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PBEM 23 Organizing/Tech Thread

SevenSpirits Wrote:You keep talking about the game situation! Cheating has nothing to do with the game situation! I thought you'd realized this.

Look. To be fair, I can maaaaaybe see how you could consider this a bug, and that exploiting a bug would be cheating. But I don't see that it clearly IS, since there's no simple definition of what's a bug and what is just bad game design (hence my comments about the 10 turns unbreakable peace weirdness).

And since we posted this a week ago in our thread, with several lurkers posting there since and none of them even suggested that this would be at all a bug, clearly no one else thinks that it's an obvious bug either.

If this was at some critical junction of the game, with everything depending on this, then I would have more patience for anal rules-lawyering here. But it isn't. There's just no point wasting time on this stuff. It was already a struggle just to play this turn, and you're making me wish that I had simply quit the game instead.

ESPECIALLY since, if we had really wanted to abuse game mechanics to screw you over, we could have done much worse. Either by gifting away all our cities, or by letting mackoti capture them all. There's no rule against that (what was that comment you made last time? No rule against being an asshole?). We chose what seemed to be a reasonably fair and sportsmanlike option, without simply giving up on the game completely.
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SevenSpirits Wrote:That is actually my favorite genre of board game, the "you get screwed" genre. smile Most notably Space Alert is a brilliant cooperative game where things regularly go catastrophically wrong.

It's not really important to me whether you feel things have gone really badly for you this turn. I mean I sympathize, but I don't consider that a justification for suspending the philosophy of playing in good faith.

Space Alert sounds like a load of fun. smile I think Dwarf Fortress does a great job of fulfilling this type of chaos as well, but it takes a lot more time to set up the "fun" there.

I didn't mean to comment on us being dogpiled. That's water under the bridge at this point. What I meant your team is the one getting the short end of this particular sequence of random events. Mackoti attacks and offers a peace deal on his turn. You attack and offer a peace deal on your turn. (You know, I initially took the two peace deals you gave as a sign you were colluding with mackoti. Oh, the irony.)

As much fun as I'm having with this conversation (and I honestly am! This is invigorating stuff), I have to step away for a while. You guys can do what you think is best. But I think that if you want to pursue that something has to be done before the next turn is played then we need to get an arbiter, because it looks like we're both pretty entrenched in what we think is the correct course of action.
Suffer Game Sicko
Dodo Tier Player
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luddite Wrote:Look. To be fair, I can maaaaaybe see how you could consider this a bug, and that exploiting a bug would be cheating. But I don't see that it clearly IS, since there's no simple definition of what's a bug and what is just bad game design (hence my comments about the 10 turns unbreakable peace weirdness).

I'd really like to hear an argument for why it isn't a bug. For EVERY other tradeable item that you can lose before the trade, if you lose it, the entire trade is cancelled. Why would one specifically exempt cities from this? Do you think someone sat down and said: "I just thought of a cool feature for sequential turns games which are a miniscule fraction of played multiplayer civ games which are a miniscule fraction of played civ games. I'm going to make it so that in this rare type of game which the diplomacy system was not designed for (and which we tested the least of all game types), JUST FOR CITIES, this feature we implemented where trades only go through if the whole trade can go through will no longer apply. This will make PBEM/hotseat games much more exciting and unpredictable! You'll never know exactly what you're agreeing to!"

Also, even if you really think it's a feature of the game and was intended by Firaxis, I'd enjoy hearing an argument for why we at RB should ever condone it.
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What? If you ask for a city that gets captured, it doesn't cancel the deal.
If you ask for a resource that gets pillaged, it doesn't cancel the deal.
If you ask for gpt, and I then lose the necessary gpt, it doesn't get cancelled.

If you think that deals should automatically get cancelled unless everything is perfect, that causes a lot of problems. Suppose that you had captured that city, instead. That would mean that we can't make peace with mackoti, and in fact wouldn't even SEE his peace offer, even though it's just a minor part of it. So instead we're forced to fight on, even though neither of us want to. Does that make sense?
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luddite Wrote:What? If you ask for a city that gets captured, it doesn't cancel the deal.
If you ask for a resource that gets pillaged, it doesn't cancel the deal.

Yes it does. I can see how you wouldn't think this is a bug if you thought everything worked like that. Cities are the exception.

Quote:If you think that deals should automatically get cancelled unless everything is perfect, that causes a lot of problems. Suppose that you had captured that city, instead. That would mean that we can't make peace with mackoti, and in fact wouldn't even SEE his peace offer, even though it's just a minor part of it. So instead we're forced to fight on, even though neither of us want to. Does that make sense?

Actually you would see the peace offer but accepting it would have no effect. (This is what would have happened if we'd both offered you peace for your gold - you'd accept one and then the other deal would become illegal.)

If Mackoti was worried about us capturing one of the cities he wanted for peace, he could of course have made multiple different offers like we did. Or you could make a counteroffer on your turn, or he could make another counteroffer on his turn. The offer of his which you accepted was just his first suggestion.
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SevenSpirits Wrote:Yes it does. I can see how you wouldn't think this is a bug if you thought everything worked like that. Cities are the exception.
No. Say we do a peace for horse deal. I make the trade, then Mackoti comes and pillaging the horse resource. After that you're getting nothing, but it doesn't invalidate the deal.

Quote:Or you could make a counteroffer on your turn, or he could make another counteroffer on his turn. The offer of his which you accepted was just his first suggestion.
This is ridiculous. We can't keep haggling over the course of many turns in a no diplo game. I'd have to immediately start whipping units, in case he changed his mind and decided to not make peace.
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luddite Wrote:No. Say we do a peace for horse deal. I make the trade, then Mackoti comes and pillaging the horse resource. After that you're getting nothing, but it doesn't invalidate the deal.

I don't follow your argument.

Quote:This is ridiculous. We can't keep haggling over the course of many turns in a no diplo game.

Of course you can!
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luddite Wrote:And since we posted this a week ago in our thread, with several lurkers posting there since and none of them even suggested that this would be at all a bug, clearly no one else thinks that it's an obvious bug either.

Only speaking for myself, but please don't bring what lurkers said or didn't say into this discussion. You (as in you and pindicator) posted about this on the 22nd, as if you were pretty set on your course. Then there was no activity in your thread until the 27th, about the game starting up again, and the lurker activity was quite minor (like city naming, comments on Fierce's demise, or questions for info).

IIRC, I was having thoughts about if your proposed course was honest or workable, but since your course seemed set, and I didn't know anything about intended behaviour, I didn't say anything. I can't speak for anyone else.
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Okay, back at it again. I've been speaking with Luddite so I think this falls in line with both of our intentions.

First off, I want to apologize to the other teams involved. When we made our peace deals we had no idea this would be the fallout, and for the delays and the inflamed org thread we are sorry. We're all here to have fun playing a game and for any way that this has detracted from other people's enjoyment I apologize.

Second, I want to share part of a post from our spoiler thread that I made when we were confronted by the save. (The one that came after saying that we were screwed wink )

pindicator Wrote:All right, after calming down (it was pretty frustrating to open the save and see our slim chances of impacting the game go down to 0), here's what I think we should do:

1) Take Mackoti's peace deal
2) Take NoSpace's first peace deal. if I'm right, because Mackoti is taking the city first, this means we get straight up peace with NoSpace.

This gives us 10 turns

It was just a suggestion at the time, hardly set in stone, but after speaking with luddite we decided this was the most sporting of all the realistic options we had. I did this in full understanding that the game mechancis would work out exactly how they did. This is why I have a hard time thinking of the lack of a city transfer as a bug; it worked exactly as i thought it would. Yes, I figured there may be some ill intent towards us, maybe even some sabre rattling. But i did not expect that the save would be held hostage and a demand for reparations made.

My view on the whole situation is that team NoSpaceSeven is the game's clear run-away and eventual winner. But it is absurd that they are holding up the game just because this one situation didn't turn out how they wanted. It has zero impact on the fact that novice, sevenspirits, and spacemanmf have played a fantastic game and are likely going to win in the end. If 143g and our world map are pivotal to victory than PM me the specific reasons and i will bow out as a turn-player after sending you the gold since i'll be spoiled to your plans. If it's principle you're after, then take pride in the eventual victory and be big enough to let this one insignificant matter of bad fortune pass. Yes, it's bad fortune and an unfavorable confluence of events, but to say that it's a bug or an unintended game mechanic is silly because it worked exactly how I thought it would work. It's sad that the great game you've put together so far is going to be marred by such an event.

Going forward I have no intention to give team NoSpaceSeven anything more than i have to and i don't see why i should. Unlike NoSpace, luddite and i are not playing for victory, we are playing for fun and for pride. We are not going to roll over on the whim of the big dog. You want our gold or our cities? Come and take them. There's nothing stopping you from doing that in 10 turns, just like there was nothing to stop you from doing it for the last 100 turns. Or are you afraid you'll botch the next war like you've botched the one against mackoti?

I hope novice, sevenspirits, and spacemanmf will move on and play the turn so we can get this game running again and one day congratulate them on their upcoming victory. With that said, if the other teams believe that this was somehow a game flaw and that we should give them reparations we will work with what the majority of teams playing think is fair.
Suffer Game Sicko
Dodo Tier Player
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Your trash talk is both uncalled for and hilariously off target.

Of course it's about the principle - the gold in itself is meaningless. Twisting your arm now to get a replay or compensation wouldn't mean a thing though. You apparently feel that accepting both peace-for-city offers was sporting, whereas accepting the two compatible peace offers was unrealistic. If I understand you correctly your course of action was made more sporting by the fact that it better preserves the game balance.

We disagree strongly. We're not holding the save hostage, though. We just need to decide if we want to play on in a game where your actions are considered to be in good faith.
I have to run.
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