RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Twinkletoes89]

The only thing I will say to support Selrahc's question is that perhaps after being screwed over once by Jowy's 'cheese gifting' - you could have put out a statement in the public thread when you declared war saying something like "any civ who takes gifted cities from Athlete which they have not taken in combat will be subject to an instant DOW" - I'd be surprised if anyone (besides maybe Nakor) would take them then?

[Sullla]

As Speaker said, we had an active NAP at the time with Kathlete when Jowy gifted cities over to him. We also would have been locked into a long and useless war which would have seriously damage our team's chances of winning. Remember, Kathlete could have just slaved a bunch of longbows, which would have been sufficient to stop our army of maces and knights. Furthermore, we were expanding from 10 cities to 16 cities from absorbing the rest of Jowy's territory. We would have been dealing with insufficient road networks, poor or no cultural borders in the recent conquests, and so on.

Attacking Kathlete then would have been a disaster... it would not have gone well for us. We had to make the smart play, which was to develop our Greek captured cities/territory, tech upwards to better units, and then come back to hit Kathlete with a superior force. As this war shows, it worked out perfectly. But that doesn't mean that the Jowy/Kathlete move wasn't carried out in extremely poor taste and poor sportsmanship.

OK, now let's go over the current situation. Sure, we could declare war on slaze and take Alderaan from him. Then what? That would drive slaze into an alliance with Nakor for sure, and we're back to a situation with hostile powers on both borders again. Not good. Plus we still have our army locked up in Ottoman territory - it's not beyond reason that Kathlete could find some way to screw us over further to slaze or Nakor's benefit before he expires from this game. And we look like arrogant jerks and bullies if we go around issuing demands/orders to the other teams in the email thread. Posting something like "we will declare war on anyone who does ____" is the surest way possible to create an alliance of teams against us. Just not smart.

I don't like complaining either, but what can we do? The rules of the game apparently allow this type of stuff. We can't stop the others from following these cheese tactics short of killing them all (which we're trying to do). We're angry and irritated, so let us vent in our own spoiler thread. As I've said before, I think this kind of play is totally against the spirit of our community here at Realms Beyond. I expect cheese in a public non-ladder online MP game, not here.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I don't like complaining either, but what can we do? The rules of the game apparently allow this type of stuff. We can't stop the others from following these cheese tactics short of killing them all (which we're trying to do). We're angry and irritated, so let us vent in our own spoiler thread. As I've said before, I think this kind of play is totally against the spirit of our community here at Realms Beyond.

I can't quite manage to shake the notion that part of the answer would be "to play the diplo game differently".

For instance: you didn't have to commit yourselves to the destruction of Kathlete now. An earlier peace would have allowed you to respond to Dantski's cry for help sooner. Shouldn't you have been negotiating the exchange of those cities with him already? (Not clear to me - I don't have a good feel for whether you should prefer to let slaze eliminate them, or do it yourself).

Put another way, the conditions of contest are what they are, not what you would prefer they be - it may be an error to insist on choosing your plays based on the latter.

Which is not to say that your team should cheese as well, but maybe (only maybe) you should be giving the opposition more outs.


In the long run - I'm not convinced there's a lot of difference between capturing the cities now from Kathlete, or capturing them later from slaze/nakor. And this has had the effect of keeping the outcome at least somewhat in doubt, as opposed to snowballing the opposition to death.


That said, I'm not learning a lot by watching Speaker waltz his troops into undefended cities. So I've got a lot of sympathy for "this isn't as much fun as we expected when we signed up."


I'm almost tempted to switch to lurker status, to see how the omniscient peanut gallery is reacting to all of this.

[Speaker]

That said, I'm not learning a lot by watching Speaker waltz his troops into undefended cities.

When in doubt, use Horse Archers.

[m4gill4]

As I've said before, I think this kind of play is totally against the spirit of our community here at Realms Beyond.

Agreed. I came here to see the best of them all fight it out, like the world cup of CIV! Watching speaker waltz into undefended cities is rather anticlimactic.

On the other hand, your enemies have played so poorly that perhaps cheese gifting is the only way for your enemies to remain competitive enough for the outcome to be at all in doubt. Think of it like a golf handicap.

[Adlain]

I'm almost tempted to switch to lurker status, to see how the omniscient peanut gallery is reacting to all of this.

we are sat there throwing peanuts at the big screen demanding more blood

[sunrise089]

I'm almost tempted to switch to lurker status, to see how the omniscient peanut gallery is reacting to all of this.

49% of our posts debate whether other posts are spoilers or not. Another 49% passionately take one side or the other in disputes raised in spoiler threads based on which players we like the most outside the game. 1% are amazingly insightful micromanagement posts by T-Hawk. The final 1% are from Krill reminding players who may be lurking to play their turns in other games

[Speaker]

49% of our posts debate whether other posts are spoilers or not. Another 49% passionately take one side or the other in disputes raised in spoiler threads based on which players we like the most outside the game. 1% are amazingly insightful micromanagement posts by T-Hawk. The final 1% are from Krill reminding players who may be lurking to play their turns in other games

Isn't this a spoiler post in itself?

Fake Edit- General Sunrise is cleaning and oiling his rifle in preparation for the battle for the Ottoman capital. Byzantium shall be avenged!

[Sullla]

I wanted to respond to this post with some thoughts. Don't think I'm picking on you VoU, you raised some interesting ideas.

I can't quite manage to shake the notion that part of the answer would be "to play the diplo game differently".

You mean trying to be nice guys and sign Non-Aggression Pacts with all of our neighbors? Oh wait, we tried that, and it resulted in everyone gangbanging us. What are our diplo options?

* Nakor: prime competition to win the game. Probably not much room for cooperation here.
* plako/Broker: our friends, but still not even willing to Close Borders against a mutual enemy.
* Dantski: been a good neighbor, but also tried to kill us earlier in the game, and sold out his allies before to make peace with us.
* slaze: has never done even the slightest bit to help us, lied to our face, tried to backstab us.
* Kathlete: LOL

Maybe it's getting into spoiler territory here, but what exactly would we do to change our diplo game? Try to be friends with teams who have worked against us the whole game? Gift away our military units to teams who may or may not decide to help us when we need it? I guess we could back off and try to go for Culture or Space victories, however I honestly think we'd be more likely to lose that way. I dunno. I'm sure there's more we could do here, but I don't see it at the moment.

For instance: you didn't have to commit yourselves to the destruction of Kathlete now. An earlier peace would have allowed you to respond to Dantski's cry for help sooner. Shouldn't you have been negotiating the exchange of those cities with him already? (Not clear to me - I don't have a good feel for whether you should prefer to let slaze eliminate them, or do it yourself).

Sign peace with Kathlete?!? Oh come on, man. That's cutting off your nose to spite your own face. That not only leaves him free to conduct more mischief and gift more gold/cities away to other teams, it also means that all his culture would remain intact (uselessly crushing half of our conquests) and we'd have permanent "we long to return to the motherland" unhappiness in Ottoman cities. Plus, you can't draft cities that are still full of foreign nationals. All of that goes away if we eliminate Kathlete from the game. There's really nothing to negotiate: we are taking all of cities. End of story. And gifting away cities that cannot be defended, and are certain to fall, to teams who had nothing to do with the conflict, is just a pain in the behind.

There seems to be a train of logic that runs, "well those are Kathlete's cities, and you're attacking him, so he should be able to do whatever he wants with them to stop you." The problem is that it break the notion of a fair game; you can't really have a game of this sort without an implicit understanding that each team will try to win the game, and not engage in petty, spiteful behavior. For example, what if Byzantium had had more cities, and gifted us say two cities in 1000BC? Would that have been "fair" to Kathlete, who would then have been denied the right to enjoy the success of his force of arms? Or what if Kathlete had gifted every single city of his over to Nakor when we invaded. Just because the degree is smaller, only a couple of cities changing hands, doesn't change the logic of the event. It's a violation of the spirit of the game, and grossly unfair to the teams competing. (Spin it around the other way: what if plako got tired of playing, and agreed to gift us all of his cities instantly. Would that be fair to the other teams still playing? The whole game becomes a farce once you allow that kind of nonsense.)

As for Dantski, well, what of him? It's not our fault that he was still running around with axes and skirmishers in the Industrial Age. We already gifted him some rifles and helped him upgrade his muskets/skirmishers to rifles. If we see a chance to intervene and strike at Nakor, we're going to take it - but we're not going to interrupt our own plans to go into "save Dantski" mode. No one else has done a damn thing to save us militarily in this game.

Put another way, giving up the chance to take cities from Kathlete just to save Dantski would be a poor exchange for us!

Put another way, the conditions of contest are what they are, not what you would prefer they be - it may be an error to insist on choosing your plays based on the latter.

That's really well stated, and I'd like to think that we've done that (mostly) in this game. Rules may be rules - but that doesn't mean you can't say, "this shouldn't be the rule, and it needs to be changed in the future." I get the impression that most readers don't actually like this style of play, of giving up and handing out "gifts" at death's door to various competing teams. Each person can feel how they wish - but I hope there's a better reason than, "Speaker and Sullla are winning, and I want to see a more interesting game."

Thanks for the thoughts. Now please play the turn, Kathlete, so we can get back to killing more of your units.

[Speaker]

One last thing I'd like to add: Holy Rome has captured one very-developed city at this point. Dantski has no military left. We could do a couple things:

1) Declare war on Dantski and capture his border cities, which are defended by Skirmishers, before Holy Rome can get them.

2) Pillage the numerous towns (matured cottages) that are now in "neutral" territory, as the new Holy Rome city is in post-capture anarchy.

We choose not to do either of these things, even though they are 100% legal within the rules. Why? Because Dantski has been an ally the whole game, and we don't need the cities so bad as to kick him while he's already down. And we won't pillage the towns, even though they would give us a *lot* of gold because it's a silly game mechanic, and those tiles belong to that captured city. Pillaging them is a hostile act that the game, for some reason, doesn't interpret as such.

Now please play the turn, Kathlete, so we can get back to killing more of your units.

Somehow I'm sure he'll need to use the whole turn timer, despite the fact that he has just 2 cities left, and one small stack of outdated units. In fact, I'd be willing to bet he gifts Hilton Head away to Slaze this turn, due to the fact that it is empty and we have a stack of units that can capture it this turn. But hey, at least he can't gift his capital!