[SPOILERS] B4ndit's thread (Darius of Ottomans)

[B4ndit]

Yes, from the moment I have razed his city, I was proposing Herena Desert for the peace. He didn't want to agree. Why would he? All units defending Herena Desert came from whipping it so this defense didn't cost him anything.

Previous turn there was funny situation. In Herena Desert he had 2 archers, 2 warriors and 1 axeman. Axeman and archers were fully fortified. My horse archers had 36% chances attacking Archers and ~18% axeman. 2 tiles away from Herena Desert I had 4 Horse Archers and 1 axeman (I was stacking units on the hill 2N 1E from HD until I accumulate enough force to attempt attack on the city).

Now the funny thing. My warrior while pursuing his two workers moved on the hill 2S 1E from HD (his workers were on the forest tile and I have thought that he can not attack my warrior). I haven't thought that he can build a road on the forest tile (1S from HD) and use this road to attack my poor almost useless warrior. But he did just that! With his axeman The best defending unit which he had in Herena Desert against my Horse Archers This was grave mistake on his side (I guess we are now even after my stupid lost of chariot in opening move). His fortified axeman was extremely powerful unit, untouchable by my axemans and very strong against HA... and my warrior was pretty useless. It was only blocking workers... By the way. Why did he try to move workers to HD?

I have immediately used this situation and moved those mentioned 4HA and 1 axeman into atack range for HD. Of course his axeman couldn't come back to the city on time and he produced only one more archer (with no fortify bonus). Maybe he thought that this will suffice to hold this city. To be honest... I have also thought that I won't be able to retake HD in this turn and I was preparing for second attack in the following turn (next turn I would have one more HA and axeman). Surprisingly attack has succeeded way better then I expected:

~36% HA vs Archer WON
~36% HA vs Archer WON
~55% HA vs unfortified Archer WON
~95% HA vs Warrior WON
~98% Axeman vs Warrior WON

the city came back to it's rightful owner

I have moved in 1 axeman ~2.9 strength and two very week HA (0.3 and 1.2). He has Axeman ~4.x strength and 2 workers 1 tile south. It will be interesting. I thought about offering him the peace without conditions, but after thinking it through I didn't make it.

Yes he has praetorians. But 10t peace will just give him time to build more of them. If he is planning to use prets against me, peace won't make me any good. He can not attack me sooner, because he has only 1 praetorian in his capital at the moment. Secondly and I will have catapults in ~12 turns, so the later I sign the peace the better for me (probably if i sign the peace in 2 turns, I will have first catapult ready at the time he attacks me) AND in the mean time I will try to hunt down his workers

He can:
1. attack my city with his axeman, killing one of my unit (axeman probably)
2. try to save his workers moving them out of my range WITH his cover from his axeman.
3. run away with his workers separately with axeman.

Hopefully he will agree into peace and realize that this war can not end good for any of us. Even with prets, he will not be able to capture my cities easily. Axes with defense bonuses (from culture AND fortification) will be able to defend from him pretty easily... Nevertheless, even if he signs the peace, it won't change my immediate plans: i need catapults.

PS, I will have settler ready in 3 turns. What should I do with it? I was thinking about settling city on the same hill where I have razed his city. Good defending position against him. It would be funny to do that DURING the war

PS2, I will never play the game without diplomacy ever again. I am 95% sure that with diplo I could talk him into signing the NAP for something 20 maybe 30 turns and move on. Without that option even after singing peace treaty we will be building military instead of focusing on rebuilding ourselvs... (we both have 3 cities while other players have 6 or 7...) As Catwalk has mentioned before. His attack has ruined both of our games so far. Especially that he hasn't reinforced those cities after first peace. What was he thinking? Even one damned spearman would be pain in the ass for me. I guess he was building granaries/settlers/workers or other things like that... Like he couldn't predict my counter attack?

[Bobchillingworth]

PS2, I will never play the game without diplomacy ever again.

Good luck with that, man. Playing with diplomacy has caused a lot of bad blood in a lot of games. Not being able to verbally negotiable with CH might be a pain, but you might find the cure is worse than the cold if 80 turns from now the leading player has NAPs with everyone who could hurt them and your only options are to ruin your reputation or spend the next month playing out the string until they win by space.

[B4ndit]

Ok, maybe I have exaggerated a bit saying "never". I have very limited experience with mp in civ4, but still one of the most interesting part for me of my other game (pb14) is the diplo contact with other players. It makes the game feel much more "realistic" if you know what I mean. Additionally diplomacy gives you much more "depth". Good example are simple MMORTS games like Travian or Ogame (I have played quite a lot in Travian many years ago). They are extremely simple games in term of rules and pure "game" decisions. It is almost no brainer decision where to settle new city, what should be produced where, which units, which buildings. But this "MMO" part, with all the diplomacy and human interaction, bring those games into completely different dimension, where 90-95% of the game is being played on emails and clan boards. I have very similar feeling playing PB14 but on much smaller scale. Here? I feel like playing some "(much) better AI" mod to be honest. Which is nice, but could be much much better

[NobleHelium]

We're not here to play games on emails and clan boards. No problem if you want to do that, of course.

[Ceiliazul]

Yeah, I tried diplo in my first game. I spent more time on email than I did in-game. The result was a game that went to the industrial age without a single great general: once a team takes the initiative to get NAPS, all other party's have to do it or it's mutual destruction for them.

[B4ndit]

Unfortunately really bad news for me, please read following correspondence:

Hi B4ndit,

I was wondering if I could look at the save you received for the turn you got your city back. The reason is that I'm worried that you might have reloaded the save to find the best order of attack. My sincere apologies for the stress I'm potentially causing if this is not the case. (If you did, now would be a good time to say so, and we can rewind to that turn and say no harm done. )

In any case, I'd appreciate it if you sent me the save from the start of the turn (I think 1000BC, correct me if I'm wrong), and let me know what the password is to open it up. My email address is whatever@something.com.

Thanks,
Seven

Hmmm, it may sound stupid but I haven't thought/read that it is prohibited (you might not remember when few months ago I was asking about rules book in the welcoming thread).

Is this general rule applying to all aspects in the game? Like I don't know, closing diplomacy windows to checkout situation and then reloading game to accept/deny it (when diplo window is blocking your view). What about other pop ups? I don't remember if apostolic palace/un nations blocks your actions?

Do I have to always choose unit to attack based on chances of winning? What if someone is not attacking first with his best promoted unit (for example with great general) at ~70% chances? I am guessing it is legit as far it is not a decision based on reloading?

Is there any way to enforce such a rule? Generally speaking I don't like rules which can not be checked/enforced, that's why I haven't thought that it should be prohibited.

But harm was done. I am deeply sorry for disobeying such a rule - it would not happen if I knew about it and it won't happen again.

That all has been said, how should we proceed from this point?

sorry, B4ndit

Hmmm, it may sound stupid but I haven't thought/read that it is prohibited (you might not remember when few months ago I was asking about rules book in the welcoming thread).

Is this general rule applying to all aspects in the game? Like I don't know, closing diplomacy windows to checkout situation and then reloading game to accept/deny it (when diplo window is blocking your view). What about other pop ups? I don't remember if apostolic palace/un nations blocks your actions?

From what I've read, I think it's generally acceptable to initially decline all diplo offers so you can see the situation before deciding which ones to accept. That is, people have said they did this and no one complained; I'm not sure if it's ever been discussed. You can see there's a good reason though: the game would work a lot better for everyone if people could see the situation when making these decisions. Personally, I don't remember if I've ever done this; currently, I think I would not, unless it's been explicitly discussed with the other players before.

When it comes to reloading after taking an action like exploring or attacking though, the consensus is clearly and explicitly that that is cheating. We don't want the attacker to have a constant, magical and infallible advantage in combat. Honestly, if you took serious advantage of this, you'd never lose a combat on your own turn, which is just ridiculous, and definitely not how the game is supposed to work.

Do I have to always choose unit to attack based on chances of winning? What if someone is not attacking first with his best promoted unit (for example with great general) at ~70% chances? I am guessing it is legit as far it is not a decision based on reloading?

No. And, of course, attacking first with the unit that highest win chance isn't always the strategically best move. The important thing is you can't take back any choices.

Is there any way to enforce such a rule? Generally speaking I don't like rules which can not be checked/enforced, that's why I haven't thought that it should be prohibited.

There's also an implicit rule that you can't read other players' threads. I hope you have been following that! I can understand the distaste for unenforceable rules, but we have no choice but to rely on the honor system here.

But harm was done. I am deeply sorry for disobeying such a rule - it would not happen if I knew about it and it won't happen again.

That all has been said, how should we proceed from this point?

sorry, B4ndit

I think people can be understanding about it. I'm still not sure exactly what you did so I can't figure out a solution right now. But it sounds like maybe you tried a couple different paths of combat decisions to find the best (or at least a good) one? My suggestion is post what you did in your thread, apologize, and ask for a solution. Maybe a good solution is to go back to your turn where you captured the city and do the attacks in the most obvious order. (If you send me the save I could help with deciding what is "most obvious".) I also want to make sure that other players in this game don't feel unfairly disadvantaged. May I ask if you did anything wrong unwittingly earlier in the game?

Seven

Thanks, I think I understand pretty much now what happened. Though if you can confirm my interpretation I sent in email before reading this is correct, I would appreciate it.

I will talk to cheater hater and I think we can figure something out, and things will be pretty much OK.

Thanks for talking this through with me. I can't know for sure if you really don't know what you were doing was wrong. It's possible that other people feel more or less forgiving than me - I don't know. I am pretty sure though that you must feel pretty embarrassed right now and maybe worried about it, and as far as punishment goes, that's enough for me. Just... don't do it again. Ever.

Thanks for pointing out the earlier failed axe attack. It's true, that was really bad for you.

Yes, please post our conversation in your thread, that's a good idea.

About the things like trying to figure out why you didn't finish HBR: It's not nearly as big a thing; it's in a different category. Those are things you could theoretically figure out by asking someone, or by testing it out in a sandbox, or something like that. Those things are knowable and learnable facts that you just happen to not know. The state of the random number generator, on the other hand, is not knowable in a meaningful sense without trying it out in the actual game save itself. It's not meant to be known. Now, as to whether or not those things are therefore acceptable, I'm not going to take a strong position on. If it were up to me I'd allow them, but I know that many others wouldn't, and I never bother asking, so I just always assume it's not kosher. I think you should do the same.

Seven

Again sorry for what has happened. I don't have anything more to add beside that it's good that I have done it in such obvious way and someone (presumably you) have spotted this early in the game. Please understand that this was just newbie mistake and at the moment the only things what matters is to coming out clean from this situation :/ Or at least as clean as possible in such circumstances...

I can comply to any decision which will be satisfactory for SevensSpirit and other players.

[NobleHelium]

You should remove Seven's email address from the post.

[Catwalk]

That's a big whoops Yes, it's very much disallowed to reload in any situation an unknown outcome (typically interpreted as exploration and combat). I'm guessing what you wanted to do was simply sim out the attack to see what the best order of attack was. Had you set this up in a single player game and played it out 20 times to compare results, you wouldn't have broken any rules. Seven is a good guy, and Cheater Hater doesn't seem to be overreacting either. You answered honestly and owned up to your mistake, shit happens. Let's hope you can still salvage the game and continue fighting for your territory.

[SevenSpirits]

Hi B4ndit, please replay the turn, doing attacks as follows, keeping your scouting moves the same, and responding the same way to the open borders trade proposal as you did last time.

1. Attack city with horse archer that's NW-NW of it.
2. Attack city with horse archer that's N-NW of it.
3. Attack city with horse archer that is adjacent to it.
4. Attack city with other horse archer that is adjacent to it.
5. Attack city with axe.
6. Move chariot N-N, attacking praetorian.

Results should be Win-loss-loss-win-win-loss. If you get something else, something is wrong, and please let me know. The chariot attack is dumb of course; it is meant to be a very small punishment.

Hope this sounds good to you and the game can now resume!

[B4ndit]

Thank you. Attack results as expected.

You should remove Seven's email address from the post.

Thank you for pointing it out. I have removed it as soon as you have posted.