Gavagai manages his personal GULAG

[Gavagai]

I don't think Barteq ready to attack already. He has logistic problems which are practically non-existent for us.

[Bacchus]

That's true, and his distance from Grimace is the biggest reason I don't think Barteq is planning to attack southwards. Can we figure out from the power graph when Barteq got IW?

[Old Harry]

Loving the tactical discussion, any chance of a screenshot to illustrate?

[Old Harry]

I'm afraid this still doesn't make sense to me - people may or may not know you are going to attack. The fact that you are or aren't sticking rigidly to a schedule shouldn't be meta information they can use to decide whether they are about to be attacked. I know in most cases it is information you can use, but I don't think that it should be. If Barteq takes first half and the defenders all move north, then Gav claims the third third, then he's made an excellent tactical move (although I still think you should try and declare on the same side to avoid 3-way turn splits, other people (eg Krill) think that you need the third turn split so you don't double-move your co-dogpiler anyway so it doesn't matter).

The thing is, I *agree* that it is indeed an excellent tactical move, and if it is legal than it is the best move. I've wanted to make moves like this in the past and have been frustrated when it doesn't work out. However, the problem is that this move treats the timer as if it were a game construct, like the map or a unit or whatever, which IMHO is a bad thing to do because it has the potential to screw up the turn pace, and I think its more important to respect that than anything else. In this specific case, it creates a three-way split. This might not be a big deal if the split happens along nice time zones, or it could be a disaster for the turn pace. I also think that letting people game the timer is a slippery slope. If it's ok for one person to do it, just because the turn pace didn't suffer, why not for another, especially since there's no a hard limit on how "bad" the timer is allowed to suffer from a split.

Unfortunately however much we'd like it not to be, the timer is a game construct and all we can do is work out how not to let that affect games too badly.

Taking the half of the split you're given naturally would be an ideal solution except that I think it would lead to more clock games, with players making sure that their window puts them in the right position if they're ever attacked and screwing with the clock to make sure that happens and that the turn rolls at the right time for them.

On the three-way-split turn-timer-wars - in many cases the three-way split is going to be necessary even if both aggressors are on the same side of the split, and even if you get into the split on the "right" side of the turn roll there is no guarentee you'll stay on the right side with other wars, a 24 hour clock and life going on around you.

For example, I'm now self-employed and working from home, so I could theoretically play my PB29 turn maybe at, like, any of 14 out 24 hours in the day. Would the turn pace of the game suffer if I Montezuma my neighbor with a whimsical wardec that gives me some small advantage on a certain half of the timer? Probably not. However, my wife and I are having a baby in 3 weeks, so my available time slots will probably drop by a factor of 1000 or so, at least for a little while. If I did the same kind of opportunistic wardec - perhaps even for the exact same tactical situation - the turnpace of the game would crash. I don't think its fair to say the former is allowed but the latter is not, just because my personal time is more flexible right now; the only fair way is to rule that both shouldn't try to game the timer. Sometimes that means it that players will just have to take whatever half of the timer comes naturally to them, and sometimes it will come down to random order.

I reckon you could play it on any of 24 hours if you had to :P.

Good luck with the nipper! If you're anything like me you'll have a month or two of more spare time than you know what to do with, then you'll be clamped down to an unmovable window of 3-4 hours in the evening to cram all your gaming pleasures into but you'll be too stupified to actually manage to fit anything into those hours...

I think PBEM vs Pitboss preference comes down to how you enjoy their different metagames. Big-game vs small-game, to me, is a similar difference to pangaeaish-map vs watery-map. I personally feel the big pitbosses are a lot more interesting and exciting, and have a higher skillcap, than the little PBEMs.

Well I don't want to play PBEM again after being accused of cheating on combat and having no way to prove I hadn't. Happy to play a small sequential-turns pitboss though.

I don't remember reading people saying the attackers need an advantage, do you have a link?

I'd guess it was in one of my threads, possibly PB13, and possibly Krill, but it may never have happened and I might be making it up .

What if the defender pre-emptively declares war to take the second slot?

I'd say the defender has made an excellent tactical move, and the attacker either didn't disguise their attack properly or should have dropped behind them earlier. And that if the defender knew the attack was coming with enough certainty to declare first then the whole first-turn-whiped-units-not-appearing thing probably wouldn't have worked anyway. Maybe.

Actually Mardoc nailed the problem and solution far better than I ever could in post 272. Especially the bit about winning pitboss being about luck .

[Bacchus]

Seems we have 11 axes, but only 1 Chariot on T80, with one more to come out at the end of turn.

I've started Norilsk on a Mint. We need another Settler asap for the iron spot, and another one for the floodplains spot. I guess the flood settler should be built in Segezhlag, and the one for iron in the capital. Norilsk and Construction will be busy building HAs before long.

[Mardoc]

By the way, I don't think pitboss vs pbem preference comes down to pace vs fairness at all.

Well, honestly most of this topic is molehills, not mountains. I believe that Pitboss has more luck than PBEM, but not by a significant degree. And most of the extra luck comes from size rather than simultaneous turns: neighbor variance is much higher with 20 players than 5.

For all that going second is an advantage, you only ever see a deliberate turnorder choice from someone who knows MP pitboss, is very engaged, with free time and flexibility, and who believes they can win a war. What a coincidence that a veteran with time and interest, who chose the war, might win it .

[Bacchus]

So, Gavagai went off-com without telling me much about this turn, during which we are meant to stage the attack, and there is an Immortal poking around our borders. I moved the Skirm from Segezhlag to hold zone defense between Norilsk and Segezhlag. I whipped the Granary in Segezhlag for 1 and the Worker in Kolyma for 2. Gavagai will probably be unhappy about the latter, but we have a big shortage of labour actually, and what's the point of working a plains forest there.

That tactics screenshot. Sorry for the mess.



Our forces are mustered at the blue dot, fogged for Grimace. Next turn we will build a combat road and attack Borzoi with 10 axes, 1 spear, shock skirm, 2 chariots. Another chariot shortly incoming. At least one of his few axes is out of position currently, standing 4N of the blue dot.

You can see Barteq's culture in the north-east. This is from our scouting way at the start of the game, so that's the capital's second ring. Lime question mark is a potential city site for Barteq, who has a ton of cities (well, actually, only 7, but that's 40% more than us). Fortunately the barb city (black) has prevented Aztec settlement south of that 3-tile lake -- that could have been a really annoying outpost.

Yellow is that forest/jungle superhighway I mentioned. Gray is the Grimace city sites -- confirmed and potential. As Gavagai mentioned, we are far better placed to take over Grimace's core, but had Barteq gotten initiative on the theater, he could cause real problems for us with Jags. If we take Grimace's capital though, we can get around this forest through the northern gap, and then harass his relatively deforested core. Ultimately we would want to take the barb city and establish the border there, whilst also planting a dream city on the desert hill. We will have to concede the northern reaches of Grimace's land either to Barteq, or whatever other neighbour may be there.

Grimace's lands are really, reallly good, it's all basically riverside grassland with decent resources thrown around.

PS Tsargon is also on 7 cities, having captured Magyar.

We have lost 1st place in MFG by 5 hammers, it's currently 61 - 56, but we are still in an incredibly strong place for MFG, which we have to keep converting into soldiers and expansion, as we can't compete on CY or, by implication, commerce. We are currently only second in power, which is a bit worrying, but only by 4000 points, i.e. one unit.

[Bacchus]

Tsargon is focusing his EP on us, so I reciprocated, currently 3/1 on Tsargon/Hak. We have 55 points into Barteq, but only need 43 for graphs.

[Bacchus]

Also, we are roleplaying Gulag pretty hard -- in three turns we will have all of Metal Casting, Iron Working and Horseback Riding, but no Writing.

[Gavagai]

The reason I went-off without telling was that I planned to play the turn myself So, I woke up, checked civstats, saw that Bacchus played and made an unplanned whip. My heart sank
What is hilarious is that he dilligently obeyed my instruction not to build a camp on Segezhlag Deer and build a road instead. But this instruction was made on the assumption that Segezhlag isn't whipped now and will be whipped next turn into a worker which, among other things, would actually build the camp.