[SPOILERS] Yossarian blames Caledorn

[Krill]

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.

Note, I'm not saying that there isn't strategy in a diplomacy or tech trading game; there is. It just doesn't involve game knowledge or skills, it generally involves knowledge of people and manipulation.

If the same group of people played multiple games on similar settings, variance would only occur if the player skills were similar (in addition to balanced map, settings and leader/civ picks etc); if Mackoti, Seven, Plako, Serdoa, novice, Noble and myself played a 7 player game with diplo, then it might work. But to do that with a bunch of random players with disparate skills, knowledge and understanding of each other? I agree that it is in fact a players perception of skill that is in fact what affects the actions though. But also playing well and having decent demos (which look good when everyone else playing the game doesn't know what they are doing) will reinforce those perceptions.

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.

I never said that the game wasn't worth following, but that's circular reasoning. This game doesn't focus on civ knowledge and skills, because it's a diplo game, and people don't want to read a billion diplo messages dumped into a thread. People generally have limited time to read and play games so they prioritize, fairly obvious. So I suppose the point is that the denizens of RB generally don't want to play diplo games, and they aren't that bothered about reading them either.

Interestingly enough, you raise a good point about hosting. Games don't have to be reported, you don't have to post spoiler information publicly. You could post what you wanted to a blog, you could stream the turns, do whatever you want, but there are two things that you have to accept if you do that. Firstly, you trust your opponents to not spoil themselves on your updates, and you trust readers to not go and spoil you or your opponents with spoiler information.

The only reason to host the games on RB is that the community will adhere to the latter, and it's not even worth playing games with people if you don't trust them to not cheat so the former shouldn't be that difficult to accept. I wouldn't dare report a game on CFC, but there are a few other sites where you could do this (such as Apolyton or WPC).

I also said this:

Honestly, so long as you are all having fun then who cares if the game is being played in an (objectively) skillful manner? It's not like playing CIV is anyone's job.

So really, I don't even know how people interpreted it that way. People can play what the hell they want, how they want to.

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.

I actually muted every thread in this forum except the lurker thread, so that isn't going to be happening. I only read this thread because Caledorn wants to learn to figure out what would be useful for him.