[SPOILERS] Yossarian blames Caledorn

[WilliamLP]

You seem to imply that out of game diplomacy and tech trading are what makes "Grand Strategy" and "Mind Games". That's just wrong. What they do create is a metagame where game knowledge is actually a drawback because players can decide, using totally arbitrary reasoning, to dog pile a player so that they cannot win the game. And the best people to dog pile are those that have better civ skills. Regardless of how you report these games, they are just not interesting if what you want to read are games that involve micromanagement and strategic decision making. If you linked to it from CFC you'd possibly break the RB server though.

We could argue definitions of what "strategy" is. I think if enough full diplo games were played with the same group of people (who could stomach it), there would be a lot of variance, but also quite a bit of consistency in who wins these games. And those players wouldn't necessarily be the ones with the best Civ skills, but they would have to be said to have some skill in the particular game they're playing.

I don't think game knowledge can ever be a drawback, though having other people know you have game knowledge is a huge one (hence Locke / Cervantes), as is being obvious about displaying it.

For interest, I disagree, some of us love personal drama and blow ups, when they're well reported. PB2 was one of the most fun things to follow ever, despite the Civ skill being poor for most of the players, in a way that even I can recognize.

I am quite amazed by the audacity of this statement. If you want me to go and post spoilers from your thread in a public location, then sure I can go and give specific reasons why this game has been played out in a sub-optimal manner, but that is generally frowned upon. On top of that, it doesn't matter that I, or any other posters on this site don't play games with diplomacy or any other settings. We have played games with diplomacy, and with tech trading, and we don't anymore because we learnt that we don't enjoy those settings. It is frankly nonsensical to take the position that because we learnt what we don't enjoy, and why we don't enjoy it, that we never understood it in the first place.

I don't disagree. But since specific Civ knowledge and skills aren't the biggest factor in winning a full diplo game, it's hard to see why they should be focused in on, when people are trying to win the game being played.

All I was really saying though is that it's a very smug dismissive implication that a game isn't worth following (or maybe even hosting here) if play isn't good enough to your standards. Or that the settings you (and a majority) enjoy are the optimal ones for everyone. I'm not sure if that's what you meant but I'm not the only one who interpreted it that way, or who ascribes this attitude to a lot of people on RB.

There is a difference between saying someone is stupid, and what someone said is stupid. Like when I say your post is stupid, but you aren't.

Also I'm not a genius.

Yes you are.

PS: I'd quite enjoy reading your detailed thoughts for what is sub-optimal about this game in the lurker thread.