[SPOILERs] PBEM 19 Lurker Thread (No players!)

[Gaspar]

I don't understand why Seven does stuff like pillage luddite's oil with a privateer. Any player is going to consider it a NAP violation and its unnecessary as they have the game won regardless.

[novice]

I don't understand why Seven does stuff like pillage luddite's oil with a privateer. Any player is going to consider it a NAP violation and its unnecessary as they have the game won regardless.

Yeah, bad impulse control there.

In better news, Seven pillaged Luddite's oil source last turn. Luddite is treating it as an act of war which nullifies their NAP, and told us he's going to attack T147, that's in 2 turns, 3 turns earlier than planned. Hopefully it will distract Seven from his rampage campaign in Radioland

Can't say I blame Luddite.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

That's a nice trick saving the morale promotion on the commando tank, very FFHish. Wouldn't it give an extra 5 moves though? If I understand railroads correctly, each move costs 0.1 move points if you have a 1-mover, and 0.2 move points if you have a 2-mover.

Also, if Seven brings a carrier with a stack of fighters, he can probably get odds on pretty much any internal city.

Edit: Wait no, I understand, once he promotes to mobility each railroad move will cost 0.33 move points. So only 13 moves, in fact.

[SevenSpirits]

Well, I decided to spoil myself and read everyones' threads here. This game is over, and I consider it to be a waste of several peoples' time to play it out starting a couple turns ago. At least it's unlikely to approach the colossal timewaste (IMO, this is all IMO) of pbem4.

In order to breathe a bit of interest back into the game while it continues, Ranamar and Commodore agreed to both rush for the U.N. I guess I just don't understand the attitude of wanting to play on so much that you'll give your opponent an extra chance he or she doesn't deserve. It seems completely unsportsmanlike to me, particularly if there are still other players left in the game. Anyway since I find this plan distasteful personally and don't really care what the result is, I figured why not read all the threads. (That and Ranamar said he'd take responsibility for playing the remaining 10-15 (presumably) turns.)

So at this point I've read the map thread, lurker thread, MNG thread and Commodore thread. Wow, that's a lot to digest. I feel like I should respond to a couple things:

1) "Seven was a shark in the Newbie game"
Uh... I didn't join a newbie game. It did not even claim to be a newbie game. Apparently in an old first post there was some mention of a newbie game? But Commodore edited it out (and even said he was doing so in his next post), because right away scooter replied and pointed out that being "only" a monarch player was not that big a deal.

Aside from the official stance though, the game contained Mr Nice Guy, who played PB3, GES, who played (the truncated) pbem11 and subbed in another game, Lewwyn, who subbed pbem6, and was in pbem14 and pbem18 at the time, and Luddite (don't know off the top of my head but he's obviously not a newbie). I myself have played in pbem6 and (the truncated) pbem11. You can argue that's more but it sure as hell isn't a lot more.

2) "In truth, I planned on gifting you a couple more workers before asking you to DOW so you can get the GL."
That's a MNG quote in Commodore's thread. Commodore later says he picked up some workers of MNGs that had basically run into his open arms. And on our turn we once found Rheims (the GLH city) mysteriously empty. I am seriously pissed at the global lurkers for not stopping this nonsense. We should absolutely NOT have been allowed to capture Rheims like that. I tried to contact MNG myself to see if this (his leaving Rheims empty) was legitimate, and he said that he simply hadn't realized it was capturable, so I didn't pursue it further. (Poor play is always legal.) Now it looks like he was lying and was trying to gift it to Commodore. I'm severely disappointed in everyone involved.

3) It's clear to me now that our opponents who badmouthed my diplo don't exactly have clean records themselves. In fact they lied to us quite a bit, much more than I did, I think. I didn't break any deals I made. I was good to and open with people I considered allied, dastardly towards our enemies, and cordial and at least honest with anyone in between. Not really sure what else you could want out of someone's diplo.

I got a decent amount of criticism (from the other players) for being a hardass. Yup. That's what you have to do if your trade partners are vastly misjudging the values of things being traded. I don't think Yuris understood how good those galleons could be until we killed half his cities with marines, and maybe not even then. (Haven't read his thread yet.) He also misjudged our willingness to attack him several times. And, I don't think he realized that that aggressive city of ours we let him raze cost us a ton of money in maintenance before he killed it. That little venture was NOT profitable for us. It was cutting our losses.

[SevenSpirits]

Honestly, if the map is a mistake to me in hindsight, its that it takes settling races off the board more than I intended, and that makes the early turns quite dull. Mostly I just thought we hadn't done Wheel before and its an MP script, why not try it. In retrospect, I have no business making maps.

As you have probably learned, people ALWAYS complain about the map. You shouldn't take it personally - it's a) rhetorical, b) used to create a diplomatically useful aura of inferior position and c) directed at you specifically only out of convenience of target. I do think the people who looked over the map should have noticed the luxury disparity. With novice's tool, this will probably not be as much of a problem in the future, at least.

The rivers thing is not something that I personally would have noticed, had I been checking the map. But when you play in a game with that disparity for months, you do notice it. It was actually a very big deal. (Unusually so, because this game has unusually well-defined borders for how non-mirrored it is.) We could feel its effects in our struggling research rate throughout the game. In the future, rivers are definitely something I'll pay more attention to.

As you say I think the main thing wrong with this map was how little competition for land it prompted. Particularly having just come from pbem11, that felt pretty unappealing to me. However: this game was really exciting and enjoyable! Like, a lot. The result was good, and a large part of that is how you decided to make the map. So, thank you. And I'm sure you didn't mean that bit about you having no business making maps seriously, but yeah, don't say that.

[spacemanmf]

1) "Seven was a shark in the Newbie game"
Uh... I didn't join a newbie game. It did not even claim to be a newbie game. Apparently in an old first post there was some mention of a newbie game? But Commodore edited it out (and even said he was doing so in his next post), because right away scooter replied and pointed out that being "only" a monarch player was not that big a deal.

Aside from the official stance though, the game contained Mr Nice Guy, who played PB3, GES, who played (the truncated) pbem11 and subbed in another game, Lewwyn, who subbed pbem6, and was in pbem14 and pbem18 at the time, and Luddite (don't know off the top of my head but he's obviously not a newbie). I myself have played in pbem6 and (the truncated) pbem11. You can argue that's more but it sure as hell isn't a lot more.

I'm not going to comment on this per se, because I have only read your thread (and only recently MNG's) so I have no idea about how the game was set up, etc. However, I did think to myself that your skills made a big difference in this game and it would be interesting to know how it would have turned out without your input/turn-playing.

But I'm definitely glad to have you on my side in PBEM23 rather than not.

[Lewwyn]

Heh, I haven't really been playing since we took out MNG. I got busy and then there didn't seem much sense for me to come back and play when everything seemed in hand and I had other games to play. I was thinking today that I'd start reading the other threads (started here), and lo and behold Seven had the same idea. I guess the game really is coming to a close. Crazy fast game... 14 and 18 which started before this are both still going!

I think I'll read more of these threads when I get the chance tonight (still have work to do here).

[Lewwyn]

Oh and...

I'm lurking on and off. Had to smile at SS's team's complete schizophrenia. As always, Lewwyn vastly overestimates the benefits of early aggression.

So true! Thing is I know it, and I'm REALLY trying to pull back from it, but it's just so much fun! Sometimes I care less about winning the war and more about winning the battle. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to completely switch off that thought process. Then again I don't know that that is always a bad thing.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm not going to comment on this per se, because I have only read your thread (and only recently MNG's) so I have no idea about how the game was set up, etc. However, I did think to myself that your skills made a big difference in this game and it would be interesting to know how it would have turned out without your input/turn-playing.

But I'm definitely glad to have you on my side in PBEM23 rather than not.

I feel like I got a lot better in the course of playing pbem19. Partly because I had a long way to go and partly because (unlike pbem6 I have to say) the opposition was pretty skilled and quite challenging.

I think I played pretty well in this game, and it's nice to hear that from other people. I should add though that our team got some extraordinary luck in this game:

* MNG leaving his cities EMPTY.
* Yuris deciding to declare war on GES.

Without either of those choices by other players, I don't see how we could have won.

I also feel like I was responsible for quite a large number of poor moves. Notably,
* Attacking with knights on galleons should not have worked.
* The artist bomb should not have worked.
* Helping GES get the religious trifecta and convincing him it was a good idea (which it was) risked giving him even more of an advantage. To be the right move, it had to have made the difference in Yuris deciding to attack him.

[Gaspar]

As you have probably learned, people ALWAYS complain about the map. You shouldn't take it personally - it's a) rhetorical, b) used to create a diplomatically useful aura of inferior position and c) directed at you specifically only out of convenience of target. I do think the people who looked over the map should have noticed the luxury disparity. With novice's tool, this will probably not be as much of a problem in the future, at least.

The rivers thing is not something that I personally would have noticed, had I been checking the map. But when you play in a game with that disparity for months, you do notice it. It was actually a very big deal. (Unusually so, because this game has unusually well-defined borders for how non-mirrored it is.) We could feel its effects in our struggling research rate throughout the game. In the future, rivers are definitely something I'll pay more attention to.

As you say I think the main thing wrong with this map was how little competition for land it prompted. Particularly having just come from pbem11, that felt pretty unappealing to me. However: this game was really exciting and enjoyable! Like, a lot. The result was good, and a large part of that is how you decided to make the map. So, thank you. And I'm sure you didn't mean that bit about you having no business making maps seriously, but yeah, don't say that.

Like I said, I do get it. And I think at the time it was just being heard SO much - not just your thread, but GES as well, who in my mind had no reason to complain. I think I also felt a little guilty about it for reasons I stated upthread. Anyway, the whole objective was to create a map with tons of interesting tactical decisions while at least making some attempt to adhere to the "snaky" feel desired in the organizing thread. I think I succeeded on that count, and I'm glad the game was as fun for you to play as it was for me to lurk.

And though I may not have said it specifically to you or aloud in thread, I know I've said it in chat with Lewwyn among others: I think you sell yourself short here. You played this game in a different way than we've seen a winning game played here, maybe anywhere. Personally, you've gotten me to think a bit more about the different ways one can win and certainly you deserve tons of credit for being the first to recognize just how dangerous ships would be (if you look at the map thread, that was definitely intentional.) So great game.