[no players] CiVI Lurking Part II: Sophomore Slump

[rho21]

He offered Alahambram a joint war while explicitly stating that he hopes that Alhambram declines.

I believe he intended the offered deal to mean that he would be interested in joining an attack on Woden in a few turns' time. He wanted it to be rejected so as not to give the game away.

Not that I disagree with the rest of your points, I just wanted to clarify that one.

[suboptimal]

We need to start a house rule for future games banning the Declaration of Friendships. This is almost as bad as the early days of Civ4 with unrestricted diplomacy and endless Non-Aggression Pacts between everyone. The nonstop friendship pacts between Woden and Alhamram have robbed this game of what could have been a fascinating conflict. Now Woden is virtually guaranteed to win because he's managed to friendship pact everyone who could have potentially attacked him. Kudos to him on reading the diplomacy and setting that up, but it's not really what we want in terms of gameplay.

PBEM1 was a lot more fun when there was constant uncertainty about whether your neighbors would attack on every turn.

I have to agree with the others in that it's premature to ban DoFs.  It's not an exploit and if the players themselves are the ones setting up constant DoFs, so be it.  If it results in a runaway that's their own fault, no?  It makes it interesting for us in this game because they've collectively dug a hole that they need to try to dig out of - how will they make the attempt?  We're also seeing a lot of infrastructure development (and discussion about it) that we might not be seeing if the threat of war was always there.  We also get to see the downsides of enforced peace (which they are now realizing) which may affect future games.

I think it's also important that we don't lose sight of the fact that it's the players' game, even if it's not what "we" (the gen-lurkers) want (personally I'm enjoying it).

[Mardoc]

We need to start a house rule for future games banning the Declaration of Friendships. This is almost as bad as the early days of Civ4 with unrestricted diplomacy and endless Non-Aggression Pacts between everyone.

Bad in what way, specifically?

It doesn't appear to be costing hours of everyone's time.  I don't see any particular sign of bad blood translating to out-of-game grudges.

There might be some aspect of helping powerful people snowball further, only there was definitely an opportunity for that to be averted with Woden.  It wasn't the DoF that kept him safe, it was the fact that Alhambram wasn't interested in rolling the dice and OleDavy wasn't able to hit him alone.  Which would have been true with or without the ability to use a DoF in-game.

Paradoxically, I think the varying DoF's are making the eastern triad *more* warlike, not less. I think some of these wars don't happen if the aggressor has to keep half their army home just in case.

I think it's also important that we don't lose sight of the fact that it's the players' game, even if it's not what "we" (the gen-lurkers) want (personally I'm enjoying it).

Yep. On a related note: I can't help but notice that about three turns after Alhambram got his new DoF's signed, he doubled his faith production and added all the Theocracy bonuses to religious combat, on top of the Mahabodhi free apostles.

[Ichabod]

The cool thing about religious victory is that, if people try to stop Alhambram by conquering his lands, they have to watch out not to go over past the "cities with religion" cap. So, Alhambram may become "unconquerable", in some, admittedly not very likely, scenarios.

[Commodore]

Yep.  On a related note:  I can't help but notice that about three turns after Alhambram got his new DoF's signed, he doubled his faith production and added all the Theocracy bonuses to religious combat, on top of the Mahabodhi free apostles.

So question, if he was actually trying from the outset to build his empire towards mass buying Cossacks with theocracy faith would he really have done much different?

[ebbitten]

He wouldn't have gotten a +300 power differential against the game leader and then not attacked. Either invest the hammers somewhere where they will generate compound returns or pounce.


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[ebbitten]

On a different topic Davey is starting to notice ways to use the 1UPT rules in pretty passive aggressive manners, I'm wondering if behavior like this will make people more hesitant to DOF


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[Ichabod]

That 300 power differential is the reason why Alhambram is able to keep peace with Woden for more than 100 turns. If he kept just a skeleton military, Woden would have eaten him way back. A lot of players are always complaining that some other player got easier neighbours to eat. In this game, Alhambram didn't give Woden any advantages (City State scouting is random luck, pretty much), and he even forced Woden to spend hammers in religious and military defence. What do we hear from the other players: Alhambram is not attacking Woden, he's so bad.

Next thing we'll be seeing complaints that "X player is not in my house playing my turns for me, he's so bad, etc.".

I completely understand the frustration from the players, it's a game and they want to win. But I don't see how all seeing lurkers can echo them and criticize Alhambram here. I think all his choices were perfectly valid and he seems to be doing his best to win, which is what I expect from a good participant in a game. People may not agree with his moves, and that's fine, but the judgemental tone I've seen in some posts, that's too much, in my opinion.

I sincerely think Alhambram's chance to win through religion is the best he has. If he had attacked Woden, I think at most he would have gotten a city, and nothing further. Oledavy's troops would have been completely irrelevant (Oledavy himself admited that one crossbow or something like that would stop his attack - he'd probably have retreated as soon as possible, to not lose any hammers). Then, Alhambram would be stuck with all military builds to keep a losing stalemate, while Oledavy, in the other side of the world, could just tech freely.

Remember, the whole east has no religion to combat Alhambram's. Passive spread can probaly work its magic there (though I don't have much experience with how long this takes), especially since growing cities is so hard in Civ 6. He doesn't need to convert everything with Apostles/Missionaries and it seems he's already making his way in Archduke cities. He'll get some Oledavy cities too, apparently. That's actually quite close to a victory, I'd say.

[ebbitten]

On a different topic Davey is starting to notice ways to use the 1UPT rules in pretty passive aggressive manners, I'm wondering if behavior like this will make people more hesitant to DOF


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[Esteon]

On a unrelated note:
ebbitten, would you please do something about those double posts? It's becoming really annoying when you do it on every page.

And I second 'the defense of Alhambram' It is easy to criticize his indecisiveness with all-seeing eyes, but with his limited information I'm not so sure. And he really misread OleDavy's diplo (which isn't that surprising) - I mean those premature joint wars, etc.