm inclined to point the finger at sequential Pitboss: 5 teams with up to a full day for each to play in practice means the turns take too long to roll. Too long to keep the game alive and enjoyable. What else could it be?

Does this make pirates our new best friends?

Still, the most intriguing developments are with Gillette right now: The Pirates have stretched the truth of their war with Menagerie to the limit of truthfulness, such that Gillette seem rather too keen to throw their lot in with "the underdog", against Menagerie, with whom Gillette had apparently favourable relations for so long.

Sure, the Pirates are Gillette's logical ally - the opposite neighbor of Gillette's weakest neighbor, and at war to boot. But I doubt Menagerie's "North Korea" style diplomacy has helped - not informing Gillette about what's happening in the north while letting Gillette's fear of Axes fester. Would Menagerie be in this situation if Menagerie had spent the last 20 turns crying on Gillette's shoulder about how "those dastardly Pirates" pink-dotted Menagerie while completely ignoring diplomatic messages? I suspect Gillette would have been a lot more cautious about picking sides.

If the game lasts long enough, the repercussions will be significant: TEAM's Pirate vassal allied with TEAM's sworn enemy, Gillette - with just about any impact on global politics possible. Menagerie getting the upper hand on the Pirates, only to be later kicked from the rear by a technologically advanced Gillette.

[NobleHelium]

This game really needs to be euthanized.

[Sullla]

The game turned into a joke when 3 of the 5 team captains disappeared. Parkin, Krill, and oledavy created these teams and then left them in the lurch. Very disappointing behavior from all of them. I can understand if things come up in real life, but none of them made any attempt to put someone else in charge of their team. They just... left. Their teams have been left picking up the pieces, enthusiasm is way down, which then causes the turns to be played more slowly, and that further dampens enthusiasm, etc. I'm not sure how much longer this game is going to continue. Feels dead in all of the team forums.

I also blame Team for their flippant belligerancy throughout the game thus far. As it turns out, trolling all of the other teams isn't a recipe for running a successful game. They've done a great deal to turn a serious game into a farce.

[timski]

I accept that sequential turns are not, in themselves the root cause. However sequential turns do directly add to the organisational burden: In a fixed turn timer game everyone instinctively knows that "the turn needs to get played today." In a sequential game the turn could be up any time between now and next week. For anyone trying to ensure turns get played, such lack of regularity is an extra hassle, hence an extra risk for a disorganised team. It is notable, for example, that the reconstituted Pirates invariably start each turn by posting, "we're up, what's the plan?" Ergo Team Pirate are only sufficiently organised enough to get today's turn played, not to plan their turn out as others are playing, like the Trolls.

So with weak team organisation, especially leadership, sequential turns make Pitboss games harder for a team to play. One team's failing then gradually slows everyone else down, since the expected pace of the game slows. Organisational failings also trigger reloads (and worse, discussion over reloads), exacerbating the slow pace even further. Lack of pace especially hurts a democracy game, because it is almost impossible to keep large numbers of players engaged in a game where almost nothing happens for months.

As for captains, each has slightly different stories, so I would not wish to generalise too much:

Krill was a good leader early in the game: In the shadows somewhat, but always making sure things happened. We both fault the way in which Krill exited the game, but I would add the caveat that the game was already dying by that stage - Krill's exit was a secondary effect, not a primary cause. We can be critical of their gameplay, but TEAM's Always War style is as much a a function of TEAM as of Krill. TEAM's failing is ultimately of responsibility within and to their own team: Many of the voices that were keen on early warfare as a bit of fun subsequently abandoned the game. A "wisdom of crowds" phenomena where it is far easier to make decisions that one isn't personally responsible for.

Parkin had, whether they acknowledge it or not, a personality conflict with Mortius, so I understand why Parkin subconsciously backed out after the start: Menagerie rapidly became Mortius' game by virtue of Mortius' character. But why didn't Parkin pick the game up again when Mortius went AWOL? They were "busy" - but that generally translates into "this chore isn't fun" - and hence they've remained on the sidelines, making a niche play on diplomacy which avoids engagement with the wider game, much as we saw with (edit) WarriorKnight on C&D in the reconstituted Pirates. Parkin is far from blameless, but Menegerie's woes are as much a function of the early team dynamic as of Parkin.

Oledavy's Pirate "team" was in bad shape on turn 0. My gut reaction then - that the team was in trouble - transpired to be spot on, although I regret that I failed to communicate the nature of the trouble clearly to anyone on the team. Oledavy then proceeded to play the game as "Oledavy and their lurkers" for 20 turns, before admitting they were too busy. Since they had put no structure in place, the team promptly collapsed, unable to even get a simple scouting turn played. None of the team's veteran players seemed to want to take responsibility for what was already looking like a train-wreck of a game, so the Pirates were left with a "rag tag newbie team" to do the best of a bad job. In my view, Oledavy carries a lot of the responsibility for the way the game subsequently developed, because they failed to get to grips with their team's organisation at the outset. It was that which meant there was nothing in place when they exited, which meant the turn-playing ceased, which was the point at which the game lost momentum.

Lewwyn is now trying to sound optimistic on pace, but when Gillette are actively discussing some sort of restart, and even the Trolls are struggling to find the motivation to plan out their next moves, one has to agree with that master of the one-liners, NobleHelium.

[Sullla]

I don't think that sequential turns helped, but I don't see it as the primary cause of this game's issues. Pitboss 6 was run on sequential turns, and it was an extremely popular game (well, with 3 out of the 4 teams, anyway). This game's problems come down to a lack of leadership and organization. Three teams had no real plan in place on how to run their group, and quickly fell apart as the game progressed. The other two teams have had much better organization, and are still holding together fairly well. Running a team in a Democracy game is not an easy thing to do, and the team planning/organization side is just as important as the Civ micro side. The Apolyton game was the classic example of this, as we were able to keep a large team heavily interested in a game with an excruciatingly slow pace. Our competitors mostly collapsed or checked out as the months progressed.

So for anyone reading this in post-mortem, how do you avoid a team falling to pieces? Some simple tips:

* Have clear team roles. Have a designated turn player, a diplo guy, a micro guy, etc. This helps keep people engaged and discussion flowing. Do not ever set up a situation where "anyone can feel free to log in and play the turn." This will ensure that no one will log in and play the turn.

* Pictures, pictures, pictures. Take lots of screenshots. Write long turn reports. Most people on the team will not be logging into the game. They need to be aware of what's going on. This will help draw them into the group discussions. Short, terse, vague descriptions causes people to get bored and check out.

* Always be discussing something. Civ4 is a big game, there's always something to be thinking about. If you're in the boring early scouting phase, talk about long term strategy. What are the team tech goals? What wonders are we thinking about building? What teams do we think are going to be the biggest problem? There always should be something going on. If I see a team not doing much, I'll start writing some kind of overview post just to stir up discussion of some kind. Make sure that the game is never boring for the people on your team!

There's no one correct way to run a team, but there are a lot of methods that are inefficient. We've seen plenty of them in this game. Teams need organization to survive over a period of long months. This game is a good example of what happens when that organization is lacking. No one knows who is supposed to be doing what, and the game stagnates.

[SevenSpirits]

Yeah I'm done with this game. I've read this thread now, though none of the other teams' threads.

I think what killed this game (yes, I do consider it killed, though still twitching for an unknown length of time) was the insane amount of player interest at the start, when it looked like the ISDG might take forever to set up, or even fail. That interest was transient and left several teams with key roles unfilled. Gillette didn't have a real turnplayer. Neither, I gather, did Pirates, though they may have thought they did.

Neither Mackoti nor myself wanted the turnplayer role. It just wouldn't make sense. Aside from the fact that Mackoti is quite terse in forum posts, the main problem is it just wouldn't work as a team enterprise. It would be: good player with a bunch of lurkers. Just look at the few moments of the game where I had to sub in. I set us up with a good micro plan and pretty much took care of everything myself. If I were to contribute that much for the whole game it would just be me shooting down other people's ideas with steadily decreasing quantities of explanation. That's no fun for anyone, especially at the pace of this game.

Having people with widely varying skill levels on the same team is hard. I don't think RB has enough members to produce five teams of comparable strength, each with at least 5 functional members.

[SevenSpirits]

Regarding the TEAM kill of Gillette's scout, yeah that was a dumb scout move on our part. I remember seeing it reported and thinking "well there goes that guy, oh well." TEAM's subsequent refusal to EVER talk to us again was more of a diplomatic influence than the fairly easily-forgivable scout kill.

Giving one of the teams a plains hill start that still got both their good food resources was a mistake.