[PB70] Charriu tries to promote the arts again

[El Grillo]

Okay understood. My understanding with the queued Worker action is that if I log in right when the turn rolls, I can manually cancel and move it before the queued action happens, so I will try to do that. I will move the Worker back into Uematsu and then play the rest of T64 identically and as instructed. I can play tonight if the reload occurs within the next 2-3 hours.

[Charriu]

And am I to assume that we reload because Bing was not able to count to 5 and therefore knew that my borders popped T65?

[Qgqqqqq]

That's not how I'd describe the situation. I would say that we're reloading because of a slight mistake by the sub led to a situation that should generally be resolved by a reload, as it's an out of game issue. The diplomatic 'solution' offered meant this wasn't delivered immediately, but we're now returning to that.

I would say in general that I think that trying to use a technical issue to achieve a positional advantage in game doesn't reflect well, especially when the other party hasn't tried to take advantage themselves.

[Charriu]

I disagree. I never asked for a reload. On the contrary I was willing to own this mistake and use it to my advantage like sacrificing a pawn.
To me it feels like a diplomatic interaction between players is overruled because one side isn't happy with the result.

[El Grillo]

T64 played, I was able to cancel the threatened Worker's action and move it back into Uematsu, and I repeated the other actions from your instructions.

[Charriu]

Bing wrote this to me:

I forgot to declare war so we're at peace and there's no turnsplit.
XD
extra turn of movement makes it not worth (I guess) and without the worker I would never have pre-emptively decced to prevent border teleport

Seriously? What is this. All this bullshit (and I'm guilty here too) and now you are fine with all of it. Why put us all through this.

[Charriu]

I'm back and played the turn. I will write down a report about the Bing-Charriu incident of the last turns tomorrow after a good night sleep. But before that I want to say thank you to El Grillo for covering my turn. Job well done I can say. Were my instructions helpful or to complicated?

[El Grillo]

The instructions were clear, and there weren't too many moving pieces. The only thing that threw me off was that the instructions had screenshots from T59 and your sandbox, but the first turn to be played was T63, so there were a few instructions that were no longer relevant in the Tin and Kondo screenshots.

[Charriu]

Yes I had to prepare those in advance and I did not expect to get more turns to play before I was gone.

[Charriu]

The Charriu-Bing incident

So here is my summary of the incident we had over the last days. It started with me waking up on my first day of vacation to this:

Bing: @El Grillo I just attacked and took the first half of turnsplit
nabbed the worker
[Insert meaningless picture of a skirmisher with a worker]
Tho IDK if this is even allowed in the rules
somehow
I don't understand them
I'll ask in my RB thread...
I don't feel hugely entitled to the worker... if I violated the turnsplit rules... but man, I hate the turnsplit rules' complexity.

Charriu: If you don't feel hugely entitled to the worker, then why did you took it. ?
You can still sign a peace treaty with me and give it back. ?
As you know I'm on vacation and my sub took over. He didn't notice that your skirmisher is there and forgot to move the worker away when he could.
Would you have moved there if my worker was gone?

Bing: Indeed not, and I'm fine with reverting mistakes

Charriu: Ok in that case you can give me a peace treaty. In instruct my sub to give you open borders after the peace. Then you can move the worker in my territory and gift it back to me.
Would that be ok?
That way we don't have to reload

Bing: I'm used to playing a lot of scrappy TBS games where stray units get killed all the time. Hence me just grabbing the worker, instead of thinking "hey this should have moved"
As for the peace.... what if I want to mess you around by invading with the skirm?

Also is gifting even enabled?

Charriu: I think we allowed it. Let me check
Yes it's allowed. So should I give my lurker instructions to do as above?

At first I was like oh shit. He's going to attack with skirms towards Uematsu, which is only defended by a warrior and will likely be razed. So you can imagine how relieved I was to see that this was just an opportunity grab by Bing and he will likely leave with his skirmisher. My solution would have meant a slight disadvantage for me (loosing worker turns), but I would have peace again and we would have avoided an annoying reload discussion. Then this came just 2 minutes later:

Bing: Are we able to combine ceasefire, open borders, worker gift.... with my skirm invading into that forest in the pic above?
I guess ceasefire can be offered and accepted this turn
open borders offered this turn
Next turn, worker moves to grass and is gifted, then war dec and skim moves to forest?

Oh great.  He actually planned to attack with the skirmisher all along. My city is toast. But I remembered that I have an axeman finishing around this time. So my hope was that I maybe can get the axeman to the city in time. So I was scrambling a response together.

Charriu: Was it your plan to mess with me all along? I have an axeman and more units on the way. So there isn't that much to mess around.

Bing: You could say that, but the plan just involves walking around with a 25 hammer unit and seeing what happens
not surprising if it has to walk away again

Yeah buddy. You can say that but I won't believe you after you said it was only an opportunity grab and now revealing that it's an actual assault.

Charriu: In that case we can just speed up the process. The most worthwhile tiles I am working with the city are the floorplains but there my units can kill your skirmisher. So should we even start this all?

Bing: You might be bluffing ?

Well he called my bluff there. Shit, shit, shit. What can I do. Oh wait. My borders will pop next turn and the worker can't be moved this turn. That could give me an extra turn for movement. Maybe he can't even declare again because of the open borders. I don't know. Let's hope for the best and role with the plan.

Charriu: But in any case I would send aboves instructions to my sub after the reload from Mjmd is discussed and decided on

Bing: MJMD is the one who told me I might've broken the rules (though I also believe in reverting mistakes generally regardless of rules)
I think he called the reload for our situation, just to conceal what's going on , out of principle.

Charriu: Ok I can't know
In that case let's do as discussed above and avoid the reload. I will give instructions to my lurker. They will.

Send you a ceasefire
You accept and send OB.
They accept
You login and gift the worker.
You can then move in to the forest.
And you will still have the first half of the turn

This is the exact moment where I was misleading Bing. My thinking was I don't have to tell him that borders pop next turn. It's easy enough to figure out, because he knew when the city was settled, because his warrior was teleported before he could move it. I did not know if he may not be able to declare war after the OB, but even then I'm his enemy in this game. It's not my responsibility to explain game mechanics to him.
Yes, this was an evil plan, taking advantage of his sportsmanship. But oh my god my city could be burned down. 
We continued.

Bing: I don't have Writing, so they have to send OB

Charriu: I have writing so you can send

Bing: oh cool

Note for myself. Bing just does not check what techs the others have.

Charriu: Ok I let my sub know about what to do
Oh I think you cannot move the worker this turn right. But that should not be an issue. You just do it next turn

Here is another issue, which is somewhat special because it's me. Because I did so many analysis of the game mechanics people may think that I'm very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the game. At the same time though I still think that as a player in a diplo game I am allowed to lie towards my fellow diplo players. These two personas clash hard here and caused an additional issue.

Bing: indeed
Apologies for the nuisance and enjoy your holiday

Charriu: Yeah my first reaction was. Great it's the first day of my vacation and the kids back home can't behave themselves
?
My lurker has done his part. I think you can go in and accept or send the OB

Bing: @El Grillo @Charriu OB is accepted

[Next turn rolled and once again in the morning]

Bing: bloody borders popped! I've asked lurkers to remove it from the skirm's tile so he can still move forward in warstate this turn..
instead of getting teleported out by OB

Charriu: Part of the plan
[Bing answered with a laughing smiley to this]

First of all for future games. It's harder to remove culture and I would not advise it. Better declare war and teleport the skirm. Then Ramk removes the skirm and adds it in at the appropriate location.

I would have to assume Bing asked for a reload at this point. He is understandably angry although he answered my message with a laughing smiley. My plan was evil I admit. But I want to point out that Bing still had options here. He could move in with his skirm and warrior, which could now attack the city at the same time. He was also allowed to keep the worker in my mind. At this point the only thing I tricked him into is delaying his skirm by 1 turn.
I have to admit that I was very angry with the lurker decision at this point. To give you some background. For as long as I was playing civilization I dreamed about playing this game against humans and having actual meaningful diplomacy interaction, the one area, where the AI truly and always was lacking. Then I found Sulllas page and game reports. I was happy to see an community engaging into diplomacy games and was happy to throw my hat into the ring. Unfortunately I quickly discovered that diplo games were shunned and rarely played. But I figured well at least playing against humans is maybe more interesting, so I gave it a try. I played 4 games before this. The first PB39 was just a noob expierence. The second PB40 more or less too. The third PB52 went quiet well. As you may very well know I also started CtH with PB52 and therefore observing the games more closely. Over these time I noticed that I find these multiplayer increasingly inferior compared to singleplayer. Yes, humans are way better at warring each other with more meaningful interaction in that regard, but at the same time the game looses so much that made it fun for me. You rarely see any of the non-war related victory conditions like Culture, Space or Diplomacy (which clearly never works with humans). In fact you rarely see any victory condition fulfilled. But it doesn't stop there. People also tend to not build that many buildings. I would guess that I could delete half the buildings of the games and a good chunk of the player base would not notice. To me these multiplayer games just turned stale and boring. It's always the same playbook of:

- Expand fast
- Build huge armies (compared to singleplayer)
- Conquer another player
- Repeat until everybody else concedes.

On top of all of that. These multiplayer games are a huge timesink compared to singleplayer. But it doesn't stop there. The meta evolved into extreme ways that amplified aboves playstyle even more. By now 'No war weariness' is a standard and with that another chunk of buildings are useless. 'No barbarians' is also more or less standard now, which makes early exploration trivial and somewhat boring. At the same time it makes expansions way to easy. You may have noticed that I tried to counter these developments in CtH to no avail. I started developing a private mod for my singleplayer experience and noticed that Civ can be fun again.

I had almost given up on multiplayer when PB67 came along. I thought finally I can play a diplo game. The one thing that may make these drags of a game worthwhile and fun. As you may have noticed I had fun with PB67. The map provided good diplo interaction and I also had some early fun diplo engagements with my neighbors.
Then PB67 game to a grinding hold, because the other players did not like the map from T20 onward. The restart dragged on and I was absolutely disappointed. Then suddenly the game actually started only to be slowed down again. I met Bing as one of my neighbors, which is the worse neighbor I could have gotten. Not because of his in-game actions but rather because he is clearly not really interested in a diplomacy game. And then this all happened and I felt that lurkers were taking even these last diplo interactions away from me. I was absolutely disillusioned. Why am I not allowed to actually play a diplo game.

Having written all this down I hope you understand my anger and frustration a little bit. The issue was now resolved by the lurkers. Bing would not get my worker, but can move freely towards my city. Then this happened.

Bing: @El Grillo I forgot to declare war so we're at peace and there's no turnsplit.
XD
extra turn of movement makes it not worth (I guess) and without the worker I would never have pre-emptively decced to prevent border teleport

So in the end Two-face flipped his coin and moved on with the game taking the outcome we would have had if we would not have reloaded. What a clown.