Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder

[Amicalola]

I think spite-whipping and improvment destruction make the game more balanced and interesting, BUT only if everyone does them. If player A gets to conquer massive healthy cities, but player B gets stuck with size 1 nothingburgers, that's obviously an issue.

I don't agree that it doesn't help the victims. If one is less profitable to conquer, one is less likely to be conquered.

[Gavagai]

I think spite-whipping and improvment destruction make the game more balanced and interesting, BUT only if everyone does them. If player A gets to conquer massive healthy cities, but player B gets stuck with size 1 nothingburgers, that's obviously an issue.

I don't agree that it doesn't help the victims. If one is less profitable to conquer, one is less likely to be conquered.

Same question as to xist - would you enjoy playing against an AI-mod doing all that? Observe that there is a high demand on mods that make AI more cunning, more ruthless, generally tougher to deal with. I, in particular, enjoy playing with such mods greatly. But somehow none of these mods implements spite-whipping. Why?
I think the answer is simple: it is fun to play against dangerous and intelligent opponents but it is not fun to be rewarded for your victory with a scorched wasteland. If we do not want our opponent to adopt a scorched earth strategy, we, by golden rule logic, should not resort to it ourselves. Those who defend the scorched earth strategy, therefore, face a dilemma:
a) They want to deny their opponent spoils strongly enough that they are willing to be denied spoils in their own conquests. OR
b) They reject the golden rule.
To choose b) pretty much means to write "asshole" on your own forehead - not an interesting answer. But I struggle to understand the motivation behind a). At the very least, people who endorse a) should want to teach AI to do it and I never heard that anyone would complain that AI does not spite-whip.

[Krill]

If we wanted to be arseholes we would forced the scorched earth player down to one city and then make them log in every single turn.

[Dreylin]

If we wanted to be arseholes we would forced the scorched earth player down to one city and then make them log in every single turn.

I thought we just reserved that for Scooter? 

[scooter]

Ok, I'll be more blunt about how I really feel about this.


I think my strong distaste for the spite-whipping and self-pillaging is it's just fundamentally absolute loser stuff. In my opinion the people who defend it mostly get conquered a lot. I think they should spend their energy trying to figure out how not to get conquered next time instead of doing what amounts to throwing an in-game tantrum. I've never seen anyone that I believe to be a good player do it, and that's probably because they are busy using their brain to defend instead of doing mindless stuff like pressing the whip button repeatedly. So yeah, I'd prefer we ban it, but even if we don't, I'll always think less of the people who do it.

[Amicalola]

I think spite-whipping and improvment destruction make the game more balanced and interesting, BUT only if everyone does them. If player A gets to conquer massive healthy cities, but player B gets stuck with size 1 nothingburgers, that's obviously an issue.

I don't agree that it doesn't help the victims. If one is less profitable to conquer, one is less likely to be conquered.

Same question as to xist - would you enjoy playing against an AI-mod doing all that? Observe that there is a high demand on mods that make AI more cunning, more ruthless, generally tougher to deal with. I, in particular, enjoy playing with such mods greatly. But somehow none of these mods implements spite-whipping. Why?
I think the answer is simple: it is fun to play against dangerous and intelligent opponents but it is not fun to be rewarded for your victory with a scorched wasteland. If we do not want our opponent to adopt a scorched earth strategy, we, by golden rule logic, should not resort to it ourselves. Those who defend the scorched earth strategy, therefore, face a dilemma:
a) They want to deny their opponent spoils strongly enough that they are willing to be denied spoils in their own conquests. OR
b) They reject the golden rule.
To choose b) pretty much means to write "asshole" on your own forehead - not an interesting answer. But I struggle to understand the motivation behind a). At the very least, people who endorse a) should want to teach AI to do it and I never heard that anyone would complain that AI does not spite-whip.

My answers is simply that I would argue for 'a.' I would be fine playing a mod in which the AI does it too (no strong opinion, really), but I'm certainly not going to spends dozens of hours teaching myself how to make one. Playing against the AI is also different in many other ways (e.g. catching up from behind), which means I don't think it's a very good comparison regardless.

To be clear, I think spitewhipping sucks in contexts like yours right now, where only some people are doing it. For that reason I've never done it in an RB game, and I also get very angry when people do it to me. But I can see the argument for it being a good meta if consistency is present, because conquest is the One True Path of MP civ and branching out the optimal play style seems like a positive to me.

[xist10]

I didn't wanted to make the discussion longer, but when Gavagai still want to discuss it...

I wouldn't enjoy to playing against a KI, which does it, but then, I wouldn't not enjoy it. I'm ambivalent about it.
If I conquer someone, I want the land and maybe the wonder. Pop and Infrastrukture a nice to have.
I remember, that Mjmd argued in the PB72 thread with Aetryn for raze and replace in most cases - especially if your IMP.

There is a bit of an problem, if only a few players uses scorched earth, but you have this problem already ?
Neighbours are already the most important part of the game.

[GT]

Since I was mentioned earlier

I usually don’t do spitewhipping if I can’t hope to win the war anymore. If I hope that due to another player entering the war it might turn around, I might use “scorched earth” like when the Soviet Union did it. They needed the time (and deny the Nazis the resources) to build up their army, and anything to slow down the enemy was fair game. Similar with the Zar burning down Moscow to Pop1 when Napoleon approached.

For me it’s a war tactic. I don’t “overbuild” cottages, which is imho even worse strategy. A Pop1 city might take couple more turns to become useful again than a Pop5 city, but once your granary is full, you can catch up very fast those early Pops, if you get 2 food sources..

Overall, Civ4 in MP has many shades, and every player might have different approaches. I mean we even have different rules between the German forum and this one for PBs, albeit nuanced.

And now excuse me, while I get another beer

[Gavagai]

I do hope Piccadilly feels stupid because of what he has done to this city. He pillaged it into the ground - but I am not coming.

[Gavagai]

I am attacking Commodore in three turns. The main reason is that I just cannot take anymore all the bullshit which is happening in this game. Commodore is pretty much playing for memes at this point but he is still most likely to win because Tarkeel and Pindicator decided to become his vassal states instead of pursuing their own goals - sort of understandable from Tarkeel but utterly bizarre when it comes to Pindicator. Commodore is now invading Plemo - the war which makes no sense no matter how you look at it - and he somehow managed to recruit Tarkeel and Pindicator to assist him in this madness. I don't know how Plemo did not ragequit already, this is just absolutely unfair to him. The second powerful nation in the game simply decided to screw him over for no reason.
Piccadilly I will leave alone indefinitely. It will take ages to turn his land into something productive and conquering him is not worth the effort. So the dude can go fuck himself. Seriously, I expect him to go right to the center of the Plateau of Gorgoroth, into which he turned his land, pile all his riflemen into a huge dildo-like structure - his own version of Mount Doom - and take a sit on it. There is simply nothing more for him to do at this point. His economy is non-existent, his land is wiped clean of improvements, and the population of all his cities is in low single-digits. The army of rifles is his only asset but I now have cannons, railroads and machine guns, so he cannot attack out.
If Piccadilly did not go full scorched earth policy and took one of my peace offers, he would be about the size of Tarkeel now but with much better tech. And Tarkeel, from what I see, managed to make something interesting of this game and is still having fun.