RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Friendly Kittens (Ragnar of Maya)

[RefSteel]

Craziness. Okay. I'll see what I can do in terms of turnplaying if Morgan's not available, but ... well, like I said: I'll see. More posts to follow shortly on just about everything. Also, thanks for all the pictures!

[EDIT:I just logged into the game for a moment to get some data for my next post. A diplo window was waiting for me from Swiss, requesting a world map trade; I of course accepted. I then logged in a couple more times to get a few more bits of data. That accomplished, I have now also logged out, having changed zero things.[/EDIT]

You know, I had a panicked moment a few minutes ago when I opened up DosBox... I was afraid I had overwritten the game... and I might have, BUT, I fortunately sent you the save, and I've also found it in gmail.

I think I found it tucked away on my HD as well. Also, I have chased down the turn log, and the pictures, so my intent is to work on that stuff tomorrow, Friday, and sunday on the drive back if I can get a car power strip to keep the labtop powered up. I will hopefully be able to post the story within a week. Cross your paws!

Too excited to cross anything, but that's great news! (Note to the confused: We're talking about a totally different game.)

[RefSteel]

Right. So, what we have here (see attachment - yes, it's in ods format, which only works with OpenOffice; I couldn't get it to save an xls that was functional, unfortunately) is Version 1 of a spreadsheet for Feng Shui. Creating spreadsheets for other cities from this one will hopefully not take ages, but we'll see. [EDIT: New, fixed version uploaded.]


BASIC INSTRUCTIONS:

Fill out the row-3 boxes highlighted in Mayan blue with the current state of the city as of the end of the current turn. I've done this for Turn 142 for you. Column-by-column explanations will follow in the next post. The first turn requires a LOT of information; the spreadsheet needs to know the city's entire game state in order to function correctly! This means you'll need to scroll to the right and fill out all the details - or you would, if I hadn't already. For every turn you're planning after the first, everything you need to fill out will be in columbs E through W, which shouldn't require any scrolling on most monitors: The item being built, tiles worked, and whether or not you're whipping - again, only change or enter data in the boxes highlighted in Mayan blue. See the detailed explanation in the next post for how to read the spreadsheet and what the numbers mean.


KNOWN ISSUES:

1) This spreadsheet DOES NOT correctly calculate penalty whips. This is in no small part because I can't figure out how penalty whips work myself! I assume we won't be intentionally planning in advance to whip from scratch anyway, and if we decide we need to whip a wonder somewhere, we can sim that out in a sandbox to make sure. Once a penalty whip has actually taken place, the spreadsheet can be corrected accordingly or "restarted" with the new conditions as the starting point. As we will see below, this isn't quite as difficult or time-consuming as it sounds.

2) It DOES NOT recognize empire-wide changes. When we acquire a new happy/health resource or swap civics, it may be trivial to manually fix the formulas, but it may be necessary to "start over" with the new conditions as the starting point. Again, that's probably not as bad as it sounds. More importantly, when we get certain techs (SciMeth and Biology come to mind) build a Levee, or enter a golden age, many of the spreadsheet's assumptions will become incorrect, and I'll have to fix its formulae accordingly.

3) It DOES NOT recognize builds for which we don't yet have the needed technology (with the important exceptions of rifles, cavs, and Levees). It's going to need some updating when we start wanting to build Observatories or whatever. [EDIT: See RECENT FIXES!]

4) It DOES NOT know how to deal with drafting. We'll cross that bridge when we burn it (or another mixed metaphor of your choice).

5) It DOES NOT calculate [EDIT: see RECENT FIXES] beakers, gold, or anything else not directly related to the city's builds and growth.

6) It won't tell you if you're trying to construct a building that's already finished, nor will it tell you when a build is complete (except by listing "excess" hammers, if any.

7) It can't handle misspellings. Scroll to the right at the top of the spreadsheet to see the correct spellings if you're not sure. Fortunately, FS already has a Granary.

8) It doesn't recognize hammer decay. This shouldn't be a problem for buildings, but units will start losing hammers relative to what the spreadsheet expects if left dormant for about ten turns.

9) It is set up specifically for Feng Shui; other cities will need their own spreadsheets.


RECENT FIXES:

1) This spreadsheet should now correctly indicate what the city will do when growing WHILE building a Worker or Settler (unlike the game itself).

2) When whipping, it will now calculate the whip cost for you (but see Known Issue 1 above). This DOES take the exact-hammer whipping bug into account.

3) Happy cap, Health cap, and base hammers now automatically update to reflect newly-completed builds. In the case of resource-dependant builds like Markets, they make assumptions about our resources that may not be borne out in the game however; I made my best guesses for now. In the case of Hindu buildings, no guesswork was required, but it is not prepared for obsolescence (per Known Issue #2).

4) Hammer cost, hammer multiplier, and hammers-already-invested for all builds are now automatically taken into account.

5) Fading whip anger is now automatically reflected in the happy cap.

6) "Excess" hammers that would be lost because they exceed the original cost of the item are automatically truncated.

[EDIT: NEW FIXES

7) The spreadsheet now identifies buildings-under-construction correctly (first posted version was buggy).

8) [EDIT: If a version that updates the build queue for Rifling is desired, it can be done, but this version does not do so.]

9) It now correctly calculates the amount of total culture the city generates, except that it can't handle thousand-year culture doubling for buildings. I did tell it about FS's thousand-year-old Library, but it won't keep track of which other buildings need doubling. Culture-watching is a largely meaningless improvement at FS, but was trivial to program and was useful for planning other cities.

[/EDIT]

Please let me know if you discover any odd behavior!

[RefSteel]

The top two rows are (mostly) header information, to make the thing easier to read. The subsequent rows describe the city's state on each given turn. Except where otherwise noted, they describe what the city will look like at the END of the turn, just before it rolls. Hopefully the whole thing is intuitive anyway and you can ignore this post, but here goes, taking the columns from left to right:

Turn = The game turn.

Size = The size of the city, after any whipping, drafting, etc.

Cap Space / :) = Happy space. This should be the number you get when you subtract the city's angry faces from its happy faces. A negative number means there will be an angry face in the city (the spreadsheet recognizes this and adjusts the number of citizens accordingly).

Cap Space / + = Health space. This should be the number you get when you subtract the city's green sick faces from its red crosses. A negative number means you're losing food to unhealth this turn in that amount (the spreadsheet includes this in its calculations).

Building = This is the unit, building, or project the city is trying to build this turn.

Whip (Check mark) = This is the whipping indicator. If you're planning to whip the city this turn, put an X or some other mark in this box - which mark doesn't matter, as long as it's not an = sign or a zero.

For = This is the number of population points the whip will cost you; it is non-zero only when you mark the column to its left. If you attempt to whip when you don't have enough population to do so, this will read ZERO.

Tiles Worked (Bonus Tiles/Spices through Cottages/G) = These are the numbers of each tile you want the city to work. The spreadsheet will let you claim you're working more tiles than you actually have available, so make sure you only list tiles that actually exist. You should list the actual number of tiles of each type (e.g. "4" under Farm/FP). FP means floodplain; G means Grassland, and P means Plain.

Specialists (Sp through P) = The number of each type of specialist you plan to hire, sort of like tiles. Again, make sure not to claim three Engineers when all we have to enable one is a forge.

Specialists / C = This is the number of citizens that are still available to be assigned. If it's a negative number, you have to fire one or more specialists or reduce the number of tiles worked. If it's greater than zero, you should be working more tiles or specialists that turn; though the spreadsheet will make its calculations as though you hired a Citizen specialist on purpose, you should almost certainly never do so.

Food in Box / Start = This is the number that you see when you mouse over the food bar in the city screen (just the denominator; i.e. 30/42 in the game translates to 30 on the spreadsheet.)

End = This is the amount of food that the city will have after the turn rolls, before it grows and "eats" the food if applicable. If building a worker or settler without starving, this will be the same as "Start".

Hammers / In = This is the number that you see when you mouse over the production bar in the city screen (just the denominator; i.e. 26/40 in the game translates to 26 on the spreadsheet.)

New = This is the number of hammers listed next to the production bar in the city screen: The number of hammers you'll be adding this turn.

Excess = This is the amount of overflow you can expect at the end of the turn, if any, BEFORE demultiplication.

Whip :( Clock = This is the number of turns remaining before all the "Cruel Oppression" unhappiness wears off. You can find out how much this is in the game by mousing over the whip icon (making sure NOT to actually click it!) and subtracting ten from the number of turns it says the new unhappy from a new whip (which would have added that extra ten) would last.

[The next six columns exist for calculation purposes only, and are pretty self-explanatory anyway; you can safely ignore them.]

Granary Food = This is the amount of food that will be stored in the granary at the end of the turn. The game doesn't tell you this anywhere. For FS's purposes though, it's pretty much always the city size plus 10.

City Infrastructure:
This lists the names and costs of various things the city can build in the first two rows. After that, each row lists the number of hammers that are already invested in that build by the beginning of the turn to which that row corresponds. Note that for already-completed buildings (Granary, etc.) the number remains "maxed out" so the spreadsheet will know that building is still present in the city, but already-completed units reset their "invested hammer" count to zero so you can start on a new unit of that type right away. As such, when setting the initial state of the city, you'll have to make sure that all of the already-completed infrastructure is listing the same number of hammers invested in the Maya-blue row as its hammer cost in the row directly above, as well as noting the number of hammers already invested in partly-built units and/or buildings. The buildings are listed first, followed by the units, all unfortunately in no very special order.

Culture, Research, and Wealth are present only for completeness. The "0" column is present strictly so the spreadsheet will look pretty on turns when no build has yet been specified.

[RefSteel]

It might take me until tomorrow afternoon to post a worker plan for turn 143. At that point, I should be able to post one for the next several turns though. G'night for now!

[RefSteel]

I logged into the game, but didn't actually do anything [EDIT: Except set new builds at FS (University) and Ornata (Hindu Temple)]. Let me know if you'd like me to actually play the turn, and I'll try.

Turn 143

Savannah builds culture, working a plains forest. (Working more hammer tiles won't affect the amount of culture we put on our second ring next turn - only speed us a little bit toward the 100 culture mark - because it will be the first turn we pop borders. Don't ask me why it works that way; it just does. As a result, the extra food from the forest is better than the extra 2 culture from the plains hill mine this turn.)

Koivu, Chmeee, and Thomas O'Malley: Move 2NE to a floodplain and Farm (3/7). (Using this one because it's the furthest first-ring FP from Inca.)

Serafina & Kiara: Road; complete.

Peppo: Chop (1/3).

Mufasa: Chop (1/3). Yes, I know he started out by roading last turn. He needs to start chopping now though, to time his chop to come in at the same time as Peppo's. The road on this tile will be completed just as it becomes needed.

Marie: Move 1S-1SE to a grassland forest at the southern edge of Savannah's BFC.

New Worker from FS: Named Hello (feel free to use a different name instead). Move 1SE-3NE-1NW to a grassland forest in Savannah's first ring.

Shun Gon: Move 2SE-2E to a riverside desert hill in Temminck's BFC, Windmill, and CANCEL orders (1/7). (The windmill will be needed eventually, but this is mainly busywork en route to the east.)

Sarabi: Road; complete.

Simba: Road (1/2).

Bagheera: Road (1/2).

Billy Bass: Road; complete.

Tuolouse & Berlioz & Nala: Farm; complete.

Duchess & Oliver: Do whatever Maniac was planning for them to do. (My guess is Farm; complete).

-----

Turn 144

Savannah pops second ring borders and builds culture. Tile worked will depend on Ruby Tuesday: If it already had a religion by the end of T143, work the Plains Hill Mine. If not, work the Floodplain.

Koivu, Chmeee, and Thomas O'Malley: Farm (6/7).

Serafina & Kiara: Move 3NW to a roaded river grass forest, Lumbermill, and CANCEL orders (2/8).

Peppo: Chop (2/3).

Mufasa: Chop (2/3).

Marie: Chop (1/3).

Hello: Road (1/2).

Shun Gon: Move 4NE to a plains forest in Savannah's BFC.

Bagheera: Road; complete.

Sarabi: Move 1N-1NW to the silks.

Simba: Road; complete.

Billy Bass: Move 1N-4NW to the last pre-cottaged grassland in Temminck's BFC and Cottage; complete.

Toulouse & Berlioz: Move 2S to a pre-farmed river grassland; Farm (3/5).

Nala: Move 1N-1NE to a plains hill; Mine (1/4).

Duchess & Oliver: Do whatever Maniac was planning for them to do.

[RefSteel]

Okay, I've been wanting to post this, but all these stupid emergencies keep cropping up, and I'm STILL working without sufficient information about turn 143 while stupidly agreeing to babble about national wonders we may or may not build by turn 175.

Maniac has said (in e-mails to PAT and maybe in the IT thread) that the bug that led to the reload was affecting my morale vis-a-vis this game. It sort of did, but in a straw-camel's-back kind of way, and no reload could remove the straw, and even doing so cannot unbreak the back. The bug was annoying and frustrating, but not game-breaking. We'd have lived. It was cool to find out the reason and how to fix it, but I was willing to play on with or without the reload, as I indicated here. Unlike Maniac, I don't think refusing to reload the thing would reflect badly on the community. It's just ... whatever. Sometimes the game bites you, sometimes because you missed something, and sometimes because it lied, because of a bug. It happens. You play the hand you're dealt and see where it takes you. That's part of RB too.

What breaks the camel's back is not the straw. It's the nineteen gigatons of assorted garbage under which the camel is already straining when that final straw is dropped. Yeah, with the reload, the time spent setting up HV's one-turn settler is marginally less wasted. Only very, very marginally though: The fun of planning it isn't less because it couldn't come to fruition; the fun of seeing it actually happen is neatly replaced by the fun of finding out why. And apart from what fun there was in that (which isn't to be written off of course) the time WAS wasted, reload or not: Wasted making complex plans for what to do in a game that apparently more than half of the players have no interest in anymore. Maybe/hopefully that's an exaggeration, and Maniac is projecting from like Byz and Rome (this is why I don't suggest choosing a civ for a non-Indian UU in this kind of game, by the way) and darrell (not sure how the other three guys on his team feel) but also maybe not. It's a game that several people are not enjoying, with no end in sight for months - and if the majority of teams were to just vote to quit, where does that leave the ones who do enjoy it (they exist, apart from us, right?) and are still excited about it and have spent months of intensive planning getting to the point where they are now and looking forward to what's to come?

Here are some things I think this game has completely lost sight of, because losing sight of them was built into the design (RBP3's ruleset, everyone's civ and leader picks, and the assumptions going in) of the game:

Winning doesn't matter. Only one of the 17 teams that started is going to win anyway. Even now, there are 14 teams left. Even if you write off two or three of the most hopeless, today's front runner is tomorrow's flame-out, and today's nobody is tomorrow's dark horse. The odds (still) aren't good for anyone. Winning is (maybe) a bonus, but if the *reason* you play is to win the game, you're probably out of your mind.

"Cool Stuff" isn't the point. Under the heading of "Cool Stuff," I include the likes of Praets and Phracts and World Wonders. They're not really that cool. You can get them easily in SP. They're just stuff - a handful (way too many because civ's code is somewhat inelegant) of 1s and 0s in a computer in Sunrise's apartment. It's not why we RBers are here.

We're here for the community - for me, planning and talking with Maniac and Cull early on; with Maniac and Morgan now; interacting with lurkers when they comment; chatting with Kyan and Krill and all the rest.

We're here to seek new challenges. That's why, when I have time for this game at all, what I like to do is come up with crazy plans to do things that seem like they're impossible. (Even when, for buggy reasons, it turns out that they are!) It's why I'm disappointed to hear that some teams are losing interest just because the game isn't going the way they want. (It's particularly frustrating in the case of Byz, since they're in an excellent position to change the way it's going!) It's why I'm hoping Krill really does go for culture and really pulls it off. It's why I'm spending MORE time when I should be sleeping on this ridiculous treatise. My morale was supposed to go out the window because something I planned didn't go my way? Give me a break. What I hated about that settler bug was this: It would take more real-life time that I don't have for me to figure out what happened, how to prevent it happening in the future, and how to make the city recover from the bug.

That's it: That's the entire and ongoing and not-fixed and impossible-to-fix with-a-reload-or-any-other-band-aid problem. I don't have time for this. As I said a few pages back, before we found out about either of the latest bugs, I know the optimal use of my time, and it DOES NOT INVOLVE THIS STUPID GAME FOR WHICH I SIGNED UP TO LURK ONE THREAD BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO FOLLOW THEM ALL!!! Don't get me wrong: It's been lots of fun playing this game, for all the reasons mentioned in the two paragraphs above - but it's a fun thing I've been doing when I could have been doing things that are more important and vitally necessary and which - when I make time for them properly - I frankly enjoy a lot more.

The fact that I posted a bunch of stuff over the past few days probably looks like me saying, "Oh, good! We got a reload! Now I'll get back in the game!" - which makes it all the more imperative that I post this: That's not why I'm throwing all this up here. It's the opposite. I'm posting all this so I can get it off of my computer, into the hands of whoever-if-anyone on the team has time to play with it - so the time I already invested in creating this stuff won't necessarily be 100% wasted, even though it means spending more time cleaning it up and posting it. Most of it is stuff I wanted to post over the weekend when nine momentary emergencies hit instead.

I am so, so sick and tired of "emergencies" involving a computer game that - thanks to the joys of Pitboss - are time-sensitive in real life. The one with HV's Settler got resolved, thanks to Maniac and the various other teams, with some expert non-partisan code analysis from T-Hawk and excellent insight from Swiss, while I was doing out-of-game things; the one before, with Sankore, resolved itself as magically as it appeared; the one afterward, with the sugar, was likewise resolved without my intervention. But I had to start planning around the Settler problem before it was resolved; I had to try to figure out what was causing the Sankore failure and come up with a possible solution before I went into the game and found out it wasn't needed; I had to redesign the worker plan to take the missing sugar into account before the replacement turned up. And I can't and won't keep this up. When I step back and think about it, I don't really give a half-eaten chickpea if our civ gets thrown out of kilter by a silly bug or an honest mistake or another civ's encroachment or the like. We do our best with the time we've got - and too often, with the time we *don't* have - and if that's not enough for Amazing Success™ ... that's all right.

What I resent - what I won't put up with - is the drain on my real-life hours to address the various things that go wrong or look like they might be going wrong or just need planning out. I've got a backlog of stuff I've been meaning to post, and I'll try to put that up. I'll try to play turns when needed, though counting on my connection, as has been mentioned, is not wise. When I legitimately have time to develop them, I'll try to add further thoughts. But I've been optimizing things out of force of habit, and I intend to cut that out. If the optimal way I can spend such time as I devote to this game - now that I've posted that FS spreadsheet of course, right? - is to figure out how best to get ready for a Space Victory, that's good: Because it means I'm not really needed for anything really important, and I won't even let the team down much when I take a whole lot more time off.

Further worker plans are coming anyway because they're already created; I just have to spend five minutes cleaning them up and posting them. I was even tempted to say we might not need the two workers out of the cap (yes, sadly, micromanaging worker actions makes that much of a difference) but then I remembered all our desert hills and jungles still remaining, the needed link between HV and Ornata, and....

So, yeah.

[RefSteel]

One diplo note: Searched our thread, searched our F/K account, and can find no reference to any NAP with Byz. I didn't do an absolute in-depth search, but I think Bob is misremembering the situation.

[Maniac Marshall]

I'll play the turn later. There's stuff I wanted to say to that post above, but I couldn't get it all typed up in time, and now I have to go.

I'm really sorry this game has been such a bad experience for you in many ways as I'm the one who got you into it to begin with.

[RefSteel]

I'll play the turn later. There's stuff I wanted to say to that post above, but I couldn't get it all typed up in time, and now I have to go.

'Sallright. A couple of things, in case it wasn't clear:

I do not intend to abandon you, the team, or the game. I can't afford to keep spending massive time on it, but I'll continue trying to keep up with such plans as I can without burning time like dry scrub in a brushfire.

To the extent my internet connection cooperates, and with the difficulty (not impossibility, depending on when) of weekends a given, I can still try to substitute-turnplay. I'll try to keep the spreadsheets and so forth up to date when I have time, and the worker plan I devised already goes through something like T150 - maybe a little longer.

The main thing, I think, is that I can't respond to in-game emergencies as though they're actual emergencies. It's not going to be unusual for me to be barely able to check the thread, and definitely unable to do much calculating for the game, for several days at a time. I already know that in the month of September, I might be able to count the number of times I can even log in on the fingers of one hand. That's independent of emotional attachment or lack-thereof to this game, but it should be noted that when I think of those September gaps, I'm glad.

[Maniac Marshall]

Okay, I've been wanting to post this, but all these stupid emergencies keep cropping up, and I'm STILL working without sufficient information about turn 143 while stupidly agreeing to babble about national wonders we may or may not build by turn 175.

Yeah, well, I was expecting the turn to roll in time for me to play it before leaving for the Airport, and I would then tell you what to do the next turn. Then the pause for England happened and that became impossible.

Maniac has said (in e-mails to PAT and maybe in the IT thread) that the bug that led to the reload was affecting my morale vis-a-vis this game. It sort of did, but in a straw-camel's-back kind of way, and no reload could remove the straw, and even doing so cannot unbreak the back. The bug was annoying and frustrating, but not game-breaking. We'd have lived. It was cool to find out the reason and how to fix it, but I was willing to play on with or without the reload, as I indicated here.

I'm aware you would have. However, you spent a crap load of time working on that microplan, and I did not want your time ruined over something incredibly stupid in the code. This really was my primary motivation. Not saying I wouldn't have pursued the issue had this not been the case.

Unlike Maniac, I don't think refusing to reload the thing would reflect badly on the community. It's just ... whatever. Sometimes the game bites you, sometimes because you missed something, and sometimes because it lied, because of a bug. It happens. You play the hand you're dealt and see where it takes you. That's part of RB too.

I completely disagree, and here's why. First, this IS a bug. We'd already agreed that bugs were just cause for a reload months ago.

Second, precedent had already been established for allowing a reload based on code stupidity. See post #626 of the IT thread. As I stated in the IT thread, if THAT deserved a reload, this situation was more deserving for reasons I outlined there.

Third, and this is what really pissed me off, the only two people that I talked to about this situation that did NOT want us to get a reload both told me they thought we deserved one, but that they were fed up with all the pauses and reloads and just wanted to keep the game moving regardless of whether or not that meant we got screwed... Say WHAT?! I'm sorry, but to me that's a VERY Un RB like stance, and that sort of uncaring attitude with regards to justice is really what angered me so much. Moving on.

Would I really have quit if they had not given us the reload? No, almost positive I would not have. I'd have been extremely pissed off, and I'd have blasted the decision publicly, but I wouldn't have quit. Nothing short of a major RL disaster like a major illness or an ip ban from the forums would keep me away from this game at this point. The game is like crack. I both hate it, and can't live without it at this point...

What breaks the camel's back is not the straw. It's the nineteen gigatons of assorted garbage under which the camel is already straining when that final straw is dropped. Yeah, with the reload, the time spent setting up HV's one-turn settler is marginally less wasted. Only very, very marginally though: The fun of planning it isn't less because it couldn't come to fruition; the fun of seeing it actually happen is neatly replaced by the fun of finding out why. And apart from what fun there was in that (which isn't to be written off of course) the time WAS wasted, reload or not: Wasted making complex plans for what to do in a game that apparently more than half of the players have no interest in anymore.

Maybe it's just me, but, I don't find it wasted for THAT reason. If you find it fun, it shouldn't matter what other people think/feel about the game. Look at it this way; If you spent time working all this out for an SP game you were going to report on, would it be wasted time because there were not other players in the game that cared? No. Then that shouldn't matter here either. If you enjoy it, then screw what everyone else thinks, or what their motivation or lack thereof is.

Maybe/hopefully that's an exaggeration, and Maniac is projecting from like Byz and Rome (this is why I don't suggest choosing a civ for a non-Indian UU in this kind of game, by the way) and darrell (not sure how the other three guys on his team feel) but also maybe not.It's a game that several people are not enjoying, with no end in sight for months - and if the majority of teams were to just vote to quit, where does that leave the ones who do enjoy it (they exist, apart from us, right?) and are still excited about it and have spent months of intensive planning getting to the point where they are now and looking forward to what's to come?

I'm pretty sure that it's not QUITE as bad as I've made out, but, I do think very few people are as into this game as I am... Despite the fact that losing Mr. Nice Guy has bummed out Shoot, he told me the other day he's pretty much addicted to this game too, but the others in PAT have told me they are somewhere around bored and disinterested. Regarding India specifically, I think reggo is no longer on the Indian team, or is taking time off at the least. darrell has told me specifically he finds the game stupid. Regarding other CUDDLE teams, we know how Byz and sandover and JANK, and Ruff feel, and they are between bored and annoyed. I do think Warrior Knight is still into this game, and probably HRE too, so it's not like no one cares.

Given the above, I think it's a fair generalization to say that probably at least half the teams care to some degree, but only 3-4 actually still have clost to the same "fire" for this game they did when it started.

If we actually DID take a vote to end the game... I'd vote against it. However, I wouldn't be devastated if the vote passed... well, I kind of would, but I'll explain that below.

Here are some things I think this game has completely lost sight of, because losing sight of them was built into the design (RBP3's rule set, everyone's civ and leader picks, and the assumptions going in) of the game:

Winning doesn't matter. Only one of the 17 teams that started is going to win anyway. Even now, there are 14 teams left. Even if you write off two or three of the most hopeless, today's front runner is tomorrow's flame-out, and today's nobody is tomorrow's dark horse. The odds (still) aren't good for anyone. Winning is (maybe) a bonus, but if the *reason* you play is to win the game, you're probably out of your mind.

Eh, winning DOES matter, however, I think what you're trying to say is that it shouldn't be the only thing you care about, and you are correct that winning, should not be the ONLY goal in this game. If the only 2 possible results are complete bliss, to total abject failure, then that's not good. What's important is that you do your best to win and have as much fun doing so as possible.

Regarding my desire to win this game, the biggest reason that I want to win now is because so many of our friends now EXPECT us to... It's become a situation where if we don't I'm going to feel like I've failed everyone, especially Kyan who is looking to us like his great hope by proxy... I do NOT like failing people, and so, I will do everything I reasonably can to try to win as I've stated before. Yes, it's a lot of pressure, but not all pressure is bad pressure.

"Cool Stuff" isn't the point. Under the heading of "Cool Stuff," I include the likes of Praets and Phracts and World Wonders. They're not really that cool. You can get them easily in SP. They're just stuff - a handful (way too many because civ's code is somewhat inelegant) of 1s and 0s in a computer in Sunrise's apartment. It's not why we RBers are here.

Really dono what to say to this. I enjoyed getting Sankore because it's cool, and it helps the alliance, but I wasn't exactly shaking about it. It's nice, but the money from failure was nice too.

We're here for the community - for me, planning and talking with Maniac and Cull early on; with Maniac and Morgan now; interacting with lurkers when they comment; chatting with Kyan and Krill and all the rest.

We're here to seek new challenges. That's why, when I have time for this game at all, what I like to do is come up with crazy plans to do things that seem like they're impossible. (Even when, for buggy reasons, it turns out that they are!) It's why I'm disappointed to hear that some teams are losing interest just because the game isn't going the way they want. (It's particularly frustrating in the case of Byz, since they're in an excellent position to change the way it's going!)

Well, ideally all of that is true. That is the "mission statement" for RB, but, realistically, everyone's motivations will be different from everyone elses. As I've stated not long ago, I'm glad I played if, for nothing else, because I've had fun talking to a lot of the players both on this team and on other teams. I've learned a lot about a game that, frankly, I really didn't much care for when it first came out, and still don't care much to play against the AI (though it's a lot better than vanilla Civ 4)

The lack of lurkers for this game is, frankly, depressing. Understandable, but depressing.

As far as new challenges, I think a lot of people in this game are very new to MP, and thus, just a generic try to win goal is a new and exciting (at least initially) challenge to some of them.

I'm not sure it's just their position in the game that's caused some of the loss of interest. Some people who are doing well have simply cited the slow pace of the game with all the pauses as enough to make them not care. Others hate the tech alliance thing and say that makes the entire game stupid and not fun. I've heard other complaints as well. Some of these have been chats off my personal email, and thus you wouldn't see.

Generally, I'm not going to try to judge them. I will say that, if I was in sandover's position, where I not only had a completely hopeless empire, but also no one to even talk to about the game, I'm not sure I'd be very motivated either. Unlike PAT, it's my understanding that most of CUDDLE barely even talk to each other. Doesn't sound very exciting to me, so I can understand it.

It's why I'm hoping Krill really does go for culture and really pulls it off. It's why I'm spending MORE time when I should be sleeping on this ridiculous treatise.

Bah, why don't you want US to pull off something "impossible" Maybe you should figure out how WE could best win a culture vic instead

My morale was supposed to go out the window because something I planned didn't go my way? Give me a break. What I hated about that settler bug was this: It would take more real-life time that I don't have for me to figure out what happened, how to prevent it happening in the future, and how to make the city recover from the bug.

And having to invest more time that you don't have to try to figure out what happened, how to prevent it in the future, and how to make the city recover from the bug was NOT a blow to your morale? It sure as hell looked like it to me.

Yeah. I'd look at this in more detail, but I'm frankly getting sick of Civ and its buggy behavior. Are you saying there are now 16 food in the bin? Because that should be impossible - we just grew with 34/34 food in the bin, and with our granary that should translate to 17. Whatever. No more impossible than 101 hammers and one turn to completion magically turning into 99 hammers and 2 turns to completion for no reason. Yay, civ!

I'm at work, and won't be able to log into the game until sometime tonight, if then. I have various plots, plans, and ideas that I'm reluctant to post because, whatever, Civ will just turn on Avoid Hammers or something and invalidate everything.

Still looks like that to me, but whatever. As I said, my primary motivation for fixing this was to try to not invalidate all the time you put into making something work. That, and you had a 10+ turn extension to the microplan that, despite the fact that you said you didn't have time to fix, I highly suspect you'd have fixed anyway. Sorry if I misinterpreted/misrepresented your feelings, but I was serious about how frustrating it would be if you cut back your involvement over a stupid bit of coding. Sorry I got involved at all I guess.

That's it: That's the entire and ongoing and not-fixed and impossible-to-fix with-a-reload-or-any-other-band-aid problem. I don't have time for this. As I said a few pages back, before we found out about either of the latest bugs, I know the optimal use of my time, and it DOES NOT INVOLVE THIS STUPID GAME FOR WHICH I SIGNED UP TO LURK ONE THREAD BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO FOLLOW THEM ALL!!!

I understand this very well. I was supposed to be a dedicated lurker too. I thought I'd be giving general advice since of the three of us, I was actually the most experienced player , diplomatic advice since I've handled this sort of thing in other games, writing silly stories, occasionally playing a turn, and doing whatever occasionally when I had time. I was expecting our Primary Turn Player to do 75% of the work other than the frenzied period around first contact.

Unfortunately, this did not happen. Our primary turn player VASTLY underestimated his availability AND the crazy ammount of time this game needed to be played properly. So, gradually, you and I took over, then, eventually, it became mostly me, though you're still spending a lot of time on the game when you were able.

I never wanted to be in charge of this team, for a whole lot of reasons.

1) I intended to be spending most of my gaming related time on MoO, which I prefer.
2) I did have a pretty good idea how much of a time sink this game would be and I didn't want to (nor did I think I COULD) spend that much time on it.
3) As I've mentioned before (not sure if in this thread or just in talking to other people) I knew how this game would take over my life if I let it. I had every intention of not letting it, which is why I signed up to be a dedicated lurker and try to make a thread entertaining.

I've had past experiences with games where I've done crazy shit like not sleep more than 90 minutes without waking up to log in/play a game for months at a time. I've taken the laptop to work and driven across the street to a hotel to leech wireless internet so I could long in and play at lunch every day for hourly ticker games before (being offline for 8 straight hours was an absolute killer). I've not slept for multiple days at a time. I've been 2 hours late to Thanksgiving dinner because I had to wait to play a time sensitive game.

OK, say it. "WTF, Maniac, you need help dude." Yes, I get ridiculously obsessive over games, I know that. That's why I was only going to be a lurker here. Unfortunately, what it came down to was that either I had to take over the team, or the team was going to fall apart, and they might spend weeks looking for a replacement. I really had no choice. I had to take over the team to avoid letting down the community.

In some ways, I don't regret it, but in a hell of a lot of other ways I do. I'm really not terribly happy that it's become my life now, but, as I said, it's like crack now. I can't give it up, and, honestly, even if we win the game because you come up with the most awesomely spectacular plan in the history of gaming (which I would NOT put past you), I'd be depressed that the game was over for a couple of weeks anyway. I'd eventually find something else to fill the void, but that's how it would be.

Don't get me wrong: It's been lots of fun playing this game, for all the reasons mentioned in the two paragraphs above - but it's a fun thing I've been doing when I could have been doing things that are more important and vitally necessary and which - when I make time for them properly - I frankly enjoy a lot more.

I don't know about the vitally necessary part for me, but otherwise I agree with the sentiment. But, as I said, it's now my crack, and I find it hard to give it up even for a weekend at a gaming con. (Have I mentioned how depressing it is that GenCon is happening this weekend, and I'm not there because of this wedding )

The fact that I posted a bunch of stuff over the past few days probably looks like me saying, "Oh, good! We got a reload! Now I'll get back in the game!" - which makes it all the more imperative that I post this: That's not why I'm throwing all this up here. It's the opposite. I'm posting all this so I can get it off of my computer, into the hands of whoever-if-anyone on the team has time to play with it - so the time I already invested in creating this stuff won't necessarily be 100% wasted, even though it means spending more time cleaning it up and posting it. Most of it is stuff I wanted to post over the weekend when nine momentary emergencies hit instead.

I am so, so sick and tired of "emergencies" involving a computer game that - thanks to the joys of Pitboss - are time-sensitive in real life. The one with HV's Settler got resolved, thanks to Maniac and the various other teams, with some expert non-partisan code analysis from T-Hawk and excellent insight from Swiss, while I was doing out-of-game things; the one before, with Sankore, resolved itself as magically as it appeared; the one afterward, with the sugar, was likewise resolved without my intervention. But I had to start planning around the Settler problem before it was resolved; I had to try to figure out what was causing the Sankore failure and come up with a possible solution before I went into the game and found out it wasn't needed; I had to redesign the worker plan to take the missing sugar into account before the replacement turned up. And I can't and won't keep this up. When I step back and think about it, I don't really give a half-eaten chickpea if our civ gets thrown out of kilter by a silly bug or an honest mistake or another civ's encroachment or the like. We do our best with the time we've got - and too often, with the time we *don't* have - and if that's not enough for Amazing Success™ ... that's all right.

What I resent - what I won't put up with - is the drain on my real-life hours to address the various things that go wrong or look like they might be going wrong or just need planning out. I've got a backlog of stuff I've been meaning to post, and I'll try to put that up. I'll try to play turns when needed, though counting on my connection, as has been mentioned, is not wise. When I legitimately have time to develop them, I'll try to add further thoughts. But I've been optimizing things out of force of habit, and I intend to cut that out. If the optimal way I can spend such time as I devote to this game - now that I've posted that FS spreadsheet of course, right? - is to figure out how best to get ready for a Space Victory, that's good: Because it means I'm not really needed for anything really important, and I won't even let the team down much when I take a whole lot more time off.

Further worker plans are coming anyway because they're already created; I just have to spend five minutes cleaning them up and posting them. I was even tempted to say we might not need the two workers out of the cap (yes, sadly, micromanaging worker actions makes that much of a difference) but then I remembered all our desert hills and jungles still remaining, the needed link between HV and Ornata, and....

So, yeah.

I really never intended you give the game time you didn't have to fix these things, but apparently they came across that way to you.

The Byz thing was mostly me ranting. I didn't really expect you do to anything about that. I ranted to some other people too, who all told me "Dude, don't throw away your chance to win over this." which of course, I was prepared to do right then except I'm sure the fact that it would have drug down teammates with me would have prevented it in the end.

The Sankore thing happened when you were around and were fixing to log into the game, so it seems like something I really had to mention...

I really don't want to discuss the Settler thing anymore, other than to say that I really wasn't expecting you to spend countless hours trying to straighten it out.

The main reason I asked for those spreadsheets, which I would never have asked for in the first place had I realized they were as time consuming as they seem to be, was so that I had something to use to help morgan know what to do if he needed to play a turn while I was out of town (like, now for instance)

The sugar thing was MY fault. Yet another in a long line of Maniac Fuckups™

It's off... now we have another problem though, and this is my fault. Swiss came to me in game asking for our sugar. I gave it to him thinking we didn't really need it, and we'd have that other one hooked up shortly... uh, problem, I just noticed HV is slated to have no happiness to spare. I guess I can see if I can get 10 turns of sugar from Kyan or, sigh, Byz, who'll probably demand a worker or a settler =/

This was a message posted out of frustration with myself for being an idiot. This was not intended as a "please save me from my own stupidity" message, although it was apparently taken that way. When you responded that you thought you could make a worker plan to solve it, I assumed we were talking about using 3-6 workers over a 3-5 turn period. I was STUNNED that you were talking about an empire wide plan. I was not asking for you to do something like this, though apparently it was taken that way

The main reason I posted about any of these things at all was to bitch about them occurring and/or to ask if anyone (T-Hawk for example) had an explanation for them, or if maybe you had a quick suggestion.

Honestly, all of this shit over the last week seems to be my fault, and if you really feel this way about the game, and are only staying on out of a sense of obligation, then I'd rather you do quit. Seriously.

If it's no longer fun (or less fun) than other things you could be doing instead, why are you still here? If it's only out of obligation to me, then just don't. I have to be here, since it's "my team" now. You don't have to be here. And really, if you're only staying out of loyalty to me, then that makes me feel really shitty, and asking you to stay on would be a pretty shitty thing for me to do to a friend.

Yes, it will suck the fun out of the game for me to be going it alone, but, what the hell, why should I be the special one who's actually having fun with the game?

'Sallright. A couple of things, in case it wasn't clear:

I do not intend to abandon you, the team, or the game. I can't afford to keep spending massive time on it, but I'll continue trying to keep up with such plans as I can without burning time like dry scrub in a brushfire.

As I said, if you're only staying on out of obligation, and the game has become a drag on your life, than please, please get outa here.

Do I wan't you to go? Absolutely not. I wouldn't have even signed up for this game as a DEDICATED LURKER if it hadn't been to play with you, but I'd much rather you go than stay if it's dragging down your quality of life.

The main thing, I think, is that I can't respond to in-game emergencies as though they're actual emergencies. It's not going to be unusual for me to be barely able to check the thread, and definitely unable to do much calculating for the game, for several days at a time. I already know that in the month of September, I might be able to count the number of times I can even log in on the fingers of one hand. That's independent of emotional attachment or lack-thereof to this game, but it should be noted that when I think of those September gaps, I'm glad.

Again, I really, really was NOT asking you to do something that required you spend time you didn't have, and I'm sorry that you felt like I was. After reading all this, if you really do still want to stay on, great. The next time you think I'm asking you to do something you don't have time for just tell me to kindly, GTFO. K?

Now, in answer to your next question: No, I got nothing done on that today, sorry. I expected to get a lot done, but. I couldn't get to sleep last night. I ended up getting like 2 hours before I had to get up, and drive 2.5hrs to the airport. Then it was an hour from the airport to this hotel. By the time I got here I was exhausted, and slept from 3PM till like 7:30PM when I discovered that post. Unfortunately, I had to go out to dinner at 8, and did not get back till midnight. Since midnight, I've been working on this response. It's now 5AM, and, while I'm finally done, I haven't even logged in to play the turn yet X_X. I'll do that now, but then I'm going to go to bed