[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] PB41 Lurker Thread: RNG Roulette with a Shotgun

[Mr. Cairo]

I think you are exactly right: If there is a clear #1 and #2, then this is what happens. I'd just have to ask though: what is interesting in carrying on the game? Because all the decisions everyone has made has been in the context of trying to win. What makes it worth carrying on, in terms of what is interesting? Not being sarcastic here, I'm hopeful of your reply.

Well, I suppose there's two things that make the game interesting enough to continue.
First, especially for those with low odds of winning throughout, that tantalizing chance of snatching victory is interesting, and fun to imagine and plan for.
Second, most pitbosses here don't last very long into the Industrial era or beyond, so we rarely get to spend much time playing with those units. That by itself is enough for me to want to keep playing, even in an unwinnable position.

[Rusten]

I think you are exactly right: If there is a clear #1 and #2, then this is what happens. I'd just have to ask though: what is interesting in carrying on the game? Because all the decisions everyone has made has been in the context of trying to win. What makes it worth carrying on, in terms of what is interesting? Not being sarcastic here, I'm hopeful of your reply.

Well, I suppose there's two things that make the game interesting enough to continue.
First, especially for those with low odds of winning throughout, that tantalizing chance of snatching victory is interesting, and fun to imagine and plan for.
Second, most pitbosses here don't last very long into the Industrial era or beyond, so we rarely get to spend much time playing with those units. That by itself is enough for me to want to keep playing, even in an unwinnable position.

That's easy to say when you only spend 6-7 minutes per turn like you did recently. Having to spend hours upon hours to nurture a game that's essentially won is not very fun and leads to civ burnout.

And to reply to your previous post: 
We did expect a resignation and made a post about it in the thread a while back, and we're very happy for the game to end.

[Charriu]

I think it might have been better to PM the parties concerning the request to concede. Posting on all the threads like that was a bit transparent

I have to agree. I saw the time stamps from the postings and knew who did not want to concede.

[Mardoc]

@Rusten & Hitru - Don't read too much into the criticisms you read in the lurker thread.  They're not working with the complete information, just what people post, and they have different information than you had in the game.  But more than that, the criticizing and debating is part of the entertainment of the lurker experience.

+1!

I very confidently predicted a CommoPin victory...mostly because I misjudged how you were doing, Rusten. In particular I'm amazed at the way you could swing your empire from one demographic to another, so that one moment you were last in research rate, the next moment first. It took a while for me to recognize that 30 bpt in a screenshot didn't mean much, you were still able to climb the tech tree quickly on average.

Did nobody else find it ironic that Naufrager was so upset at Rusten settling on his home continent, but that he did the exact same thing to us by settling on our h?  We really wanted to take/burn those cities for the longest time.  It just was never prudent for us to do so in context of our larger goals.  But they definitely earned him some negative diplo points.

Didn't mention it, but yep! Also ironic because if Nauf hadn't invested the resources into those cities, he might have gotten to RedDot first.

[Rusten]

@Rusten & Hitru - Don't read too much into the criticisms you read in the lurker thread.  They're not working with the complete information, just what people post, and they have different information than you had in the game.  But more than that, the criticizing and debating is part of the entertainment of the lurker experience.

After reading through the lurker thread I feel stronger that Commodore and I had a window to win in after our GA, but unfortunately we made the wrong move then and fell behind Rusten.  I also feel we fixated on DZland too much and should have reassessed more when we saw Gav attack.  Pindore Norte was not worth the effort in hindsight and was just a net drag on the economy in the long run.  I think it's a sin that we never got to Mercantilism with an empire of our size, and as I've said before our GP plan was weak.  But we were a bit too locked in our plan the whole game and didn't successfully reassess when situations changed.

There was criticism of Rusten not having a plan, but my impression was more that he kept his plan flexible, and that's something that I've been thinking about more in my last couple of games.  I feel like I lock in to a plan too eagerly and don't change the plan when the situations in game change.  I actually think he did a good job of exploiting his options.  Commodore and I perhaps put too much stock in the diplomacy aspect and didn't think quite so many people were as checked out of the game as they were.

Did nobody else find it ironic that Naufrager was so upset at Rusten settling on his home continent, but that he did the exact same thing to us by settling on our h?  We really wanted to take/burn those cities for the longest time.  It just was never prudent for us to do so in context of our larger goals.  But they definitely earned him some negative diplo points.


Time to get into the individual threads.


@Cairo - I don't think you have a realistic assessment of the situation in the game.  We were spent and Rusten just had to land on our shores to be able to start burning/taking our core.  20 turns tops.  Were you going to suddenly get a manufacturing base in that time?

Bingo. Finally someone giving us some credit instead of mindlessly following the narrative that I played SP once upon a time...

We are very happy about our game and choices so all the posts mocking our diplomacy are a little bewildering, even saying that I don't "understand human nature", but I see your point of not taking the lurker thread too seriously. We were aware of our strengths and weaknesses and attempted to play around it. We identified that BGN had no path to astronomy and took advantage. Lurkers like to hate on limited war, and I know there are downsides, but if we had not claimed land somehow there's no way we could keep up with ComPin. They had twice the starting area thanks to an early elimination and also extra space to the north because of DZ/naufragar not expanding in that direction. Even with all our assets we were behind in land area and only got an edge thanks to crucial wonder targeting and grabbing better quality land.

Krill mentioned it earlier in the thread, but as long as your enemies have no way to attack you it's not necessarily a problem to make enemies. We knew that if we could get to frigates before nauf/BGN got galleons there would not be a problem. We'd just have to continuously 1-up them. If you border someone by land you can't play like this as numbers trump all, but in the case of nauf/BGN we only needed to control the seas to nullify any threats because it doesn't matter how many galleons you make -- they're not going to beat frigates.

[Krill]

I think you are exactly right: If there is a clear #1 and #2, then this is what happens. I'd just have to ask though: what is interesting in carrying on the game? Because all the decisions everyone has made has been in the context of trying to win. What makes it worth carrying on, in terms of what is interesting? Not being sarcastic here, I'm hopeful of your reply.

Well, I suppose there's two things that make the game interesting enough to continue.
First, especially for those with low odds of winning throughout, that tantalizing chance of snatching victory is interesting, and fun to imagine and plan for.
Second, most pitbosses here don't last very long into the Industrial era or beyond, so we rarely get to spend much time playing with those units. That by itself is enough for me to want to keep playing, even in an unwinnable position.

The point Rusten made about time taken to play turns is basically the answer to the first one. And later era starts is the answer to the second: Between 5 and 10 players in an FFA game will lead to the game being played in teh chosen start era and ending up to 2 eras later. So play a Medieval start, and finish in the Ind era with Inf. Ren will end with tanks, if a bit sooner depending on effectiveness of navy. Ind and later starts can actually finish pretty quickly: Pre-BtS I never saw a future era game last more than 40 turns, most ended in fewer than 20.

There's nothing stopping players from putting together a later era game, or even a later era teamer: One game type I've been thinking we might want to try are the 3v3 and 5v5 Ren and Ind era games, using ladder settings (Always war, 2, 3, or maybe even 5 city elimination and a 100-120 turn limit). As these games are self limiting, they can get played pretty quickly.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I haven't had a chance to read much of this thread but I was curious how our raze of DZ's capital went down and I'm not surprised at all. I assumed that several civs would be interested in taking that city. In a purely rational sense, it was not a good trade losing units that I could have more profitably kept, but I was secure enough at that time to go for my revenge play anyway. I was not in a purely rational game position anymore once Rusten had annexed my three eastern cities with no hope of recovery due to the eternity it took me to get to galleons. I knew he'd have frigates before I could have galleons and that's exactly what happened. Rational play is for those who can win. Those who can't win have the luxury of finding alternative goals to keep things interesting. 

I took out my frustration on DZ simply because I could, and because he fucked around and didn't build cities and then once I had finally gotten into a position to try to compete despite the map hemming me in from t0, DZ then started a fruitless war that killed any chance of me accomplishing anything at all for the rest of the game. Had DZ not attacked me and forced my two western food cities to endlessly whip units (over 100t of whip anger in both by the end of that mostly bloodless war) I could have put that food and those units to settling the rest of the islands that Cairo did not, and those hammers into more profitable endeavors. I would have easily had at least 6 more island cities, and much, much sooner without that fruitless attack. But that's not how it went so I felt fully justified in nuking DZ's shrine. And I was completely happy to prevent gavagai from getting it because he kicked up a fuss over exploring workboats and the circumnav bonus, which wasn't even a close competition. Yes, I hold petty grudges. And, also yes, it's good to know your opponents and how they think/respond. I hope killing a workboat was worth it.

So, the answer is a bit of both. A dick move, and some rational basis for it. I have no regrets. 

Edit: It is worth adding that my fleet had to sail somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 tiles from my home continent to make the attack happen so if anyone wanted the shrine to keep they should have made it a priority. There was certainly time to make that play work for someone.

[Gavagai]

because he fucked around and didn't build cities

Have you seen his land? Where exactly would you expect him to build cities? Like, name a specific spot which is more worth settling than building one of his wonders. I don't even want to comment on the workboat issue.  Was that really the first time someone refused to give you an OB? Do you hold a grudge against all these people? 

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I never got a good look at it. But he had coastal access to the northern part of Com/Pin's island that I ultimately got to. Did not even have to wait for culture to cross ocean tiles, it's just coast to get there. He could have doubled his city count by expanding east, and this would have put him in a position for a further 4-5 cities dotting the area further north. Even with bad land you still have to build cities. Having awesome units is good but you can't count on them winning in fights outnumbered 2:1 or worse, which eventually will happen if you don't expand.

We don't always rely on OB. Scouting wars happen all the time. As long as someone doesn't park on your food resources it's usually going to work out ok. And it is totally your call if you don't want to allow the scouting to occur, just keep in mind that some players may not appreciate it and it may be an issue at some point. If I have to choose who to go to war with, the death of a scouting work boat is a very minor consideration, barely registering. But if I am not in the running to win the game and I'm looking for goals to achieve you're more likely to find yourself on the wrong end of piracy or worse if you've given a reason for someone to hold a grudge. And really, it was whatever the issue was surrounding a turn split or something. It's so long ago that I don't remember now. I just remember not minding if you were annoyed about the city raze because at the time I was miffed (not quite pissed but certainly not amused) due to the minor controversy over the work boat.

All of this would have been moot if I could have responded in any meaningful way against Rustru. I couldn't, so displaced frustration meant I kicked DZ instead.

[Gavagai]

I never got a good look at it. But he had coastal access to the northern part of Com/Pin's island that I ultimately got to. Did not even have to wait for culture to cross ocean tiles, it's just coast to get there. He could have doubled his city count by expanding east, and this would have put him in a position for a further 4-5 cities dotting the area further north. Even with bad land you still have to build cities. Having awesome units is good but you can't count on them winning in fights outnumbered 2:1 or worse, which eventually will happen if you don't expand.

This land is utter shit. It is pretty much a consensus that investing in getting it was the move which cost Commodore the game. And wonders were a thing which helped him to win a war against you.