[SPOILERs] PBEM 19 Lurker Thread (No players!)

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks Gaspar.

I've read all the threads now. Here are some things I want to say to the other players:

GES: I enjoyed working with you, and I'm sorry you felt betrayed by the galleon sale. We just draw the line at slightly different places. To me, deals with third parties are unrestricted by such an agreement except where explicitly stated, or if they're intentionally trying to damage the other.

Commodore: You're fun to chat with, and I thought you were a friend, though apparently you saw us as an enemy. It seems that seeing us so antagonistically prevented you from from realizing how much advantage you could have taken of our generosity. Something I'd work on for the future.

MNG: Your lack of communication, unwillingness to sign a NAP, and convenient location combined to make you our target. Sorry! I appreciate that you tried to fight us and deny us as much advantage as possible - that's how I'd hope someone who's been attacked to behave. However I think your methods of denial went over the RB line of good sportsmanship. Examples of this are your offer of all your income to Yuris, and sending your workers to Commodore. (I'd say that instead, you should have deleted your workers and spend all your gold on unit upgrades. Or you could have tried to bribe the other players to help you, of course.) It also seems that you tried to give Rheims to Commodore. That would not only have been terrible sportsmanship, but against rules you specifically and emphatically agreed to. Therefore I hope I'm wrong about this (and I hope yuris is wrong that you tried to give him 98gpt on purpose - a "misclick" does seem quite implausible to me though, and I hope I'm wrong that you were trying to give your workers to Commodore).

Yuris/Maestro: I wish we'd met you first and allied with you. You were totally honest and reliable. Unfortunately we'd already committed to working closely with GES, and it's pretty much impossible to make such close deals with two players and not have them come into conflict. Hence we made deals with you, but there was not much fundamentally underlying generosity and friendship, at least from our end. I don't think I ever tried to screw you, I did always offer what I thought were even deals (generally after offering an unfair deal first though, knowing how much you'd try to negotiate it down). Overall I still feel like you profited more from the total deals we made, than we did. Your unwillingness to ever do anything that put us ahead in the balance from our perspective did contribute to the non-closeness of our civs' relationships.

[Ranamar]

Looking through this thread, partly because it's shortest.

I still stand by RL7 winning the game, though there's a pretty clear difference between Seven playing the turns, Lewwyn playing the turns and Ranamar playing the turns. No offense to those guys, Seven's just a really good player.

I certainly don't take any offense... Seven tells me he made mistakes, but I didn't really notice it, for the most part. Sure, we're always more aware of our own mistakes, but I felt like my turns were a lot more fumbling than the others'.

Also illustrative as to why I don't think GLH is broken if you add in the metagame, MNG had a nice little start but became a global pariah and fell into a distant 3rd. Nonetheless, I think the map has done what I had hoped and created conflict from all sides.

By the time we finally researched Corporation, it was only something like 30-60 commerce, and that was with two people's land. (Admittedly, that was after everyone had gone mercantilism on us...) That seems like hardly the terrifying monster everyone seems to want to make it out to be. It's a helpful boost, though, especially on a map like this where 80% of cities were going to be coastal.

[yuris125]

I read through Seven's thread and this thread so far, and I have to comment on a couple of points

I think I played pretty well in this game, and it's nice to hear that from other people. I should add though that our team got some extraordinary luck in this game:

<...>
* Yuris deciding to declare war on GES.

I think I explained why I chose to do so in my thread. By that time, I was already behind (because we played poorly approximately between completion of the Oracle and the point of your aggressive plant), trying to come up with a way to overcome the disadvantage, and every failed gamble only increased the gap. At that point, I could either

a) Attack you
b) Attack GES
c) Do not attack anyone

Option c was by far the worst, it didn't give us any chance to catch up. Option a meant that we had to go to war against the military leader, with fast-moving and boosted Galleons, before our defences would be ready. So signing a NAP with you and attacking GES was the best option. I agree it helped you a lot, but I think if the attack succeeded, I would've been at least contending the victory

Overall I still feel like you profited more from the total deals we made, than we did. Your unwillingness to ever do anything that put us ahead in the balance from our perspective did contribute to the non-closeness of our civs' relationships.

What about no-compete for TGLib, do you rqate TGLib and MoM equal? In any case, I'm sorry if you felt we were unwilling to make concessions; I have to say, that aggressive plant of yours soured our relations a lot, there was no deal we could agree to which would be beneficial for you. The funny thing is, we didn't lie: if you told us "look, we have a Settler in your land and will plant a city, can we do it without screwing you over?", we would've conceded the spot, next to the spices. You got a Settler ready for an aggressive plant - congratulations, well played. But the rice spot was so bad for us, it was doomed to cause tensions

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game, and think I learned a lot. Well played all, and congratulations RL7! Now to read the other threads

[SevenSpirits]

What about no-compete for TGLib, do you rqate TGLib and MoM equal?

No, but I think that without the deal we could have gotten both.

[yuris125]

No, but I think that without the deal we could have gotten both.

You were the one who offered the deal though

[SevenSpirits]

You were the one who offered the deal though

I know, I'm not blaming you for that. Nor for the fact that we settled a city at you.

[NobleHelium]

Why did you offer the deal then, Seven?

[SevenSpirits]

Why did you offer the deal then, Seven?

I think this has been discussed a lot in our thread, but basically we didn't expect him to choose MoM as his non-competed-for wonder.

[yuris125]

I think this has been discussed a lot in our thread, but basically we didn't expect him to choose MoM as his non-competed-for wonder.

Hehe, you have to blame Maestro for it. I undervalued MoM a lot before this game, mostly because in SP AI always builds it before I start to consider it

By the way, your read on me was always spot on. I wouldn't want to play poker with you!