RBP6 Lurker Thread

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I've always found when doing worldbuilder sims, I always accidently drown everyone else's settlers under ocean, giving me victory a few turns later.

Which is a huge pain in the ass because it wipes out all my hard work building the damn sim in the first place.

[luddite]

Hey guys,

I noticed a ton of posting in the lurker thread and I decided to see what was going on. Don't worry, I'm completely out of the game now. Lewwyn and ASM have been playing the last 20 turns or so completely without me, and I'm not going to say anything to them about the game from here on out.

First of all... yeesh, yeah, that was a huge spoiler to post that in Spulla's thread. I'm not too mad though. It sounds like they did think about culture, but they just think it's impossible for us to get it, because they think the game mechanics require 3 cities all in one civ. (and for the record, I did test that out at the beginning of the game, and the same thing happened to me- no immediate victory, but after clicking next turn a few more times I got the culture victory).

I'm actually thinking someone should tell them that they're wrong about this. Because it's not just a case of bad strategy, they're making a good strategic choice based on being wrong about the game mechanics. That seems like a case where the lurkers really are supposed to tell them what they're doing wrong.

And um... maybe I'm being too cocky about this because it's my own team and strategy... but it seems to me like we have this in the bag. I really don't understand comments like this:

While I completely agree that we shouldn't talk about it with them anymore, I doubt it will make any practical difference. The only way it would work is if it was a surprise, and it's not a surprise to team #3. Right now, the only way it can work is if Team #1 decides to press an attack on Team #3 soon, so they can't go kill team #2.

We're going to win culture in about ~20 turns, and all our culture cities are at least 9 tiles away from the border. So, assuming they attack with 1-movers, they've got only 11 turns to get an army into position. That's not much! That means they need to start assembling the invasion army immediately, and so far they're not doing that at all. Pretty soon it will reach the point where units built at the back half of their empire won't even be able to reach the front in time.

Of course they could arrive faster with a stack of 2-movers, but then that means no siege, so they'd be attacking a hill city with 80% culture. No chance. And it's not like they can just send up a handful of cannons and we'll fold... ASM and lewwyn have been whipping cats and muskets nonstop in all non-culture cities for the last 30 turns or so. I think our team was actually #1 in power for a while, and a lot of those cats have barrage 2 thanks to theocracy. We may be backwards in tech, but we have a lot of older units.

Seems to me that Teams 1 and 3 are ssort of trapped in a prisoner's dilemma right now. Either team could stop us, but they'd have to basically send everything they've got right away. But in doing so, they'd leave their border with the other undefended, and lose a lot of border cities. If they could communicate they could work out a deal... but they can't.

So yeah... I say go ahead and tell Team 1 that they're wrong about culture victory. It seems like a legitimate game mechanics issue, and frankly I don't think they'll be able to stop us anyway.

[Cyneheard]

Hey guys,

I noticed a ton of posting in the lurker thread and I decided to see what was going on. Don't worry, I'm completely out of the game now. Lewwyn and ASM have been playing the last 20 turns or so completely without me, and I'm not going to say anything to them about the game from here on out.

First of all... yeesh, yeah, that was a huge spoiler to post that in Spulla's thread. I'm not too mad though. It sounds like they did think about culture, but they just think it's impossible for us to get it, because they think the game mechanics require 3 cities all in one civ. (and for the record, I did test that out at the beginning of the game, and the same thing happened to me- no immediate victory, but after clicking next turn a few more times I got the culture victory).

I'm actually thinking someone should tell them that they're wrong about this. Because it's not just a case of bad strategy, they're making a good strategic choice based on being wrong about the game mechanics. That seems like a case where the lurkers really are supposed to tell them what they're doing wrong.

And um... maybe I'm being too cocky about this because it's my own team and strategy... but it seems to me like we have this in the bag. I really don't understand comments like this:

We're going to win culture in about ~20 turns, and all our culture cities are at least 9 tiles away from the border. So, assuming they attack with 1-movers, they've got only 11 turns to get an army into position. That's not much! That means they need to start assembling the invasion army immediately, and so far they're not doing that at all. Pretty soon it will reach the point where units built at the back half of their empire won't even be able to reach the front in time.

Of course they could arrive faster with a stack of 2-movers, but then that means no siege, so they'd be attacking a hill city with 80% culture. No chance. And it's not like they can just send up a handful of cannons and we'll fold... ASM and lewwyn have been whipping cats and muskets nonstop in all non-culture cities for the last 30 turns or so. I think our team was actually #1 in power for a while, and a lot of those cats have barrage 2 thanks to theocracy. We may be backwards in tech, but we have a lot of older units.

Seems to me that Teams 1 and 3 are ssort of trapped in a prisoner's dilemma right now. Either team could stop us, but they'd have to basically send everything they've got right away. But in doing so, they'd leave their border with the other undefended, and lose a lot of border cities. If they could communicate they could work out a deal... but they can't.

So yeah... I say go ahead and tell Team 1 that they're wrong about culture victory. It seems like a legitimate game mechanics issue, and frankly I don't think they'll be able to stop us anyway.

Not with Sullla on T1. His understanding of lurker spoilers is stricter than most; I don't think he'd actually want the help.

[NobleHelium]

Redacting the post was much worse than the post itself.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Blame me for that

[luddite]

Not with Sullla on T1. His understanding of lurker spoilers is stricter than most; I don't think he'd actually want the help.

You might be right about that. But it just seems incredibly lame if this game is going to end with them saying "nah, they can't possibly win culture" and they let us win it without a fight.

Ironically, Team 4 might actually have the best chance to stop us right now. They're about to get rifling, they've got nothing else to do, and most of our units are positioned to defend south against teams 1 and 3.

[luddite]

Oh wow... I just re-read Sulla's last post and realized that they still don't know exactly where Milkshake is. So even if they knew how close we are to a culture victory, they wouldn't be able to beeline our culture/wonder city. Who cares if they're about to get assembly line... there's just not enough time for them to use it.

[T-hawk]

I'm actually thinking someone should tell them that they're wrong about this. Because it's not just a case of bad strategy, they're making a good strategic choice based on being wrong about the game mechanics.

I'm kind of starting to agree. I could word it like this, about as neutrally as possible. Sullla won't think twice about me detailing a game mechanic. Any opinions?

I was curious about this too. There seems to be a check in the code, that no victory is awarded until after the first 20 or 30 turns.* The purpose is to avoid the game ending right at the beginning, when somebody has no cities because they haven't founded one yet. Did you test for a decent number of turns?

*borderline lie, since I didn't actually find it in the code, but he doesn't have to know that.

[Hesmyrr]

The problem is that had there not been anomaly of cultural victory not functioning in initial fifteen turns, Sullla would have found out the fact about team culture requirement in Worldbuilder test he did. While some responsibility is upon the player to understand the game's mechanics, such argument can hardly apply when their attempt to replicate the situation was confounded by unmentioned bug.

However it is still wrong to inform Sullla about this fact now, since doing so would definitely tip Team 1 of Team 3's intentions. I believe it might be good idea to correct their misunderstanding only when he is 100% certain that team 2 is heading for the culture victory.

Edit: T-hawk posted before me, so I was not addressing his post while writing above.
Just one question: what are you exactly curious about? (I haven't seen any part on his post that warrants such response) Moreover it'd be hardly difficult to figure out... I'm not really opposed to making such suggestions right now, it is just that such flimsy pretense would hardly work at all. I guess others can speak up about this since I don't know much about Spullla.

[Tyrmith]

Spulla's already knows team 2 is heading for a culture victory, for better or worse. They just don't care because they don't think it's anywhere close to possible for team 2 to pull it off due to bad information.