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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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[SPOILERS] Biggest & The Best
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He whipped his cities again, and his power has skyrocketed. He also didn't accept a white peace offer, and demanded a city from me.
Honestly I'm fucking tired of people demanding cities from me after I win a battle against them. This will be the THIRD game I have on-going where I will be stuck in an eternal war with a bitter neighbor. If I don't get peace soon, then I give up. I'll give him a proper war if that's what he wants.
Why does that keep happening?
Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon (February 20th, 2014, 06:02)spacetyrantxenu Wrote: Why does that keep happening? People get mad, but they shouldn't. It's called a farmer's gambit for a reason. You shouldn't get mad at your neighbor for attacking you, when you settle close to them and run such low military that two chariots would be enough to kill a city and capture 3 workers. That's a 60 hammer investment by your neighbor, to remove your 100 hammer Settler, 180 hammers worth of workers (possibly CAPTURED!), many worker turns you spent on roading and improvements, and in this case those two chariots could in the process kill at least one axe (35 hammers). It's a perfectly sensible move. If you get called on your gambit, you should just own up to it and not dedicate the rest of your game on revenge. However, eternal wars where neither side can gain any benefit, those are fucking stupid and only happen due to bitterness from one or both sides.
More meta theory:
I think there are three scenarios when war is good in our Civ4 setups. 1) Very early, when you can invest very little for big gains. Stealing workers, destroying empty cities, killing settlers, even eliminating your neighbor in best case scenario. Some of these benefit you directly, such as stealing workers. Slowing down or eliminating your neighbor will help you win the game long term. You will have more land, and/or a weak Civilization to swallow once you are ready for it. Having weak neighbors goes a long way in securing your position as a victory contender. 2) Mid-late game when you can eliminate an opponent and you can afford to take over their cities. This usually requires a tech edge and/or production edge. 3) Late game when someone is about to win. If you can't win without war, you have to go to war even if your chances are slim. You've got nothing to lose. There are other scenarios where war can be good, but it's a lot tougher to judge, such as border skirmishes.
On the topic of bitterness:
Yes, early wars can bite you in the ass if your neighbor gets bitter and mad. But we all should expect other players to not become bitter over pure beneficial gameplay moves. It's comparable to gifting your cities away when you are losing a war. You are working against one player out of spite, and helping the others by doing this. The method by which you do this is different and less obvious, but it is still at it's core the same thing. Who can judge whether another player is doing something out of spite or because they actually think it's a good gameplay move? You can't, because it is relative to our skill levels and our views on meta are subjective. For an example, in PB9 I legit thought that staying in war and demanding ridiculous stuff was the best gameplay move I could make: Which is the exact same way some people are now playing against me. I've since grown as a player and now know that it wasn't the best gameplay move nor fair to the other player, but you can't force everyone to think the same way. Even straight out city gifting is still subjective, as we saw in PB13 when TBS thought that selling some of his cities for X amount of gold was a good gameplay move, but another player strongly objected and thought that it was not a fair deal and that TBS was just gifting them away. What you can do is straight out ban any deal involving cities and that settles that problem, but you can't ban war. What I'm hoping for is that when the games are over and I read my opponent's threads, their reasons for eternal wars against me are because they think it's a good move, not just "screw that guy for making a good move against us, let's fuck his game up".
You have a point Jowy, people shouldn't just throw away their game after one battle. But if you leave people in such a bad position that they feel they don't have a chance of winning anymore, you have to be prepared that they might throw their game at you. If you don't mind some (constructive) criticism, I think there were two things you could have done better to prepare for that.
1. You could have offered peace on the turn you declared war and took the workers. Then Yuris is left with the option of leaving you with the workers or losing both the workers and the city. I think you'd have to be against someone really bitter for them not to accept peace then. That gives you a net gain, it still significantly hurts your neighbour but perhaps not so much that he's ready to throw his game away yet. And if he was, you have 10 turns to use these new workers to chop down forests and prepare your defenses. Plus I think if people have 10 turns to think things over, their heads begin to cool and the violent option becomes less appealing. At least that's clearly what happened to me in PB13. 2. Obviously, you shouldn't have moved those units up on his capital last turn. The chances of his capital being open enough for you to take it would be extremely low IMO and the chances that he had enough units to counter attack pretty high. So, you were unlikely to gain anything from the attack, better just to retreat and keep your units. Why would he accept peace now he knows he has the military advantage?
Yup that's a smart concept on immediate peace, but I don't know anyone who'd accept peace after a surprise attack without first checking what has happened. In this case it'd already be too late then, because if he leaves the workers untouched, then I will get both the workers and the city, unless I blindly accept his offer when it's my turn to log in, which wasn't gonna happen since I knew exactly what I was getting into at that point.
Now that I know the results, it's very easy for me to admit that going for the capital was a pipe dream and stupid :P Hopefully I'm reading him wrong, and you are correct about his motivations. Imo if he wasn't bitter, he would accept the peace deal and prepare for the assault properly. By staying in war and demanding Blight, he shows me his intentions and I'll be as prepared as I can if he does land an assault. I think that's just silly play on his part, but play that would fit if he's mad and bitter. Maybe I've played too much WW 
(February 20th, 2014, 05:40)Jowy Wrote: He whipped his cities again, and his power has skyrocketed. He also didn't accept a white peace offer, and demanded a city from me.What you are saying is right for you to atack him , and him to not retaliate?In my games i had so many times the oportunity to snipe 2-3 workers even empty cities,or other times i had units and neighbours having 2-3 units in that area and i dint atacked to punish them for farmer gambit becasue then they will return to destroy my game. So if you start a war be prepare for the results and 99% times thast means that the other will use all energy to kill you.Maybe he wants to get the score even and win a batle too. (February 20th, 2014, 12:20)mackoti Wrote:(February 20th, 2014, 05:40)Jowy Wrote: He whipped his cities again, and his power has skyrocketed. He also didn't accept a white peace offer, and demanded a city from me.What you are saying is right for you to atack him , and him to not retaliate?In my games i had so many times the oportunity to snipe 2-3 workers even empty cities,or other times i had units and neighbours having 2-3 units in that area and i dint atacked to punish them for farmer gambit becasue then they will return to destroy my game. So if you start a war be prepare for the results and 99% times thast means that the other will use all energy to kill you.Maybe he wants to get the score even and win a batle too. It's okay to retaliate if it benefits him. I've always thought we've had a gentleman's agreement here to play in a way that benefits our Civ, which would be why gifting cities or not defending properly or kingmaking has been frowned upon. But yeah, maybe the spirit of the game is just an illusion and I really should be expecting people to be bitter over any war. Maybe we should go back to the diplomacy days and just sign 150 turn NAP's 
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