RB Pitboss #2 - Postgame Discussion Thread

[Krill]

Good catch, wires got crossed there for a bit, Pacal =\= Maya.

[Maniac Marshall]

Krill, there was no Maya. I assume you mean Greece, the "other" light blueish civ.

Edit: Too slow like usual

[sunrise089]

I think you guys are missing what Jowy actually posted in his thread - that he believed the Ottoman lies at the time. He was told that we were full of it (and ok, maybe we were at times, but with him we were negotiating in good faith) by the Ottomans and therefore read everything we wrote in a negative light. You'll note the rapid change in tone with no real direct cause.

[Krill]

I think you guys are missing what Jowy actually posted in his thread - that he believed the Ottoman lies at the time. He was told that we were full of it (and ok, maybe we were at times, but with him we were negotiating in good faith) by the Ottomans and therefore read everything we wrote in a negative light. You'll note the rapid change in tone with no real direct cause.

I was ignoring the diplomacy actually - it didn't matter so much what you said in the past or said in the future, but the facts on the ground, well, could you help against India and defend/attack against Ottomans, once you lost Paris and were down to one city?

While editing:

Its also a question of "bird in hand". With us, we'd give him an agreement. With the Ottomans he was relying on their good intentions. That didn't work out for slaze, and I don't think it worked out very well for Jowy either . They did not provide much support in the India war.

Darrell

Depends, if you don't like the bird, it's a bit scrawny or some such, relying on someones good intentions could be viewed as a step up. And you couldn't have provided the support Athlete did, regardless of how "crappily" Athlete helped out.

[darrelljs]

Its also a question of "bird in hand". With us, we'd give him an agreement. With the Ottomans he was relying on their good intentions. That didn't work out for slaze, and I don't think it worked out very well for Jowy either . They did not provide much support in the India war.

Darrell

[Sullla]

OK, new discussion topic! After reading the Jowy/Yaz thread:

- Hmmm. Apologies for saying this, but there were a lot of mistaken assumptions in this thread early on. For example, assuming that our team didn't have Bronze Working or copper because we offered an early NAP. While that's not bad metagaming, it was not the case in this situation.

- I'm still surprised that Greece had no copper anywhere near the starting position. Still, I don't think it was as big of an issue as you played it up to be. Your neighbor to the south wasn't making any aggressive moves at all, and your neighbor to the east was ranked dead last in military power (then got into all kinds of troubles of their own!) Lack of early copper really only matters if someone gets aggressive towards you early. Greece had horses and iron, both in easy range, and two non-aggressive neighbor teams. I don't think this was that great of a setback.

- Yes, we were genuine in offering friendship to your team. We offered friendly terms to Dantski too - there was no desire to fight an early war on our part. But you guys were suspicious of us from the start, reading all kinds of hidden motives that, quite frankly, didn't exist. It's unfortunate. We were hoping to find a longterm ally, and when Dantski went all quiet and stopped responding to messages, you were our favorite choice.



- In this picture, you say that you got the short end of the resource stick, but I really don't think that's true. There are food bonuses galore, plus stone to be had (and horses + iron, once you had the proper techs). You also have two long rivers, and grassland on 90% of the tiles. I've played out of such worse starting positions, it just seems insane to me that people would consider this "bad" land. Ah well.

Btw, we pretty much settled right along the lines of those "borders", so I don't want to hear about aggressive settling, haha.

- "Someone already has their second city." OK, I enjoyed that more than I should, heh.

- Jowy, I thought your dotmap that you posted was good, aside from the one Thebes spot because it lacked any food or production bonuses. We simply had a stronger opening, and reached the two locations furthest away from your capital first.

- It's disappointing to me to read that the formal diplomatic style I tried to do came off as "fake" to Jowy. That really wasn't the goal! Looks like I still need more practice writing.

- Can't believe that another team didn't know who eliminated Mortius! One look at CivStats makes it so clear.

- I'm definitely surprised at how quickly Jowy was willing to sell out Byzantium to the Ottomans, despite friendly relations and a longterm NAP. Jowy, you wrote over and over again that Byzantium had lied and been hostile to you - I don't see that at all! I'm not sure why you became so hostile towards a team that barely sent any units at all in your direction. regoarrarr wrote about a 180 degree turn in his thread, and I have to agree. For all the lurkers who insisted that names and reputations didn't affect the diplomacy in this game, I'm going to continue to disagree with them. (Not saying it wasn't the right play for Jowy, but you can't tell me he would have been so eager to swap sides if, say, Dantski had been in the Byzantium spot.)

- I don't think your neighbors were as dishonest to you as you seem to think... Honestly, I think that you convinced yourself of aggression that didn't actually exist. Certainly we weren't negotiating in any worse fashion than you yourself were doing with regards to Byzantium! For example, you insisted that a city planted four tiles away from our capital that claimed copper was "aggressive". That despite the fact that you made an indentical settlement to claim iron at Sparta. Serious question: where could we have planted cities that you would not have viewed as aggressive?

It's really bizarre, after watching the Templars convince themselves that Realms Beyond was intending to attack them, seeing the same thing happen here with Greece. Well, sorry to say, that all became a self-fulfilling prophecy, with pre-emptive military strikes leading to the same result!

- Here's a tip: don't write, "I am a man of honor and integrity, I wouldn't go against my word" while secretly negotiating to backstab us. I think you inherited too much bad karma there!

- I'll have to keep in mind that people over-read EVERYTHING in diplo messages. For example, Dantski used a playful turn of phrase that I wrote as evidence of a conspiracy against him: ("Would you be willing to sign an Open Borders treaty with our team, as a further sign of cooperation between our teams? More money for both of us, no such luck for the other teams. ") Be careful what you write!

- I know I already said this, but it's hard for me to read that Jowy was 100% convinced that we were about to attack him. Jowy, you completely convinced yourself of something that wasn't true! To the point of viewing our NAP offers as misdirection before an attack, instead of the actual wording of what we wrote. I've been trying to figure out what I did "wrong" diplomatically in the early game, since our emails were almost entirely geared towards being friendly with our neighbors. Now I have even less of an idea of what to do! How do you play things when everyone else reads your friendship messages as secretly hiding intentions to attack?

- Also, for the record, Jowy posted a number of times that he could have eliminated us had he started with copper, which is completely laughable. Do you really think we weren't watching exactly what you were building? Do you think it was a coincidence that we started building units the minute you started building units? Please. Give us some credit! If you had had copper and tried a phalanx rush, we would have had axes waiting to counter.

- I really did like Jowy's YouTube video! Check it out here if you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-n4hMsEZT4

....although I still maintain that it points out the silliness of going max aggression in the first place in the Ancient Age. Cities with multiple unhappy faces from whipping, 30% science rate - was that really worth it? To attack a team who'd shown no signs of animosity? Oh well, been over this plenty of times already!

- I actually did not know that Greece had research visibility on us the whole time. That was never spoilered, and I'm sure it helped you guys a lot.

- Finally, even though I think this is common knowledge by now, we never contacted Dantski and asked to sign peace. There was no secret deal. He came to us and asked us for a treaty. We never talked about this diplomatically because we thought it would be useful to have 4 other teams hate Dantski, and have Romali stuck with us as their only friend.

- I think you were unfair in your comment that the Ottoman units didn't matter in the war. athlete's horse archers were our #1 target during the war, and we sacrificed quite a few units to take them out as soon as possible. As for Whosit, he had way too far to travel and mismoved his galley landing (spirit was willing but the execution was flawed). Nakor and DMOC did practically nothing - it's probably their fault more than anyone else that the whole thing failed.

India has made their move. They're on my borders (2S 2E of Thebes) with:
- 13 axes
- 6 catapults
- 4 spears
- 2 fast workers

- Also, the stack that Jowy thought was made up of gifted Dantski units only had 4 of his units in it. The rest was all our production, hehe.

- I'm glad to see that we were able to sow enough misdirection that Jowy and athlete genuinely didn't seem to expect our second attack on Greece. Hopefully people were fooled by our hostile emails towards Holy Rome (?) Well, have to read Nakor and DMOC's thread to find out more there! (Although more seriously, why would people expect us to attack Holy Rome? How would that benefit India, to be engaged in warfare way over there? We could never defend those cities even if we could have captured them!)

Overall, I think Jowy did a great job on the diplomatic side of things. It was clear that you focused really heavily on conversations with the other players; I think 80-90% of the posts in the spoiler thread involved diplomacy in some way! The downside is that there was very little discussion on the actual Civ side of things, as in little mention of things like tech goals, where and why to found cities, build orders in cities, etc. That was probably what ultimately dragged down Greece in this game, since I know that Jowy had a lot less practice with the actual gameplay mechanics than Speaker and I did. We have some posts in our thread analyzing some of this, where a couple of mistakes were made along the way.

With the game now in the rearview mirror, I would like to stop and apologize again for some of the heated and angry words that were exchanged at the time. Speaker and I were angry and frustrated, with seemingly every hand turned against us at once and no allies whatsoever, which I hope explains the context in which they were delivered. I don't think you are a bad guy at all Jowy - I just wish that you had chosen friendship with us over making yourself our enemy. But you definitely achieved your goal of making a name for yourself in this game, which none of us are likely to forget any time soon!

[VoiceOfUnreason]

It's disappointing to me to read that the formal diplomatic style I tried to do came off as "fake" to Jowy. That really wasn't the goal! Looks like I still need more practice writing.

I disagree - you don't need to refine your current writing style, you need to learn a new one. Re-invention, rather than more practice.

Try rooting for the person you are writing to while composing.

[Axiis]

- I know I already said this, but it's hard for me to read that Jowy was 100% convinced that we were about to attack him. Jowy, you completely convinced yourself of something that wasn't true! To the point of viewing our NAP offers as misdirection before an attack, instead of the actual wording of what we wrote. I've been trying to figure out what I did "wrong" diplomatically in the early game, since our emails were almost entirely geared towards being friendly with our neighbors. Now I have even less of an idea of what to do! How do you play things when everyone else reads your friendship messages as secretly hiding intentions to attack?

FWIW, the general consensus in the Lurker thread was that your diplomacy came off as too formal and thought out, which lent it an air of fakeness instead of being genuine. A carefully constructed message is suspicious.

[sunrise089]

Sullla, I don't think I'm going to offer any sort of formal response to your critiques, mostly because I agree with the majority of them, and partially because I think there is a tendency all around to pass judgment based on what happened and not based on what was likely to happen, but I do think

Also, for the record, Jowy posted a number of times that he could have eliminated us had he started with copper, which is completely laughable. Do you really think we weren't watching exactly what you were building? Do you think it was a coincidence that we started building units the minute you started building units? Please. Give us some credit! If you had had copper and tried a phalanx rush, we would have had axes waiting to counter.

is very illustrative.

Now I don't disagree that the claim is laughable to India, but while I know you guys know that other teams weren't putting the effort into this game that you were, it may be something that you can forget from time to time.

Reading these threads, the amount of effort you guys put into the game was very impressive. I'm perfectly willing to concede that you guys were the most skillful team, but before the game started I'd have said I expected your skill difference to carry you. In fact, I think once a sane plan was formulated, your effort proved more important. You had the most skill, best civ, one of if not the best leaders, and some good luck, and that helped your absolute domination of the game, but I feel like you could have managed a victory of some sort of strength of will alone. Other teams were not tracking builds or doing any other micro to the same degree. Hence Jowy's claim might have been true not just if it was about Byzantium (we died in part because we didn't track builds) but any non-India team as well.

[MJW (ya that one)]

FWIW, the general consensus in the Lurker thread was that your diplomacy came off as too formal and thought out, which lent it an air of fakeness instead of being genuine. A carefully constructed message is suspicious.

A formal message is suspicious in this kind of game. A carefull message shows that you put in a lot of time on it. Because this game is small and unnoticed there has to be a "real reason" for you to put in the time. There a very few good 'real reasons' in Civ. So it is very suspicious and shows that you are planning something bad.

In a big game it is normal to spend a lot of time on messages.