PBEM12 Postgame Thread

[Sullla]

Guys, I'm moving this into the archived forums since the game is over. Wanted to give you a week or so to discuss the postgame stuff before moving. You are still welcome to continue posting, of course.

[Gaspar]

I had this lengthy and insightful wrap-up planned, but I pretty much said whatever I needed to say in our thread, and Kyan really should get the privilege of writing the game's history as the winner.

My bottom line on our play - the two big mistakes we made were signing the NAP and then not beelining the economic techs fast enough. I've said before I think we expanded well and I think the empire management was pretty decent. There were other smaller mistakes - AP was a waste of a GEng, should have just popped a GA. I don't think it was until the last 5-10 turns or so when I realized just how fast the game was moving - there really was no time to save anything for.

All in all, Kyan deserved to win, and the rest of us made too many mistakes to take advantage of any he made.

[Kyan]

Hmm, the more i sit and try to write up a deeper analysis, the more i think it's both unnecessary and unwanted. I'll do a brief summary:

GE: i know it's been said a few dozen times, but this game was probably just a step too far mate. Hopefully, you can take the lesson forward that civ is such a snowballing game- get chopping and get foresting. That should put you in good stead. However, on the plus side, i actually found diplo with you to be easy and enjoyable.

Malakai: Two games together already? For some reason mate, you decided to stop expanding. In a MP situation, even with the crazy maintenance here, you just have to bite the bullet and do it. Your GNP was impressive all game though and you've definitely improved from PBEM4.

Whosit: You got screwed by that early attack from GE, but then i'm not sure what you were doing pink dotting that lake anyhow? Oh well, we all make errors and you certainly seem to have done the best you could from that point.

Nakor/Gaspar: You guys are confusing! After each chat, i'd come away thinking what a nice chap and now that i've read your thread, you were apparently thinking how insincere i was being! Fun times. Total fail diplomacy on my part as i was actually trying to be genuine. However, i can totally understand why you wouldn't want to deal with me being EXP India in forested paradise.

You guys played a good game and expanded well, but i think perhaps you did so a bit fast for your own good. Damned hard to manage expansion rate on this nutty map though so it's hard to draw much from that. Overall, well played and i'd like to play with you guys again- preferably not on the other side of an alliance though!

Tredje- I'm not really sure what you did here mate, you started really strong, but then seemed to have just given up? This is evident from your thread as the posting regularity gets less and less. You managed your economy well. Only mistake i think was underestimating how much i could achieve during a NAP and not attacking me with cataphracts instead. Also, you *could* have got liberalism but unintentionally delayed allowing me to beat you by 1 turn. Yeah, that was unfortunate. I thoroughly enjoyed our chats although the game forced us to not ever be 'friends'. Really well played mate.

Thanks everyone for the game and thanks Ruff for making the map. Sullla, cheers for moving the thread.

[Kyan]

I had this lengthy and insightful wrap-up planned, but I pretty much said whatever I needed to say in our thread, and Kyan really should get the privilege of writing the game's history as the winner.
.

Please feel free mate, your thread was definitely an enlightening read! Hopefully, i'll take things from that in regards to diplo. I don't think anyone but us two read this forum anymore so i gave up on the 'history' before even starting.

[Sandover]

I'm still here, for whatever that's worth.

[Lewwyn]

I'm still here, for whatever that's worth.

I followed all the threads throughout so these wrap ups are interesting. No pressure to write anything though. The game is over after all.

[Gaspar]

Hmm, the more i sit and try to write up a deeper analysis, the more i think it's both unnecessary and unwanted. I'll do a brief summary:

Yeah, this is pretty much what I figured myself.

Nakor/Gaspar: You guys are confusing! After each chat, i'd come away thinking what a nice chap and now that i've read your thread, you were apparently thinking how insincere i was being! Fun times. Total fail diplomacy on my part as i was actually trying to be genuine. However, i can totally understand why you wouldn't want to deal with me being EXP India in forested paradise.

Eh - I think you couldn't have done anything short of sending us legal tender that would have changed much. I actually rather liked you in most of the diplo, so much so that I found myself divulging too much. We knew from turn 1 you were likely to win, so as long as we felt we could win, it didn't make sense to team up. I think its telling that Civs you were friendly with were basically out of the running. You are quite good at diplo.

You guys played a good game and expanded well, but i think perhaps you did so a bit fast for your own good. Damned hard to manage expansion rate on this nutty map though so it's hard to draw much from that. Overall, well played and i'd like to play with you guys again- preferably not on the other side of an alliance though!

I dunno - I actually think this worked out better than expected. At some point we realized if we tried to keep up on improved tiles before new settlements, we'd have no chance. Everything just took so long to improve before Hagia Sophia. I really think if we had used a GA a little sooner and prioritized Education and Banking from the start, instead of wasting time on military techs, we'd have been a lot closer to tech parity. Still would have been behind in production, of course, but I think we'd have been only a couple, three techs behind instead of the better part of an era. The maintenance spooked us out, no question, but its actually amazing how quickly it cleared up. I really think the duel setting was far worse for the competitive environment than the forests, its what made impeccable city tile micro so imperative, and hence each turn so monotonous.

Let me say it again, as well, for all the Kyan-bashing that went on in our thread, it was mostly frustration at the game, and you made a more convenient target as we couldn't declare war on Ruff.

Tredje- I'm not really sure what you did here mate, you started really strong, but then seemed to have just given up? This is evident from your thread as the posting regularity gets less and less.

Not about us, per se, but this is pretty much what happened, I think. Its certainly what happened to us. You just get to a point where you're MM'ing tiles for 18 cities and feeling like you're making progress and you check the tech trading screen and you see that the guy you have to take out to win is one tech away from Machine Guns or whatever, and you're just like this is way too much work to finish 2nd at best.

I still haven't read the other threads, I suspect I will in 6 months or so when I'm far enough removed to have some nostalgia for the game, so you can look forward to maybe some thread necro then.

I don't mean to pile on Ruff here, but I think if this game should accomplish anything its to be a cautionary tale for future mapmakers - your priority in making a map should be to make a fun game for the players, not a weird science experiment for yourself. An experiment can work out (I think the PBEM6 set-up, for example, was pretty well executed) but its just as likely to piss the people spending a year of their life playing the game off (see this game, PBEM10.) So always create a map thread.

[Sullla]

Nakor/Gaspar: You guys are confusing! After each chat, i'd come away thinking what a nice chap and now that i've read your thread, you were apparently thinking how insincere i was being! Fun times. Total fail diplomacy on my part as i was actually trying to be genuine. However, i can totally understand why you wouldn't want to deal with me being EXP India in forested paradise.

Heh, well for what it's worth, Speaker and I felt the same way about Nakor when we were in a similar position in our game. Either Nakor is really good about metagaming, or he's darned stubborn and creates his own enemies. Take your pick.

[RefSteel]

Thanks to all of you for the game - I still haven't caught up on the non-Indian threads (virtually no time for online stuff lately) but it was lots of fun while it was going on ... even though I played an extremely minimal role (especially later on). I have to agree about the map. My first reaction when I saw our start was, "You have GOT to be kidding me!" I think if we'd been sure at the time that all the starts were identical (Kyan suggested early on that we might each have been given a start that was perfect for our individual leader+civ, though early C&D would have proven otherwise) it might have been worthwhile for Kyan or me to post in the IT thread suggesting a new start with a different map. It might not have looked right for someone else to suggest it, but if Expansive India posts, "Hey guys, want to maybe give this a miss in favor of a map with fewer forests on it?" I'm sure others would have agreed and made the game more interesting overall.

("Duel" size had a massive impact too, particularly for England. I dunno when you guys realized it, but it didn't even occur to me until Kyan started planning our defense against Redcoats that no one would be able to draft more than one unit per turn, empire-wide.)

[Nakor]

I'm still reading.

Kyan, almost all chats with you, Gaspar managed. And you almost had us convinced to join the dark side... Good job there, but there was just to little to gain for us.

But I'm glad to hear that during the game you thought we were "nice chaps". We thought the same of you, it just wasn't meant to happen in this game. Also good to see that earlier opinions about people can change.