I mean if someone turns their back on the #1 player and attempts to get stronger it isn't that crazy that the #1 player might want to jump in. EVEN IF they managed to divide Pin in a fast and painless manner without you jumping in you still run into the same problem that those cities aren't as productive for a while and they are basically down a civ worth of land in a key time period of the potential dog pile after giving you more time to get ahead. As you were pushing Commodores islands even with all 3 against you, I think you are being a bit harsh on your competitors potential motivations and actual odds of doing anything else successfully.
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[pb74 spoilers] Miguelito and Ginger bring about the end of the world
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(August 10th, 2024, 22:00)Mjmd Wrote: I mean if someone turns their back on the #1 player and attempts to get stronger it isn't that crazy that the #1 player might want to jump in. EVEN IF they managed to divide Pin in a fast and painless manner without you jumping in you still run into the same problem that those cities aren't as productive for a while and they are basically down a civ worth of land in a key time period of the potential dog pile after giving you more time to get ahead. As you were pushing Commodores islands even with all 3 against you, I think you are being a bit harsh on your competitors potential motivations and actual odds of doing anything else successfully. You know, I just read Commodore's thread and then lurker's thread and I just see how Commodore's narrative about the game gets accepted uncritically by lurkers, of which your post here is case in point. But fundamental assumptions of this narrative are just factually wrong which, I think, should be evident for anyone who looked at main demographic indicators every turn, like I did. Most importantly, I have never been as far ahead as he portrays. The food graph I posted here is the most powerful evidence of that, Mig was on trend to overtake me in food until he started whipping the army in preparation for the Great War. And he was very far from his food ceiling, his cities were massively underdeveloped. The islands we have been fighting for during the war even did not have basic land improvements, so there is a huge untapped potential right there. The only indicator where I had a significant lead was mfg but I needed much higher mfg than others because of my crappy diplomatic situation and lack of access to slavery. My point is, I never had the ability to act in a hegemonic fashion, like you suggest. I tried during the first war with Commodore and it backfired spectacularly - my greatest mistake in the entire game. The Coalition declared on me at the worst possible moment for them, when I was already half-way industrialized and they were only starting and they had to balance war production with factories and coal plants (judging by the mfg graph, only Pindicator made significant progress towards industrialization during the war). So, they started the war at the point of my largest relative production advantage. And even under these conditions, they were so dominant in terms of resources that were able to throw away entire fleets and armies without me being able to make anything more than incremental progress.
I do my own thinking. Even if their war vs Pin goes well, they are unlikely to increase their power during that time. They are then down forces vs you. Both what little they lost (assuming minor losses, which isn't guaranteed) plus the ENTIRETY of Pins forces. Sure they get a little stronger individually, but they are down in power for a pile on and their gains won't pay off for a while, so they are down in chance to defeat you. I get it sucks to be piled on, but I do think you are being a bit harsh on your competitors other chances and motivations.
Good game, Miguelito, appreciate your alliance, sorry I wiffed on a couple of my fleets.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out. 
I was going to argue some points brought up by Gavagai, and concede a couple, but seeing not only my intelligence but also honour insulted in other threads repeatedly I think we are well past the point of discussing a game. Pity this lovely game has a sore winner, if certainly a deserved one. Sorry we made you work for it.
Still I enjoyed most of it, so these are my highlights form the game:
Plenty of low points as well: (but I'm not going to provide links for that   )
I didn't give it the same dedication as to previous games. Been squeezed for time, and possibly I'm also feeling some burnout/reduced interest. I frequently handed over to Ginger on short notice and with little discussion, who then had to make sense of it. It showed not only in reporting but most importantly in repeatedly flawed long term plans and lack of coherent strategy. So that was too little to contend for the win, but still I enjoyed playing a lot. Never have minded much playing a losing position, although of course motivation suffers after a few dozen turns of it  To adress some criticism that I've seen:
(August 11th, 2024, 13:40)Commodore Wrote: Good game, Miguelito, appreciate your alliance, sorry I wiffed on a couple of my fleets. Cheers, and who hasn't  . Good game as well, and sorry about all the turn pace grief you had and my part in it. Second half of July I was on a family road trip and it was really hard to get to the turns at times. Should have communicated more though. Although in general, I really wouldn't expect nor want faster than 2 days per turn at this stage of the game to be honest.
Mig, I am sorry if anything I said offended you. I was irritated by this game since the moment I realized Commodore was semi-intentionally throwing it because I immediately knew that any victory would be hollow and was not particularly motivated to keep playing. When I got dogpiled, I realized that now I would have to invest some ridiculous amount of time and effort into a game I did not care about. I got angry and I leaned into that anger because it was the only way to motivate myself to keep playing. I now wish I did not do it. Victory was not worth it and if I had a way to go back in the past and concede on the turn you all declared on me - that would be the way to go. In any case, my emotions spilled into post-game discussion, especially given that what I read in player's threads and the lurker thread did not help to improve my mood, but rather the opposite. But I understand that you made a genuine effort to play the game in a reasonable and honorable way, and it was wrong for me to speak the way I did.
Hey,
I should also probably tone it down. Sure you should be allowed to vent your frustrations in your thread, what weirded me out was the sour mood after winning, even more so as you had played some very dedicated, meticulous and successful war turns; but as you say you've got your reasons. Of course we have different outlooks on the game, and what you describe sucks, but I hope you can eventually come around to feel good about your win. You built yourself a beautiful and resilient civilization and I know I'd feel good about it. In my view, another player having their morale or commitment flaking will happen in any pitboss, and I don't think it makes the game a farce - in a world where Commodore keeps up or goes beyond your power level I (and I suppose pindi) don't feel compelled to ally against you but would actually try to balance you / be the laughing third. But the way it turned out, we felt like we had to dogpile, and you got a different challenge (and I hope one not too easy) to earn your win. Regarding your point of the dogpile being "justified" - it was meant as "not obnoxious kingmaking". So if I was winning due to it you could argue that it's the latter, although probably smart play from me. Your argument that we would have a chance just staying peaceful against you I can't come around to. So we both have a more pessimistic view for our respective civs having the inside information; from my pov you had
So the one argument I could accept would be that on t220 there wasno path to victory for me either way, andI admit that it depended on first stunting / flattening you, and then have the three way of the remaining powers play out in our favour, which might be excessive wishful thinking. And of course it depended on you not being super angry with me and throwing your weight towards Commodore rather than me, which again might be unrealistic. But at the same time I felt like that would have been a prettystale end to the game. On that note, I quite enjoy modern warfare, which many others appear to hate. Please also note my explanation for the weird half hearted counter attack on Gao, in case you were still wondering. Wouldn't have changed anything but it was symptomatic. Congratulations again, great play and a gorgeous civ
Mig, the thing (perhaps, the only important thing) where we disagree is the evaluation of our pre-war diplo situation. You say I had "no credible military threat from a single player". My perspective was that Commodore alone was close to an existential threat, given his access to Kremlin-powered slavery and what seemed like a total commitment to the purpose of bringing me down. Even Piccadilly with his stack of 70+ uber-promoted Rifles wasn't exactly trivial, especially in combination with Commodore.
You, on the other hand, were amazingly safe from my perspective. I knew about myself that I would only attack you in case of imminent launch and Pindicator given his awful geography (stretched between two continents with no strategic depth on either) could hardly dream of attacking you. The way I saw my situation was that my superior resources did not matter because they all would be tied up by Commodore anyway, while you can do whatever the hell you please with almost a full continent. This diplomatic advantage, in my mind, was way more important than all the economic advantages you listed. I have a question I want to ask you - what was the mechanism of making the decision to dogpile me and who came up with the date of T229 specifically? I wasn't able to piece it out from spoiler threads but this is what I am curious about. Because I feel this start date was not particularly suitable for any of you (you and Pindi would have preferred to start later, Commodore - probably earlier).
To clarify my previous point a bit - what I expected you to do was to build factories and plants and run research everywhere while I was fighting Commodore. I had no idea what I would do in that scenario, so this was the reason I thought you were the most likely winner of the game pre-war.
(August 18th, 2024, 17:56)Miguelito Wrote: And of course it depended on you not being super angry with me and throwing your weight towards Commodore rather than me, which again might be unrealistic. Two comments on that: 1) Our geography was such that irrespective of with whom I am most angry (and I was pissed at everyone but for different reasons) you would always have been my main target. The thing about me and Commodore was that we had a lot of strategic depth against each other. I could not reach his main production centers easily but so couldn't he. It set the stage for a long, gruelling, extremely costly war I expected to fight with Commodore one on one but also made the theater relatively unimportant. On the other hand, we only had a short island bridge directly connecting our cores. From you I felt most threat and also with you I felt most hope to end the war quickly. So it was inevitable that my strategy would revolve around hitting you the hardest, even at the expense of everyone else. It was actually a great frustration for me that you defended so resiliently because my main and best forces were always deployed against you. 2) The kind of game I really want to play is a competitive space race. The kind of game where there is a strategic balance of forces so that main powers don't attack each other and we compete in who can optimize launch date the best. I hoped for this in PB66 and I hoped for this here but it did not came to be. I understand it is very naive to expect other players to want to play the same kind of game as I do but still, it added to my overall disappointment. When even was the last time we had a game like this? I recall one very old Pitboss where I got my ass kicked by TBS. |
. Don't really have a better shot, but here you see its buildup plus lovely Atlantis. I'll come back to the criticism but I loved it
, which we had fought so hard for. At least DZ's replacement was a good attack vector later on.,