ISDG 2012 flame war

[MJW (ya that one)]

if it helps, people who proposed alternative strategies within the team were equally disrespected...

I was just saying that saying "RB has a bad attitude" just doesn't cut it. You have to back it up with points like yours.

[antisocialmunky]

Not to dig too deeply into that topic again but I wouldn't say dissenting opinions were disrespected. That is a little extreme. I'd say that the team had a tendency to tunnel vision to such an extent that consideration of alternative plans was never really on the table after the early micro plans.

There were a couple other issues that plagued the team besides arrogance. The first problem seemed to have been that there were too many people on the team. Another issue was the skill disparity and the amount of time (both skill and time related so it can be considered one problem) players could commit. A few people committed a lot of time and energy to the game while most were more casual observers. These two factors, as far as I can recall led to a lot of noise, vague and casual suggestions, and monday-night quaterbacking from players who were less skilled or spent less time on the game. This in turn seemed to have greatly annoyed the people who were spending more time on the game which led to valid criticism being filtered out (such as how much of WPC we should take). Because our micro-experts and turn player who were dedicating tons to the game seemed to want to play the game rather than the other Civs... well RB played the game the best and lost to the other players.

:\ Consequentially, there were a lot of frustrations at the suggestions that we should stop optimizing so hard and start making asymmetric deals with other teams. It eventually boiled over during the mopping up stages of the WPC war due to the amount of time devoted on the war turns (which was exacerbated by live streaming) and the amount of different opinions on what to do. IIRC Sullla and some other more experienced players lost interest at this point especially when it looked like we would be punished by the world for being too good at the micro aspect of the game.

You know, Mack, after the rules lawyering complaints early on, it did get a lot better with RB respecting other teams. But the super evasive diplo exchanges like when CFC sniped some crucial wonder (was it Taj or Oracle?) from RB using resources gifted to CFC kind of reinforced the perception in the setup phase that CFC was going to play dirty. The language barriers and the less than optimal plays many of the other teams were doing also led to friction because it was hard to figure out who would actually be dependable. Then between delusional northern neighbors, an extremely passive aggressive eastern neighbor, and a western neighbor who seemingly didn't care, was it any wonder why RB was so critical about the other teams?

[mackoti]

I wouldnt say RB played the best game of all, why thwy were so bad prepared at turn 175? Why they didnt even considered getting cruisairies which would had been far beter the rifles,from what i seen could had come faster even before , PP so i will not just say played the best.
Why didnt reesarch directly nationalism and this way getting taj for sure, and ahving this way great peoples for a second GA?
From what i read they were 99% sure about dogpile, but all the time belived other are'stupid 'enough to do nothing.So no RB play wasnt very good knowing practicaly what is expecting them.They could had at least 40 cuirasiers along cats , muskets maces by that time with the great start RB had.

So, no , dont be deluded, RB didnt played the best game knowing what is falowing. if you know you will be hit you prepare ...., even change standard play.There are many more mistakes which were made, if you want i can point but is not the case i think.

[antisocialmunky]

Well we are basically saying the same thing. RB got into a commanding position before the WPC war because they had the strongest and probably the greediest play. Don't forget we almost landed Taj to do exactly what you described but barely missed it because we went for other things to invade WPC (the game plan for the whole game). However, the team also treated the other players like AIs and were punished accordingly.

Also I don't know if you've read all the threads butatleast two players from my recollection proposed using cuirs but we went with the option we did because we didn't think we had the production base to make cuirs mass produceable after the war already started. :| At this point in the game a lot of players had left because they were tired of playing the game and the war would suck/be unwinnable.

Point out all the mistakes, please. It might be educational.

[Krill]

Well like I said RB played the game, not the other players.

No, RB micro'ed the start but ignored the macro. That's not even treating others like AI, that's exactly the same as playing like an AI yourself.

[antisocialmunky]

How does that differ from what I said? It seems like we are saying the same thing.

[Krill]

I disagree with you conclusions that RB played a good game. You didn't. You played a bad game and most of your post seems to agree but you conclusion is the exact opposite, saying that RB played the best game.

However, the team also treated the other players like AIs and were punished accordingly

well RB played the game the best and lost to the other players.

The tl;dr is that even if the micro was the best it doesn't mean the game was well played. It's exactly like playing the fiddle whilst the capital is burning. It's better to have mediocre macro and shite micro than no macro and solid micro.

[Jowy]

Because our micro-experts and turn player who were dedicating tons to the game seemed to want to play the game rather than the other Civs... well RB played the game the best and lost to the other players.

Sounds like an excuse to me. RB didn't play the best game if they lost (and from what I've heard it wasn't even close).

[antisocialmunky]

I said they played the best micro game (the 'mechanics of the game') but failed to play the other players (taking into account that other human beings were manning the other civs). Seems like we are just disagreeing on semantics and are trying to say the same thing. Jowy, Mackoti: While you can say that someone played a good or bad game, that's not really helpful in dissecting what went wrong since the game itself has multiple domains of play (micro/macro as Krill puts it or 'game mechanics' and diplo as I choose to divide it up as). I'm actually quite curious at if there's any further lessons to be learned form that year-long train wreck to prevent similar things from happening in the future.

I don't really like the idea that several dozen people burned a year on a game that no one learned anything from it other than group think in hidden forums can lead to massive failure.

@Mackoti, I'm actually quite curious at your insights from playing CFC. You should also checkout the recorded streams (if they are still around) because you can see how the team interacted. (guess they were deleted by the latest archiving changes by twitch)

[mackoti]

I seen even bad decison in micro , like not whiping courthoses which had a huge impact on the macro: RB didnt produced too many espinage points and all the time were at mercy of the oponenst and as well payed alot of maintence for the gold becasue SP coming in 40 turns. What SP when you are 90% sure yuo get dogpiled , make a plan to see what can you field by then get some espionage points , run some counter espionage missions.Becasue of this way of playing RB a sitting duck and always had to play what the oponenst dictated.you were in nationhood, freaking corthose in near evry city, that would be like15 cities would ahd benefit, run a spy in everysingle one, ant there you get in more 100 espionage turn.
Best micro for a city is best when serves the greater good, in this case macro golas not city itself.

Atacking germans which people expected to be conquered in 15-20 turns when you knew war comming at turn 170, so those cities just an invitation to be conquered.Why no one done the math there?