RB Pitboss #1 Spoilers - Joai of the Incans - Krill/Memphus

[Krill]

Sunrise doesn't know yet...

posted for hilarity value

Krill,

Is this a single-player style NAP where if you declare war on a third party the NAP is void? I'm happy to agree to one like that. I'll add as a bonus that if you declare on someone outside the tech trading group I'm in I won't declare war on you through t120.

-sunrise

I agree with what you have written. Consider it signed?

Krill

[scooter]

And just why the **** does no one ever want to be my friend in these games? They must know by now that there is a decent chance someone is going to get screwed over by me one way or the other.

I agree with parts of what Sullla said, but I think another big part might just be that they felt 6 was simply too big a group. In a given game, you don't want to be friends with everyone, and I think this was just a case of, like you said, being late to the party, so you got stuck being the odd man out.

To put this carefully without spoiling anything, it might not be personal at all like you are hinting at, might be more logistical than anything.

I actually don't disagree with anything you've done so far, including the worker steal (under the circumstances), with the exception of your early scouting. I think that may be the thing that actually hurt you the most. Either way, thanks for making this game more interesting .

[Krill]

Actually scouting was something that me and Memphus argued over quite alot at teh start. The problem was that trying to get even 1 Quechua kept us back just too much, because we really needed a work boat to grow and it took too long to get to size 2 without a 3 food tile. Now, if we had had a land food res, and hadn't had to research fishing, we could have gotten out alot of scouts.

We did actually consider starting with Fishing, the problem was that we would have had to first pick a leader (probably would have been Suryavaman) and then a civ that started with both agri and fishing. We thought we'd try something a little more left field with the leader and civ.

[athlete4life10]

Does anyone feel that this is below the belt, stealing a worker off sunrise?

I personally was really hoping to see this. You've certainly made the game a lot more interesting. And no I don't think it was below the belt. The whole diplomacy thing in MP is so new to me I'm used to just doing what I want when I want it totally caught me off guard in the PBEM. I only wish I had just gotten rid of MH in the first place but now it looks like I'll have to use him to get rid of Dreylin.

Anyways, it appears to me you've been pushy with the diplomacy as Sulla mentioned and arriving late certainly didn't help. That being said I think you did what you could have done to get in on it and now failing that you're right in the fact you now have to meet everybody else as quickly as possible.

[Speaker]

I don't think it is below the belt at all, especially considering that they rejected you from their little cartel. In my opinion, the best way to beat the cartel is to fracture it. Sunrise is probably pretty crippled now. If you could manage to cripple another member of the group, it would probably break apart. Maybe put together a stack of 2-movers as soon as possible and try and mess with Dreylin?

[scooter]

Forgot to add this to my post, but I am also in agreement that what you did was not below the belt. Perhaps if you made no effort to get into the trades then it might have been, but they turned you down (even though you made them a very lucrative offer), so you made the right choice IMO.

My comment about scouting was more about the direction you scouted with your original Quecha (not the lack of building another), see this screenshot that you posted early on: http://i554.photobucket.com/albums/jj417...rldmap.jpg

You quickly pointed out that you were near the northern edge of the map, but you scouted along the north pole (where you're less likely to meet other players) rather than going directly south, where your odds of finding another player are better, resulting in meeting the players that you've met at a later date. That was what I was referring to.

[Krill]

Actually we tried to head west as well with Q2, but ran into 2 bears and a wolf. Originally We only found out we were in the northern lands after heading NE along the spit of land and found the northern edge. Not knowing that the spit of land was in fact a huge **** off belt, but instead thinking it was a land bridge, and deciding ot continue along it and that it would end shortly obviously turned out to be a mistake. If we had headed S after finding the coast though, we aren't even certain to have found the choke point.

That's the problem with saying "If you scouted in this direction" talk; it's exploration for a reason, the only way to be certain is to send scouts in every direction, and if you do that your economy will suck massively compared to those that gambled and got lucky with the direction that they took and immediately built a worker or workboat. There isn't a simple right/wrong way to go about it, more shades of gray and gambling.

I could try to figure out what would have happened, but tbh if the reason for rejecting my overtures to an alliance were mainly "We're scared of Krills' ability" then I don't think finding them any earlier would have helped, and would have helped them band together even sooner, as well as play a more defensive game, which compared to how sunrise got crippled...

Speaker: We were considering that actually, but the problem we have is that we only have horses near us, and while we would like to get HA and some chariots out, against a creative civ with copper (and we have to assume that's what Dreylin has) on a huge map, we probably aren't going to be able to cripple him. HBR would take until t69, Archery until t72, getting 5HA and some chariots would take until t80 at the earliest, which is when they plan to trade everything, and all he'd need to defend is 3 spears and 2 vultures at most. And when he comes for us after that we can't actually defend. So we're heading to maths (t70ish) and then depending on what we need we might make a burst for construction and war eles.

[Swiss Pauli]

I think you made the right move. The Gang of Five offered only stick and no carrot. sunrise was the 'right' person to attack as well: I'm sure you can explain the situation to him because, as an MP guy, he would have done the same thing in your shoes.

[RefSteel]

And then, wow, will this game get boring fast if that happens. Well executed, but boring, right?

Well, if all your fears are realized and the game winds up with an unstoppable five-way alliance and a bunch of backwater civs, it's only a matter of time before fractures start to form: Even if the winner is sure to be one of a certain five, there can still only be one winner, and anyone who's not actually been eliminated at that stage can affect the outcome, if only in a spoiler role. So I don't see the game becoming boring - at least not for long.

Also, you Incans seem to provide a sure antidote for any kind of boredom! I must admit that - diplomacy aside - I really like the Krill/Memphus game thus far. You're skillfully playing the hand you're dealt (whatever you think of its quality) rapidly adapting your strategy in response to emerging situations, now racing to find the remaining civs in order to avert wars that may or may not be brewing, trying to beat the clock (of tech progress, war, or both) to find allies in someone, somewhere.... Really, what's not to like?

And the worker: I wouldn't have stolen him, but when I play games against live humans, I'm a fairly severe pacifist, and generally not interested in Winning It All. (I play variants in board games now!) The rhetoric around it (allies or enemies!) was a bit extreme, but that was here in your private thread, and maybe not quite serious. With five of the ~closest(?) players to your starting location all refusing to give you any tech trades at all, even with major beaker advantages for them ... well, that's a little ways beyond "not allies." If I was part of a five-way trade alliance and saw you coming down from the north roughly in the middle of "our" lands, I would have tried to come up with creative deals to at least make you (even if not a sixth) a "friend of the five" without undermining my five-way trades. I don't think anyone planned a Giant Anti-Krill Alliance, but regardless of intent, that seems from your descriptions to be the net effect of what was done. When they refused to trade with you at all, you had to do something - and you did.

Nothing like a shot across the bow that carries away the bowsprit when you want to make a point, I guess....

[LiPing]

Does anyone feel that this is below the belt, stealing a worker off sunrise? Or is it a fair diplomatic reprisal for the tech embargo that has been placed on me?

Did any of you expect warfare such as this so early in the game

I think it is a reasonable call, you did try, and that option exhausted, there wasn't really anything else to do other than quietly inevitably lose, but I wouldn't call it in any way diplomatic.

I'm not really sure about the wording of the second question, (in case you mean a one vs many war) but with 11 players I did expect a war to occur earlier than this.