[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] PB41 Lurker Thread: RNG Roulette with a Shotgun

[darrelljs]

Has there ever been a successful dogpile in a non-diplo game?

Darrell

[Krill]

If you ignore PB18 and dtay?

[Krill]

TBS, they did try. They failed. I don't see how you can expect them to carry on trying when it can see a material loss to those players though.

Everyone dogpiling Rusten would take material losses, but his combined loss would hopefully be greater. That's the route to victory and if Cairo's making a plan that's the way he's got to think. (It's also assuming a 'There's no prize for 2nd place' mentality I guess).

You can't expect people to keep playing on when it's too time consuming and they're not having fun though. I'm not trying to cast any stones at Comm/Pin etc here, I threw in the towel in a similar situation in PB38(arguably I threw it in even earlier), just that it's reasonable for Cairo to expect people to try hurt Rusten if the game continues. Just as it would have been reasonable for Xenu/OH to expect that of me in PB38.

But according to Commodore, they have dogpiled, and now Com/Pin are about to start losing cities, so I don't think that bolded bit is true any more. I agree with what you are saying, but I think what Cairo is expecting is that other people do the heavy lifting against Rusten while he continues to build an economic base by attacking BGN. Cairo is essentially expecting/requiring other people to buy him turns to be able to fight Rusten. but if the cost of that purchase is that it is harmful to Com/Pin's or Gavs chance of victory, then they have no reason to play kingmaker.

All that to say: Cairo should have moved earlier, he missed his window of opportunity where he could attack without interference, and now Rusten can reply to whatever move he makes and still continue to fight against Commodore to take his stuff.

[Hitru]

There's been lot of discussion that we should have gone after Nauf hard when he attacked us. We considered it, but we did not have mfg to produce enough units. Before we got to nat we really could not produce that big land army while also controlling seas. And as many of you correctly pointed out our research was completely depending on caste rep for a long time, so we could not afford to go to full war mode early on. Instead we had created huge advantage in sea by early astro and wanted to use that against BGN, cut him away from islands and steal all of them (which does not require that many ground units). That land was eventually key to our victory and we lost really few units in process (We had also luck, I happened to flawlessly win sword vs xbow behind walls battle ).

We newer felt that we were badly behind and were pretty confortable with our position for the entire game. But I admit that Comm was looking pretty scary once he had fixed economy and was growing like weed.

All in all, I really enjoyed this game and SPI with Mids is pleasant to play.

[Rusten]

Yes. While I see that people disagree with some of our choices this game I can say outright that trying to invade naufragar was 100% a losing play. He was more or less the #1 power ( completely without a navy) with an incredibly compact empire. There's no way we could've made any progress. We were forced to look elsewhere/make other enemies.

So any denier's of Rusten's victory?

He didnt win the popular vote.

That's putting it mildly...

[Mr. Cairo]

TBS, they did try. They failed. I don't see how you can expect them to carry on trying when it can see a material loss to those players though.

Everyone dogpiling Rusten would take material losses, but his combined loss would hopefully be greater. That's the route to victory and if Cairo's making a plan that's the way he's got to think. (It's also assuming a 'There's no prize for 2nd place' mentality I guess).

You can't expect people to keep playing on when it's too time consuming and they're not having fun though. I'm not trying to cast any stones at Comm/Pin etc here, I threw in the towel in a similar situation in PB38(arguably I threw it in even earlier), just that it's reasonable for Cairo to expect people to try hurt Rusten if the game continues. Just as it would have been reasonable for Xenu/OH to expect that of me in PB38.

But according to Commodore, they have dogpiled, and now Com/Pin are about to start losing cities, so I don't think that bolded bit is true any more. I agree with what you are saying, but I think what Cairo is expecting is that other people do the heavy lifting against Rusten while he continues to build an economic base by attacking BGN. Cairo is essentially expecting/requiring other people to buy him turns to be able to fight Rusten. but if the cost of that purchase is that it is harmful to Com/Pin's or Gavs chance of victory, then they have no reason to play kingmaker.

All that to say: Cairo should have moved earlier, he missed his window of opportunity where he could attack without interference, and now Rusten can reply to whatever move he makes and still continue to fight against Commodore to take his stuff.

I was certainly hoping for other players to do that heavy lifting as you described, since that is what would be best for me. What I expect is that other players do what's best for them, and if what's best for them is to turtle then that's what they should do. And that in all likelihood would have resulted in Rusten winning, even if I did have the time to attack BGN. But what ended up happening is that Commodore/Pindicator gave up once they were losing the fight against Rusten. I don't begrudge them that, I've been in their position before (although not in an actual conflict with the #1). What I suppose I'm trying to say is that it appears to me that the second place civ in these games has too much influence over whether the game continues. If #2 decides to give up, well, that pretty much ends it for every other civ, no matter their own level of commitment or interest in continuing the game. What TBS said about there being no prize for second place comes into play here as well, since in my experience the only civs that really care about winning at this point are the #1 and #2 civs. After reading the threads (well, the most recent posts anyway) I think I can be confident in saying that me and Gav may not have thought we had much of chance of winning, but the game was interesting enough to want to keep playing and at least try (also Rusten at no point appeared to think that a concession was forthcoming and appeared to be having a lot of fun). Whereas for Commodore and Pin, once that chance of victory appeared to slip out of their fingers, they no longer felt the game was interesting enough to keep going. I don't blame them for that, I just wish it didn't have to result in the end of the game for everyone.

As for missing my window of opportunity, well, I'll discuss that in my thread.

[pindicator]

@Rusten & Hitru - Don't read too much into the criticisms you read in the lurker thread. They're not working with the complete information, just what people post, and they have different information than you had in the game. But more than that, the criticizing and debating is part of the entertainment of the lurker experience.

After reading through the lurker thread I feel stronger that Commodore and I had a window to win in after our GA, but unfortunately we made the wrong move then and fell behind Rusten. I also feel we fixated on DZland too much and should have reassessed more when we saw Gav attack. Pindore Norte was not worth the effort in hindsight and was just a net drag on the economy in the long run. I think it's a sin that we never got to Mercantilism with an empire of our size, and as I've said before our GP plan was weak. But we were a bit too locked in our plan the whole game and didn't successfully reassess when situations changed.

There was criticism of Rusten not having a plan, but my impression was more that he kept his plan flexible, and that's something that I've been thinking about more in my last couple of games. I feel like I lock in to a plan too eagerly and don't change the plan when the situations in game change. I actually think he did a good job of exploiting his options. Commodore and I perhaps put too much stock in the diplomacy aspect and didn't think quite so many people were as checked out of the game as they were.

Did nobody else find it ironic that Naufrager was so upset at Rusten settling on his home continent, but that he did the exact same thing to us by settling on our h? We really wanted to take/burn those cities for the longest time. It just was never prudent for us to do so in context of our larger goals. But they definitely earned him some negative diplo points.


Time to get into the individual threads.


@Cairo - I don't think you have a realistic assessment of the situation in the game. We were spent and Rusten just had to land on our shores to be able to start burning/taking our core. 20 turns tops. Were you going to suddenly get a manufacturing base in that time?

[Mr. Cairo]

@Cairo - I don't think you have a realistic assessment of the situation in the game.  We were spent and Rusten just had to land on our shores to be able to start burning/taking our core.  20 turns tops.  Were you going to suddenly get a manufacturing base in that time?

Well, there's only so much I can tell from the info in-game, from my perspective it looked like Rusten had beaten you on the sea, but I didn't know he was threatening your core. Once that had started then I would have realized it was over. As for that manufacturing base, well, in a perfect world I would have taken it from BGN

[Krill]

I was certainly hoping for other players to do that heavy lifting as you described, since that is what would be best for me. What I expect is that other players do what's best for them, and if what's best for them is to turtle then that's what they should do. And that in all likelihood would have resulted in Rusten winning, even if I did have the time to attack BGN. But what ended up happening is that Commodore/Pindicator gave up once they were losing the fight against Rusten. I don't begrudge them that, I've been in their position before (although not in an actual conflict with the #1). What I suppose I'm trying to say is that it appears to me that the second place civ in these games has too much influence over whether the game continues. If #2 decides to give up, well, that pretty much ends it for every other civ, no matter their own level of commitment or interest in continuing the game. What TBS said about there being no prize for second place comes into play here as well, since in my experience the only civs that really care about winning at this point are the #1 and #2 civs. After reading the threads (well, the most recent posts anyway) I think I can be confident in saying that me and Gav may not have thought we had much of chance of winning, but the game was interesting enough to want to keep playing and at least try (also Rusten at no point appeared to think that a concession was forthcoming and appeared to be having a lot of fun). Whereas for Commodore and Pin, once that chance of victory appeared to slip out of their fingers, they no longer felt the game was interesting enough to keep going. I don't blame them for that, I just wish it didn't have to result in the end of the game for everyone.

As for missing my window of opportunity, well, I'll discuss that in my thread.

I think you are exactly right: If there is a clear #1 and #2, then this is what happens. I'd just have to ask though: what is interesting in carrying on the game? Because all the decisions everyone has made has been in the context of trying to win. What makes it worth carrying on, in terms of what is interesting? Not being sarcastic here, I'm hopeful of your reply.

[pindicator]

I think it might have been better to PM the parties concerning the request to concede. Posting on all the threads like that was a bit transparent