[SPOILERS] Team Orgynized: Parkin/Arki/Magno embark on a kinky adventure

[Lord Parkin]

Sorry for not answering on chat yesterday, Parkin. I did the nasties with my fuckfriend :D

[Lord Parkin]

Turn 47

Domestics

Katniss grew to size 2, and started working the Oasis. Next turn the Gold mine will be finished, and Hermione will grow to size 4.

Demographics

Care Bears whipped 1 pop. Margarita finished a tech - looks like Bronze Working from the soldier count increase. Dinosaurs, Blame Caledorn, Eagles & Condors and GG grew 1 pop each.

The #1 GNP is quite a way ahead of the pack - perhaps someone hooked up their Gold already?

Blame Caledorn founded city #3 last turn. Current count:

Care Bears - T28, T37, T42
EggHeads - T33
Blame Caledorn - T33, T46
Eagles & Condors - T36, T43
Gladiator's Glory - T38
Margarita - T38
Bowsling - T38
Dinosaurs - T39
Orgynized - T42
Cannibal Ponies - not yet

[Lord Parkin]

High time to get this unexplained muteness from Team Margarita sorted out. Sent the following PM:

Hi Maga, Asterix and Ichabod,

Is everything alright? I'm a little confused as to what's going on right now. The last time we heard from your team, we seemed to be beginning a great friendship - we had signed a NAP to T183 and were working out the details of our partnership. That was more than half a month ago, at which point you abruptly stopped responding to all messages from us. In the last two weeks we have not heard a single word from you, despite multiple attempts to make contact.

Just before you disappeared, you gave us a Skype address and suggested we get together for a chat. We shared contact details, and we sent you a couple of messages trying to work out a time to talk, but clearly that didn't work out. It appears that since then, you have revoked your contact details on Skype, which makes me very concerned that you are actively trying to avoid talking for some reason. I sincerely hope this is not as it appears.

Can you please at least let us know whether or not everything is okay? If it is, please give us a method to reliably get in contact with you. Email, Skype, PM, whatever works best - just so long as you'll actually receive and respond to our messages.

Kind regards,
Lord Parkin of Orgynized

[Lord Parkin]

Had a two sentence reply from Maga on Skype:

hi, I am just putting my kids to sleep, will be able to talk with an hour
I am very sorry, just found that my answer to your letter from a while ago was left in the draft stage

This was 28 hours ago. Clearly, the talk didn't happen... which is fine, people get busy. But no response or acknowledgment of anything on chat since then. Nothing from any of the other members of her team either.

Let's wait a few more days and see if that draft turns up. I don't want to jinx it, but I've got a bad feeling that we're being blown off right now... and I don't understand why. If this were 100 turns down the road, based on the deafening silence I'd be certain they were about to attack. But this early, it just makes no sense.

[WilliamLP]

Ugh, that is quite rude at the very least.

Pessimistic theory: someone she's working with on the game hates the idea of a near-indefinite NAP and is looking for an angle where it isn't valid because of a lack of team unity or something.

[Dp101]

Could they be rushing us?

[Lord Parkin]

Too early to be rushing, and they're not even our neighbour. Attacking us anytime soon would be an idiotic move and a guaranteed loss for them - wasted hammers on units and wasted beakers on supply lines. Which makes their apparent commitment to actively ignoring us all the more puzzling.

WilliamLP - Yeah it's a bit rude, also somewhat disrespectful of the time we've put into (attempted) correspondence. Let's see if things change in the coming week or so. I suspect you could be right about her coming into contact with someone else and changing her mind about her arrangements with us, but there's no denying she agreed to the NAP (she even brought it up in the first place). However little she or her sub communicates, if they attack us prior to T183, it's nothing more than a dirty backstab. Imagine the lunacy if everyone could just hand over to a "sub" when convenient for them to attack and claim their past agreements void. If you commit to being a sub, you commit to respecting the arrangements the previous player made.

[Lord Parkin]

Turn 48

Domestics

Finished the Gold mine and switched to work the Gold - changed growth in 3 turns to 4 turns, but the extra commerce and hammers are worth it.

Demographics

Cannibal Ponies whipped 2 pop - could they finally be finishing the settler for their second city? Guess we'll see soon.

Eagles & Condors grew 2 pop, whipped 1 pop. Dinosaurs whipped 1 pop. Bowsling and Care Bears both finished techs and grew a pop. Blame Caledorn and GG finished techs.

[Lord Parkin]

Turn 49

Domestics

Working a grassland forest instead of a mine just for 1 turn at the capital so we grow to size 5 a turn sooner. Next turn we'll begin on a Settler, which will be whipped to completion and overflow into a Granary.

Meanwhile, Katniss is growing while building a Warrior and contributing nicely to our research rate.

Incidentally, thanks to the Gold mine we'll get Pottery just in time for Granaries in both cities despite the tech detour. Figured we'll want Priesthood soon enough to enable the Oracle anyway, so why not take a shot at a religion while we have a few spare turns. Always handy to have some extra early happiness, after all. Next turn we'll see whether we're successful - right now it's still available, so fingers crossed.

By the way, "Choose Religions" is on, so any thoughts on which religion best fits with the theme of Team Orgy? I was thinking maybe Hinduism.

Demographics

Dinosaurs, Blame Caledorn, Margarita and Care Bears grew 1 pop. GG whipped 1 pop. EggHeads finished a tech.

[WilliamLP]

However little she or her sub communicates, if they attack us prior to T183, it's nothing more than a dirty backstab. Imagine the lunacy if everyone could just hand over to a "sub" when convenient for them to attack and claim their past agreements void. If you commit to being a sub, you commit to respecting the arrangements the previous player made.

It's an interesting issue, in human behaviour and quite beyond Civ 4!

I've never understood why NAPs are so sacred. It's a game, period, and it doesn't prevent you from being deceitful or even outright lying. I wonder if it would only take a few people who were willing to violate NAPs (or give some weak plausible reason) and if it would just make them unreliable for everyone. And maybe Civ would start to be viewed more as a game where some backstabbing was actually normal and expected, similar to Diplomacy perhaps.

Say someone subbed for Maga and thought "this NAP is dumb, and it's a game, and I'm trying to win, so f*** this". Would they be despised and targeted in future games? Maybe by some and not by others?

If I were to try a full diplo game, honestly I might try to throw a monkey wrench in the whole thing by telling all people in advance "I think NAPs are dumb. We can agree to a loose one but I'll break it if taking a city is clearly in my self-interest". The retort to that is that it unbalances the game because someone who doesn't start next to me would win. Or would it create ripple waves, and cause someone else to play like that? And then the metagame might evolve into something that's more like an AI diplo game of opportunism except that people can actually talk to each other? Maybe not, or maybe?