[SPOILERS] Yossarian blames Caledorn

[Old Harry]

The role playing stuff really turns some people off (I unsubscribed from that thread before it hit the second page). It could be that Care Bears are just running away with the game so it's not interesting - no-one was particularly interested in PB12 once it became clear that Serdoa and Noble were taking it seriously - but I think PB14 was unpopular from the start because RB users like interesting new approaches and clear explanations rather than the reams and reams of flavour and diplo that we've seen before (no matter how popular Commodore's write-ups are).

PB16 spoiler:

As the response to MikeHendi's selection of PHI in PB16 shows

As someone who participated in the last unloved pitboss (the demogame) too I think you've just been unlucky...

[YossarianLives]

It's not popular on RB because it doesn't have many RB-like qualities. That is fairly straightforward.

That makes a lot of sense.

Because I've been spending a lot of time playing and reporting this game, I have been reading much less than I normally do of other RB games. I just finally read the much-disussed tier posts in your PB 16 thread and am very honored and proud to have been mentioned and ranked as highly as I was. Thanks

2metra hasn't played much on RB, but having interacted with him a lot in the ISDG, I must say that he is a much, much better player than I am, and we should not be in the same tier. I don't know if that means I should be ranked lower or he should be ranked higher (but my biased opinion is he should be ranked higher).

Preview edit: I just really want to say thanks to you Old Harry for sticking with this game. Your posts are really insightful and I hope to improve my game based on your feedback (though I doubt I'll ever be able to find the time to play another one of these after my son is born in a couple months)

[Caledorn]

YossarianLives
What are your thoughts on diplo?

Caledorn
First of all, Maga is incredicly conniving
I really really do not want to cooperate with her, because she more or less has absolutely no interest whatsoever in helping us unless it puts herself in a spot where she is closer to the victory
Her statement that she has learned to not rely on anyone else but herself says everything
I don't know what you're thinking - you seem to be enjoying talking to her about the game
But be careful that do not fall into the trap of believing her honeyed words and theatrics when she says things like the stuff she said when she sees us as a good partner to cooperate with in the south because we are the only other team who is not short-sighted
Second, about the attack on Rome
I don't understand why we are participating in it at all
Eggs and Dinos are going to be the ones who profit
While we hurt our economy further, and capturing even one Roman city would be sheer idiocy for us
Yes, I know we are in a defensive alliance with them
but Rome has not attacked any of us yet
So if we deny participating in a pre-emptive attack we would be violating the spirit of the alliance, but not the letter
And this is one of those instances where I seriously think we should be conniving bitches and do a Parkin/Sommerswerd and stick to the letter of the alliance and not the spirit
As for Maga's suggestions that we need to bribe Rome, and that our message to Rome is hostile etc etc etc blah blah balh
That's just bullshit
But you were pretty firm when you responded to her, so I don't really think it's much to be said about it
However, I would like to add that I am in agreement with you on the concession of land part
I would not object to letting Rome have the unsettled lands between us and them if it keeps them away from us
it's only about 3 - maybe 4 - cities we're talking about, and they are definitely going to end up in a conflict, so we can snipe those cities back at a later time when our economy allows it instead
in other words, giving that concession would be beneficial to us now
but on the other hand, because of the defensive alliance we are in with Egg/Dinos we have a problem with that, as GG is certain to attack one of them even if we give this concession
and I doubt we are willing to give this concession on behalf of all three teams, unless Eggs and Dinos give us something in return for giving this concession to GG
and I further doubt Eggs and Dinos would show any form of gratitude other than hollow words if we do give GG the land

YossarianLives
Awesome, thanks for all this
Re: Maga / Asterix (I don't know if we're revealing publicly her true id), we need as many northern allies as we can get. All our war gains will come from the south, so we need the northern teams to be helping us or at least leaving us alone. I think I can keep Maga happy with us fairly easily, which is all we want
Re: Rome, you're right that the defensive pact benefits us less, but when it was still up in the air regarding where the praets might go, we made lots of commitments, I don't feel super comfortable going back on those now
Plus GG's southern city will fit very nicely in our empire. Having a good excuse to snipe that when they attack east will work out for us nicely
But we should stop there, don't need to send our army any further than that

Now, to sum things up for anyone who thinks the above chat is TL;DR:

1. I am vehemently opposed to cooperating with Maga/Asterix. I do not mind us keeping up appearances and pretending that we are cooperative if Yossarian doesn't mind playing that game for our longtime benefits. But I believe we should keep it to pretending that we are cooperating with her, without entering any real deals with her that binds us to any long term deals.

2. I do not think we should attack GG together with Eggs and Dinos at this time, and I believe we should use the letter of the law to avoid going to war with them, since GG hasn't attacked any of the three members of the alliance. However, if Yossarian believes we should join to snipe their southern city if this war becomes reality, I guess that's okay - provided Eggs and Dinos actually is successful in their attempt at crippling GG. Otherwise we would be target #1 for retaliation.

3. I do not mind conceeding the land between us and GG to "bribe" GG to stay away from us, and attack India. But if we do that I believe we should receive a compensation from both Eggs and Dinos as repayment for our land.

4. About Maga.. Most people have already figured out that Asterix=Maga - so I don't see any point of pretending we're believing her lies.

[Caledorn]

Oh, and "Runaway Civs" is an excellent name for our next city. :D

[Old Harry]

Oh, and "Runaway Civs" is an excellent name for our next city. :D

I doubt I'll ever be able to find the time to play another one of these after my son is born in a couple months

Congratulations!

[YossarianLives]

Thanks for the congrats Old Harry!

I finally chatted with Asterix in-game today. Here's a brief rundown of the chat that I sent to the 3 musketeers:

I finally chatted with Asterix today. Rome says they will be attacking soon with praets, but claims they have not settled on a target yet. According to Asterix, Rome will agree to target India if both of you + Asterix agree to a coalition against India, so you all fight together. In addition, they want land concessions from us.

What do you guys think? I would need to discuss with Caledorn, but in theory I am willing to give a favorable land agreement to Rome in exchange for them sending armies against India instead of any of our teams. Would you be willing to work with Rome and Ottomans against India?

I think that together we can hold off any attack from Rome without needing to agree to this, but this might be the cheapest way to protect ourselves from praets. I am going to try sending another email to Rome to see if I can get more information from them about what type of land concessions they want.

[WilliamLP]

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but I feel like this game has been unpopular on RB and I've been thinking about why that might be.

First, Krill is a genius but smugly criticizing the players in this game as "sub-optimal" without any specific points, when he himself doesn't even play diplo games or even BtS games, is pretty beyond the pale. But there is a general perception here that Civ ought to be more like chess and a puzzle game, where the best optimizer should win, than a game of grand strategy and mind games among humans with Civ as the battleground for it.

Also, nobody is really reporting this game from the point of view of trying to entertain or educate lurkers. Most posts are diplo-dumps which are both hard for a lurker to follow and also very boring in a vacuum. For the gold standard, contrast with Sullla's reporting for PB2. If someone were pultting in that kind of effort, people would be flocking in.

[YossarianLives]

Thanks for the input WilliamLP. I don't fault Krill at all for his post, I acknowledge that the play in this game has been sub-optimal in many instances. At the start Krill was actually posting in this game, though, and I was just wondering if there was something else behind the lack of interest. I've certainly been guilty of the diplo-dump posts, and I'll try to tone it down a bit from now on. I'm never going to be able to get up to Sulla-level entertainment value though .

So, to summarize some of the more recent diplo. I chatted with Teddy who is really skeptical of Asterix's offer, going so far as to suggest maybe Asterix = GG. Then, Asterix messaged me saying that EggHeads have confronted her with that accusation, and she will be reporting it to Plako. She seemed pretty offended and has taken her offer of cooperation with us off the table. So I chatted with Dinos right now in-game, and they say that theory is impossible because they have played with Haram (or maybe Barteq, I don't remember), before. I guess they are all from the Polish community. Lots of drama going on now unfortunately.

Regarding game issues, our economy continues to be terrible. We'll finish a couple libraries next turn, including in our capital. Then we'll turn on research and run scientists everywhere to get Currency as fast as possible. Once that comes in we'll run a bunch of wealth builds and tech priesthood / mono to take advantage of the Missionary that Orgy is sending us. Orgy bulbed Theology a couple turns back, so assuming they get AP soon, our cheap temples will definitely become worthwhile.

We'll settle "Runaway Civs" on the ice hill towards Rome next turn. I'm starting to move our units to the edge of our borders so they are in position to move against Rome if they DOW either of our allies. I know that Caledorn is questioning the worth of this strategy, but I really would feel kind of shitty if we fell flat on the commitment I've made to them already. EggHeads are building a couple galleys to try a naval invasion to raze Rome's iron city, but Dinos say that Rome has sentry chariots on hills that will give them plenty of warning against this, so there is little chance of that succeeding. Rome's power continues spiking up, but as long as they send the praets against the Dinos as we all suspect, we'll get off pretty clean, maybe even with some territorial gains at minimal cost.

Here are some pictures.



















Demos:

[Bobchillingworth]

To provide my own perspective into why this game is not particularly popular, I have found it to be essentially impenetrable and impossible to follow. Several teams are not reporting, some which do only post chats or roleplay which I have no interest in, and much of the focus is on in-game drama which I do not understand (apparently one player is an infamous cheater suspected of controlling two or three other teams? Or something?)


I wouldn't stress over it much though, as long as you're enjoying participating. It's not like being party to this game is going to attach some indelible stain on your reputation disqualifying you from future events. Well, unless you're controlling several teams at the same time

[Krill]

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but I feel like this game has been unpopular on RB and I've been thinking about why that might be.

But there is a general perception here that Civ ought to be more like chess and a puzzle game, where the best optimizer should win, than a game of grand strategy and mind games among humans with Civ as the battleground for it.

Also, nobody is really reporting this game from the point of view of trying to entertain or educate lurkers. Most posts are diplo-dumps which are both hard for a lurker to follow and also very boring in a vacuum. For the gold standard, contrast with Sullla's reporting for PB2. If someone were putting in that kind of effort, people would be flocking in.

You seem to imply that out of game diplomacy and tech trading are what makes "Grand Strategy" and "Mind Games". That's just wrong. What they do create is a metagame where game knowledge is actually a drawback because players can decide, using totally arbitrary reasoning, to dog pile a player so that they cannot win the game. And the best people to dog pile are those that have better civ skills. Regardless of how you report these games, they are just not interesting if what you want to read are games that involve micromanagement and strategic decision making. If you linked to it from CFC you'd possibly break the RB server though.

First, Krill is a genius but smugly criticizing the players in this game as "sub-optimal" without any specific points, when he himself doesn't even play diplo games or even BtS games, is pretty beyond the pale.

I am quite amazed by the audacity of this statement. If you want me to go and post spoilers from your thread in a public location, then sure I can go and give specific reasons why this game has been played out in a sub-optimal manner, but that is generally frowned upon. On top of that, it doesn't matter that I, or any other posters on this site don't play games with diplomacy or any other settings. We have played games with diplomacy, and with tech trading, and we don't anymore because we learnt that we don't enjoy those settings. It is frankly nonsensical to take the position that because we learnt what we don't enjoy, and why we don't enjoy it, that we never understood it in the first place.

And on top of that you are misrepresenting what I said: I never commented on the players. This is what I posted:

Not really, it is a game that has been played out incredibly sub-optimal fashion in places, regardless of personal opinions. That is not a generalization, that's truth.

There is a difference between saying someone is stupid, and what someone said is stupid. Like when I say your post is stupid, but you aren't.

Also I'm not a genius.