[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[novice]

Um, so, I don't suppose you'd fancy a game of werewolf instead?

[Krill]

Between Plako's golden age and the ridiculous known tech bonuses. I'm feeling silly for getting suckered into playing yet another game where drastic changes were made to late-game tech costs/bonuses, but nobody ever actually, you know, tested them. So it goes. I would have stopped teching completely (why do it when you're at such a disadvantage in doing so) and committed to units, but Mackoti keeps pressing down the tech tree on 0% bonuses, so I've had little choice but to follow him.

Are you venting here, or do you want to actually discuss this topic? If you're just venting, then cool, discuss it another time.

[scooter]

Well I wasn't planning on really updating further, but I feel the need to here.

First off, I sold 2 cities to Commodore for 2k gold. Honestly, I'm completely shocked he took the deal. Mackoti was going to capture them, so I figured I would offer it to him. Commodore has several airships over my islands, and he can absolutely see Mackoti is about to attack me - anyone paying a bit of attention could.

So I figured he would look at that and have a decision to make. I assumed he would reject it, gets units in place, then re-offers it a turn or turn and a half later when he could get units into those city to defend them. My offer was shooting high, I was fully expecting a counter-offer. Basically, I was trying to buy myself a war ally. NOPE. He just up and accepted. Oooookay. Then mackoti immediately walked in and captured them, meaning Commodore lit 2k gold on fire. Of course, now he'll be mad at me probably. I'm still completely baffled that he would accept that as he watched with airships as Mackoti MADE PEACE with Azza and then mass upgraded a ton of his boats that were right next to me and positioned them in such a way as to move onto obvious staging tiles. AI diplo is just hilarious stuff. Anyway, mack offered this:



I closed the window, and after a lot of thinking re-offered it. At this point I'm just trusting Mackoti to honor the 40T NAP rather than immediately stab me and press for more. He did honor our past "NAP" type things, so who knows. If I'm being forced to play turns, the only enjoyable goal I've got at the moment is to finish off my southern theater conquest, so if he's going to let me do that, I will. More pressingly though:



If Commodore burns that city - the Confucian shrine - I will immediately quit and not login to this game again. At this point I'm willing to keep playing until a replacement steps forward, but if that burns I'm no longer willing. Nearly everything I've done over the last 30T - including re-offering this deal to mackoti just now - has been predicated on the immense value of that shrine. Ironically, it was a big part of why invading south rather than north was the route I went. I was screwed out of it by Lewwyn, and if it burns now, I'm just done. How's that for popcorn?

[scooter]

Clarifying comment - when I offered that to Commodore, the peace deal with Mackoti was still forced for almost 2 turns. That's why I offered it in advance of that - it was guaranteed to be under my control the following turn too, so he didn't need to accept it right away. He had the time to transfer units over to the island and then take the deal. Mackoti didn't exactly have that many units on the island, but he had enough to capture cities defended by 0 units for sure.

[scooter]

Well a few things just happened. Mackoti logged in and accepted the deal, then his and Plakos' thread pinged, then the lurker thread blew up. So now that he accepted that deal, I feel I owe a brief explanation on a few things.

1) I'm pretty sure I'm going to offer a refund to Commodore when I get a chance to play my turn. I didn't intend or expect for him to actually accept it right away. I still don't feel tons of sympathy because it was ludicrous of him to accept cities like that with 0 units of his ready to defend them, but now he's looking for someone to take it out on, and I'm the most logical person. Why keep the gold that was received not in the way I intended. Looking at this whole lining up the shrine city thing - it's not really his fault that Lewwyn did what he did, and it seems foolish to take it out on him. Mackoti was going to take those cities from me anyway. At least in this case he was forced to capture them rather than get them intact via peace deal. I was thinking it over, and I realized there was a strong chance he was just going to capture it and then try to extort the 2k back from me. Maybe I can bypass the whole thing by refunding him.

Now, if he still burns it anyway after getting his money back, I may seriously just walk away instantly. But I've been thinking that in the back of my head for a week now as I watched him walk his units down there - didn't think he'd actually stoop so low as to do it.

2) On paper it's a lot I gave to mackoti for peace, so I feel I owe an explanation there too. Those cities were all going to fall anyway, plain and simple. Only if I didn't take that deal, there's a chance he could have pressed the mainland. He could not have captured and held the mainland due to the presence of my railroads, but I probably would have been forced to let Lewwyn live a little longer just to save my cities. So I have two options - I could "fight" and lose every one of those cities AND be forced to abandon my plans AND lose units, or I could just give him the cities that were dead anyway and he'll leave me alone for 40T, letting me do whatever the heck I want. Pretty much a no-brainer for me, especially since I'm just trying to have some semblance of fun now, and finishing off my southern conquests is about the only thing left that sounds enjoyable. Now I get to do that.

So in the end, I made the decision that I felt did the most to "better" my civ (or salvage if you want to use that word). This was a change of heart from my "fight to the death" initial reaction to seeing Mackoti start to invade, and it's definitely not in Plako's best interest. However, I think all I need to worry about is what's best for my civ, and thus the decision to take that deal Mackoti offered.

[Krill]

Out of interest, what are you going to give mack in 10 turns when he comes back? As facetious as that sounds, I think it's a fair question of what future plans would look like, even if the retort is "war to the death".

[NobleHelium]

Clearly it's time for the game to end in ignominy and masochism.

[Bobchillingworth]

Clearly it's time for the game to end in ignominy and masochism.

[scooter]

I'm calmer. I'm not going to rage quit regardless of what Commodore does. And I am going to offer him his refund.

However, if he burns or does anything to harm the value of that shrine city... I have a plan.

[Ceiliazul]

I have a plan.

Happy to hear that! ...whats the plan??