[NO PLAYERS] Witnessing Democracy Inaction

[Sullla]

I think larger teams can work together just fine. We genuinely had contributions from a lot of different people in the Apolyton game, for example. But the organization has to come first. As a first step, it's extremely important for a team to have a very clear turn player, and for him or her to post detailed reports for every turn, with ample pictures of anything interesting happening. Few people will be logging into the game firsthand each turn, so those who do have to set the table for team discussion. If that's done properly, you can have a couple dozen people chiming in and making decisions together without too much friction.

We're seeing too many teams here try to make things up as they go along, without much in the way of defined roles, and that's simply not going to work. Of course the team is going to break down when the turnplayer doesn't even tell them what's going on!

[Swiss Pauli]

At the start of the Apolyton game, Team RB's members knew and respected each others playstyles and personalties quite well from the game reports that were posted for RB events, MP games, SGs and so forth. There was some good chemistry there and, mean-spirited though it might have been, I turned away some newbies who seemingly joined RB just to sign up to the demogame to avoid the risk of upsetting this chemistry in the crucial, early part of the game.

Wasn't sure about admitting Soren Johnson either until he said he only wanted to lurk

[Commodore]

Ah, thank you TEAM. This is refreshingly hilarious.

[timski]

TEAM's kill has indeed been entertaining. I especially loved Mackoti's Islamic beeline response, which instantly diffused any out-of-game aggression that might have festered.

The other teams seem to think that TEAM's kill was cavalier in a "full diplo" game, but it was much more logical than it seems from afar:

1. TEAM already had 2 of the 4 opposing teams fully engaged away from them, including one (friendly) neighbor. So at worst they were going to get the 2 unaccounted teams upset, one of whom was their southern neighbor and was going to be a territorial target anyway.

2. TEAM knew their southern neighbor had not advanced towards them, so de facto had advanced towards their other neighbor. They (correctly) deduced that the Trolls were dot-mapping towards that other neighbor.

3. The pay-off from the kill was good: An early 2XP Warrior is never a bad thing. And Gillette's ability to explore the map and make contact has been severely gimped. Notably, Gillette will not be making contact with the Pirates anytime soon, so won't be undermining TEAM's vassal with inconvenient truths.

So Gillette may hope to make the other teams fear TEAM, but in practice it won't make much difference:

• Gillette can't tell the Pirates, so can't muddy TEAM's relationship with its vassal.
  
• Gillette told Menagerie, but Menagerie are about to be fully engaged with the Pirates.
  
• Gillette told Troll, but all Troll's expansion plans are already towards Gillette. And beyond that Troll were going to have to deal with their northern neighbor regardless.

So short-to-mid term, the Scout kill doesn't make any different to TEAM's standing. Long term one suspects the teams will find better reasons for building friendships than retribution over a turn 27 Scout kill.

I was rather uncomplementary about the Gillette move that made this kill possible. Unfortunately Gillette moved as if playing an (early) always peace game. A gentleman's war, where everyone waits patiently to line up their musketeers before shooting. In practice they should have moved as if the TEAM Warrior was a Barbarian - until proven otherwise by diplomatic contact. The entire episode would have been completely avoidable with a little more caution in play.

Equally entertaining is Gillette's current response to Menagerie's information about TEAM's Scout. Miscommunication (?) looks likely to send one of Gillette Warrior's off on a wild goose chase, only to end when TEAM's Scout appears where Gillette's Warrior would have been, had it not moved towards the place where TEAM's Scout is not...

At this point it doesn't much matter if Gillette do kill TEAM's Scout, since the later has largely served its purpose, in contrast to Gillette, who badly needed to scout north. What's more interesting is that this probably won't endear Gillette to Menagerie half as much as Menagerie might have hoped.

Team Pirate have now gone almost 2 days without playing their turn. Oledavy mentioned they were going to be busy, but didn't appear to agree on who would play the turns. TheStick (who played the last turn) doesn't seem to be around now either. If I hadn't caused an upset on turn 0 over just this issue, I'd probably be ranting in their thread now. It doesn't look like anyone that is active in their forum is even reading the tech thread.

Sullla's and Swiss Pauli's latest points are well made. It's obvious from TEAM, who don't have the same rigid structure as the Trolls, but do maintain enough organisation to make things work: The people jell with one another. The turns always get played and reported on. And Krill is always there in the background, ready to pounce when a decision needs to be taken - even the "whatever" response to the proposed Scout kill. They don't have the same attention to detail or (apparent) organisation of turn playing as the Trolls, but TEAM works nonetheless.

Oh, and I almost forgot to repost this closing gem:

The Worker finished the Farm. What to do now?

Stealth edit #2 is even better:

Did we miss the turn?

Edit: Who is Cassidy and did you play the turn?

FFS Pirates. Get it together. Please.

Edit again, for and finally:

Pirates seem to have disappeared. I decided to play. If there is a reload so be it.

TEAM you're up.

Plako, the ultimate turn-timer playing gentleman has lost patience! Maybe once the Pirates start losing turns they'll become more focused on playing them...?

Meanwhile Gaspar spots the flaw in TEAM's gameplan:

Might actually want to rethink being allied with the guys who can't get one person to log in to play a turn that still takes about 15 seconds to play.

While thestick is presumably going to delay everyone another day while awaiting a decision on whether they should reload, followed by however long it takes Sunrise to perform a reload and everyone to replay. I'd rather the discussion took the form of, "do we deserve a reload," to which the answer is patently no.

(Sorry for the repeated edits, but this last hour has been like watching TV...)

[Sullla]

I'm not convinced that Team's brutish diplomatic policy is particularly wise. Yes, they're having fun with it, and it's amusing for lurkers in a juvenile way. But this is a full diplo game, and there are only four other teams out there. Declaring unending Always War with one of those four teams severely curtails strategic options. In this case, Team has already indicated they plan on aggressively expanding towards Trolls. Gillette should be their natural ally in this scenario. Instead, they've made a permanent enemy of Gillette over trivialities. Early settlement goals notwithstanding, this is very likely going to drive Gillette and Trolls together into a strong partnership.

Now maybe Pirates and Menagerie go to war, and Trolls/Gillette get caught up in their own fighting, and Team simply sweeps the board unopposed. It's certainly possible. I'm simply suggesting that limiting your options diplomatically for little more than trollish kicks is not the wisest move. I also don't think I would respond positively to a team that constantly belittles everyone else and mocks their team names non-stop. I'm not sure how far you can roleplay arrogant douchebags without simply becoming arrogant douchebags.

This game would certainly be a lot more interesting with five teams competing, instead of the current 3.5 teams. (I figure Menagerie is worth about 0.5 teams right now.)

[NobleHelium]

Big question is whether we want another Worker so soon.

That basically sums it up. Pirates are now a rag-tag newbie team with some veterans occasionally making largely ignored or useless comments that aren't pertinent to the actual gameplay.

[timski]

Sad, but true. Pirates have gone from the questionable, through the incompetent, to the pitiful. I feel rather sorry for pindicator, who has reluctantly stepped into the role of "being reponsible", when the role they are best suited to - microing stuff - remains vacant.

The best outcome I can foresee is:

1. Pirates plant their Pink Dot city aggressively against Menagerie, without *early enough* roads, culture generation, defense, or, frankly, strategy.

2. Menagerie bulldoze Pirate's new city, because even the unchangeable Mortius is going to have to divert from wonder-building once they lose their Ivory and (shss-it's-a-secret) Gold spot; and because the Pirates will struggle to survive a Warrior rush against their new city, let alone anything more challenging.

3. TEAM, who will inevitably lose out to Troll's latest "central land grab" strategy, stab their Pirate ally in the back, grabbing Pirates' land as a damage limitation exercise to prevent Menagerie from getting it first.

The wildcard is how Menagerie responds. But at least if the 2 lame ducks are left quacking at one another, and Troll grabs the center, the remaining 3 active teams will be similarly placed to exploit the situation in the AD years. If the game lasts that long.

Added: For context, I feel compelled to highlight Novice's latest micro plan...




That's 5 - count 'em - 5 cities by Turn 55. Sure, that's a double-Worker opening, with probably the best civ/leader setup for REXing, but.

[Sullla]

Ambitious. That's a lot of cities and a lot of food, but no commerce whatsoever. I think I would rather have four cities and more improved tiles myself. I'd also like to have more defenses than "none at all". But I hope they go for it because it would make for an entertaining game.

It's a real shame that Pirates and Menagerie have been underwhelming in terms of competition. The extended pause has done little in terms of making Pirates a competitive team that I've seen. At least they are next to each other on the map; everyone other than Trolls has a fair chance to expand at their expense.

I think the key diplomatic issue is which two of the three major teams end up pairing together. Because of the way Team has acted, it looks like that will be Trolls and Gillette by default.

[timski]

Troll's expansion and finances will certainly be interesting to watch. 5 cities will take them down to about 10% break-even research. I guess they'll need Libraries to remain competitive at all. Thereafter I presume Troll will play the board as they find it: Pyramids or GLH if (for some reason) one hasn't fallen by then, otherwise beelining Caste and MoM?

Due to the fact that I will not be able to play until Saturday, and the only remained active member - HitAnyKey is also away. I would like to ask for a pause on those two days.

What bothers me is that Mortius has posted that in the tech thread without asking if anyone else was available in their own forum. Mortius appears to have decided, based on their earlier reading of the (un)riot act, that Team Menagerie has just 2 players remaining, which I'm not entirely sure is the case.

Regardless, the request is going to go down like a lead balloon with the other teams, who have only just got rolling again after Pirates' pause:

For teams that are supposed to have a dozen members, this inability to get basic (BC) turns played is a farce. Delaying the game 2-3 days so that Menagerie can move a couple of units or whatnot is ridiculous. This is not a PBEM.

I'm tempted to suggest that any team that cannot play within their 24 hours without a better excuse than poor team organisation simply forfeits the (non-automated) turn. If teams are weaken as a result, so be it: They are weakened anyway by their ineffectual teamwork, and at least that way the teams that are playing get to play promptly.

One other possibility is that teams in this situation write out exactly what needs to be done (no conditional moves, no diplo, no ambiguity), and a lurker plays the turn exactly as written. However there aren't many lurkers for this game, so that solution may just cause a new tier of problems.

(If you want to re-quote that last 3 paragraphs in public Myst, go ahead.)

[T-hawk]

Troll's expansion and finances will certainly be interesting to watch. 5 cities will take them down to about 10% break-even research. I guess they'll need Libraries to remain competitive at all.

Libraries don't do much if you're at 10% research. Multiply that 10% to 12.5%, what's that going to get you? Scientist specialists aren't hot either; if you want to work 3 beakers you're probably better off overall with a 2-0-2 cottage or even 1-0-2 coast tile.

Libraries only get you out of research trouble by producing a Great Scientist to settle. But even that is a short-term play compared to an academy. The real way out of economy trouble is cottages, Currency, and Bureaucracy. All those create more commerce as a whole, rather than just operating on the thin slice of commerce that goes into research.