Now that I’ve worked my way through all the spoiler threads, I'm going to start out with my thoughts on the game as a whole – how it was setup and how it played out. Hopefully this gets the discussion going.
First off, congratulations to Team #2 on their victory!
I’ve already written a little in the my thread and in the turn tracking thread, but it bears repetition. What you three did here was a little short of incredible. Good game 
I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for making this game possible, and as fun as it turned out to be. A big thank you to my team and our ded-lurkers. WK, Shoot, this game wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without the two of you. Scooter, and Ilios while you were around, thanks ded-lurking us and offering advice. Dazed, thanks for getting France off on the right foot. To everyone who played in this game, thanks for helping to make it my most enjoyable MP game on RB to date A special thank you to Thoth and Nabaxo for taking over the shattered Team #4 and soldiering on to the end 
Thanks to Sunrise for being a reliable host, and thanks to Sulla and Speaker for introducing the game concept. Most importantly, perhaps, thanks for building our map Plako, which leads us straight into:
[SIZE="4"]The Map[/SIZE]
Of the games I have played on RB, this has by far been my favorite map to play on. The less lush terrain made for interesting city placements, and lake and peak placement allowed for fascinating tactical situations. The map was well-balanced, and well thought out. Resources were on the whole, well-distributed. Every map I play on from here on all will be measured up to this one. Plako
That being said, the map was not without a few flaws, that I will briefly highlight here:
1. Too Defensive – This was harped on a lot in the Team #1 sub-forum, and I concur wholeheartedly. The map was just a tad too defensive in nature for the game I personally envisioned, and made any sort of offensive difficult. There were just too many choke points. For example, me and Sulla had a hard time getting at each other because of the water-dominated geography of our shared border. The only land connections were in the far north and south, very distant from our respective cores. If the middle ismus between us had not been blocked by peaks, it would have completely changed the dynamics of warfare between us.
2. No Happy At Flood Plains Start– Near my start, there were only silks and whales for happy. While not a big deal as the game progressed and we opened up trade routes between our civilizations, it was really annoying early on when trying to grow.
3. Few Copies of Some Luxury/Health Resources – Another copy of Dyes, Gold, Gems, and Bananas for each team would have been really nice. As things stood, when we started facing health and happiness issues later in the game, we had to make tough choices on who got what. While not a bad design decision, if that’s what the design team had in mind, I didn’t personally find it very fun. Having to keep a score of MPs around just to keep my major cities happy was not all that enjoyable.
[SIZE="4"]The Setup[/SIZE]
Especially with the benefit of hindsight, I feel like we tried to get this game started too fast, when we really needed more time for organized teams to coalesce. Expecting coherent teams to just form out of single signups was a lofty hope, and we all saw the results of it with Team #4s spectacular implosion. There was a lot of indignation in the Team #1 thread over the missed turns towards the beginning of the game. I agree it was really frustrating (even though I was not playing at the time) However, given the slap-dash nature of how teams we formed - which had players who had never worked together before playing in an unfamiliar setting - I don’t know what else was to be expected other than missed turns and drama. Team #1 had an enormous advantage here, having known and played with each other before. Before joining this game, I didn’t even know WK. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s slightly miraculous our team worked together as well as we did. Even then, we were never really as coordinated as I wanted us to be. With WK in Australia and Shoot lacking the time me and WK had to devote to the game, we could rarely play the turns together or cooperate on the level of Speaker, Sulla and Sunrise. We never played a turn simultaneously over voice chat until the final battle. While things did eventually stabilize, this came after one team had already shot their long-term potential.
Another consequence of the rushed setup is we never really discussed a ban list or fully thought out the settings. I’ve already harped on a few things in my thread, which I’ll repeat here. First off, letting Team #1 go first in the turn order basically conceded the GA to them, though none of us really realized it at the time. For future medieval start games, there needs to a bid system for place in the turn order, or the GA needs to be disbanded. Blockades had an enormous impact on this game, they really should have been banned in the setup. Likewise, the Cristo Redentor is extremely powerful in the team setting, it, and probably the Kremlin as well, needed to be banned. Most importantly, if I ever play in an AW teamer again, I'm going to ask that Culture and Space be banned. I’m not saying this to disparage Team #2’s victory at all, it wasn't banned and was a perfectly legitimate victory. The bottomline is that both of these are just far too easy to attain in a team setting, and put the other teams in the situation of a prisoner’s dilemma, which is entertaining to watch but not fun to play. I prefer my AW games bloodier than this one turned out to be. Even had we stopped the culture victory, the defensive nature of this map combined with the Spaceship victory not being banned would probably have turned the late game into a Space Race buildfest between us and Team #1. At least with culture, you give up tech to achieve your aim. Going for a space race victory, you can effectively defend as you launch your spaceship. In the event we stopped the culture victory, I was planning on asking Team #1 to agree to ban a space victory. Seeing that Team #1 had no intetion of giving up going for a Space victory, I’m glad the game ended when it did.
Also, while I know any form of communication was banned in the game setup, I came to really wish we had a banter thread as the game went on. Not being able to communicate with your rivals removes much of the human element from these games, and not getting to trash talk your opponents made the game a little less enjoyable for me.
At any rate, I’m really interested in doing another one of these. However, if we do, I would like to spend enough time in the setup process to make sure we catch all the potential things like those I have mentioned, that come to define the game later on.
A few notes on the lurker thread, as it’s far too extensive for me to comment on everything:
First off, you guys, at least for the first fifty pages or so, are the most doomy gloomy people I have ever met. I swear almost every post was something about Team #1’s inevitable victory, how everyone else just wasn’t good enough, or how this game was doomed to fail. It was a little frustrating to read actually, but got a lot more interesting, especially after Sulla came back to the game.
The lurker debate after ssmagus’s major spoiler post, and then later on over what to tell Sulla was absolutely fascinating. I do think it might be time to re-evaluate the lurker code of conduct and what is and is not permissible. Since I’ve come to RB, things have moved towards being a lot more relaxed, and encouraging more lurker involvement in games. Personally, I would have favored telling Sulla he made an error in his test. Correcting a mechanics question like that is completely acceptable, even if it does have enormous impact on the metagame. If Team #1 had just put a question mark at the end of a sentence regarding whether the CV was possible or not, then it would have been permissible to tell them it was from the current code of conduct - at least as I understand it. The entire game hinging on an article of punctuation...oye.
It was really refreshing to see all the people rooting for us behind the scenes – sorry we couldn’t deliver in the end. I was amazed so many people responded to my suggestion of wagering on the number of dead units. Congrats to Waterbat on winning with his guess!
At the risk of starting a cavalcade of criticism on myself, I have one more thing to say that’s heavy on my mind after reading the lurker thread: lay off Speaker and Sulla. Pitboss #2 was a long time ago. I’m not saying he and Speaker didn’t deserve some of the shit thrown their way (no offense to you guys, but legitimately there were times when I was frustrated with one or both of you). Moderating the UN thread was over the line. Then Thoth went over the line with personal attacks. Fussing at me when I logged in during your turn and then consistently logging in while we were playing for the rest of the game was, a tad hypocritical, and I’ll leave it at that. That being said, there was a lot of undeserved bile towards Team #1 in the lurker thread. If players take potshots at one another, that’s different. You don’t have the complete picture, and you’re invested in your game, it's expected that you'll make some posts in the passion of the moment. Sniping at a player from the lurker thread is just poor taste.
At any rate, it was a really fun game Thanks again to everyone who made it possible. I'm currently working on writing up my thoughts on how each team played, should be getting them up during the course of the next few days.
First off, congratulations to Team #2 on their victory!
I’ve already written a little in the my thread and in the turn tracking thread, but it bears repetition. What you three did here was a little short of incredible. Good game I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for making this game possible, and as fun as it turned out to be. A big thank you to my team and our ded-lurkers. WK, Shoot, this game wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without the two of you. Scooter, and Ilios while you were around, thanks ded-lurking us and offering advice. Dazed, thanks for getting France off on the right foot. To everyone who played in this game, thanks for helping to make it my most enjoyable MP game on RB to date
A special thank you to Thoth and Nabaxo for taking over the shattered Team #4 and soldiering on to the end Thanks to Sunrise for being a reliable host, and thanks to Sulla and Speaker for introducing the game concept. Most importantly, perhaps, thanks for building our map Plako, which leads us straight into:[SIZE="4"]The Map[/SIZE]
Of the games I have played on RB, this has by far been my favorite map to play on. The less lush terrain made for interesting city placements, and lake and peak placement allowed for fascinating tactical situations. The map was well-balanced, and well thought out. Resources were on the whole, well-distributed. Every map I play on from here on all will be measured up to this one. Plako
That being said, the map was not without a few flaws, that I will briefly highlight here:
1. Too Defensive – This was harped on a lot in the Team #1 sub-forum, and I concur wholeheartedly. The map was just a tad too defensive in nature for the game I personally envisioned, and made any sort of offensive difficult. There were just too many choke points. For example, me and Sulla had a hard time getting at each other because of the water-dominated geography of our shared border. The only land connections were in the far north and south, very distant from our respective cores. If the middle ismus between us had not been blocked by peaks, it would have completely changed the dynamics of warfare between us.
2. No Happy At Flood Plains Start– Near my start, there were only silks and whales for happy. While not a big deal as the game progressed and we opened up trade routes between our civilizations, it was really annoying early on when trying to grow.
3. Few Copies of Some Luxury/Health Resources – Another copy of Dyes, Gold, Gems, and Bananas for each team would have been really nice. As things stood, when we started facing health and happiness issues later in the game, we had to make tough choices on who got what. While not a bad design decision, if that’s what the design team had in mind, I didn’t personally find it very fun. Having to keep a score of MPs around just to keep my major cities happy was not all that enjoyable.
[SIZE="4"]The Setup[/SIZE]
Especially with the benefit of hindsight, I feel like we tried to get this game started too fast, when we really needed more time for organized teams to coalesce. Expecting coherent teams to just form out of single signups was a lofty hope, and we all saw the results of it with Team #4s spectacular implosion. There was a lot of indignation in the Team #1 thread over the missed turns towards the beginning of the game. I agree it was really frustrating (even though I was not playing at the time) However, given the slap-dash nature of how teams we formed - which had players who had never worked together before playing in an unfamiliar setting - I don’t know what else was to be expected other than missed turns and drama. Team #1 had an enormous advantage here, having known and played with each other before. Before joining this game, I didn’t even know WK. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s slightly miraculous our team worked together as well as we did. Even then, we were never really as coordinated as I wanted us to be. With WK in Australia and Shoot lacking the time me and WK had to devote to the game, we could rarely play the turns together or cooperate on the level of Speaker, Sulla and Sunrise. We never played a turn simultaneously over voice chat until the final battle. While things did eventually stabilize, this came after one team had already shot their long-term potential.
Another consequence of the rushed setup is we never really discussed a ban list or fully thought out the settings. I’ve already harped on a few things in my thread, which I’ll repeat here. First off, letting Team #1 go first in the turn order basically conceded the GA to them, though none of us really realized it at the time. For future medieval start games, there needs to a bid system for place in the turn order, or the GA needs to be disbanded. Blockades had an enormous impact on this game, they really should have been banned in the setup. Likewise, the Cristo Redentor is extremely powerful in the team setting, it, and probably the Kremlin as well, needed to be banned. Most importantly, if I ever play in an AW teamer again, I'm going to ask that Culture and Space be banned. I’m not saying this to disparage Team #2’s victory at all, it wasn't banned and was a perfectly legitimate victory. The bottomline is that both of these are just far too easy to attain in a team setting, and put the other teams in the situation of a prisoner’s dilemma, which is entertaining to watch but not fun to play. I prefer my AW games bloodier than this one turned out to be. Even had we stopped the culture victory, the defensive nature of this map combined with the Spaceship victory not being banned would probably have turned the late game into a Space Race buildfest between us and Team #1. At least with culture, you give up tech to achieve your aim. Going for a space race victory, you can effectively defend as you launch your spaceship. In the event we stopped the culture victory, I was planning on asking Team #1 to agree to ban a space victory. Seeing that Team #1 had no intetion of giving up going for a Space victory, I’m glad the game ended when it did.
Also, while I know any form of communication was banned in the game setup, I came to really wish we had a banter thread as the game went on. Not being able to communicate with your rivals removes much of the human element from these games, and not getting to trash talk your opponents made the game a little less enjoyable for me.
At any rate, I’m really interested in doing another one of these. However, if we do, I would like to spend enough time in the setup process to make sure we catch all the potential things like those I have mentioned, that come to define the game later on.
A few notes on the lurker thread, as it’s far too extensive for me to comment on everything:
First off, you guys, at least for the first fifty pages or so, are the most doomy gloomy people I have ever met. I swear almost every post was something about Team #1’s inevitable victory, how everyone else just wasn’t good enough, or how this game was doomed to fail. It was a little frustrating to read actually, but got a lot more interesting, especially after Sulla came back to the game.
The lurker debate after ssmagus’s major spoiler post, and then later on over what to tell Sulla was absolutely fascinating. I do think it might be time to re-evaluate the lurker code of conduct and what is and is not permissible. Since I’ve come to RB, things have moved towards being a lot more relaxed, and encouraging more lurker involvement in games. Personally, I would have favored telling Sulla he made an error in his test. Correcting a mechanics question like that is completely acceptable, even if it does have enormous impact on the metagame. If Team #1 had just put a question mark at the end of a sentence regarding whether the CV was possible or not, then it would have been permissible to tell them it was from the current code of conduct - at least as I understand it. The entire game hinging on an article of punctuation...oye.
It was really refreshing to see all the people rooting for us behind the scenes – sorry we couldn’t deliver in the end. I was amazed so many people responded to my suggestion of wagering on the number of dead units. Congrats to Waterbat on winning with his guess!
At the risk of starting a cavalcade of criticism on myself, I have one more thing to say that’s heavy on my mind after reading the lurker thread: lay off Speaker and Sulla. Pitboss #2 was a long time ago. I’m not saying he and Speaker didn’t deserve some of the shit thrown their way (no offense to you guys, but legitimately there were times when I was frustrated with one or both of you). Moderating the UN thread was over the line. Then Thoth went over the line with personal attacks. Fussing at me when I logged in during your turn and then consistently logging in while we were playing for the rest of the game was, a tad hypocritical, and I’ll leave it at that. That being said, there was a lot of undeserved bile towards Team #1 in the lurker thread. If players take potshots at one another, that’s different. You don’t have the complete picture, and you’re invested in your game, it's expected that you'll make some posts in the passion of the moment. Sniping at a player from the lurker thread is just poor taste.
At any rate, it was a really fun game
Thanks again to everyone who made it possible. I'm currently working on writing up my thoughts on how each team played, should be getting them up during the course of the next few days.
but our original estimate of 100 turns was almost dead on. Also we originally thought that all 3 cities had to be on the same civ, so things got even better when we realized that was not the case.
