[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Coeurva]

As stated in the tech thread, I hate this game now. Not for losing to Krill, but rather because Krill has all but confirmed he's, to use his words, "trololol wrecking all he can". To the point that he gifted Regna to Savant. Also confirms that he was basically taunting us with the gold offer every turn.

I don't want to play on in such an environment. First, there was this being called "cutthroat" by someone due to an early attack (who later turned out to have attacked another player even earlier...) and now this. Bizarrely, Savant is the outlier. I have no illusions that he's not working in-game to "get his revenge" (or rather: get back into a strong position) but in his case, I get the feeling that the response was "you bastards, I'll pay you back double " and not "you bastards, I'll pay you back double".

Yeah, there's a difference to me. What's happening in-game, as a board-game situation, is incredibly engaging (if stressful and taxing, but engaging). But city-gifting out of spite or hatred? Apparently, the failure to play Civ correctly makes me a horrible person. Alright. Or perhaps I'm a horrible person and this inability reflects on that. I'm not being facetious about that, it could well be true.

I'm aware that nobody will believe this, but it's not about losing cities or the war. I've been expecting to lose Emerald Isle since we've captured it (if to Savant, eventually).

The IT post (in which I explained to Krill why we attacked him, spoilered for all other players) was probably a huge mistake because it breaks diplo (but so did Krill first) -- but as I said, I don't care. Sub me out, ban me from future games, problem solved. I'm not willing to play on unless this all changes, and I don't think it will. Nor do I want to demand it changes. Respect can never be demanded.

I'll make a post requesting a sub. Tomorrow.

[Coeurva]

Or possibly not. This is the other players' game as well. And even when it's not about the in-game losses, leaving the game now is ultimately capitulation. Not what I want, either.

The issue is: If the attack succeeds, Krill hates me (for wrecking his game); if it doesn't, Krill hates me worse (for incompetently wrecking his game). Maybe I'm misunderstanding this and Krill's wording is an exaggeration, but gifting cities to a third party essentially shows how it is, and I've been suspecting it for a while anyway.

I don't know what I'm playing for: "to win"? Against people who apparently hate me (say, for incompetence)? They'll hate me anyway; at most I should get their begrudging respect, execution delayed; more likely, I lose the game to fulfill their satisfaction. A mismoved galleon becomes a mismoved life: you can be judged -- celebrated, taunted, despised -- by synecdoche. I do believe that this holds truth. (As a child I would most often play goalkeeper.) Yet there is such cruelty in this. Within the game, I want to take all of Savant's cities and I derided his Shock spears early on; on the forums, I enjoy his posts and think he's someone I could learn a lot from. What I really want to learn for myself is to unite competition and compassion (I think myself lacking in both fields). Either without the other is out of balance. But I don't think I've succeeded here, this game has really been a mess on both accounts.

Coming back to Krill, though, I don't understand the argument of having wrecked his game. Using my fantastic skills of deduction, Krill attacking our cities with nearly-unkillable C2 galleons / CR3 swords to raze everything forever is either

a) A winning move,
b) A losing move.

If a), what's the difference? In that case, Krill could always have done precisely what he's doing now; in fact, should have done it the minute he had those galleons ready, and owning Mandrake only gives him more of an opportunity to do it: one more canal to fork two important mainland cities (Maudlin/Chehalis), one more port to whip. Attacking first changes nothing. It's like claiming Krill shouldn't have declared war on us T124 to avoid drawing our "ire".

If b), why not make a winning move instead?

If no moves are winning anymore, why get angry about us?

It's insane how late I'm staying up to put these thoughts; but if I say that "it's telling", you'd best be inclined not to believe me, because I'm just looking for an excuse to leave a lost game, etc. -- And because I don't even trust myself on this, I have to play on. And because I owe it to Krill to wreck me.

It's that simple.

You went a while without ramblings, so here they are.

[Coeurva]

I feel terrible about this, and Joey is obviously right that I was fucking stupid. Although he shouldn't have read the spoiler in the first place -- and I explicitly said in boldface that "the following is massive spoilers about our reasoning" even within the spoiler.

By the way, Krill didn't mean to liberate the city to Savant. Doesn't remove the "taunting" peace offers (but maybe he earnestly thinks those are sensible payment for 20t of holding Mandrake or whatever), nor him describing his campaign in public as "trololo wrecking everything I can", but I guess I'm misunderstanding him.

I don't even know at this point whether I should play on or not, but I'm thinking not to. Now I've managed to have three players hate me for stupidity (I'm including myself). It's only going to get worse.

[Coeurva]

The decision is final. I'm not playing on, unless either nobody can sub, or anyone playing wants the chance to whoop my ass at Civ some more, in case they feel that's the best way to set things right.

Actions must have consequences. Mistakes and violations of rules, especially. In-game as well as out-of-game. That's the end of that. I've made a huge mistake, I must stand by it. I've done so in-game, now I must do it out-of-game. Whatever reasoning led me to believe Krill hated me out-of-game and drove me to want to explain myself has led to this actually happening, with some others now hating me as well; and while appropriate in that light that we've had a Dionysian presence in this thread, I rather wish that particular connection had not worked out. I don't think this has been particularly cathartic. There are really no words for it other than "fucking stupid". So, especially sorry here, Bacchus, for essentially wasting your time.

Particularly I'm not asking for anyone to convince me otherwise on any of these points, that would be even worse.

I'll go back to silently reading RB, I think it's appropriate -- and with hindsight, it should be quite apparent from the beginning that obviously I'd wreck things by not knowing when to shut up

I hope someone can salvage this.

[OT4E]

Hey Couerva. As one of your thread subscribers I want to ask you not to retire. I thing you are making good game so far with a lot of smart well-thought decisions I really liked.

Take in account that dudes like Krill cant simply enjoy game and accept loses. They always set their pride as a bet and try to turn every good move of their opponent into personal attack. Krill is not going to win this game and he will never confirm he has done something wrong by himself. He will blame circumstances and those who played better than him for being biased and trying to break his game intentionally.

Of course if you are playing vs humans you must be ready that they react emotionally intending to do as much harm to you as they can in response to any aggression. That is, losers hate winners and seek for revenge instead of trying to do their best to repair the situation. If people hate you it only confirmes that you are on the right path.

What can you do is just to stop taking game situation or stupid comments addressed to you personal. This is hard to do if you are not having fun from making moves, domestic plannings and winning skirmishes. But this is what true no diplo civ game consists of. 

Man, go ahead and make everyone hate you! I trust in you!

[Bacchus]

Don't retire, nothing bad has actually happened. I mean, nobody cares that much, and most people who do will read this thread and understand that any mistakes you made were completely in good faith.

Krill is unhinged and he went out of line first. The proper response would have been just to shrug, the guy is pissed and needs to empty himself. The community will point out to him that he is out of line. You misstepped, but no-one will hold your explanatory response against you, as you clearly didn't know how to behave in this situation, and the situation itself is abnormal (not of your doing).

In the meantime, your read of the in-game situation was completely spot on and that's awesome. I didn't think Krill was this far gone, as we really haven't done enough to damage his game. But OT4E is right, Krill needs someone to blame and even our small action was enough to give him that someone. I mean, look at the mass trireme whips which happened before we've actually DONE anything, as well as that first wardec to check for peace. He was already fishing for an excuse to throw the game. "A-ha, you are gonna attack me and ruin my game, you stupid idiots, well I'll show you what for, can't do much else now". So well done on identifying this.

Let's play it out, fuck him up a bit, have some fun. We still have a very distant chance of pulling something out of GJ and dtay self-destruct against each other.

I would say there is one legitimate reason to leave -- if you feel too emotionally invested and that the game is becoming too big a part of your life. You posted enough that this may well be the case. But don't leave RB, you are a cool guy (or girl) and I want to see more of you around.

[Bacchus]

Oh, also, how to deal with a maniac is a pretty interesting strategic issue in itself, so I'm looking forward to that. If we are lucky, we can redirect his madness somehow. I mean, isn't this what we always do when we play against an AI, except here it's an actually competent, if not less mad AI.

[Bacchus]

Also, GJ didn't call you fucking stupid, he just said that the post is a big violation of CTON.

[Coeurva]

Well hey OT4E, thanks for the kind support, and seeing as you pioneered the school of "attack the world!" in PB30 I'm glad you think some of my decisions smart but the poor ones have to stand as well.

I don't agree with what you wrote about Krill. I don't want to discuss his character, either. His moves in the game make perfect sense, I'd obviously try to attack and raze his cities if he threatened me with a couple of galleons, so that he couldn't do it anymore. Nice tactics, too: he holds his easy-to-reinforce center while concentrating on a wide outflanking maneuver with his companion cavalry invincible galleons. My mistake was underestimating how much Combat 2 sways the odds against Combat 1 galleons due to unfamiliarity with the Civ combat system, since C1 isn't usually very effective on land -- had we used our second GG to make three C3 galleons, Krill would perhaps not get so frisky...

For why I'm hating this game right now, it's really all about how he had to highlight in the tech thread that he was "trolling" or "wrecking" us, and him repeating that absurd peace offer. The game feels very different if you're looking at a difficult problem to be solved (how do I keep these galleons from razing our coastal cities?) or a trial-of-character by fire (how do I defend my honour and character against Krill by moving around galleons?). It's no longer a game at that point, or even a Civ duel; it's a duel in the sense that killed Pushkin. It won't come close to killing me but there's all the bad blood nonetheless.

Instead of deescalating the situation, I've done the opposite and deliberately breached the rules of the game. It's time to take responsibility. I really don't want to fish for pity or a "moral victory", which is an actual loser's move, even more when I've obviously made a losing move in the game, and the problem is that it's almost inevitable in situations like these and that the two sides of in-game and out-of-game are intertwined here. I don't even trust myself that I could evade this, that essentially this is not just that. That's why I don't want people to comment on this, but I appreciate it now that it's happened. From Savant, too. Sometimes, apparently, I can read people well.

And man, if you're fine, we could always play a duel some time, and see who's more hateful at putting swords on ships

[Old Harry]

Krill doesn't hate you, he's just playing the game. Next game you play he could be your ally and have your back the whole way. This game he's been as angry and frustrated with you as you have with him - that's the price of cton, but it's just a game. (See his reaction in pb18 when we cease-fired with dtay instead of peace-treatying so that we could protect him if dtay pressed him, but krill thought we'd hung him out to dry for more hilarious misunderstanding...)

As for the diplo post - that was a mistake, but please ignore joey's response. His tech thread Tourette's has been getting better recently, but that post is a major bit of a relapse and you can find similar hugely unjustified attacks on players in most of his previous games if you need to reassure yourself that it isn't your fault. edit: well there I go making assumptions - I thought the initial swearing and subsequent all caps indicated meltdown and didn't read, but actually the all caps was meant to be helpful.