[NO PLAYERS] PBEM 7 Map Making & Lurkers

[MJW (ya that one)]

Are they freaking kidding me.
Are you KIDDING me. They block my damn settler.
They can shove that alliance down where the sun does not shine.
I am done with those clowns.

Best post ever

[Old Harry]

I am firmly set against S/S now. At least where I am concerned, I hope you are not mad at me, but noone screws me over the day after a contract is signed. This is beyond this game. China has to die in this game.
Even if they come to their senses and cede us this city. I am still seething over their sneakyness, are they that stupid that I will overlook this?  

I can't help hearing everything Archduke says in CMF-Downfall-Hitler-bunker-ranting style now.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I am firmly set against S/S now. At least where I am concerned, I hope you are not mad at me, but noone screws me over the day after a contract is signed. This is beyond this game. China has to die in this game.
Even if they come to their senses and cede us this city. I am still seething over their sneakyness, are they that stupid that I will overlook this?  

I can't help hearing everything Archduke says in CMF-Downfall-Hitler-bunker-ranting style now.

{insert text here about how S/S is going to win and will get the VA from CMF}

"I'm sure we will be able to CMF fast enough with our canal city."

"Archduke...canal...canal..."

"Canal city is not possible. Singaboy has blocked our settler."

"... ... ... everyone who has dedicated lurked Sullla leave now."

{Archduke rants about Sullla}

[Shimomo]

Are they freaking kidding me.
Are you KIDDING me. They block my damn settler.
They can shove that alliance down where the sun does not shine.
I am done with those clowns.

Best post ever

Meanwhile...

Nice move, Singaboy! Blocking that canal city from Germany is a truly sweet play. It's going to be a weak city and exceedingly difficult to defend, but we're locked into peace with Russia/Germany until Turn 161. Denying Germany's fleet the ability to move between the western and southern oceans is simply huge, and it almost forces TheArchduke to attack Woden next because there's nowhere else for his ships to go. It also keeps his main fleet separate from his smaller southern fleet, and that's a good thing as well. Really, really cool play to see there.

-----

When I was in college, I played a lot of smash with guys who lived on the same floor. Generally everyone wanted to win, but underneath the desire to win were a lot of competing and different priorities. One guy almost always picked Ike (who he had no chance of winning with) because he just liked Ike's massive smash attacks. This guy would pause the game whenever one connected mid-attack just to revel in the moment. I was sort of a middling player on our floor--I picked a character who was easy to use and kind of existentially funny. The two guys who usually won were both more skilled than I was, but I could occasionally pull out wins b/c the one guy would bait the other, so they'd focus on fighting each other and either forget or not care as much about winning. One of them would sometimes complain about how, if he was ahead of everyone else mid-match, everyone would start going for him. This happened to the other guy too, but he seemed to find it more amusing than annoying.

Let me toss in a few necessary caveats here: I have no idea how hard it is to do what I'm suggesting, I don't play this game as much or as well as anyone involved, and the public games might be such a small and unique sample that I'm speculating without the necessary data. 


That said--Sullla's metagaming seems to be consistently his biggest weakness in his attempts to achieve his goals in these games. (To me, his main goals seem to be a mix of A) winning the game, B) pulling off some difficult technical stuff like get X Wonder at Y Really Early Date, and C) trying out some new stuff and learning, with the constraints of X) maintaining personal character and Y) generally enjoying the game.) Sullla's economy-building is the best I know of. He is the best at reporting. He uses every scrap of information he can get. I feel like he coordinates with his teammates better than I coordinate with my girlfriend. And he is so good at developing and focusing on long, medium, and short-range plans. I suspect these abilities (except maybe economy-building  ) extend outside the game. So like, this isn't a big deal in and of itself--1) this is just a game, and 2) he's already one of the best public players of it--but I think his metagaming is holding him back.

So why do I think this? In the games I've read through (and this is going to be extremely reductionist which I apologize for, but) Sullla gets into these patterns of a strong buildup accompanied by questionable metagaming followed by a war to resolve the situation, usually in his favor due to the strong buildup. I'm also thinking about Pink Dot and the RBPB2 showdown, where in general Sullla could have evaluated his decisions with more of a metagaming perspective, rather than the pure empire building one. No one is saying Pink Dot was a bad decision; I'm just saying he gets himself into hairy situations because he significantly misguesses how people are going to react.

Moving forward, I'd like to see him include more metagaming analysis in his posts. For example, his take on the Venetian Arsenal completely missed how AD/EK would see things if he had gotten it. Maybe he thought the VA could guarantee such naval dominance the metagame would be over (i.e. he could win even if the other teams allied against him and Singaboy), but if so, I don't remember him writing it. As it has turned out, when CMF grabbed the VA, Archduke waffled on which team was a greater threat, and Archduke's waffling has thus far been a major factor in Sulllaboy's unhindered wide and tall expansion. A natural counter-argument goes something like, human behavior is basically unpredictable, but 1) in this case, I think we could have predicted it b/c a) Archduke experienced the VA firsthand against oledavy and lost, and b) in his posts, Archduke comes across as very down on himself => more likely to play conservatively; and 2) I'm not saying Sullla needs to predict people's behavior perfectly, just factor it in considerably more than now. (Sidenote: CMF's reaction to AD's alliance with Sulllaboy is an example of mediocre metagame thinking. Yes it wasn't rational, but people aren't very rational! We regularly mix intuition, experience, reason, and faith. Reading some of AD's other threads would have helped CMF/Woden understand his perspective better.) Over the course of a long game like this, I think we'd see a difference between good and bad metagaming.

I'm gonna stop here b/c this is so speculatory hahahah

[MJW (ya that one)]

A 2v1 should have happened anyway, almost did, without the VA but Archduke messed up. So that doesn't count.

The Pink Dot doesn't count because the map was awful. He knew it would annoy but there were no options. Sullla didn't appreciate that RB got a corner start which made RB hard to kill and the drawback of not having others to kill didn't matter because RB had access to the Templars but the map was still awful.

There's good examples of Sullla messing up the metagame (like failing to push CivFr's buttons so they remain at war with CFC in the ISDG and the FU city plant he just made) but yours are weak.

[T-hawk]

Everyone doesn't want to war with anyone else for fear of a backstab. Man wouldn't it be great if we got into a 3-way cold war necessitating a race to space.

Not really.  Sullla's team would win that in all likelihood.  But it'd take another half a year, while the other teams go through the motions increasingly disinterestedly. And/or get even more angry when a last ditch attempt at war doesn't work either.

[Shimomo]

A 2v1 should have happened anyway, almost did, without the VA but Archduke messed up. So that doesn't count.

The Pink Dot doesn't count because the map was awful. He knew it would annoy but there were no options. Sullla didn't appreciate that RB got a corner start which made RB hard to kill and the drawback of not having others to kill didn't matter because RB had access to the Templars but the map was still awful.

There's good examples of Sullla messing up the metagame (like failing to push CivFr's buttons so they remain at war with CFC in the ISDG and the FU city plant he just made) but yours are weak.

Yeah so even from a few weak examples I can tell he could use some work on this. You can probably give some better ones? Point is, it seems to be a consistent oversight, and then it comes back to annoy him later. Like he wonders why he can't just build up and expand and conquer... in peace...

Edit: I didn't read carefully

[MJW (ya that one)]

A 2v1 should have happened anyway, almost did, without the VA but Archduke messed up. So that doesn't count.

The Pink Dot doesn't count because the map was awful. He knew it would annoy but there were no options. Sullla didn't appreciate that RB got a corner start which made RB hard to kill and the drawback of not having others to kill didn't matter because RB had access to the Templars but the map was still awful.

There's good examples of Sullla messing up the metagame (like failing to push CivFr's buttons so they remain at war with CFC in the ISDG and the FU city plant he just made) but yours are weak.

Yeah so even from a few weak examples I can tell he could use some work on this. You can probably give some better ones? Point is, it seems to be a consistent oversight, and then it comes back to annoy him later. Like he wonders why he can't just build up and expand and conquer... in peace...

[pindicator]

I think Shimomo makes a good point. It's certainly criticism we've seen of Sullla's game in the past, that he trends to write about other players like they are AI opponents at times.

[oledavy]

I think Shimomo makes a good point. It's certainly criticism we've seen of Sullla's game in the past, that he trends to write about other players like they are AI opponents at times.

Glad to see yet another lurker thread for one of Sullla's game has devolved into psychoanalyzing him XD

Regarding his tendency to regard other players as AIs, I think its a little overstated at this point, I don't think he does it to quite the same degree as he did in PB2. 

Regarding the decision to block Archduke's canal city. Sullla realizes this is a blatant "screw you," but I think its solid tactical move. You just have to know you've essentially made a game-long enemy. They might not care, betting that in 28 turns they'll be unassailable and have nothing to fear from Archduke. 

But I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong), that they believe that Archduke is going to meekly go along with attacking Woden despite this move?