Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder

[Gavagai]

A question: can anyone see my images? I mean, those who used to be able to see them. Because for me they all broke all of a sudden and I have no idea what happened.

None of them showed up for me, but since others said it worked I did some testing. They would show up in incognito mode, which usually means it's a cookie thing. Cleaing all cookies for onedrive made them show up again.

Oh thanks! This is wonderful to know!

[Gavagai]

First off, I think this was a well deserved win. You probably had one of the bottom-quartile starts in this game, but rolled good on the neighbour lottery instead. Still, this was a very impressive play.

Also, look at the tech thread. Plemo noticed that Tarkeel and Commodore are engaged in some shady turn-order BS - an accusation Commodore did not really address. What the fuck man, just what the fuck. As if their alliance did not have enough advantages already.

I think I wrote this elsewhere, but this was mainly a result of sticking too much to the "play your damn turn" rule and wasn't intentional. We probably should have noticed it though, but in the end it didn't really matter that much.

Pindicator made peace with Tarkeel. This is some 5D chess well beyond my understanding. Also annoying, I would prefer Tarkeel to die to Pindi so that Pindi would become a credible threat to Commodore.

The only explanation for Pindi sparing Tarkeel I can think of is that he believes Egyptian attack is imminent.

Pindi ran into our contingency plan: Bulb-finishing Chemistry to whip Riesengardes everywhere. We actually thought this invasion was your doing, as it really served your interests well.

I mean to hell with Tarkeel - the hammer value I see in the immediate proximity of my territorial waters is sufficient to crash Pindicator. The dude does not even have Rifling yet, his best regular unit is Knight.

Correction: We had the grenadier-replacement UU, which does stand up slightly better than knights, but we'd still be pretty toast.

Тhe "War weariness 272" is the WW you experience because of fighting with that civ.

Thanks! I suspected it but it looks strange. I have more war weariness with Commodore than with Mig but I mostly fought Commodore in my territory where I should not accumulate WW at all while my large battles with Mig were in his land.

One of the latter versions of CtH makes WW decay even while at war, and I think that's what happened here.

Just like Pindicator did, I completely forgot at that moment about German UU

[Piccadilly]

Alright, after the game i was so disgusted with my own performance (possibly my worst PB up until now) I just wanted to forget about it and move on. But I was too curious to not browse through some of the stories and after browsing through this one I regret this decision and feel the need to post here.

The whole game I had a very high opinion of you (Gavagai) as a player and your play in this game. It was excitingly frustrating having many tacticts in this war being repelled before execution and having my inadvertence taken advantage of in crutial situations. I was actually looking forward to fighting you again in a future PB in a more even position and with me a bit more invested in the game.

Seeing myself beeing framed an arsehole and slandered throughout the thread really killed that excitement.

In my opinion the most important thing in any game is to separate the player and the player's play.

I (as in Piccadilly the player) didn't have any problem with you (Gavagai the player) winning the game and conquering me. I was well deserved.

But for my play the "self-sabotage" was evidently the right way to go. After the first cities were conquered I was sure you would be strong enough to conquer the rest (even more so thanks to superdeaths backstab). But this not happening immediately suggested you didn't consider the cost/profit ratio beneficial to you. So I build my strategy on that ratio and made India unappealing. I am sure that at no point after awkwardly losing my army I could have avoided being conquered by military means. So whipping as much as possible and pillaging was basically all I could do and it preserved india till the end of the game. Compared to all other bad decisions this game I don't feel bad about this one.

And even though in this game I consider the dicision strategic rather than pricipled, there is a reason to the priciple on civforum: This may have gone past you but on civforum we had a huge cheating scandal not too long ago with one player playing multiple civs with different accouts in order to conquer themselfes without any resistance. (Additionally to getting basically any other benefit they could by reading threads and subbing other players). The cheating was only discovered recently but has been done for possibly more than 15 years on many games. And while the cheating itself has not been noticed for a long time, some easy wins without resistance have been noticed as they tipped many games. It was since frowned uppon doing anything but the most to deny your opponent their spoils of war. (Which btw. is the reason Superdeath caught me so flat-footed. Backstabbing the leading players opponent was not something I'd expect with him having no benefit from it.)

So framing this in game strategic decision that also stems from a different experience in playing Civ4 multiplayer as some kind of moral shortcoming of me as a player feels saddening and reading some parts of this thread somewhat disturbing to me.

Regardless to that: Again congrats to winning this game! It was nonetheless well deserved.

And with the need to post now sated I might as well revert to sitting on my aforementioned structure skewering myself I guess...

[Gavagai]

Alright, after the game i was so disgusted with my own performance (possibly my worst PB up until now) I just wanted to forget about it and move on. But I was too curious to not browse through some of the stories and after browsing through this one I regret this decision and feel the need to post here.

The whole game I had a very high opinion of you (Gavagai) as a player and your play in this game. It was excitingly frustrating having many tacticts in this war being repelled before execution and having my inadvertence taken advantage of in crutial situations. I was actually looking forward to fighting you again in a future PB in a more even position and with me a bit more invested in the game.

Seeing myself beeing framed an arsehole and slandered throughout the thread really killed that excitement.

In my opinion the most important thing in any game is to separate the player and the player's play.

I (as in Piccadilly the player) didn't have any problem with you (Gavagai the player) winning the game and conquering me. I was well deserved.

But for my play the "self-sabotage" was evidently the right way to go. After the first cities were conquered I was sure you would be strong enough to conquer the rest (even more so thanks to superdeaths backstab). But this not happening immediately suggested you didn't consider the cost/profit ratio beneficial to you. So I build my strategy on that ratio and made India unappealing. I am sure that at no point after awkwardly losing my army I could have avoided being conquered by military means. So whipping as much as possible and pillaging was basically all I could do and it preserved india till the end of the game. Compared to all other bad decisions this game I don't feel bad about this one.

And even though in this game I consider the dicision strategic rather than pricipled, there is a reason to the priciple on civforum: This may have gone past you but on civforum we had a huge cheating scandal not too long ago with one player playing multiple civs with different accouts in order to conquer themselfes without any resistance. (Additionally to getting basically any other benefit they could by reading threads and subbing other players). The cheating was only discovered recently but has been done for possibly more than 15 years on many games. And while the cheating itself has not been noticed for a long time, some easy wins without resistance have been noticed as they tipped many games. It was since frowned uppon doing anything but the most to deny your opponent their spoils of war. (Which btw. is the reason Superdeath caught me so flat-footed. Backstabbing the leading players opponent was not something I'd expect with him having no benefit from it.)

So framing this in game strategic decision that also stems from a different experience in playing Civ4 multiplayer as some kind of moral shortcoming of me as a player feels saddening and reading some parts of this thread somewhat disturbing to me.

Regardless to that: Again congrats to winning this game! It was nonetheless well deserved.

And with the need to post now sated I might as well revert to sitting on my aforementioned structure skewering myself I guess...

Hi! I am deeply sorry that the things I said in my thread hurt you. In RB it is rather typical to vent one's frustration about in-game events in spoiler threads, so we usually don't take what has been said there particularly seriously. For illustration, you can check what Superdeath said about me in his own thread here, though this is probably not an example anyone wants to follow. But in any case, I believe some of the things I said went far beyond what would be normal even under these lax rules. To explain myself, I can only say that self-sabotage is a strategy that is not normal in RB games and is very annoying to play against (and is typically regarded as poor sportsmanship). On top of that, I had many other reasons to get negative about this game and civ multiplayer in general at that moment, so it all added up. But this is an explanation, not an excuse, because the frustration I felt was hardly your fault. So, I am sorry for what I said and I wish to take my words back.
With that being said, I still maintain my opinion regarding the ethics of self-sabotage and believe that the arguments I presented earlier in this thread are sound. I get what you are saying about the experience of civforum but forming ethical conventions on the basis of actions of a single weirdo is not the right approach, I think. Once again, however, it is normal for good people to disagree on such things and does not justify personal attacks on you.
There is an entirely separate question of whether it was a sound strategy in your situation (and I agree that if there is a strategic reason for self-sabotage, it is justified). I do not believe strategic considerations justify spite-whipping (you did not have any other large cities at that moment, so no deterrence value). The destruction of improvements is another matter though. I do not believe it was strategically justified objectively but I can see how it might seem justified on the basis of information you had at the moment.
So, I think that you overestimated my resources. Between the start of the war and T200 I was unable to defeat your army in an offensive operation at any reasonable cost, so your land would have been safe irrespective of whether it was pillaged or not. Around T200 I made the decision to refocus my efforts from you to Commodore and, indeed, the lack of developed cottages in your land was a factor (one of many) in that decision. However, if you kept your economy intact, it is not unreasonable to assume that you would be able to tech to cannons by that point (I base my projections on the amount of gold you were able to accumulate even without cottages). I can assure you that it would made any prospect of seriously attacking you an immediate non-starter for me; I would be more worried, I think, about you going on a counter-offensive. By the moment the Great War started you could have railroads and that could be enough to make containing you a nigh-impossible task while also having three great powers to deal with. So, if you did not wipe out your own economy, I could very well have lost the Great War and the game. I understand you did not think at the moment that such long-term considerations are even at play but objectively speaking developed cottages would increase the cost of conquering you way more than lack of them decreased the respective benefit.
About your performance - I believe you have nothing to be ashamed of in this game. You made one critical mistake in the early stages of our war but after that you played exemplary well. I have come to regard you one of the most competent and dangerous of my many opponents - the quality of your play might not have been visible to lurkers and other players from the macro-picture but I could see it in your decisions on micro-level. It was, I think, the first game we played against each other but from this game alone I gained a lot of respect towards you as a player.
In the end, there is one question I really wanted to ask you: do you think it was possible for us to have a long-term alliance of the same manner Pindicator and Commodore had? With you going in the direction of SD and Plemo and me focusing on the overseas? I though a lot about how it was a missed opportunity in this game. I had a strategic choice: try to befriend you and attack Mig or going other way around. I decided to seek an alliance with Mig and attack you and we know very well how my friendship with Mig ended. So I keep thinking about missed opportunities there.
I can say you exactly when the decision has been made: when you kept your main stack near my border during my war with GT and forced me to hold back half of my army to potentially counter it. That was the moment I decided no peace is possible between us and you need to die ASAP. I am curios what were your plans at that moment. Did you entertain potential long-term friendship with me and did you understand how provocative and annoying your unit positioning was from my perspective.
That will be all, once again, sorry for being rude.

[Gavagai]

"Which btw. is the reason Superdeath caught me so flat-footed. Backstabbing the leading players opponent was not something I'd expect with him having no benefit from it" - that was funny btw. Was that your first game against Superdeath?

[Piccadilly]

Hi! I am deeply sorry that the things I said in my thread hurt you. In RB it is rather typical to vent one's frustration about in-game events in spoiler threads, so we usually don't take what has been said there particularly seriously. For illustration, you can check what Superdeath said about me in his own thread here, though this is probably not an example anyone wants to follow. But in any case, I believe some of the things I said went far beyond what would be normal even under these lax rules. To explain myself, I can only say that self-sabotage is a strategy that is not normal in RB games and is very annoying to play against (and is typically regarded as poor sportsmanship). On top of that, I had many other reasons to get negative about this game and civ multiplayer in general at that moment, so it all added up. But this is an explanation, not an excuse, because the frustration I felt was hardly your fault. So, I am sorry for what I said and I wish to take my words back.
With that being said, I still maintain my opinion regarding the ethics of self-sabotage and believe that the arguments I presented earlier in this thread are sound. I get what you are saying about the experience of civforum but forming ethical conventions on the basis of actions of a single weirdo is not the right approach, I think. Once again, however, it is normal for good people to disagree on such things and does not justify personal attacks on you.

Than the matter is settled in my books. Having seen some emotional outbreaks before I felt this one was beyond that but I do understand the emotions about this game having seen and felt them. So we are good. 

With that being said, I still maintain my opinion regarding the ethics of self-sabotage and believe that the arguments I presented earlier in this thread are sound. I get what you are saying about the experience of civforum but forming ethical conventions on the basis of actions of a single weirdo is not the right approach, I think.

I get where you are coming from with this one but I still disagree on it. The prospect of your opponent pillaging themself just changes the meta a bit with no grave downside. It is more important to take out players quickly and having contingency plans in case the conquered land is worth very little. My experience is that it makes games more intersting till later stages because it is harder to snowball. There are some weaker players on civforum that may rarely play for a win but make it to the end of most games because they are so hard to conquer profitable.

There is an entirely separate question of whether it was a sound strategy in your situation (and I agree that if there is a strategic reason for self-sabotage, it is justified). I do not believe strategic considerations justify spite-whipping (you did not have any other large cities at that moment, so no deterrence value). The destruction of improvements is another matter though. I do not believe it was strategically justified objectively but I can see how it might seem justified on the basis of information you had at the moment.
So, I think that you overestimated my resources. Between the start of the war and T200 I was unable to defeat your army in an offensive operation at any reasonable cost, so your land would have been safe irrespective of whether it was pillaged or not. Around T200 I made the decision to refocus my efforts from you to Commodore and, indeed, the lack of developed cottages in your land was a factor (one of many) in that decision. However, if you kept your economy intact, it is not unreasonable to assume that you would be able to tech to cannons by that point (I base my projections on the amount of gold you were able to accumulate even without cottages). I can assure you that it would made any prospect of seriously attacking you an immediate non-starter for me; I would be more worried, I think, about you going on a counter-offensive. By the moment the Great War started you could have railroads and that could be enough to make containing you a nigh-impossible task while also having three great powers to deal with. So, if you did not wipe out your own economy, I could very well have lost the Great War and the game. I understand you did not think at the moment that such long-term considerations are even at play but objectively speaking developed cottages would increase the cost of conquering you way more than lack of them decreased the respective benefit.
About your performance - I believe you have nothing to be ashamed of in this game. You made one critical mistake in the early stages of our war but after that you played exemplary well. I have come to regard you one of the most competent and dangerous of my many opponents - the quality of your play might not have been visible to lurkers and other players from the macro-picture but I could see it in your decisions on micro-level. It was, I think, the first game we played against each other but from this game alone I gained a lot of respect towards you as a player.

I agree that in retrospective it has been a questionable decision but in retrospective many decisions are questionable because there is more information available to us. Had I known pillaging was seen so negative on RB I probably wouldn't have been convinced enough of it to do it in this case. I would have loved to get to cannons since the lack of them basically made all active defense toothless. Had Superdeath not attacked I would have gone for cannons for sure.

My critical mistake this game was attacking greenline a second time, whiping an army only to get some desert and cultural pressure from the island. Proper lose-lose situation caused by a lack of mapview. Had I accepted Plemos offer to conquer Superdeath it would have been an entirely different game. Admittedly mostly because Plemo would have still played for the win. 
After that it was mostly low motivation paired with some rushed turns due to the short timer that led to my demise.

In the end, there is one question I really wanted to ask you: do you think it was possible for us to have a long-term alliance of the same manner Pindicator and Commodore had? With you going in the direction of SD and Plemo and me focusing on the overseas? I though a lot about how it was a missed opportunity in this game. I had a strategic choice: try to befriend you and attack Mig or going other way around. I decided to seek an alliance with Mig and attack you and we know very well how my friendship with Mig ended. So I keep thinking about missed opportunities there.
I can say you exactly when the decision has been made: when you kept your main stack near my border during my war with GT and forced me to hold back half of my army to potentially counter it. That was the moment I decided no peace is possible between us and you need to die ASAP. I am curios what were your plans at that moment. Did you entertain potential long-term friendship with me and did you understand how provocative and annoying your unit positioning was from my perspective.
That will be all, once again, sorry for being rude.

At that time it was certainly possible but I don't think it would have been in your best interest. It was a complicated situation for me. It was in my interest to prolong your war against GT but it wasn't in my interest to start one with you. I had nothing to gain from it and there were two players I could conquer in the east (three if you count greenline). So I was waiting at the border deciding again and again that it wasn't good to attack at each of the passing turns. I was trailing behind while others (Mig, Commodore, Pindicator) had proper winning chances. Attacking you, I felt, would have been the real spiteful act. It would have only benefited the others and at the time I had no squarrel with you other than the fear of beeing next.
Had I whiped a few musketman in border citys prior to your attack it would have been much different i think. If it wasn't for your attack I would have moved my units away from our border at some point trying to de-escalate.

But ultimately I would have joint the dogpile if there was any chance for me to win doing so. Which I do believe would have been possible since I wasn't so far behind back then.

[Piccadilly]

"Which btw. is the reason Superdeath caught me so flat-footed. Backstabbing the leading players opponent was not something I'd expect with him having no benefit from it" - that was funny btw. Was that your first game against Superdeath?

It wasn't but I still expected some strategic consideration rather than attacking at the first oppportunity that arrises. Now I know better what to expect.

[pindicator]

"Which btw. is the reason Superdeath caught me so flat-footed. Backstabbing the leading players opponent was not something I'd expect with him having no benefit from it" - that was funny btw. Was that your first game against Superdeath?

I read that and chuckled too. Very much a "welcome to playing with Superdeath" experience. And SD, I mean that in the most endearing way possible, love playing with you big guy

Though I still need to pay you back for that Holkan rush ..

Just finished Tarkeel's thread, need to read this one now!