[LURKERS] Sweet 16: Civ Party Fun Time and Philosophical Debate

[Ichabod]

Ichabod looks like you missed the entire point :P My post was about expecting the worst every time. Just need to accept that there are a lot of people who don't play with the same definition of fair play, and you need to accept that it's part of the game. You can't just put faith in your neighbor to be a reasonable guy, you need to assume that they'll be bitter and mad and will fuck you over given the chance. That's the only way to deal with this meta game, just live with it.

Can you describe what is the "meta game" you are talking about, I'm not exactly sure I understand what you are trying to say.

And I'd also like to know what is your definition of "fair play" in a civ game. Was it fair for Gavagai to steal Gaspar's workers? Was it fair for Gaspar to attack gavagai with HAs?

[Jowy]

Yeah you certainly don't understand. But it's fine.

[slowcheetah]

Seems to be a hot subject I baited some lurker comments in my PB17 thread with the same sort of theory crafting. There definitely isn't any consensus, in fact we are very confused about it as a community. The best thing you can do is to adopt a thinking that every player is a bittercunt who is ready to wreck their own game to destroy yours. Then you'll be ready for it when it inevitably happens, and you don't have to put faith in others playing "fair" - which is also subjective as these discussions show. Personally I don't think there's any difference between a loser in war gifting all his remaining cities to his conqueror's opponent, and a loser after a war devoting the rest of his game on trying to make his conqueror lose the game. Both have the same reason and effect, but only one is looked down on by everyone.

Of course there is a difference. Gifting all your cities to an opponent requires clicking a button 10 times or so, there's no way for your war adversary to counter it and it benefits a third party directly. Attacking someone that attacked you requires planning and competence, your adversary can react to it and it doesn't benefit a third party directly (it can indirectly benefits all the other players in the game, but there are loads of things with the same effect). Is one of these actions more morally defensible than the other? I don't know and I don't care. But they are not the same thing. Gifting cities to an opponent is closer to just breaking Sunrise's PC so that no one can keep on playing the game than it is to attack who attacked you.

If you are going to classify every player that tries to win rather than just losing for you to win as a "bittercunt", than obviously every player will be a "bittercunt".

My advice is this: pay attention to your game more than you do to the game of the other players and alwaysconsider other players as if you were playing against yourself, that is, their actions are not innately stupid and they are likely a reasonable human being too (i.e. try to get rid of the "everything the other players do is stupid, everything I do is right" mentality that seems to be spreading around). A little exercise in empathy can do wonders for understanding the reasons of others, way more than an a priori judgement that any action that doesn't benefit you is a stupid action.

Finally, on a personal level, I play games to get a break of the tough moral choices of life, not to indulge myself in them. There's only one moral rule I think should always be followed when playing a game: "do not act in a way that will make it impossible for the other players to have fun". Apart from that, I'll probably not consider if my actions are morally right or not, nor will I judge another player's actions.

I nominate this as post of the year.

Seconded.

[Serdoa]

Somehow I think my point was missed:

I want to hurt them, most definitely. But not if it hurts my game or makes my position worse.

What I've seen in quite a few games is that players don't at all consider if it helps or hurts them overall to retaliate. They just want to destroy your game, some even if it means throwing away still intact chances of winning the whole game themselves. That might be acceptable for some of you, but I personally don't want to play with people with that attitude. For me that is similar to a child that throws over the playboard because one of its pieces was knocked over in a game of Parcheesi (or Ludo, I just used the dictionary to translate "Mensch-ärgere-dich-nicht").

Obviously I don't include in the above people that attack with a clear plan and that think that it will overall better their chances. Therefore I think most arguments I read are not applicable to what I wrote. Also I agree with mackoti that in some cases it makes sense to be "stupid" and not take every opportunity to hurt the other player (for example when you have no military at all, or when you both have so much place left to expand that it would be stupid to potentially risk a war instead - because exactly as I would expect the other player to consider carefully what is the right play to win, so do I.).

There is indeed also the reputation factor- if everyone and their cousin can get away with stealing workers from me, then I'm going to be the next Nakor or Sareln with a reputation as a human goody hut for aggressive players. If I go nuts and turn my empire into a screaming revenge machine then I could instead be like Commodore and benefit from Reputation Armor regardless of whether my civ has an actual army or cardboard cutouts. I often don't agree with how RB places a great value on reputation, but enough players place stock in past performance in deciding how they approach contemporary games that you can't ignore it.

Yeah, and exactly because of that "Commodore attitude" I don't want to play here anymore. If the premise is that we all try to win the games we play in, than turning your empire into a screaming revenge machine, ignoring if that actually makes things even worse for you, is obviously not corresponding to that premise.

Btw: I think Commodore himself is much more considerate about attacks than is giving him credit for in this paragraphs. He was playing long time ago like that, but by now he - as far as I know - is considering very carefully if attacking really is the right choice.

Seriously this. You are playing a game with humans. Humans generally become unhappy when you kick over their sand castle for no real gain. Part of making smart decisions is making sure that you only kick over the sandcastle if you stand to gain enough from kicking it more than it costs you to make the person upset. If they succeed in ruining your game because you kicked it, then that's your own poor decision to blame, not their dumb bitterness or however you want to label it.

Even if I'm able to withstand them dedicating their whole empire and game just to hurt me, I still don't want to play with them. Because it goes against the premise I mentioned above: "Play to win".

And in general: Everyone is free to play the game as they want. But I personally am free not to play with others that clearly are not of the same mindset as I am.

[Lewwyn]

Somehow I think my point was missed:

I want to hurt them, most definitely. But not if it hurts my game or makes my position worse.

What I've seen in quite a few games is that players don't at all consider if it helps or hurts them overall to retaliate. They just want to destroy your game, some even if it means throwing away still intact chances of winning the whole game themselves. That might be acceptable for some of you, but I personally don't want to play with people with that attitude. For me that is similar to a child that throws over the playboard because one of its pieces was knocked over in a game of Parcheesi (or Ludo, I just used the dictionary to translate "Mensch-ärgere-dich-nicht").

Obviously I don't include in the above people that attack with a clear plan and that think that it will overall better their chances. Therefore I think most arguments I read are not applicable to what I wrote. Also I agree with mackoti that in some cases it makes sense to be "stupid" and not take every opportunity to hurt the other player (for example when you have no military at all, or when you both have so much place left to expand that it would be stupid to potentially risk a war instead - because exactly as I would expect the other player to consider carefully what is the right play to win, so do I.).

There is indeed also the reputation factor- if everyone and their cousin can get away with stealing workers from me, then I'm going to be the next Nakor or Sareln with a reputation as a human goody hut for aggressive players. If I go nuts and turn my empire into a screaming revenge machine then I could instead be like Commodore and benefit from Reputation Armor regardless of whether my civ has an actual army or cardboard cutouts. I often don't agree with how RB places a great value on reputation, but enough players place stock in past performance in deciding how they approach contemporary games that you can't ignore it.

Yeah, and exactly because of that "Commodore attitude" I don't want to play here anymore. If the premise is that we all try to win the games we play in, than turning your empire into a screaming revenge machine, ignoring if that actually makes things even worse for you, is obviously not corresponding to that premise.

Btw: I think Commodore himself is much more considerate about attacks than is giving him credit for in this paragraphs. He was playing long time ago like that, but by now he - as far as I know - is considering very carefully if attacking really is the right choice.

Seriously this. You are playing a game with humans. Humans generally become unhappy when you kick over their sand castle for no real gain. Part of making smart decisions is making sure that you only kick over the sandcastle if you stand to gain enough from kicking it more than it costs you to make the person upset. If they succeed in ruining your game because you kicked it, then that's your own poor decision to blame, not their dumb bitterness or however you want to label it.

Even if I'm able to withstand them dedicating their whole empire and game just to hurt me, I still don't want to play with them. Because it goes against the premise I mentioned above: "Play to win".

And in general: Everyone is free to play the game as they want. But I personally am free not to play with others that clearly are not of the same mindset as I am.

Where was this Serdoa in PBEM 14 when he decided to sit a huge stack of units in my territory even though he couldn't actually do anything, nevermind selling out everything to Scooter so that he would help you kill me, which again never happened.

[Lewwyn]

BTW, who sat a stack of units in NobleGas's land and kept his opponent in perpetual war with him? Not to mention continuously running a chariot around their borders? Gavagai basically asked for this.

I post this also for the other lurkers who seem to have forgotten this and boiled the relationship down to the worker steal and the GNH HA attack. Continuously applied aggression over the course of the entire game by Gavagai sort of makes NHG's attack a pretty clear attempt to get out from under Gavagai's thumb and not trying to ruin his game solely for revenge.

[WilliamLP]

What I've seen in quite a few games is that players don't at all consider if it helps or hurts them overall to retaliate. They just want to destroy your game, some even if it means throwing away still intact chances of winning the whole game themselves.

It's not a clear cut line but I think there is an inevitable time when you have to say "I can't let you do that, Dave". An example is dealing with early pink-dot settlements, "cool game" plants or vs-AI-style sealing moves that aren't one of someone's more optimal city choices. It's possible that it hurts my overall position to punish a city plant like this, but I think I have to do it, or I'm just going to keep seeing them again and again in future games.

(It's also quite possible that punishing this city plant would improve my position vs the rest of the world by opening the space back up, but I wouldn't feel like it's a spiteful move to try and make this settlement non-profitable against me, even past the point where it makes my overall position a little worse to do so.)

[WilliamLP]

Gaspar responded by offering us a sheep. lol (I think he's saying he's sheepish about trying to claim two seafood resources that are first ring to our continent. I didn't accept - it's his only sheep.)

I found this very funny on so many levels! (It's probably dry humor from Seven but the idea that Gaspar would either communicate with subtle figurative diplo or actually feel timid about something is quite hilarious.)

[Serdoa]

Where was this Serdoa in PBEM 14 when he decided to sit a huge stack of units in my territory even though he couldn't actually do anything, nevermind selling out everything to Scooter so that he would help you kill me, which again never happened.

Yeah, I changed a little bit since then. Same as others. Imo either you get better (and at that point drop this attitude as it doesn't make you win games) or ... well, you don't.

@WilliamLP

If someone plants suboptimal cities before optimal ones, he most likely will lose against you in the long run - if you don't throw your game just trying to punish it. What most likely will fail as the defender is advantaged in Civ4 and even if it works out, more often than not it will have cost you huge amounts of investment for next to no gain. If you instead wait for your revenge when it actually suits your game needs it might win you the game and it will gain you more reputation than if you throw your game just to punish something that might not be more than a nuisance actually.

I guess what I say is: I believe that players that calmly analyse the game-state and decide what to do based on what gains them the most are more prone to win that those that get emotional over a "pink-dot".

[WilliamLP]

I still think that if Gavagai thinks Plame Affair was an aggressive plant he's going to think anyone is aggressive, in any game. It's 4 tiles from Gasium's capital, first ring food and shares 2 flood plains... about as textbook a second city site as you can get? I could see it if they chose a second city forward that wasn't their best site in isolation.