PB9 Post-game Thread

[2metraninja]

I dont remember offering Commodore to attack you, dont know where you got that idea from. I offered Cornflakes and Jowi to attack you with me. Every time I mentioned Commodore it was linked with the first dogpile on Cornflakes, where I got Commodore to attack Cornflakes together with me and later you joined too.

I was even told a way to go around the rule of "cant specify how much turns after you want the attack to happen", so I could had planned things with Cornflakes so he knows in advance which date I plan to attack you and he can prepare, but then I thought it will not be nice to be told what is considered illegal and I still to find a workaround way to do it.

[Bigger]

as for the other stuff, probably I just misread your tone, due to English not being your first language, im sorry for getting defensive. I don't think you handed me the game in any way.. I don't think anyone except for Cornflakes could have brought me down, tbh... but I do have weaknesses and made mistakes, I'm aware of that .

As for helping you win the game, I think you miss the fact that without me bringing Commodore to attack Cornflakes and send our armies to die just to give you a chance to bring Cornflakes down, you had no chance to conquer the ex-Azza almost empty cities which made you the new superpower. I am not a fortuneteller, but I like geopolitics and for me this was the necessary evil to stop Cornflakes running away with the game. Do not take is as some self-denial great deed of feast, I was doing it mainly for myself, not much to help you. I had plan to try to bring you down too, but alas, there was this unfortunate illegal offer I made to Cf, and we missed the opportunity somewhat. Then the others did not saw my appeal to attack you as something important and they passed on this. I was giving the game on a silver plate to Cornflakes and he refused :D (OK, I was not :kingmaking", I already had a plan to bring Commodore later to attack together Cf, of course it was not from some sudden philanthropist incentive.

yes of course, but that was 4 months and 100 turns ago :P
I think w/ this map everything anyone did affected his neighbors even more than with most maps. I liked that very much, there's was a lot of diplomacy and geopolitical thoughts, even for a non-diplo game. It was fun. I just meant at the end when you were trying to organize the dogpile. me and cornflakes both had more than 2x the power of the other 3 of you combined, and probably close to that MFG edge as well. combine that with the SPI trait that allowed me to switch to police state, theocracy, etc. at a moments notice, I just don't think you could have done anything w/o cornflakes help.

now if you, cornflakes, and jowy ever manage to all hit me at once, thats a different story . thats one reason I was racing for tanks and bombers and trying to avoid conflict hehe.

[Jowy]

I said in my spoiler thread that I would join in a dogpile against Bigger. It just never happened, which is why I was surprised that people were conceding already.

Hehe, but I offered you to declare war to Bigger when I attacked him and even offered you one of his cities, plus techs - good military techs and some money I think. This is how a dogpile is made - one jumps and the others follow. The one to jump first is of course the most fuсked up of the dogpilers, as he is just right on top of the dogpile one. I dont know how much louder or clearer I could have announce it that it was a call to dogpile Bigger :D

I know, I know you said you were afraid of Cornflakes wanting to surprise attack you . But in the big geopolitic game, which you call meta-game, this is what you do when things get serious - you open up yourself from the other sides and take the risk to be reaped from behind just so you can pose bigger threat to the runaway. I did exactly this and out of a sudden, I got attacked in the back. Not from 1, but from 2 nations LOL!

Yeah, if I knew Bigger was that much ahead I would have been fine with a desperation play. It just looked like to me that CF was up there with Bigger in power and he was happy going for secondary targets like Krill and me. It looked like to me that there were two super powers who neither were ready to attack the other yet, and if I were to attack one, I'd just get eaten. Better wait until they go at each other, then help take down whichever one is winning.

[2metraninja]

now if you, cornflakes, and jowy ever manage to all hit me at once, thats a different story .

But of course this was what I was trying to organize. I thought it was clear I even jumped first in the breach with the hope the others will see I am serious and you lose cities, we fight, Great Generals are born and they will get the courage to jump at you. Alas, they did not.

[Bigger]

I said in my spoiler thread that I would join in a dogpile against Bigger. It just never happened, which is why I was surprised that people were conceding already.

Hehe, but I offered you to declare war to Bigger when I attacked him and even offered you one of his cities, plus techs - good military techs and some money I think. This is how a dogpile is made - one jumps and the others follow. The one to jump first is of course the most fuсked up of the dogpilers, as he is just right on top of the dogpile one. I dont know how much louder or clearer I could have announce it that it was a call to dogpile Bigger :D

I know, I know you said you were afraid of Cornflakes wanting to surprise attack you . But in the big geopolitic game, which you call meta-game, this is what you do when things get serious - you open up yourself from the other sides and take the risk to be reaped from behind just so you can pose bigger threat to the runaway. I did exactly this and out of a sudden, I got attacked in the back. Not from 1, but from 2 nations LOL!

Yeah, if I knew Bigger was that much ahead I would have been fine with a desperation play. It just looked like to me that CF was up there with Bigger in power and he was happy going for secondary targets like Krill and me. It looked like to me that there were two super powers who neither were ready to attack the other yet, and if I were to attack one, I'd just get eaten. Better wait until they go at each other, then help take down whichever is winning.

yeah thats the other thing.. I think only cornflakes could tell how far ahead of him I was pulling. It was the only one that had graphs on me near the end, I think? he was always slightly ahead of me in power, and not far behind in MFG, but my economy/GNP had been blowing him away the past 20-25 turns or so.

of course I did trade commodore electricity, so he probably could have gathered I was close to tanks as well

[Bigger]

now if you, cornflakes, and jowy ever manage to all hit me at once, thats a different story .

But of course this was what I was trying to organize. I thought it was clear I even jumped first in the breach with the hope the others will see I am serious and you lose cities, we fight, Great Generals are born and they will get the courage to jump at you. Alas, they did not.

yes, I think you did the right thing. It was cornflakes fault the dogpile didn't happen, not yours *or* Jowy's. also illustrates why it is difficult to organize a dogpile in a non-diplo game. The reason you were able to pull me in on the 3v1 on cornflakes is because you and commodore were already at war and it was fairly obvious I would make some easy gains.

[Jowy]

I had graphs on everyone. Gotta admit I only paid attention to Power.

[2metraninja]

yeah thats the other thing.. I think only cornflakes could tell how far ahead of him I was pulling. It was the only one that had graphs on me near the end, I think? he was always slightly ahead of me in power, and not far behind in MFG, but my economy/GNP had been blowing him away the past 20-25 turns or so.

of course I did trade commodore electricity, so he probably could have gathered I was close to tanks as well

I will mention experience again, but I give it to my experience that I knew what will happen and who is the next sure candidate for dogppile ever since AT got smashed. Thats like 30+ turns ago. I dont need graphs to know who will become monster and untouchable very soon. I was runaway nation way too many times to know what are the symptoms I was intentionally trading only with Cornflakes, and I was bombarding him with offers to agree to attack you together with me since 20+ turns ago. I was not even considering Jowi, as he had not serious army back then. Unfortunately it became clear the deal I was proposing to Cf was illegal, and I had to wait 15 turns before I can ask Cf to attack you with me again. But in this time I was preparing. I was saving money, I traded my techs to Commodore for cheap, just to be able to get money to drive me to MGs and to be able to upgrade serious army. I was putting few hammers in different type of units each turn, so I could whip non-stop once I declare you a war, I was building forts to move my fleet, etc, etc preparations, so yes, I knew I will have to attack you.

Nice chatting with you guys, and good game. Weird, but good

[Krill]

Oh, so they are rare to occur as to begin with? IMO this will even more narrow the chance of having successful dog pile?

And you are right that it is not 100% well defined what is considered a dogpile in Civ.

How to phrase it. Warfare is the method by which players that have invested in an unbalanced manner are punished for mistakes, such as over expanding, or researching only economic techs, etc. Basically, players have to invest hammers, food and beakers (as well as civics, population levels and culture) in maintaining a defence that is effective against opponents.

Dog piles are a method of overcoming that defence, when one player has invested in a strong enough defence to defend against at least 1 opponent (and often more) by having superior tech edge and/or more units.

Now the question I have to ask, is why is that a good thing? If a player is "better" than another, then shouldn't that player have more tech, more units and more cities? So if a player is going to be dog piled if they are better than everyone else in the game, what can, or should, that player do?

In CIV terms, there isn't really a straight forward answer, because of diplomacy and tech trading. If tech trading is enabled, the opponents can often trade techs between themselves to effectively increase their beaker output, so they can invest more heavily in weaker fields to keep up with the stronger player. If it isn't, and/or diplomacy is allowed, then it is possible to coordinate an attack to increase the amount of hammers the stronger player has to invest into units to defend. Neither of these are used on RB in the majority of games.

Dog piles are both a positive and negative metagame mechanic. On a positive measure, the threat of being attacked from two or more flanks does cause a runaway player to invest more heavily in defending themselves via unit builds, potentially more defensive research choices and dot maps, and this slow downs the rate at which they can snowball to victory. These are things that players can do to limit the potential risk of a dog pile, and slow down potential snowballs from becoming unstoppable.

In a negative manner though, they are a potential death sentence. To put it simply, if everyone in a game decides to dog pile one person, that person is basically out of the game, but the loss isn't due to anything they have or haven't done: it devolves into a loss because of perceived strength imbalance. This generally occurs when out of game communication is permitted. EDIT: If a player will be attacked by multiple players for making an effective strategic move, where is the incentive to make a good strategic move? It instead becomes best to actually play inefficiently, at a level similar to your opponents

On RB we've come to the conclusion that we don't need out of game communication, which enables much of the negatives of unanswerable dog piles, to gain the positives. By playing AI (or AW CTON) diplomacy, we have a constant threat of warfare on any turn, as there are no NAPs. There isn't a risk of a coordinated attack from multiple players, but there is always a risk of an opportunistic attack that can deal damage, and from more than one direction. This causes players to defend properly (more akin to a ladder game than anything else), investing in military units and techs, rather than spamming settlers all over the map whilst under an NAP, which then turns into a dog pile once the NAP runs out.

tl;dr playing with no diplomacy means that we don't need coordinated attacks to stop snowballs from occuring.

[Commodore]

For example: Cornflakes' dogpile brought him back to the pack, but not out of the game entirely.