[SPOILERS] Parkin brings the rain down in Africa: Churchill of Zulu

[Lord Parkin]

[Lord Parkin]

[Grimace]

Even if he notices, I don't think there's a lot he can do to stop it now. But it would be nice for him to put up a fight, anyway.

[Grimace]

What's been happening? I know there's been some pausing and such, but have you been taking your turns? UPDATE US!

[Lord Parkin]

A summary of current events:

- Gavagai is laying down and letting Mackoti walk all over him. I mean it was always a war he was going to lose, but it seems he's not even trying; building wonders and no military despite massive warning signs, researching to Civil Service instead of any military tech, not investing his EP properly, and most recently leaving cities empty. Come on dude, you could do better than that.
- As a result, Mackoti is having a much easier job than he should have had, and I'm forced to build up a much larger military much earlier than expected to keep him in check. Score 10 for Mackoti, -5 for me, and -1 for everyone else.
- We built the Apostolic Palace and are now second in hammer production. So that's at least some good news. Should be a Great Prophet in 4 turns for the Confucian Shrine too, unless we're very unlucky.

I've got pictures for the past ~10 turns but I'll get to that later when I have more time.

Regarding the mess in the tech thread - I'd really appreciate if Krill would apologize for insinuating nonexistent evidence of multiple wrongdoings. I don't appreciate being treated as guilty until proven innocent. I also don't appreciate having years long past brought up every time I make the slightest mistake. I don't know about you folks, but a lot about me has changed in the past few years. I'm no longer the same person some of you seem to love to hate. Let the past be the past, or don't be surprised when people decide to play anonymously to get away from all the prejudice. Pick one.

Where I would have gone had I continued playing:

- Keep Mackoti in check while expanding my own empire.
- Go for early Astronomy and inflict as much damage as possible.
- Attempt to profit.

Is the position winnable? Maybe if Mackoti's other neighbours put up a decent fight. Hard to say; he's got a hell of a lot of land and resources relative to his number of cities though. (That's a map issue though.)

[MindyMcCready]

Regarding the mess in the tech thread - I'd really appreciate if Krill would apologize for insinuating nonexistent evidence of multiple wrongdoings. I don't appreciate being treated as guilty until proven innocent. I also don't appreciate having years long past brought up every time I make the slightest mistake. I don't know about you folks, but a lot about me has changed in the past few years. I'm no longer the same person some of you seem to love to hate. Let the past be the past, or don't be surprised when people decide to play anonymously to get away from all the prejudice. Pick one.

Sigh,....

It would be really nice if you would follow Seven's advice. Its understandable how Master Krill's response would upset you, but you had clear benefit by renaming your unit so it's really, really hard to believe that this was anything other than intentional and therefore not a 'mistake'.

There are lots of people who would want to believe that you're not the same person and make sure that you felt welcome at RB. But each and every time you were caught doing something in the past you would deflect and try to excuse your actions. Its hard to not conclude that you're doing it again and that the leopard hasn't changed its spots.

Something along the lines of "I intentionally took an action to seek an unfair advantage over my fellow community members. I understand that I should have played more fairly and in the spirit of the community. I am sorry.

You've done a huge community service to RB with PB18 and it would be sad if that got brushed aside by what is, in islolation, a reasonably small offense.

[Grimace]

I'm not judging one way or the other, but if the name of the unit really was "WillNotCapture", that does seem less of a reminder and more of a message. A reminder would seem to be something like "DoNotCapture".

In any case, I think there was a bit of an overreaction, but I think you have a bit of a reputation (not entirely deserved) that hurts you in these situations. It's not fair, but it is reality. You're sort of stuck in the position of having to prove your innocence. Having read through most of the completed games, my feeling on the matter is that you play as hard as you can to win...not necessarily intending to violate rules or piss people off, but to try to play the best game that you can. I have a lot of respect for that, but I'm also the type of person who doesn't take what happens in a game personally unless someone makes it personal (insults and what-not). It's just a game to me. But when you push limits like that, and especially if someone feels like you're being "deceptive", even if it's not technically cheating, they sometimes want to make a big deal out of it because they take it personal. And there's not much you can do about that.

I think that if that really was the name of the unit, I would interpret it as attempting to communicate to another player, as well. But since it's the first time it happened in this game, I'd just make it a warning and say "don't do it again" and let it go.

Anyway, I still support you, and I learn a lot from your play, so I enjoy reading your exploits.

[Lord Parkin]

Okay, here's the honest truth about the situation: this is likely to be a pretty rough position for a first time player to jump into.

Partly this is Gavagai's fault for not trying as hard as he could to put up a defense against Mackoti (researching non-military techs, building wonders, not responding to power graph warning signs, not allocating EP correctly, etc). I can understand wanting to be out of the game ASAP when you're in a crappy position like that, but lying down on your stomach has a negative effect on rest of the players. Mackoti's army has advanced far faster and with far fewer losses than it had any right to - and if he smells weakness in the form of a first time player taking over a position with many established, juicy cities, he could well decide to press his advantage.

Basically, right now you're the wall between Mackoti and world domination. If you don't stand firm and strong against him, that wall is going to crumble and he's pretty much going to have the game in the bag.

So best of luck, and apologies that you're stepping into a situation that could well become a bloodbath shortly if Mackoti decides to take advantage of a first time player taking over a well established position.

[Grimace]

Yeah, I know it is. My near-term goals are to focus on building a strong enough military to hold my own and try not to lose...not sure I'm able to micromanage well enough for a win against many of these players, but I can do my best to stay as strong as I can. Hopefully being the n00b will attract some lurkers who are willing to help with advice.

[Grimace]

Turn 125:

Since this was largely just my taking over from Parkin, I didn't do too much and I didn't take screenshots since I was kind of rushing to get everything ready for the turn to change. I did follow Parkin's instructions on his signs to whip in the specified cities on this turn, and I put a couple of workers to work building more improvements. My future updates will hopefully contain a bit more useful information, but for now I just wanted to complete the turn.

There was an Apostolic Palace leader election, so I voted for myself. wetbandit also sent a trade offer of 10 Gold for Cows. Assuming I cancelled after the required 10 turns, that's only 1gpt, which seems kind of low even for cows, so I turned it down.