The lurker's burrow

[Dreylin]

Concession register:

Superdeath - Yep
Bing - Yep
Yuris - Nope (though has proposed a max 10% chance that anyone other than Scooter can win)
Cairo - Nope (but doesn't post much so hard to tell)

[Mjmd]

Despite my many non civ issues with Bing, in civ games he is a very loyal ally. He also probably doesn't care at this point.

To SDs request about who hasn't conceded, we are probably just waiting on Yuris right? I know T-Hawk gently prodded him recently. Edit as Dreylin and I posted at same time. Cairo's opinion probably doesn't matter as he is at a low city count.

[T-hawk]

Cairo said "I'm going to die soon" which is close enough. If Yuris concedes, we can ask Cairo if he would concede if all other players do, and he'd say yes.

Yuris is still playing with full engagement though. Hard for us to tell if he actually has any chance, if the rest of the alliance can do anything meaningful vs Scooter.

[Dreylin]

Yuri is universally one of the best people to play with. Immaculate PYFT, consistent effort no matter the situation, low drama, etc. In a game that at times severely struggled for pace, it was nice being able to count on him while I begged the rest to play their turns.

This is also exactly why Yuris is less likely to concede than others in his situation would.

[Qgqqqqq]

Yes I also found that ironic. Scooter is quite annoyed at the lack of concession, but Yuris is the one holding that back - which tbh should be very obvious given his engagement.

Also, Yuris has virtually no chance. But it's not up to us, it's up to him.

[RefSteel]

Well, I'm pretty sure Scooter is contending that he wouldn't mind the non-concession or even the dogpile if he felt like he was playing against four self-interested empires instead of the equivalent of Master of Orion Final War. That's nothing to Superdeath's constant calls for the game to end - while gifting a thousand gold to the one player who hasn't conceded. (But hey, apparently he asked for some of it back now....)

That said: There is a significant problem with gold-per-turn gifts specifically - or rather with any gold-per-turn offer, even in exchange for trade goods, lump-sum gold, cities, or peace - in a sequential game. I wouldn't have noticed/remembered if not for the controversy, and I'm not sure what can/should be done about it now, but it applies in all (and only) games (including PbeMs) where each player's economy is processed as soon as they end turn. The problem is that gpt deals don't transfer gold from the gifter's treasury to the recipient; they reduce the gifter's income (potentially to negative numbers) and increase the recipient's by the same amount. This is no problem (strikes aside) in simultaneous pitboss, but this is sequential, so: On the turn when SD offered 100gpt to Yuris, since Yuris hadn't accepted yet, Superdeath generated his usual gpt, paying nothing for the as-yet-uncompleted deal. Later that turn, Yuris accepted the deal, and his gold income immediately increased by 100gpt. This then applied to his treasury as soon as he hit end turn. So at that point, Yuris had gotten 100g for free, out of thin air. Of course, SD then lost 100g at the end of his next turn (unless he declares war on Yuris) but after Yuris takes his next turn, he'll still be at net +200g while SD is only at -100g. This rolls all the way forward to the last turn of the deal: SD ends turn and is down 900g, the same amount that Yuris is up. Then Yuris ends turn and is up 1000g, still ahead with those "free" 100g. When it's SD's turn again, his income still shows -100gpt from the deal ... but he can now cancel it before ending turn! Doing so immediately restores his income to normal, so he'll have paid only 900g to give Yuris 1000, just because of the way the game processes these deals.

There are of course ways to get around or repair this. In this case, for instance, SD could refrain from canceling the deal, and then Yuris could cancel at the first opportunity. That way the money would all line up ... for that deal. There have been other deals like that this game though, in different amounts, and I don't know what the overall impact or balance of effect has been. Note also that demanding (or requesting) gpt is generally not a problem, because the player giving the gold will presumably be the one to cancel the deal, and the result will be that the correct amount is paid and received. (If the recipient cancels the deal, it does cause one turn of gold from the deal to "evaporate" just like the much-more-likely case of a turn's worth of gold magically appearing from nowhere when someone who offered it cancels the deal.)

So ... sorry to clutter the situation even more. I just thought I should at least make note of this.

[Krill]

That's a good point, and the same issue can also apply when the only version of a resource is traded between two players.

[scooter]

Not a ton to respond to as this was one of the quietest lurker threads I've ever seen for a game I played and heavily reported, but I think that mostly boils down to the settings resulting in a low-interaction game for the first 4 months. The game was pretty fun to play as a one-off, but I don't think it was a super interesting lurk until the last 10% of it was more interesting. The only interesting comments were around the gifting, which I'm not seeing value in discussing as it's all been said.


The only thing I'll say about that was I was stunned to learn a unit gift was shut down by the lurkers shortly before the gold gifting was not.

Yes I also found that ironic. Scooter is quite annoyed at the lack of concession, but Yuris is the one holding that back - which tbh should be very obvious given his engagement.

Also, Yuris has virtually no chance. But it's not up to us, it's up to him.

Well, I'm pretty sure Scooter is contending that he wouldn't mind the non-concession or even the dogpile if he felt like he was playing against four self-interested empires instead of the equivalent of Master of Orion Final War. That's nothing to Superdeath's constant calls for the game to end - while gifting a thousand gold to the one player who hasn't conceded. (But hey, apparently he asked for some of it back now....)

Ref mostly has it right that the meta issues caused more annoyance than the actual gamestate. I was otherwise having a good time preparing for the dogpile and fighting interesting battles. Also the fact that the peak of the game effort-wise spiked right in my busiest month personally in a year or two was just unfortunate timing. But also I don't think I was ever quite "annoyed" by non-concession, more just surprised. I vaguely alluded to this in-thread, but privately I felt the game was over around this point in mid-October:

Not a lot of discussion for this game because the reporting has been poor from most of the players, but I think it's worth noting how badly scooter is annihilating this field. Tarkeel's tech summary from yesterday is just mind-boggling:

Cairo and SD are the closest to Astro, in different directions: Cairo can research Paper, but SD is the only other player with Machinery for Optics.
Superdeath is missing the entire religion tree, including Monarchy/Feudalism.
Yuri is deep in the Aesthetics line, but is missing CodeOfLaws and Monarchy/Feudalism.

Scooter isn't just the first player to reach Astronomy on a water-heavy map, no one else is even remotely close to the #1 most important tech for this setup. He not only reached Astronomy + Paper before anyone else reached Optics, there's only one player out of his four rivals who can even RESEARCH Optics as a tech option! What the heck has everyone else been doing in this game?!? Yuri detoured off into the Aesthetics line and then sank 600 hammers into one of the most ill-advised attacks in recent memory which forced Bing to kill his economy in response, but what about superdeath and Cairo? Scooter has played an excellent game but he shouldn't be THIS far ahead against players who never fought a war or had something else slow them down.

At this rate, he's going to have frigates to their caravels and can capture anything he wants anywhere on the map.

Once I settled all of the Astro land and got all those cities quickly developed and online before anyone could touch them, things felt very good.

Current state of the game:

Scooter: unlocks frigates next turn, no one else has galleons yet
Yuris, the clear #2 power, plans to ally with scooter to attack superdeath, the #3 power
Bing: unaware that scooter has galleons, apparently not noticing the settling of the Astronomy islands or checking the tech screen
Cairo: has not posted in the forum since July

The main question at this point is how many cities will burn until we get concessions from the other players.

Emphasis mine. I wanted to say this part of this post gave me a good laugh. I was reading Bing's thread yesterday and got to this point and was confused as it came from a post where I could see my city count was already up to ~28 or whatever. So I was comparing it to my own thread trying to figure out "when" his comments were.

[Tarkeel]

I was reading Bing's thread yesterday and got to this point and was confused as it came from a post where I could see my city count was already up to ~28 or whatever. So I was comparing it to my own thread trying to figure out "when" his comments were.

FWIW, this is why I try to begin all my reports with the turn number.