[NO PLAYERS] Witnessing Democracy Inaction

[NobleHelium]

I also think it would have been fine to make a post of encouragement for them to get their planning and discussion in order. It's just that the post as it was made just complained about them being slow about playing the turn.

[Commodore]

No idea what the Pirates are doing, either. Eventually if they farm the flood plain and plantation the spices, they could look at +7 fpt, but that's still less than impressive. Really if they were determined to SIP, Pacal of China or Zulu or some Agr/Wheel would have been better. It's the P-rule: Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

[T-hawk]

Hiding your research+worked tiles from Demographics is easy i.e. after ending turn you could remove the tech selected or choose something else and then choose your tech back before ending next turn. This works also for tiles worked. You can only get totally correct numbers from graphs. I'm not fan of this kind of deceiving. We could suggest banning it or accept that demographics are not very accurate way to investigate what our competitors do and potentially consider doing similar deceiving too.

Mist, did you notice this in the Trolls forum?

I'm not sure everyone realizes that quirk of sequential Pitboss. I didn't. For the sake of a level playing field, should we bring this out in the open either for banning or so that all the teams can know about and use the tactic? Or should this be Trolls' advantage for knowing and exploiting that?

[Selrahc]

I'm not sure everyone realizes that quirk of sequential Pitboss.

TEAM have definitely also talked about it.

[Mist]

I'll post this around for teams that have a dedicated C&D thread and did not discuss this possibility already.

[Sullla]

It shouldn't be posted around, it should simply be banned. This is no different from clock games in simultaneous turns: poor sportsmanship designed to screw over the other players. Changing every population point in your empire into a citizen specialist after ending turn demonstrates terrible manners. Our teams and players deserve better than that sort of trollish behavior.

[T-hawk]

I agree with Sullla, except to pitch it to the teams more diplomatically than that. Take a tone of not a heavy-handed ban, but just a consensus that everybody would rather not deal with that silliness so please don't do it. I think Mist is already taking that approach.

[timski]

A little time and motion study... Simple stats to the end of (updated) turn 3:

• TEAM: 304 min/turn average. 1215 min total (19% game time).
  
• Menagerie: 66 min/turn average. 265 min total (4% game time).
  
• Gillette: 227 min/turn average. 909 min total (14% game time).
  
• Pirate: 903 min/turn average. 3610 min total (55% game time).
  
• Troll: 129 min/turn average. 514 min total (8% game time).

(Calculated from the forum timestamp at which teams announce they have ended their turn. Restarted turns are only counted after the restart.)

Gillette had one bad day, but are otherwise similar to Menagerie and Troll, both of whom are consistently quick. TEAM have generally taken longer to play their turns, but nowhere near long enough to challenge Team Pirate.

To reiterate, I'm not terribly bothered about the pace: I'm using these figures as proxies for the degree of (dis)organisation within teams. Disorganisation is a combination of factors, from failing to discuss turns in advance, to failing to agree who is going to play the turn, to failing to report the turn has been played promptly. All teams are playing very similar games at the moment, with nothing happening that they can't have foreseen, so we shouldn't be seeing any variations due to differences in the complexity of the turn. Also note that time-zones are not obviously relevant - for example, Team Pirate reported the end of their first three turns at 15, 8 and 0 hours (UTC) - a remarkably even a distribution for a team that seem to be heavily biased towards the West Coast.

Needless to say, I remain intrigued by Team Pirate. Mostly that the team has two "leaders" with completely different styles:

• In the red corner, oledavy, who is sporadic and chaotic, prone to popping in at short notice to play the turn with scant regard for anyone else, and then not reporting on it.
  
• In the blue corner, pindicator, who won't make a move without the express agreement of the team, even if most of the team don't care about the move.

For example, oledavy plays turn 2 relatively quickly with the comment, "Yeah, np," having completely ignored the only 2 team members to make suggestions on movement - "scout SE-S" translated into "Scout E-NE". The following day pindicator picks turn 3 up and posts a screenshot of the current position, before waiting half a day for feedback on a scouting move from a largely ambivalent team. Of oledavy I find myself asking, "did you even read your thread before playing?" Of pindicator I find myself screaming, "FFS just get the scout moving!"

There's a rather high chance the Pirate will soon collapse in a heap because the left and right legs can't agree on a direction, and the rest of the body doesn't care what the legs are doing.

[timski]

Disagree that the Stone is "close". Remember, we started 2 tiles below where our capital currently is. That Stone tile is 11 tiles away from our original start, and 9 tiles away from our actual capital. Given that the average distance between nearest neighbours is probably less than 20 tiles, and knowing how powerful Stone is, I would be highly surprised if that Stone wasn't placed within equal reach of us and another civ. Thus it's likely the Stone there is probably going to be equally sought after by another civ, and at the very least it might not be an easy site for us to hold.

Say what you like about Parkin, their analysis of the Stone, and consequently map, is spot-on, however much Mortius tries to muddy the water.

Meanwhile we're on the verge of first contact. Team Troll are 2 turns from standing in Gillette's capital with their Scout, while Gillette's Warrior is 4 turns from being able to repel it. Could be some interesting early diplomacy there. Wouldn't be the first time we've seen a declaration of war solely for scouting purposes.

On the other side of the map Team Pirate's Scout is about to collide with TEAM. It is merely a question of which element of TEAM they meet first. If Pirate's Scout continues South East, they'll be greeted at the border by TEAM's Warrior, almost perfectly timed.

[timski]

Do we have an award for the most obsessive scouting of the coast?



Mortius has wasted countless moves confirming that there is water in the ocean, and now seems intent on spending another 5 Warrior turns confirming that the headland north-west of their capital is indeed a headland. This pre-occupation with water is curious given the incredibly lush land east and south of their capital, about which Team Menagerie know almost nothing. The other teams generally followed the Cottageable riverbank - the sensible thing for Financial civs.