[TECHNICAL THREAD] for rules and settings and blaming the organizers

[DMOC]

As I have written before. I don't think this game is decided. I would like to play it through but if other players are so convinced about their loosing positions... It's kind of lame when you just give up the game when you have lost hope for winning. But whatever, I'm the newbie here and I can not force anyone to play.

In pretty much all previous Realms Beyond games, the games get called *before* one team actually wins a victory condition, because people can tell what is happening before it happens. It happened in PB4 in a similar situation, and it happened in PB2 as well (with the Speaker/Sullla team having roughly the same tech parity as suttree does now), and in other games.

This game got called a bit earlier than usual (but not that early, other games were called even *earlier* than this one, if I recall correctly) because of a combination of factors. The most important was the huge disparity in skill between the top half and bottom half of teams that led to this imbalance.

[YossarianLives]

I'm definitely willing to keep playing, but my vote is for concession because it has really been a struggle to find the time to play the turns with as much attention as they deserve.

By the way, I did play the turn yesterday when I said I would, then had to re-pause for Classical_Hero, Arkipeller, Bisons, DMOC and SuttOxy.

But do we have a consensus about concession? I'm excited to read the spoiler threads when this game is all over. I think we have SuttOxy, DMOC, Arkipeller, Bisons, Aivoturso and myself in favor of concession; B4ndit in favor of playing on; no vote from Barteq or Classical_Hero.

[suttree]

@B4ndit - We did not accept a concession. We did not ask for a concession. We did not offer a concession. No team achieved a victory condition. As has been clear for some time, no one wins.

I decided to "break the ice" because my personal list of conditions for continuing the game became long enough that it didn't seem worth playing:

1) Fly to the North Pole, take Arkipeller hostage, force him to spend 5 minutes a day playing turns
2) Invent a time machine, distribute as needed to new fathers and busy students.
3) Earn a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. Write my thesis on the history of the turn timer at Realms Beyond. Win the Nobel Peace Prize.
4) Post pictures of rape-y jesus obama

Satisfied that I have achieved at least one of these four conditions, I feel comfortable letting this game go. Obviously this is very bad for B4ndit, he generously subbed, invested time, and now doesn't get a chance to see how things will turn out. But it's a 9-player game and sometimes, despite our best intentions, this is the way the world ends; not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door.

(and yes, as always, I copied that from the internet )

[Aivoturso]

I agree that the game is not decided yet. E.g. a good old fashinoed dog pile might still change the game completely. But unless we can get rid of constant pauses and delays, IMO this game has become practically unplayable. I will go with any decision though. If people still want to continue to play the game, I will play until the end. However, I would prefer just putting the game out of it's misery now.

[DMOC]

I agree that the game is not decided yet. E.g. a good old fashinoed dog pile might still change the game completely. But unless we can get rid of constant pauses and delays, IMO this game has become practically unplayable. I will go with any decision though. If people still want to continue to play the game, I will play until the end. However, I would prefer just putting the game out of it's misery now.

B4ndit and I both have long NAPs with Suttree, and half of the teams are nowhere near the tech parity (or production!) to even scratch suttree. And how would we coordinate it? And what's to stop someone from stepping out of the dogpile and watching while the other teams do the work? Then the cycle repeats. Even if we all declared war on suttree, if I were Yossarian, and I saw your troops headed over towards suttree's land ...

[Bisons]

stop tell the others something you dont understand. that's not a mean to progress.
you really dont understand how playing this period. ask Bandit if you dont understand why i tell that.


in other case, i'm not against stop this party. i'm not against a duel with sutree, but all guy who already concede continue to interfere in order to accord him the victory. that's why i want a call for sutree victory, because in the actually situation. no mean to stop him.

[suttree]

Well, I like to think that we had a pretty good plan independent of how things played out. B4ndit taking over from Asterix had a pretty major effect on the game. Obviously DMOC being forced to carry the burden alone was massive. I was kind of counting on Yuufo/Bisons' aggressive opening to isolate India diplomatically. B4ndit was much more willing to ignore past offences and I think he was a bit more of a vassal than an ally to Bisons.

At turn 152 we had a tech lead of >13000 beakers over India and were confident enough to give up Liberalism (we could have liberalized MilTrad) in an attempt to sabatoge a dogpile. I do think Bisons' confidence would have worked in our favour. With a monk-economy and Rep/Merc we could expand at will. Arkipeller's core was set to fall in a four turn war. We would have had control of the gem/ivory astronomy islands and could deliver cannon by 6-move galleon at will.

I had a lot of fun playing and I'm happy that Oxyphenbutazone put up with me. If I were a more disciplined sort, I would have been nicer to Arkipeller and tried to explain to Bisons the way turn-timer stuff works at Realms Beyond, but c'est la vie, I guess.

[Bisons]

you have an vantage in the upper branche , that true, but if you look the direct science road, and that i can product , this late has no incidence. at the turn 152, you have printing i'm not, but i've education. i already look the graph. if i tech fully, there is no doubt ^^ actually, how many science have you more than me ? so after liberalized printing and my switch civic, i've boost my prod and my science by 30%. and a coupleof turn later, i start to exploited universal vote in my land =)

you have made a perfect move to go on tal mahaj to avoid a rush by great ingenieur. but after that, ( i think ) you havent take fully the potential of your 3 GA. i think you had too focus on miltrad, and forget the bonus of education and rifle road in couple with miltrad.

in fact, i really think your actually military dev is to early. ( because cost/power and you are late in science tree now ) there are too many people who dont understant that.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Education had little to no economic value to us. Our would-be Oxford city had a +4 food surplus and only 9hpt in golden age, so building a university and Oxford there would have taken for ever. That's not even taking into account the other 1400 hammers that would have been needed in other universities.

I don't understand why you think we focused on military too quickly. We realized that if we rushed cuirs and whipped a bunch of them while drafting muskets, we could capture 10 of arki's cities in 4 turns. And now, having visibilty on most of Arki's army, I know we would have done just that. That' would have been a tremendous economic boon to us, allowing us to cash in on a monk economy before needing to get sci method and gain 20 mature cottages. I think the other option to cuir invasion would have been focusing on libbing communism, which I think we could have down, but we didn't know how far we would get ahead.

I think your economy would have been marginally better than ours in the short term, but you certainly wouldn't have made up the vast gap in our beaker totals. And once we regrew our whipped down cities, had arki's cities come out of revolt and settled all the post-astro land, it would have been no contest.

[B4ndit]

At turn 152 we had a tech lead of >13000 beakers

Which went down to 5500? 6000 breakers at t160?

Do we conclude that this game is over?