I've not logged on the forums for a while now. Too much work and RL stuff.
I was a late-comer to RB, much younger than the median player here. I always preferred the live games on Gamespy and Zulan. I spent countless hours playing on the zulan server with friends and our custom mod which had workshops that grew like cottages and other fun features. RB always felt like the equivalent of a professional chess tournament vs. playing a blitz game on chess.com (gamespy). I could never get my fellow GenZers past the barrier of talking to people in long-form on a forum, so while we were getting 5-6 playing a mod weekly for years, it never translated to much on the forum. During covid, I ended up making a decently-sized discord that still has some activity, but the death of Zulan's server has basically killed interest in the game for most everyone I played with. A lot of players joined RB through that discord!
I don't think I was ever a good player (the one pitboss I won was through pure dumb luck and should've been shutdown after that warrior walked into an empty capital), but I think my performances are not abysmal given some of the hands I had been dealt in terms of neighboring players (thrice next to Gavagai!). It always feels like the effort to get into a pitboss game and the daily commitment given a highly irregular schedule makes it difficult for me to play, and setbacks feel worse because it means sticking to a losing game for months. I tried my best the last few times to really get into the spirit of things, but work always strikes these days.
Has civ4 pitboss exhausted itself as a format? Maybe, but it is impressive how long it has lasted on these forums with a relatively small playerbase. Civ 4 is the only video-game I return to these days, despite having played it for most of my life. Between making radical changes to the game, or finding a new generation of players, to bringing back democracy games that distribute the intellectual workload, there are probably ways to revive this format. A point that stands out to me is that even Civ 3, with its age and rough gameplay, has a youtuber that actively promotes live multiplayer. For civ 4 there's our own Sullla, Quill18, and Henrik (others I forget), but really all focused on the singleplayer side.
TLDR: nostalgia
I was a late-comer to RB, much younger than the median player here. I always preferred the live games on Gamespy and Zulan. I spent countless hours playing on the zulan server with friends and our custom mod which had workshops that grew like cottages and other fun features. RB always felt like the equivalent of a professional chess tournament vs. playing a blitz game on chess.com (gamespy). I could never get my fellow GenZers past the barrier of talking to people in long-form on a forum, so while we were getting 5-6 playing a mod weekly for years, it never translated to much on the forum. During covid, I ended up making a decently-sized discord that still has some activity, but the death of Zulan's server has basically killed interest in the game for most everyone I played with. A lot of players joined RB through that discord!
I don't think I was ever a good player (the one pitboss I won was through pure dumb luck and should've been shutdown after that warrior walked into an empty capital), but I think my performances are not abysmal given some of the hands I had been dealt in terms of neighboring players (thrice next to Gavagai!). It always feels like the effort to get into a pitboss game and the daily commitment given a highly irregular schedule makes it difficult for me to play, and setbacks feel worse because it means sticking to a losing game for months. I tried my best the last few times to really get into the spirit of things, but work always strikes these days.
Has civ4 pitboss exhausted itself as a format? Maybe, but it is impressive how long it has lasted on these forums with a relatively small playerbase. Civ 4 is the only video-game I return to these days, despite having played it for most of my life. Between making radical changes to the game, or finding a new generation of players, to bringing back democracy games that distribute the intellectual workload, there are probably ways to revive this format. A point that stands out to me is that even Civ 3, with its age and rough gameplay, has a youtuber that actively promotes live multiplayer. For civ 4 there's our own Sullla, Quill18, and Henrik (others I forget), but really all focused on the singleplayer side.
TLDR: nostalgia
"I know that Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of man to command my cavalry on this expedition."
- William Tecumseh Sherman
- William Tecumseh Sherman