Be Vewwy Vewwy Quiet! [Game 3 Session IV Mardoc v Northstar]

[Northstar1989]

Oh yeah- one more interesting fact: did I mention we settled in EXACTLY the same spot, and had EXACTLY the same dot-maps for our future cities? I too was eying the lake site (the Wheat, Corn, Flood Plains, Lanun lake-tiles, and eventually a Cove would have all been nice...), the site NNW of Remnants of Patria (for the happy-cap), and the site north of the Sugar (for the Sugar, Cows, Gold, and Bananas- as well as the ability to steal prepared Flood Plains farms from the capital and use the River for Fresh Water and trade).

Ironically, Q had the never to question and *criticize* me for favoring these city-sites (on my lurker-thread), even while tacitly approving of your decisions to settle in the *exact* same locations. Proving, the treatment each of us have received is *NOT* commensurate to our strategic decisions.


You made fun of my economic strategy, and made gleefully inaccurate predictions about how you would be the first to size 9 and such (by the way- with a Cotton plantation, it would have been size 10 happy-cap), but in all actuality our economic strategies were virtually identical up until the point I decided to start work on a Granary (and even after in all other regards). I built one fewer Worker- but my Workers were faster and thus better able to keep up with my capital. I planned to settle in the same locations (and with my faster Workers to capitalize on a higher happy-cap from Patria, my population being larger and thus able to utilize the happiness from Sugar sooner, and the Lanun water-bonuses, actually had a better reason for settling each of the sites than you did...) And, my Demographics actually remained consistently ahead of yours throughout most of the game.


Really, I'm a better builder than you think, it's my *military* strategy (or, particularly, my tendency to not build enough military units) that needs the most work...

And as this game and other games should have proved to you- it's not your strategic decisions that are the most important determinant of your relative economic potential. Rather, it's your civ/leader choice, and whether the map favors one leader over another. Hence why I was able to out-build you economically despite my "inferior" economic strategic-thinking (from your point of view). Yet Q refuses to listen to this, and continues to leave factions like the Elohim (I can say this without Q's pitiful and hypocritical accusations of engaging in "diplomacy" now that I've handed off Eitb39- likely never to return, although I haven't decided that with finality...) with pitiful economic potential to complement their equally powerless military might... (I selected the Elohim in EitB39 partially to *prove* how powerlessly weak they were as Q has balanced Eitb39, by the way- which Q then tried to twist into saying it was only because I was a bad player...)

Don't get me wrong- I'm not just harping on the Elohim there, though- the Sheahim are equally pitiful from an economic perspective- with their only redeeming feature being the early military-might provided by Pyre Zombies. And the Grigori lost all potential to become a real economic powerhouse since Q nerfed Financial... (which was also a terrible and unfair decision- which had the effect to only reinforce the "alpha" strategy of greatly emphasizing foodhammers over commerce early on, and railroad players even more into a single playstyle or end up losing... In fact, with his nerfs to both Financial and Spiritual [through Potent-->Favored], Q has destroyed the only truly viable alternatives to the typical "alpha" strategy in Erebus in the Balance...)


Regards,
Northstar

[Qgqqqqq]

...you realise you still can't discuss '39 here? The game is still ongoing. If you want to talk about this, do it in one of the relevant threads (preferably the lurker thread).

And whatever. I really don't care what your opinion is anymore.

[Mardoc]

Without it, you had considerably lower (less than 50%) odds of victory across the River- and I felt I needed to take that chance

For that to be a reasonable choice, the stakes would have had to be equal. It was reasonable to put a warrior at risk, but not a warrior + 2 workers. You could have waited two turns, put a second warrior on the tile, and been just fine. Would have cost you 4 food or so for the delay, assuming there were no other tiles worth improving further away from my scout. I wouldn't have risked even 70% odds for just a warrior kill.

(there was definitely less water than there should have been for a "Snaky Continents" map)... the relative sparsity of good coastal sites this map-gen left me with...

There is no way you scouted well enough to know that. I found two big seas already, and I don't feel like I knew the map well enough to make a call either way on the subject.

I don't appreciate all this bashing of my reputation. Believe it or not, it's not justified.

Yes, I have a life, and yes, it's chaotic at times. I'm now working 3 jobs, actually (and just struggling to pay student loans... )

My turn-times improving had nothing to do with Kragroth's threats. I had to do with my real-line schedule getting more manageable for a little while...

Then you shouldn't have signed up for so many games. I certainly don't believe that civ is more important than work, but you shouldn't make promises you can't keep.


39 spoilers:

I never argued that worker-emphasis didn't make sense Mardoc.

That's a lie.

This post in 39 is specifically that argument.[/quote]

and was so unlikely it led me to suspect cheating on your part (hence the suspicion you detected about the bug I contacted you about later...)

Yes, yes, and green jellybeans cause acne.

The vast majority of all events are unlikely to occur, especially if you describe them specifically enough. The odds of you posting at 4:49 am instead of 4:48 or 4:50 are 1/3. If I limit it to the question of the odds of you posting at exactly 4:49 am out of the possible times between 4:45 and 5:00, it's down to 6%! Spoooky!

P.S. Also- what population maintenance Mardoc? I thought you realized than even by size 9 (which I beat you to), neither of our cities would be incurring any maintenance-costs yet...

2 food per population. Still, you're probably right about being on par with me for production at that point. You should have been ahead, with non-elven workers, but you were at least on par. Do bear in mind that my comments were made based on assumptions and guesses, since I didn't know what you had.

general balance comments

If you bothered to do the slightest bit of research, or listen to what people told you, you would know that Q had nothing to do with Financial or Spiritual. He's made only the changes in v10 and v11, which really aren't that dramatic. All you can realistically accuse him of is humility and limited time. He's making changes slowly and cautiously, and hasn't gotten the mod to perfect balance yet. Instead, you have a book's worth of rants, assuming the worst of him.

If you wanted to prove that Elohim are weak, you went about it in the wrong way. You can't prove something with that many variables using only one data point. Especially not when your approach to the game is so different than ours, there's no way to isolate the variable to civ choice. You still can't prove that, because no one is likely to play another game with someone as unpleasant as you are.

But then, I don't know why I'm arguing with you. You have consistently assumed that all of us here at RB are immoral, would rather win than play fair, and are idiots. You never look for a charitable explanation of *anything*. I'm sure that you will dismiss this criticism as well, and assume I have bad motives. I sympathize for your work situation - but if I were a hiring manager, I would certainly not hire someone who is as eager to pick fights as you are.

[Mardoc]

You seem to be one of the most morally decent players on these forums- and that seems to have won you some favor from a higher power..

I am a sinner, like all humans (but one), past and present, both in what I have done and what I have failed to do.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that God would intervene with something as fundamentally unimportant as a game between two sinners, especially if that intervention merely affects the outcome and doesn't teach anything.

[Ellimist]

You seem to be one of the most morally decent players on these forums- and that seems to have won you some favor from a higher power..

I am a sinner, like all humans (but one), past and present, both in what I have done and what I have failed to do.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that God would intervene with something as fundamentally unimportant as a game between two sinners, especially if that intervention merely affects the outcome and doesn't teach anything.

100% this.

[Northstar1989]

You seem to be one of the most morally decent players on these forums- and that seems to have won you some favor from a higher power..

I am a sinner, like all humans (but one), past and present, both in what I have done and what I have failed to do.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that God would intervene with something as fundamentally unimportant as a game between two sinners, especially if that intervention merely affects the outcome and doesn't teach anything.

Mardoc, I challenge you to think of even a single possible trait-combination I could have received that would have been less favorable for that point in the game than the one I did. Assuming all combinations are equally likely, that means my odds of getting a combo that bad or worse were 1 in 990...

This isn't an unnecessarily specific way of describing it- it's like when I received the second-worse time slot in my entire university for the Housing Lottery, after receiving the worst possible time-slot the year before. I performed a detailed statistical calculation, and showed the housing office in a long e-mail that the odds of getting two lottery slots that bad or worse over two years were less than 1 in 10,000. They were either impressed enough by my careful calculation, or sympathetic enough with my situation (their giving me the last timeslot had already led me to being stuck with a compeltely incompatible roommate who stayed up all night in the room, and became physically violent when I turned off the lights to try and sleep one night...) that they promised to bump up my timeslot that year. Did I perform an unnecessarily specific calculation? Absolutely not- the time slots (like the list of possible traits from Insane) could be objectively ranked in a first-to-last heirarchy. I ended up with objectively the worse (last) time-slot one year and second-worst the next. I only needed to calculate the probability of ending up with the worst slot one year and either of the two worst slots the other yer...


Also, your theology is a little off. The Bible says first of all, that through Jesus all our sins are washed away (so we're not "two sinners" if we're both Christian) and second that the very hairs on our head are numbered. Absolutely *nothing* is too small or too great for God. And if it teaches me an important lesson about humility or keeping my mouth shut instead of complaining, then the importance was much greater than you give it credit for...


Regarding the number of PBEM's I got involved in- I had absolutely no idea what I was in for when I signed up for this many games. If I did, I would never have done it, and probably would have just stuck to what ultimately became PBEM 41- which I started and was the first game I tried to join here on Realms Beyond...


Regarding the game itself, I risked 2 Workers and a Warrior at maybe 40% odds of defeat, for a lot more than just 4 food. I knew if I didn't lure your Scout into an attack, I was going to continue to be choked for at least the next 10-12 turns until I figured you could have sent a Warrior (I assumed you had more Scouts close behind the first one- and the situation would only get worse if I didn't stop your first Scout... A single promoted Warrior could have tipped that balance- whereas I assumed the distance and danger was holding back a Warrior for at least 10-12 more turns...), costing me a total of at least 40-50 food if I did nothing (moving a second Warrior wasn't an option- as all you had to do was cross the river up or downsteam and then you could have easily taken down a stack of 2 Warriors...) 40-50 food vs. a 30% chance of losing 116 hammers (each Worker was 50 hammers- the Warrior 16) was to my advantage, if only narrowly. If I had won, I would have finished the Granary (4 turns) and then immediately started churning out more Warriors to secure myself against more powerful units like Warriors...


Regards,
Northstar

[Qgqqqqq]

Ranking food and hammers as equal (as they mostly were given that the majority was foodhammer units) gives you an expected value of: 0.4*-116+0.6*66 (presuming your calculations and assumptions were correct) = -6.8f/h.

Your assumptions are wrong, though. If you'd simply produced sufficient additional warriors you would've been able to escort your workers, and researching engineering would've put you in a good position to spring a trap and kill him.

[Northstar1989]

Ranking food and hammers as equal (as they mostly were given that the majority was foodhammer units) gives you an expected value of: 0.4*-116+0.6*66 (presuming your calculations and assumptions were correct) = -6.8f/h.

Your assumptions are wrong, though. If you'd simply produced sufficient additional warriors you would've been able to escort your workers, and researching engineering would've put you in a good position to spring a trap and kill him.

Indeed. The average payoff was going to work in Mardoc's favor- I was well aware of that. I needed a better-than-average payoff on a major risk like that to win, though...

Engineering? I would have been defeated *long* before then if I allowed Mardoc to choke me for that long. The quickest way to break his choke would have been Horsemen.


Regards,
Northstar

[Qgqqqqq]

*exploration.