(Spoilers) Churchill's Old General Death

[superdeath]

Is there any way of sneaking your 2-movers into Coco's backlines? Perhaps using OBS with Maya?

Nope. Due to the terrain, and CoCo still somehow last i checked, having plenty of spear defenders... id be dead before they reached any city by using Pacal's culture.

Make them hurt

Going to try...

Pacal peaced out with Coco after signalling to me with copper/copper and Horse/horse and we would have had a 3v1 vs coco. Then Pacal peaced and swapped to hitting the northern neighbor and Coco is free to march his 3-4x bigger stack into my territory.

Just out of curiosity: what exactly did you think him to be signalling to you by accepting these deals you proposed?

It was stated above already that we at Civforum do not "read" resource deals the same way you guys do. Why did you assume that he can "read" this deal exactly the way you mean it?



BTW: I am the guy who stepped in for Mr.X /Celts from Turn 112-117. I had clear instructions on what to do in each of his cities. I doubt that what I did there was much different from what he would have done had he played these turns himself (maybe some different micro management in the cities). In Civforum it is quite normal to look for replacement players well ahead of one's vacation. Mr. X contacted me about it some 4 weeks before he ultimately went on vacation. So I stopped reading all stories in "his" neighborhood (this one as well) right the moment that was decided and also stopped reading all stories elsewhere in the world during the time I stood in for him.

Lets do this in pieces, First off: Why would he accept a Copper/copper, horse/horse deal? Did he just accept it hoping i would do something weird? No reason to accept a random deal like that if you dont know what it means, and accepting it was already a bad idea if you DO know what it means... so...................................... Yeah. Not convinced he didnt do basically a switcheroo, or is just really bad.

The whole vacation thing i can totally get. Just didnt obviously know it was a vacation vs just quitting tho..   

One more question: who was supposed to be the third party in that 3v1 against Coco? Mr. X / Celts by any chance? What contribution could he make having barely a handful of cities? Why would he try to go for all out war?

Please don't get this wrong, but you seem to make quite a few assumptions about what other should / have to do that seem to be based solely on how you see their situations. You do not seem to be looking at things from the other player's perspectives.

As you may have noticed, many wars tend to be rather short (and there is a reason for that in pretty much all of the cases, but I cannot go into details of course) and it seems other players do not hold grudges the way you do. I mean wouldn't you choke a neighbor if you had the chance? What would you hope to gain by passing up such an opportunity? So why are you mad at him for doing something to you that you very well might have done to him had roles / positions been reversed? 

I do not mean to provoke you here, I am really just trying to understand the "why"...

Having said that, I DO understand your frustration, of course. You drew a lousy leader. You started in a part of the world that makes it difficult to get those lucrative trade routes other players have (which in turn is a must-have with these settings). And you were not fortunate enough to start next to a player or two who don't know how the game is played, giving you easy expansion opportunities. I get all that. That's totally understandable.

Mr.X. I didnt plan on being a big help either to Pacal in the 3v1 vs Coco. But the point was to force him to defend multiple fronts and slow him down. Which im sure Pacal SHOULD want to do if he wanted any chance of winning. Which makes Coco's peace treaty with him so laughable. Coco doesnt have catapults last i checked, and Pacal DOES. RE-READ THAT AGAIN.

No, i wouldnt have choked him early. Because i have multiple neighbors and it wouldnt have been worth it. Making an enemy for life in the game over a warrior choke isnt good play. Its one thing if you snipe 2-3 cities out of their 4-5, and come back later to finish them off. Its another thing entirely to choke them in a DEITY game and then kinda piss off for 50t. Its not worth aggravating a neighbor just to slow them down. Any neighbor worth their reputation wouldnt just let that slide.

See the bolded section: The fact that this was played with no mod, so that there WERE lousy leaders/civs is partly to blame. Another part is that they tried for FAR too realistic vs playable. EVERY start should have had a chance to win this game. Otherwise. What. Is. The. Point. In. Playing.

As you may have noticed, many wars tend to be rather short (and there is a reason for that in pretty much all of the cases, but I cannot go into details of course) and it seems other players do not hold grudges the way you do.

Ahem PB52 ahem. It's clear that both forums have a different culture about playing the game. Also there are always two people who have to sign peace. If the loosing side is going to die anyway or has no way of coming back. Why should they sign peace and relieve the aggressor from all the accumulated war weariness?

^ This. 

As you may have noticed, many wars tend to be rather short (and there is a reason for that in pretty much all of the cases, but I cannot go into details of course) and it seems other players do not hold grudges the way you do.

Ahem PB52 ahem. It's clear that both forums have a different culture about playing the game. Also there are always two people who have to sign peace. If the loosing side is going to die anyway or has no way of coming back. Why should they sign peace and relieve the aggressor from all the accumulated war weariness?

Yeah. To add onto this, if you want to fight a limited war, you need to leave the person an out. Superdeath on this map and position clearly has no out, so his neighbors ought to be aware of that and know that any sort of conflict will feel existential to him. For example, imagine he's not located in southern Argentina, but instead has several other neighbors. Maybe one of those neighbors are even weaker than he is. Then he might be inclined to sign peace or get over a slight setback because the reward elsewhere for doing so is pretty good. But because every negative blow makes his game feel more and more worthless due to his geography, he's going to be more and more inclined to play for revenge or some other personal win condition that maybe inconveniences a neighbor. I think that's pretty reasonable. Also, you're playing with humans, and some humans are more wired towards revenge, and I think I've seen enough Superdeath games to know he is one of those players. Reading your opponents and figuring out how to deal with them is a skill.


What I don't think is reasonable is expecting him to behave like an AI who will happily sign peace and then sit there with 4 cities for ages and wait for whenever it's convenient for you to finish them off. If you expect that from players in a game like this, I think having players who feel "done" just retire to AI is your best bet.

Also, I just noticed this thread title has Churchill misspelled, and I can't un-see it now.

Shit. Now its bugging me....



I hope that clears up any/all questions. Im happy to answer anymore that might come up. I hold no grudges/revenge outside of each individual game, but inside each game is different. Actions have Consequences.

[Old Harry]

No, i wouldnt have choked him early. Because i have multiple neighbors and it wouldnt have been worth it. Making an enemy for life in the game over a warrior choke isnt good play.

So now you're going to make him pay! By attacking... Er...

Nope, this game is too confusing.

[superdeath]

No, i wouldnt have choked him early. Because i have multiple neighbors and it wouldnt have been worth it. Making an enemy for life in the game over a warrior choke isnt good play.

So now you're going to make him pay! By attacking... Er...

Nope, this game is too confusing.  

Well... put up a SMALL defense with my 7 HA's and various whipping of spears/archers... vs a HUGE unstoppable stack from Coco, or punish someone that left me out to dry? hmmmm decisions

[Charriu]

Punish Coco. He was the main reason for your agony in this game. This is also the most fair play. Defend like you did in PB38. Never give peace a chance. Sooner or later Coco will either be attacked by others or the pressure gets to tough.

[Papa Bear]

Thanks @all for the extensive replies / explanations!

I still do not know what exactly a copper/horse - copper/horse deal is supposed to mean eaxctly. In Civforum people do tend to agree to deals with equal resources in order to make it more difficult for others to keep track of which resources are available to them. If you have horses yourself, everybody sees them who opens a trade screen. If you have traded yours to someone else and get his from him in turn, anybody else will have to go through the trade relations between all the other players every turn in order to know that you still have access to horses. Which quite simply is something not everybody is thinking about / prepared to do.

As I know why there is peace between Pacal and Hammurabi I can't really comment further on that particular train of thought, unfortunately.

Regarding the "choke / do not choke" issue... Given that you a) have a "no use (in the early game) leader", b) are in a bad strategic position it still make a lot of sense to choke you early on, as it makes taking you down completely later on (which he will have to do anyway in order to have a chance of achieving something in this game) a bit easier. In fact, not to even try and see where it gets you would seem like a missed opportunity, would it not? It did not cost him all that much (it seems) and he did make your life more difficult. I am not saying that the outcome of the fight is a foregone conclusion! And it seems to me that there is a rather broad consensus here that his action didn't make sense at the time, which I do respect, of course. Just trying to explain why others might view that differently...

Overall / on "balancing": my impression is that you guys over here place great emphasis on trying to even the odds. While that of course sounds like an idea nobody can really argue with, we have seen many PBs which have been won by guys with leaders / civs / starting positions that would not necessarily have been favourites all by themselves. Too much depends on other things you will never be able to properly balance. A skilled player who gets a good leader AND a neighbour or two he can "swallow" quickly will always have a better chance of winning than the best player with a shitty leader, a bad position and strong neighbours. Which is probably why this whole idea of "balancing" is not that popular over in our forum.

The only thing which has been modded (by consensus, based on the predecessor game) is the effect of Mining / Sushi to be less overpowering.

All other things one might consider "broken" in the BtS game as it is are polled at the start of the game. Like "goodie huts" or events. If you vote for them to be enabled, be prepared to be the poor guy who gets invaded by a bunch of horse archers at the worst possible moment while hoping for a free golden age...

[Charriu]

I still do not know what exactly a copper/horse - copper/horse deal is supposed to mean eaxctly. In Civforum people do tend to agree to deals with equal resources in order to make it more difficult for others to keep track of which resources are available to them. If you have horses yourself, everybody sees them who opens a trade screen. If you have traded yours to someone else and get his from him in turn, anybody else will have to go through the trade relations between all the other players every turn in order to know that you still have access to horses. Which quite simply is something not everybody is thinking about / prepared to do.

Wow, I didn't knew that people over there were so evil.

[Miguelito]

I still do not know what exactly a copper/horse - copper/horse deal is supposed to mean eaxctly. In Civforum people do tend to agree to deals with equal resources in order to make it more difficult for others to keep track of which resources are available to them. If you have horses yourself, everybody sees them who opens a trade screen. If you have traded yours to someone else and get his from him in turn, anybody else will have to go through the trade relations between all the other players every turn in order to know that you still have access to horses. Which quite simply is something not everybody is thinking about / prepared to do.

copper/horse exchange basically means let's fight together. If you accept it, your presumable target can see that, so it's better to not accept and send the same offer back (also not to be accepted).

The strategy of intentionally hiding resources by sending them far away of course works much better in a game with 52 players on different continents than in our regular 8-12 people game. Why would you want to hide your copper though? horses/iron/elephants I could understand.


also I tend to agree that in this particular circumstance the choke made some sense. Had he not done it, what would superdeath be doing now? Try to expand northwards, just stronger. The thing is that on a world map Coco could knew on turn 10 that SD had no other way out.

[scooter]

To be fair, I agree that balance in a 52 player game is a pretty unreasonable goal. It's a novelty game, and you accept you might be screwed a bit by signing up. I also agree that it's unreasonable for Superdeath to think the resource trade would be interpreted the way he expected. That's a pretty niche meta thing that unfolded here when we transitioned away from full diplo games, and it really only happened because players would offer it and then explain in their threads what they were thinking, and then that would get copied in future games with more people understanding it next time.

[superdeath]

To be fair, I agree that balance in a 52 player game is a pretty unreasonable goal. It's a novelty game, and you accept you might be screwed a bit by signing up. I also agree that it's unreasonable for Superdeath to think the resource trade would be interpreted the way he expected. That's a pretty niche meta thing that unfolded here when we transitioned away from full diplo games, and it really only happened because players would offer it and then explain in their threads what they were thinking, and then that would get copied in future games with more people understanding it next time.

Wish i had had that drilled into my head before i said yes to signing up  


I love playing earth maps tbh, just usually vs AI. EarthEvolution2 map is one of my favorites, although it only has enough AI spots for 1 of each civ, not every single leader. Ill try to limit my bitching for the remainder of my time in this pb.

[Papa Bear]

Thanks for the explanation, Miguelito!

I can assure you that around nine out of ten Civforum players would not interpret such an offer in the way you describe. And the one guy who does understand it would then be one of the guys who knows your forum and it's customs. So if Jerry Demmings has not been active over here in some way, you can be pretty sure that his actions were not meant to intentionally screw you in any way...

Regarding Copper. Yeah, you're right, there is no need to "hide" that, as pretty much every start has a copper source in the initial BFC. Over here, a copper-copper deal usually means that one does not intend to attack the other guy. But it's not a binding agreement like the non-aggression-pacts that were common in many PBs played with "full diplo". So never rely on them forever...