I've decided to retire from this game. Why? Dice King and I got into an exchange of emails about my attacking one of his cities.
Here is the first email ...
DiceKing Wrote:Hi Ruff,
I've got something on my mind and I think it's just better for me to get it off my chest. Did any shenanigans occur in your last turn? I'm new to MP so maybe I don't quite understand all the rules at play.
From my point of view, there's a whole bunch of strange things that make no sense unless you replayed the turn a few times.
Funnily enough, the thought of this sort of thing only came to light because I was asked this exact same question on my turn. I have offered up my saves for a neutral party to check to put the persons mind at peace. I was wondering whether you might do the same?
I genuinely mean no offence and perhaps I am only questioning it based on what has happened with me earlier, but it would sure put the enjoyment back in the game if I knew it was just luck/randomness.
I wasn't completely sure which game he meant as a) I play a fair few pbem games and b) some of those are 'at war' at present ... so I asked which game and he said pbem74C.
My reply ...
RuffHi Wrote:Khan,
My thinking re attacking the city that I did was that I could take it.
I assumed your capital was well protected. Further, I could see the galleon covering the other city and didn't really want to risk a full galleon on attacking it. Did I get lucky in some of the battles? ... I suppose so ... but I had additional units in case I wasn't that lucky.
Re leaving the warrior to last ... that is one of the ways I play the game ... spend my time thinking about battles that I might lose and how to address the issue if I do lose. In this particular game, I wanted to kill your galleon (the one near the 4 tri) and I 3 galleons to do it with ... I got lucky again and won the first battle. Do you want me to delete one of the 3 galleons I have there now to compensate for the luck?
Here are the attack options as I saw it ...
As you can see, I can attack 1 of 3 cities. One is covered by a galleon and I would have to risk one of my fully loaded galleons to attack it. The other is his capital city and I am assuming it is covered exactly the same way. So ... I tried my luck with the city that I could reach to the West.
Why did I have such a hard on to attack Dice King? Well ... several turns earlier, he killed some of my units for no apparent reason ... because he could is a good enough reason ... but it didn't really get him anywhere. And it was my fault as I could have parked them off-shore (1 tile south of where the were) and he couldn't have touched them.
Pic ...
So ... this action made me hate DiceKing (the civ, not the player) and I was determined to hit back. I teched a bunch of small techs and saved a massive tech overflow so that I could 1-turn Astronomy ... thus he wouldn't know I was teching it. In the end, this didn't help me as he had alphabet and was checking F4 each turn. The turn (or next) after I got it, he had it ... thus galleon v galleon from above.
Anyway, my attack went as follows ...
Cataphract wins at 20.7%
Cataphract loses at 25.1%
Cataphract wins at 88.0%
Galleon wins at 32.2%
Cataphract wins at 99.6%
I think it was the swap to the galleon v galleon instead of finishing off the warrior that got up Khan's nose so much - hence my comment re deleting the galleon in my reply above. Why did I do that? Two things that I can say here ... a) that city attack was over and I was looking / thinking about other attacks ... and b) the game interface just wouldn't stick with my loaded galleon.
Anyway ... back to our email exchange ...
DiceKing Wrote:Thanks for replying. No, if everything was fine then you should not need to compensate for the luck.
I suppose you have answered some of my thoughts, my main bones of contention were:
1) Why attack there? You had the ability to attack many of my cities and did not know what defenders were in them before committing. It's also a junk filler city so not sure it would be worth risking your forces for considering the disparity in our army counts. I can accept your explanation on this one though.
2) You got really lucky. On average, it would take 6 cataphracts to take the city. There were reasonable odds that you would require 7 if both the pike and longbow had defended cleanly. You had a maximum of 6 available. Even when you actually lost the battle, you did far more damage than you ought to have and cleanly made the kill with 4.
3) Your last point is the bit that really made me suspicious though, especially after El Grillo had just explained to me that the most obvious way of manipulating the system is to utilise good RNG results where they are needed most and 'save' your bad rolls for when you have a 99% battle. I acknowledge you have made an explanation for this but it's still giving me a sour taste.
I would feel far more comfortable if you would send the most recent save to a lurker (I was thinking Krill as a known entity with no stake in the game. I have asked him questions in the past and he is always prompt and helpful) and let them take a look. That will both clear your name and give me peace of mind. I have no intention of posting about this in public as I don't want to be a dick to you as I respect you as a player.
No comment on the #1. Not really sure what to say about #2 ... this is the nature of the RNG in civ4. Am I meant to delete units when I get lucky?
Re #3 ... I can accept that comment. I didn't plan it out this way ... that just happened to be the way it was played. I can accept it doesn't look nice and shiny ... hence my comment about about deleting the one of the galleons in the galleon v galleon attack.
But wait ... before we go further, lets go back to DiceKing's attach on my tri ...
What is this that we have here?
Knight wins at 99.9%
Tri wins at 32.2%
Tri wins at 88.1%
Tri wins at 88.1%
The chariot that the knight killed was scouting around the dying Dutch. Why kill it? Could it be to soak up a bad dice roll and use a good dice roll against my Tri? Who knows? I certainly don't as I didn't ask Khan about this.
Anyway ... my reply to Khan ...
RuffHi Wrote:Khan,
I don't feel any need to clear my name so I won't be forwarding the save.
I just went back and replayed the battle but swapped order from warrior, then warrior to warrior then galleon (Edit: this is a typo ... it should have read 'from galleon, then warrior' - hopefully, he understood what I meant). I won the warrior battle but lost the first galleon battle.
So ... when the game gets back to me, I will delete the victorious galleon to give you peace of mind.
His next email ...
Khan Wrote:I am struggling to understand why, if you are innocent, you would not be willing to let a lurker check.
As I said initially, I was the recipient of a very similar email myself. I know I was totally innocent and proved it and we continued happily. He apologised for questioning my integrity and I accepted it in it's entirety.
That was Feb 26th. I had said all that I was going to say (delete galleon unit, not forward save) so I didn't reply.
What more did he want from me? What was he after? Anyway ... email from this morning (Feb 28) ...
Khan Wrote:Ruff,
If you are innocent then this must be incredibly frustrating. I appreciate that and apologise for it. I just have no interest in playing if I don't trust the people i'm playing with. It removes the fun for me.
Krill has the save in question (from the tracker) and REM can provide him with the admin password upon his return. I have tried to be honest and open with you throughout this. I have not posted my reasons for the hold up in the game in the tech thread or my personal thread. I would much rather this was dealt with quietly. Even if something dodgy has occurred, if you admit it then you have my word that I won't talk about it further on the forums. I don't want to tarnish your reputation in any case. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
What a dick move. I explained what happened. I explained my thinking re attacking the city that I did. I admitted that the galleon then warrior probably wasn't the ideal order and suggested a remedy. I said I wouldn't provide my turn to be pawed over ... but they completely ignored my point of view / my wishes and did something just because they could. That is the definition of a bully. I repeat, I have no idea what new information they are going to glean from going over the save.
I hated Dice King due to this game. Guess what, now I hate Khan because of this game. I've posted in the tech thread that I will need a replacement. I have also posted in pbem75 that I will need a replacement. I won't be coming back to RB for a while.
I can understand this comment by Khan ...
I just have no interest in playing if I don't trust the people i'm playing with.
Edit: I did send one more email after this ... to both Khan and Krill ...
Quote:Here is the save. Password is 'aa'.
I also posted in the tech thread.
and got this reply ...
Quote:Thank you. I apologise again for the inconvenience and any stress this has caused.
I won't post my thoughts re that reply.
