So, how did the PitBoss work out?

[sunrise089]

Wow, hi Soren. Sullla has pointed you in probably the best direction to see current PB gameplay. In the unlikely event you want to talk about the hosting side of the pitboss games feel free to PM me about that

The end result is a bunch of dogs contributing halfheartedly and failing to achieve critical mass to take down the leader.

RBP1 was hardly the peak of our PB knowledge and execution, but the dogpile coalition worked as advertised there. Even in RBP2 considering the outcome the attempted dogpile at least had arguments in its failure (to say nothing about the actual execution...).

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Well, dogpiles against runaways tend not to work well. Not to mention runaways tend to be on the high end of the skill spectrum within that particular game, and they're usually decent at defence.

Afaik the dogpilee in PB1 wasn't that far ahead.

[Ellimist]

There was actually (sortof) a successful dogpile in one of our FFH pbems.

In a game with 5 players, four of us each contributed gold toward the creation of a large cavalry force to use against the other player. I had the ability in that game to (instantly) hire units directly for gold, and agreed to disband the army after accomplishing a specific goal. It helped a lot that the terms of the arrangement were defined and limited, and that the cost to each member was affordable.

The surprise of suddenly hiring 50 fast units on his border was pretty effective, but one civ alone couldn't have bought that many.

[gtAngel]

Though even that showed how flawed the dogpile strategy is: ultimately everyone in that game simply chose a different winner, because Ellimist was able to benefit more from the dogpile than anyone else. So instead of the dogpile being used to keep everything even, it was just a metaphorical blue shell - it kills the person in front and gave room for the person right behind to win.

Although it did show that if you can define the terms well enough a dogpile is a realistic strategy - normally the entire thing falls apart because it's hard to coordinate and no one agrees on how much everyone should contribute.

[Qgqqqqq]

In that case though ellimist was actually not too far behind (/ahead of - depending on who you believe) the dogpilee, and it basically meant that elliminst won the game as his only competitor was lost.

[Ellimist]

In that case though ellimist was actually not too far behind (/ahead of - depending on who you believe) the dogpilee, and it basically meant that elliminst won the game as his only competitor was lost.

I was ahead prior to that, and he had basically countered one of my primary advantages, bringing us to relative parity.

The dogpile part itself would have succeeded regardless of my position at the time, as the cost borne by each of the participants was not that great.

[Jowy]

Our meta just isn't there yet. It makes no sense to not commit enough troops to a dogpile and letting the leader just win without challenge. If you commit, then at least you have a chance to win. I think our current mentality comes from the fact that a lot of us play for second place. In reality there is no second place in Civ, there is only the winner and the rest are losers.

[Krill]

In that case though ellimist was actually not too far behind (/ahead of - depending on who you believe) the dogpilee, and it basically meant that elliminst won the game as his only competitor was lost.

I was ahead prior to that, and he had basically countered one of my primary advantages, bringing us to relative parity.

The dogpile part itself would have succeeded regardless of my position at the time, as the cost borne by each of the participants was not that great.

In this instance, there were a number of factors that existed that enabled a dog pile to succeed:

1. A game play mechanic that allows straight conversion of gold to units without being limited by build queues or rush from scratch penalties
   
2. Written communication between players
   
3. FFH being balanced imbalance, best described as everything is broken so everything is balanced: it takes much less to push a game at any one point from being undecided to a complete stomp.
   
4. ...really, comparing FFH to base BtS is like comparing Civ 2 to SMAC, they are completely different games even if the code base was originally the same. As T-Hawk said, dogpiles work or don't work in different games because of specific game design

Our meta just isn't there yet. It makes no sense to not commit enough troops to a dogpile and letting the leader just win without challenge. If you commit, then at least you have a chance to win. I think our current mentality comes from the fact that a lot of us play for second place. In reality there is no second place in Civ, there is only the winner and the rest are losers.

This will vary on what individual players choose to believe. Some people play the game to role play, and those players (from what I've experienced) tend not to care so much about who won or lost as described by the in-game victory conditions. Some games are even played from the outset with explicitly different victory conditions. And in the case of a dog pile forming "Having a chance to win" after the dog pile (even if it succeeds) isn't always true, so the dogpile is not always the right thing to do. That some people view dog piles as one player versus everyone else perhaps betrays that concept that wars exists on a spectrum from 1v1 through to 1 v everyone else; would a 2v1 be considered a dog pile in a 10 player game?

[spellman]

I recall an excellent talk about "How to Win at Games" where the speakers gave this piece of advice: "Attack Only One." Basically, thoroughly stomp the leader, and only the leader, until they're not the leader. Then stomp the new leader.

However, a corollary is force someone else to do it. Say "I'm doing this move so you (next player) have to stop the leader from doing this or else they win."

This is much easier when there's perfect information, easily redistributable forces, and clear information on who's ahead. Which doesn't exist in Civ4. Usually stopping the leader involves building massive army and stomping them. But then you've invested in said army, so you need to recoup that cost by taking more and more. Which means if you do it successfully you've probably completely crushed your opponent into the Stone Age. No one builds a massive army, wins a few cities, then goes "Oh, you're not the leader anymore. Let's have peace so I can go trounce person B over there who's now in the lead. No hard feelings chap?"

[superjm]

The way I see it, you have to take the action that best positions yourself to win, or at the least a position where you can take advantage of others' mistakes. In regards to Civ specifically, based on my observation dogpiling alone isn't going to work most of the time against a snowballing leader for a myriad of gameplay and psychological reasons. What has to happen is the leader has to be stopped before the snowball actually starts, which is what might have happened in PB2 if Dantski (was it Dantski? Someone correct me if I'm wrong) hadn't screwed it up

Regarding the topic, I actually signed up for the Democracy Pitboss game here but the size of the team and the way everything was structured was rather overwhelming, so I haven't been able to contribute to it at all. I'd like to try a pitboss game with a small team or on my own one of these days, my experience with the PBEMs I've played have been overwhelmingly positive so far. Heck, I'm having trouble playing single-player now because facing a bunch of AIs with a bunch of nonsense bonuses just seems unfulfilling now compared to playing with real people.

EDIT - Incidentally, while I'm still thinking about it, given the idea of "observing" a Pitboss game in progress, is it possible to mod the game to make Pitbosses more, how should I say, "spectator friendly"? Many people here are excellent at reporting the current state of the game from their end, while others are not quite as prompt or thorough as some would like (I'd put myself in this category I guess, reporting on these games is very time consuming...) so I wonder if it's possible to unload some of that reporting to the game itself as opposed to the players having to report on every last detail.