RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Peter of Byzantium

[regoarrarr]

Okay after talking with sunrise, he will end turn and play the next turn this evening when he is back at his PC.

I guess we are going to hold off on accepting the request for a turn timer, at least for now, at least for "free"

The Ottoman warrior, rather than threatening our capital, moved SE. It can move on the wheat next turn, which would be great, since our archer can then whack it.

They killed Michel the warrior and have advanced a separate, full-strength chariot to the roaded tile 2SE of our worker who finished chopping W of the furs.

[Swiss Pauli]

We won't have Cataphracts for well over 100 turns. We definitely don't want an Ancient/Classical war, and if we do settle aggressively having that long term NAP means we don't absolutely have to have Copper. So I think we really do want to secure long term NAPs with all our neighbors, get as many cities as possible and tech/build in relative peace until we reach Guilds, then !

I think this is more the reason for lurker Schadenfreude: you had a solid (if somewhat obvious plan with Byzantium) then threw it all away with a greedy land-grab. Even if the Ottomans hadn't attacked when they did, you don't seem to have considered the fact that Paris would mean that they'd probably attack you at some point before you got Guilds, and certainly ruled out a NAP with them completely. At no point did you seriously consider what you would have done if you'd been on the receiving end of such a move, and what that would have meant for your long-term plans.

One more thing - In the Apolyton game everyone viewed RB's dedication to the game (analysis of the espionage system, being constantly logged in, even my practice of making sure I was online for a half-dozen turn rollovers prior to the official war to preserve the right to move first) as an example of the best side of this community despite gaining an advantage over the other sides.

Not really fair to compare the games: Poly was a demogame where large teams were encouraged, and we gained advantage from a number of different members dedicating lots of time to the game at different stages, whereas rthe other teams rapidly lost active members. The best part of team RB was the never-say-die attitude that prevailed: even when one or two got disheartened, we pulled each other through.

Espionage in particular was gleaned way beyond what the game designers probably intended, but people didn't cry fowl.

Qwack

I don't think a "double move" because a team is lazy and only logs in every 16 hours rather than every 8 is any more unfair than a team that powergames passive espionage. Aren't they both just rewarding a team for being willing to spend more hours in-game?

Jain. The double move can give (massive) advantage in a one-off scenario where the other team could well be unavoidably offline at the start of a turn. Ploughing hours into espionage analysis gives incremental advantage, and is available to all teams all the time, whereas double-moving is inherently unfair because it's only available to the double mover.

[newbie]

Just wondering if it might have been a mistake to put a turn into the archer at the start of the war instead of whipping a warrior from scratch? 4 chariots attacking 4 warriors would have had (0.7)^4=25% chance of taking the city, but I think you calculated it as (0.7)^4=25% chance of the city holding, which may have influenced your decision?

I guess that whipping warrior from scratch vs. one turn into an archer depended on which turn they moved their chariots. Would it not have been possible to ask athlete/kalin which turn the chariots attacked? Even if it wasn't in their best interests to tell you, they'd have had to tell you in order to advance the turn-order/logistics negotiations.

I'm not totally sure of the above questions and logic though, since I was finding it all pretty hard to follow at the time. (Come to think of it, I have forgotten whether or not you are in slavery, so maybe it wasn't even possible to whip a warrior.)

[regoarrarr]

I'm not totally sure of the above questions and logic though, since I was finding it all pretty hard to follow at the time. (Come to think of it, I have forgotten whether or not you are in slavery, so maybe it wasn't even possible to whip a warrior.)

We are in slavery. And you're right, we should have asked them what turn they moved in.

Sunrise had a plan that we could have gotten all 4 warrior sin the city and still whipped the archer - I think it would have been us roading with the worker and that allowing a 4th warrior to make it in. That's what we SHOULD have done.

And @Swiss - you're right - we got greedy. We had said early on that as "good" players we should play more conservatively counting on our (darrell's and sunrise's) skills to make up for it.

[MWIN]

The whip would not work because you warrior will come turn 58. You lost your city on turn 57 (the same turn you noticed that you are at war). Basically, they didn't give you a chance to whip. Kind of sneak attack....

@Surnrise, you posts about double moves make sense. some very good points, which I never thought of. I think it warrants seperate thread as some of our players might want to take part in it.

We are in slavery. And you're right, we should have asked them what turn they moved in.

Sunrise had a plan that we could have gotten all 4 warrior sin the city and still whipped the archer - I think it would have been us roading with the worker and that allowing a 4th warrior to make it in. That's what we SHOULD have done.

[sunrise089]

Jain. The double move can give (massive) advantage in a one-off scenario where the other team could well be unavoidably offline at the start of a turn. Ploughing hours into espionage analysis gives incremental advantage, and is available to all teams all the time, whereas double-moving is inherently unfair because it's only available to the double mover.

I don't see the difference in committing time to being logged in at the end of a turn and being logged in and tediously taking espionage screenshots and running the calculations. How is one time commitment more "unavoidable" than the other.

In RB PBEM1 Sooooo gambled with a specialist strategy that Ruff could totally nerf due to the espionage system. Soooo went into the meta-game and they came to a deal. If I'm willing to invest more time being online and the Athlete team doesn't like that they should offer me something to act differently.

[sunrise089]

Just wondering if it might have been a mistake to put a turn into the archer at the start of the war instead of whipping a warrior from scratch? 4 chariots attacking 4 warriors would have had (0.7)^4=25% chance of taking the city, but I think you calculated it as (0.7)^4=25% chance of the city holding, which may have influenced your decision?

Aside from the fact that they attacked a turn sooner than any whip we could have done, the problem with whipping a warrior is that we go back to size 1 and can't get an archer out for forever.

and @Swiss since I'm being a meanie and need to balance it out...I agree with Regoarrarr that we did play greedy too.

[Swiss Pauli]

I don't see the difference in committing time to being logged in at the end of a turn and being logged in and tediously taking espionage screenshots and running the calculations. How is one time commitment more "unavoidable" than the other.

You've confused my argument: one can be in the game for 16 hours of the turn, but given one needs to sleep then one's window of operation may be the final 16 hours rather than the initial 16 hours because one is in a different time zone to the player ending the previous turn. Any given 16 hours is fine for espionage analysis, but the first hours (well minutes actually) are key to avoid being double moved.

In RB PBEM1 Sooooo gambled with a specialist strategy that Ruff could totally nerf due to the espionage system. Soooo went into the meta-game and they came to a deal. If I'm willing to invest more time being online and the Athlete team doesn't like that they should offer me something to act differently.

I think double moves are lame per se and should be avoided if at all possible (see my posts on the topic in the PB1 IT thread). Whether intentional or not, you're coming across as rather sore losers by not agreeing to a turn order.

[darrelljs]

I think this is more the reason for lurker Schadenfreude: you had a solid (if somewhat obvious plan with Byzantium) then threw it all away with a greedy land-grab.

Gee Swiss, you really know how to cheer a guy up .

I agree though. For the sake of arguement let's assume sunrise's calculations are accurate. That means the risk is a 1/10 chance to lose the game. Now in no limit hold 'em, that's fantastic. This is becaue the reward, a stack double up, more than doubles your chances of winning the game. The Deer didn't double our chances of winning the game, it probably didn't even add 10% to our chances. That makes it a bad gamble.

Anyway, spilt milk and all that. Meeting our new goal will almost give as much pleasure as meeting our old goal of winning would have 8).

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Okay so let's talk a bit about that. While I don't want to completely give up on winning, we should start talking about how to inflict max pain.

If we're Oracling, we're going to get a prophet first, and while that was real nice with a Buddhist shrine to build, it's not as attractive now.

We'll be bulbing something like Theology or Code of Laws, which are okay, but off our Machinery path.

As far as settling goes, I think we should try and focus south towards that copper. But THIS time, settle a bit closer :-D We definitely don't want to be fighting too hard with a holy creative cityi