[LURKERS] Mr. Gradgrind's Review

[GermanJoey]

So, BGN has finally given up too. So, that makes Dreylin, Scooter, and BGN have all officially conceded to REM now, 2nd/3rd/4th place. I'll let them know - GG REM!!

[pindicator]

If I didn't officially concede does that make me 2nd place?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

...civ4 has bombarding zeppelins as a defining unit of Industrial warfare? Did someone on the design team read too much steampunk fanfic?

Ok, I'm reading the lurker thread and this made me laugh a lot. Surprised this didn't get QotM. The zepplins were super powerful

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I've just lost all enjoyment now because it feels like my adjudication has disheartened REM enough to want to drop out and that will lead to the game being ruined/not getting the competitive end it deserves and it's all my fault.

Really no hard feelings about the decision. I understood it, and of course I didn't like it. However, you would not believe the headache that I got from the missus over this though (you're all moping, you've been on that all day, don't you want to do anything else) I was starting to have time issues anyway and didn't want that hassle from her too. It settled down after though.

I felt like some of the others did that it was a little harsh on me, and did cost me. It did mean there was less border tension than there would have been. I imagine if I had been able to defend like I wanted, I would have warred with BGN relatively sooner, possibly picked up combustion to counter his masses of ironclads and would have moved the game a different direction I feel.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Yeah, I don't know why there's confusion over the countdown. I always assumed people did things like "three ... two .. one ... GO!" (i.e., go *after* the one, which is when the count is 0), which is the way scooter is doing it. That's the case in many video games I've played, including those with international audiences. Where is REM from again?

This was more to do with did he send it the previous turn or the turn I read it... It is hard to know if he sent me the message on turn x or turn x+1 with the pitboss setup.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

He had no choice in fighting scooter but Pindicator would have stayed peaceful, probably BGN too. I guess the question is when will his Pindicator invasion turn a profit? A nice overview shot of Pin's territory would help. My impression is that he's only really up 2 cities so far, 1 decent one with 10t of revolt to go and one minor one on the island. The rest either being undefendable or razed.

I don't think it really matters that he's using navy against one and land against the other, he still needs to decide where he wants to commit his hammers.

My main reason for taking Pind was to remove the headache of oil navy looking around core cities. It allowed me to ungarrison a lot of cities as they couldn't be struck, and prevented his cities being used as canals for other players. That said, I completely underestimated the power it would take to overrun him, especially the cannon, and the gains I could make.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Interesting that, apparently, REM lost those 2 cities to Pindicator due to not unloading the units from the boat into the city.

I did know about that, I didn't see a need to, and keeping them on the boat gave me options of sniping the next turn. I was being overly aggressive. It was poor reading of the galleon placement there rather than not knowing that they wouldn't defend.

[Cheater Hater]

Hi everyone--such a weird position to be in, reading about a game I never spoiled myself on, yet haven't interacted with in three months. I made my way through here, and am working my way through Scootlla, but where else should I be looking, in particular with regard to my/DZ's civ? Obviously I need to read Dreyote's thread to cover the main war, but there's something about REM in there, and us getting propped up?

(also, lurker drama--*sigh*. Like it or not, we need new blood to sustain this community, and that's going to bring some split milk with it, and the reaction to that milk should not be to chase people out. We get these well-documented games when we have lurker interest, and I'd rather have a slightly unbalanced game that people actually care about.)

[Fluffball]

I made my way through here, and am working my way through Scootlla, but where else should I be looking, in particular with regard to my/DZ's civ? Obviously I need to read Dreyote's thread to cover the main war, but there's something about REM in there, and us getting propped up?

REM, Dreylin, and Scooter were the 3 players that had a major impact on the game. The rest were just conquered or otherwise did nothing. You can probably tell that from the size of the threads though (Gaspar's huge thread is almost entirely about some card game or something.)

For a while, Dreylin was running away with the game, so REM and Scooter attacked him when he attacked you.

[scooter]

Thus, to me, the Pentagon just feels like... I guess I would call it an extravagant build? Maybe a luxurious build? Something that'd be really nice to have but comes at a high cost. (an opportunity cost in this case) Even with the pentagon, they'll need Theocracy + WP + 2 GGs (or 1GG + Vassalage) to hit 17XP, which implies a successful war at minimum...

"Win more" is a term I've seen thrown around for this sort of thing.

I see a lot of comments about the Pentagon build. I don't know if opinions changed later, but honestly I think we got that choice right, although I'm open to being convinced otherwise. I think concession would have come sooner without it. The underrated benefit was that we could continue to get double promo ships while being in peacetime civics that supported our effort to catch up in military tech. If we would have been forced to take up either Vassalage or Theocracy to get those during the REM conflicts, we would have fallen even further behind in tech than we already did. On top of that, we were just one or two big battles away from a commando factory. Without that hope to cling to, we probably would have given up sooner. All in all, I think it was worthwhile. Choosing not to race BGN to Fascism (when in reality he apparently didn't want it) resulting in REM landing that GG instead of us - now that was definitely a mistake. I deeply regret that, and it may have taken some of the shine off the decision to pursue Pentagon which would make sense.

Anyway, not a whole lot of other comments for this thread, although I did mostly skim over the debates over turn split rules which took up about 1/3 of the thread. There was a weirdly high amount of reading-in the silliest possible interpretation of comments in our thread (yes, I do know how slavery works ), but I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that under the circumstances. At the very least, it's fun to see that people were entertained.