Postgame Thread

[Commodore]

Hey all, here's to an excellent game, well played all and congratulations on the win, Ranamar. Maybe with this conflict behind us you can finally free your people from the oppressive kaleidoscope of horror you've been inflicting upon them.

I'm sure all have more thoughts later but for now I just wanted to post player thoughts and some self-recriminations. No matter what else it was a heck of a fun (and fast) game to play, which I really appreciated.

My own game was very disappointing in some ways, although I'm overall glad of my performance. I did well, I think, in settling my first and second cities timed to instantly pop borders into holy cities, and the couple of early flood plain cottages I put down massively helped boost my early research rate. I hear a lot of disparagement for Darius and I certainly think there are better leaders out there, but this was the perfect map for him...and I stagnated at 3 cities for the longest time, almost completely wasting his advantages. Cheap lighthouses + Financial coast screams REX all over, and I did so belatedly. This led to my two next-door neighbors pink dotting me when I was running a catch-up farmer's gambit, and so I stayed behind the ball until my short victorious war against MNG in the hub.

In the mid-game, I bear a huge black mark for not realizing how extremely powerful Mali could be with their astronomy beeline and circumnavigation. My belated catch-up war in France didn't net me nearly the land I needed to compete with the land-engorged Mali and the frankly better-led Egypt. Really after that point it was all over, and I should have swapped to Mass Media and diplomatic shenanigans far sooner than I did.

Mr. Nice Guy, I have to say you were a lot of fun to play with/against. I think you did an excellent job in turning your early trait advantages into a fast start, but after the hub war you seemed to lack direction. I never did care to much about the GLH in the continental setup we had here, but sadly, in the end I think we were just to close to work together well.

GES/Luddite, you guys did an excellent job abusing Spiritual and turning your fertile river valleys into an impressive GNP lead, capping off with a Golden Age that had everyone else not Seven Spirits in a panic. Then, not knowing what was going on in your head, it seemed like you just assumed victory and stopped worrying about it.

The aggressive pink dotting of the landbridge, combined with the threatening of my gold, probably biased me against you even when it would have been better to turn against Seven. Unfortunately, the impression we got on the western end of the war was that you guys were joined at the hip, and apparently you trusted Seven more than anyone else for no good reason. As a result, our cooperation came probably 20 turns too late to make a difference.

Ranamar/Seven Spirits. Okay, this is the set I have the hardest time being objective about. Ranamar, from the entirely too few chats we had I have come away with nothing but good impressions, I would have liked to have worked with you this game for more than the final UN race. Unfortunately, even more than Darrell with Krill in 17, your empire was largely taken over by one the best and most ruthless players on the website.

Seven, first off all, nothing at all personal against you. I enjoyed talking with you in chat and I entirely understand the ruthlessness you showed. My very first chat with you I had the eerie "kill it with fire before he speaks" impression, and I should have followed my gut, so a lot of the frustration you hear when I refer to you is towards myself, I knew you were a manipulator (excellent diplomat, in other words) who would be able to wrap his neighbors around his fingers. This was nominally at first a newbie game, but obviously a game with MNG and GES isn't in that category anymore. You do need to stop denying it, like I believe Kyan has...you're one of the best players on the forums, and have entirely outclassed every field you've entered by several orders of magnitude.

Unfortunately, the wisdom you showed in going navy on this map, the well-planned and executed campaigns against MNG and then the rest of the world, are overshadowed by the knee-jerk bastardy with privateers and the like. Hidden nationality units offer up fun shenanigans, but Pocket Beetle never signed NAPs and then killed his rivals. NAP means non-aggression pact, and honestly I considered ours void the second you opportunistically sniped the caravel. Luddite was 100% right to attack over the oil platform too, and I'm sure it stung Yuri that he felt (miscommunication, apparently) you threatened banned blockades over his swapping to mercantilism. I sensed it would be foolish to ever trust you, and I'll call anyone else who plays with you a fool if they trust you to follow anything but the most explicit letter of the agreement they have signed.

Finally, Yuri, I'm sorry I was precluded by my deal with Ranamar for voting for you in the election. Your determination to play for the win after most would have given up entirely is heartening. I don't know the specifics of why you fell behind in the mid-game, but I'm certain you're a better player now than when you started, and it has been a real pleasure to be your ally in this game, more or less from beginning to end.

[Ranamar]

Finally, Yuri, I'm sorry I was precluded by my deal with Ranamar for voting for you in the election. Your determination to play for the win after most would have given up entirely is heartening. I don't know the specifics of why you fell behind in the mid-game, but I'm certain you're a better player now than when you started, and it has been a real pleasure to be your ally in this game, more or less from beginning to end.

I'll put up my own review of my play later, but I wanted to speak to this right now...

There were a few jokes about throwing the UN vote to you, though it was mostly based on the idea of messing with Commodore, I'll admit. Still, when the vote came up, I almost did it. I'm afraid I do rather like to win.

In any event, I feel like you got the least fair shake of anyone from interactions with my team, because, among other things, I let Seven run roughshod over you. It was of significant value to us, although I wonder how much of the value was, in the end, from weakening you as much as it was from enriching ourselves.

[Gaspar]

This is for you guys, so I won't offer much commentary other than to say due to making the map I spent a closer eye lurking this than probably any game here. It was a lot of fun to lurk and I think unique in that nobody played a lousy game - everybody played pretty solidly. Obviously, Seven and Ranamar played an absolutely outstanding game and are deserved winners, but I think everyone played pretty well particularly after considering that for 2.5 of the players it was their first RB game. Almost as importantly, it was pretty darned well reported by almost all the players and I certainly appreciated that.

I guess I'll just end by saying thanks for making an entertaining pitstop on the old Interwebs for the last few months, and great game all around.

[SevenSpirits]

are overshadowed by the knee-jerk bastardy with privateers and the like. Hidden nationality units offer up fun shenanigans, but Pocket Beetle never signed NAPs and then killed his rivals. NAP means non-aggression pact, and honestly I considered ours void the second you opportunistically sniped the caravel. Luddite was 100% right to attack over the oil platform too, and I'm sure it stung Yuri that he felt (miscommunication, apparently) you threatened banned blockades over his swapping to mercantilism. I sensed it would be foolish to ever trust you, and I'll call anyone else who plays with you a fool if they trust you to follow anything but the most explicit letter of the agreement they have signed.

That's a pretty harsh review. It feels like a personal attack, even if it's not meant as one.

NAP means non-aggression pact

Have you noticed how much controversy there is over NAPs on this site? That's because everyone has their own interpretation of what constitutes "aggression". And thus in practically every game there's some action someone does that they think is fine but the other party thinks is breaking the NAP, and things just go downhill from there.

I hate this. I think it creates bad feelings, and having such a significant deal be so open to interpretation just seems dumb. How are you supposed to build up a reputation of keeping deals if you sign deals that are inevitably going to be broken because they're incredibly broad?

Some people's solution to the proliferation of over-broad NAPs is to not sign NAPs at all. That just seems silly to me too. I mean, it solves the problem, but you're just screwing yourself - you'll be the best target for everyone else. See what happened to MNG this game. My philosophy is instead just to not sign over-broad ones. It's my view that by keeping it simple (no declaring war during these turns) it becomes a deal that is unlikely to be broken. And while it doesn't promise quite the same level of protection as a blanket ban against vaguely-defined "aggression", in practice it is actually safer because your trade partner is not going to interpret random crap as voiding the deal. I do try to make this clear, that the deals I sign are of this limited nature. I'm sorry if that didn't come across.

Let me go over the apparently controversial things in this game.

1) Yuri swaps to mercantilism. We had a NAP tied to his maintaining open borders. His mercantilism adoption negated the benefits we were gaining from those open borders. This did not technically break the deal, but it's very inconsiderate, and if he didn't offer restitution I would not want to have further dealings with him in this game once our NAP was ended. I explained this to him by analogy: attacking/pillaging with a privateer would not technically break the deal either, but it would not be nice. I asked for some restitution (NOTE: didn't even ask for full restitution, just approximately half the gpt we lost), and he gave it to us. This seems downright generous to me! For comparison, it seems like Commodore would have considered the entire NAP void and possibly just attacked Yuri. I have no idea why you think this reflects badly on me, it seems you should be criticizing Yuri instead if you're consistent. (Though I ymself don't have a problem with his actions.)

2) Privateer kills caravel. All right, we already know that we had different ideas about the terms of our NAP. In my view it was "can't declare war without giving 7t warning". That's right, the reason I was nice to you all game wasn't because of a deal, it was because I actually wanted good things for you.

Weird, why didn't I want good things for you anymore? Maybe it's because you initiated our NAP cooldown and were planning to fight against us alongside every other player in the game in seven turns, in a war that would clearly decide the game. It just doesn't make sense to me why I would NOT do things like that, when you've so clearly declared yourself to be our enemy for the rest of the game. Not even reputation makes sense as a reason: the repuation you want is clearly that when people have declared themselves your enemy for the rest of the game, you're going to treat them as such (while still upholding existing deals of course).

3) Privateer pillages oil. This is an interesting case because contrary to my philosophy I posted above, we actually did have a blanket being-nice deal with GES. Maybe that was a mistake. I thought from pbem11 that we could probably make it work, because we got along well in that game.

But here's the thing: when Luddite took over, I asked him explicitly if he wanted to continue that deal. I mean hell, that wasn't even necessary, he should have had to keep following it. But that kind of thing is personal and I didn't want him to feel like he had to stick to the spirit of something he didn't sign, so I gave him the opportunity to cancel. And he took it.

So now we just had a NAP, and that's it. (In fact I gave him the opportunity to cancel that too, which I thought was quite generous, but he wanted to keep it.) And I don't know if you saw in the diplo screen, but the only relevant deal left between us was that we were gifting him Rice. That's something GES asked for a long time ago and we gave it to him. I continued gifting him the rice even though we didn't even have an agreement to be nice anymore, and even though we weren't getting anything back from him.

But then GES adopted Mercantilism at clearly no benefit to himself (no Rep) and sent us a taunting email, making it clear that he was doing it to make us get fewer trade routes. That's just fucking mean. All this while we're still gifting him rice.

Again, I did not consider this to be a breach of any deals we had. I just considered it to a pretty clear declaration that he was our enemy. What do we do with enemies? That's right, we treat them poorly, though we don't break deals to do so.

I've already talked about how explicitly I set up our NAP. I don't think anyone could read that and come to any conclusion other than it was only a prohibition of wardecs.

[Commodore]

That's a pretty harsh review. It feels like a personal attack, even if it's not meant as one.

Have you noticed how much controversy there is over NAPs on this site? That's because everyone has their own interpretation of what constitutes "aggression". And thus in practically every game there's some action someone does that they think is fine but the other party thinks is breaking the NAP, and things just go downhill from there.

I hate this. I think it creates bad feelings, and having such a significant deal be so open to interpretation just seems dumb. How are you supposed to build up a reputation of keeping deals if you sign deals that are inevitably going to be broken because they're incredibly broad?

Some people's solution to the proliferation of over-broad NAPs is to not sign NAPs at all. That just seems silly to me too. I mean, it solves the problem, but you're just screwing yourself - you'll be the best target for everyone else. See what happened to MNG this game. My philosophy is instead just to not sign over-broad ones. It's my view that by keeping it simple (no declaring war during these turns) it becomes a deal that is unlikely to be broken. And while it doesn't promise quite the same level of protection as a blanket ban against vaguely-defined "aggression", in practice it is actually safer because your trade partner is not going to interpret random crap as voiding the deal. I do try to make this clear, that the deals I sign are of this limited nature. I'm sorry if that didn't come across.

Yeah, sorry, again, please note that my feelings towards Seven Spirits, turnplayer of Mali, are one thing. I quite realize that John "Seven Spirits" Doe, a cool guy who likes to play Civilization, is quite the different fellow. Please don't take my harsh criticism as a personal attack, you seem like a cool guy personally. I think you got a lot of folks looking at you in betrayal because you are an easy-going, friendly person and you seem that way in diplo too. Krill gets a pass because he says "mwahaha I'm a bastard" and then is an upfront (but largely honest) one. People get surprised (less so me, but I still should have been more proactive) when you are mean because your persona isn't a mean one.

I stand by my "explicit deals" statement, as apparently you do too. Again, no hard feelings meant, and I should have been (in game) working a lot harder to bust the Egypt/Mali axis.

Gaspar, I mentioned it before, but I really enjoyed the map. Obviously, your toriodal settings made my Org choice a lot less weedy, but I also have to say the naval post-astro turnaround was a very interesting twist. I (and you) would have made the blobs a little less clearly "my land", but that helped every player grow to a reasonable size and strength, and meant that interesting tactical wars could be fought without completely knocking someone else out of the game...until the blitz, of course. I know it's a thankless task to mapmake, but...thanks.

[SevenSpirits]

OK, no hard feelings then.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I (and you) would have made the blobs a little less clearly "my land", but that helped every player grow to a reasonable size and strength, and meant that interesting tactical wars could be fought without completely knocking someone else out of the game...until the blitz, of course. I know it's a thankless task to mapmake, but...thanks.

This was interesting. I was surprised how balanced it was until the lategame, no one got crippled by early war or getting bottled in, everyone was competitive, and we got a chance to see some rather clever strategies.

[Ranamar]

Hey all, here's to an excellent game, well played all and congratulations on the win, Ranamar. Maybe with this conflict behind us you can finally free your people from the oppressive kaleidoscope of horror you've been inflicting upon them.

Good lord, it's terrible... although they at least were allowed to vote and say what they wanted again at the end. TBH, I'm kind of shocked and very amused at just how well it worked to never research Democracy. Fortunately, there is plenty of bread (usually...) distributed by a truly enormous circus department. They might not be able to do entirely whatever they want, but, at least I hope they're happy.

More seriously, I've been trying to come up with a review of my play. The problem, really, is that I end up spending more time worrying about how much I did or didn't contribute as I do actually considering what was done. I've given up trying to make a comprehensive post, but I feel like I need to get this off my chest, in some form, so that any part I might play in the discussion can move forward.

Basically, what it comes down to is that this was a team effort between Seven and myself, but, due to experience and Seven's greater ruthlessness, it's safe to say I was the junior partner. Seven was an incredible asset to the team. Furthermore, he would have been one anyway, even if he hadn't done basically all the diplomacy. It was incredibly tempting to just sit back and watch a master at work. In the end, I regret not taking a greater hand in the diplomacy, because I feel like I didn't get to know any of you. On the other hand, I am reasonably certain that I would not have been as ruthless, and I see that lack as a weakness for this sort of game.

I also didn't realize until sometime after we'd gotten started just how busy I can get myself. As such, there were a certain number of turns I beggared off because I had other obligations. It's really, really impressive how long war turns can take, and I think I'd forgotten how long less warlike turns can take, too. (I never seem to realize that until I look at the clock later. )