Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[spacetyrantxenu]

Go get 'em, General MacArthur!

[Lewwyn]

Via PM Thoth let us know he's ready to call it:

Lewwyn Wrote:
Hey Thoth, just a heads up that our team and commodore have both conceded pb19 to TBS in our threads. Don't know what your thoughts are, but if you want to keep going we will. If however you agree with us that TBS is too far ahead to catch we can end the game now. But really no pressure, just wanted to let you know in case you felt the same.

Lewwyn

Yeah I think it's time to call it in TBS's favour. smile

Obviously he hasn't posted in his thread or the tech thread... so lurkers?

[Gaspar]

What are my goals for this game?

Here's the best answer I can come up with for that.

1. Have fun.
   
2. Explore a playstyle I have not personally executed recently.
   
3. Pick a leader I've never picked before.
   
4. Pick a Civ I've never picked before.
   
5. Prove that I am in fact a good Civ4 BTS player.
   
6. Kill Commodore.
   

I'm not going to do much postmortem for reasons spoke about when I did my perimortem writeups (which are somewhat incorrect, I think, given what the last 10 or so turns tought me) but I skimmed the early thread here yesterday when Lewwyn let me know that the PM came in and I thought it was worth revisiting this. How well did I accomplish my goals this game?

1. Have Fun.

I think overall I did a better job of hanging through the tough times here than I did in any losing game previously. While there were certainly moments, I think everyone has those. Once it was apparent it was going to take a miracle to get to a winning position, I put a plan in place to put myself in that position if it occurred. It never did, and because of the big brown menace next door, it never would have, but I don't think we made the wrong call transitioning to a heavy production focus. We generated the most hammers when everyone was in the same game state (i.e disregarding GAs) most of the time for the last 30-40 turns and if we could have ever stopped building units in 2/3 of the empire, we could have used wealth builds and sprint teching to catch up a bit. We couldn't have caught the leaders on beakers, but we could have been competitive. Still, this is something I need to continue to work on when I play games of any variety - not letting the setbacks set me back quite so hard.

Grade: B-

2. Explore a playstyle I have not personally executed recently.

Mixed bag on this regard. I think overall I settled far more aggressively than I perhaps ever have but ultimately, this game looks a lot like PBEM38 minus the monk stuff. When you're not IND or way in front, you have to pick a wonder or two and build around them and I think we were well positioned to get four 12 turn golden ages if the game continued - you can't ask for much more than that with MoM. Anyway, it wasn't precisely a typical Gaspar game but it also wasn't anything revolutionary.

Grade: C+

3. Pick a leader I've never picked before.
4. Pick a Civ I've never picked before.

Lumping those together - we did in fact accomplish that. I don't think we leveraged ORG particularly well and while I've never built this many Muskets before, there's not a lot different between the Ottomans and any other Ag/Wheel civ.

Grade: Pass

5. Prove that I am in fact a good Civ4 BTS player.

This was largely a silly goal, since its not really a thing you can prove. You can prove you're elite or prove you're terrible, everything in the middle is pretty open to interpretation. I don't know really that this game was any different than previous efforts. The catastrophic event here was bad RNG with scouts/chariots vs animals/barbs and I know there isn't anything different I could do there. So on that note, certainly a step-up - I met Seven's goal of not losing my game to a pair of chariots though unfortunately a loss of my own chariot was a major factor in my demise. Nonetheless, I think all things considered I played a solid game and I am particularly proud that I managed to turn us into a silver medal contender from the lowest point, where Lewwyn and I nearly were ready to grind the empire to dust to avenge Hyperborea and almost certainly would have been eliminated before Oxy.

I guess I think in another scenario on a different map, the game was good enough to win. It wasn't great, though, and mistakes were made.

Grade: C

I'm not going to rehash our whole game here - the post where I explain the situation to Noble in chat does a good job outlining both the mistakes I thought we made and the stuff outside our control that exacerbated them. I think we're all a little tired of listening to me talk at this point.

At the end - a few thank yous:

Thanks to the opponents for a mostly crisply and fairly played game - we had 2 significant layoffs due to external circumstances and still got in 180 turns in 6 months. A lot better than some other games around here.

A big thanks to Lewwyn to sticking with me throughout the game until he couldn't anymore and a big thanks to Noble for stepping in and helping me out when Lewwyn had to step away. Thanks also to Boldly for what he could contribute given the bear that is PB18 soaking up his game time, thanks to Ichabod for keeping the thread fun with his trolling and being a good sport when I trolled back and thanks to Xenu for mostly taking my bitching in stride and knowing when to leave when he couldn't.

And finally, a big thanks to all of you who read my kvetching, even mostly silently - without you we couldn't have won the most important competition - thread views! Do chime in more next time, if there is a next time but I can honestly say for the most part, the ability to brain dump and interact in here is the biggest value to playing in these games. Everyone who doesn't take advantage of that is missing out quite a bit, I think.

Fin.

[Ichabod]

Thanks for the thread, mate. It's always good fun to read what you write.

I can honestly say for the most part, the ability to brain dump and interact in here is the biggest value to playing in these games. Everyone who doesn't take advantage of that is missing out quite a bit, I think.

I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. Civ 4 is a nice puzzle to squeeze the brain a bit, but the thread and the interaction (with teammates, lurkers and opponents) is where the real fun is, at least for me. It's an easy thing to forget, though, especially when the game isn't going your way.

Hope you start a new game soon!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I agree with most of this, and especially about the bit where you get some social interaction. That's the best part, having something to talk about. Except for winning. That's the really best part, but getting there is often brutal, stressful, and not that much fun. I think I'd rather have some try-hard good times and good thread banter, which is mostly what you got here. So, you win!

GG guys.

[Ichabod]

[spacetyrantxenu]

Obviously....

[Lewwyn]

For those curious, our password to get into pitboss for the game was "winordie"