[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

Scooter is frustrated with the way this is going to the point of saying he doesn't want to continue the game that is obviously won, and your reaction in his own thread is ? Empathy much?

If this were single player he'd clearly have put the game on a shelf and moved on to something else. When you are getting to the point where even the clear game winner no longer wants to continue, and there is no resolution coming from the lurkers, something has gone seriously off the rails with the game.

There have to have been at least some other players who have complained about playing out the string on this, right?

[Krill]

Yup.

Because every other reaction would be a lie. And the demand that lurkers jump to is laughable at best.

I haven't been lurking this game at all until I saw the lurker thread post. There's plenty to talk about after the game, but not here, not now.

And on a personal level, about empathy: believe what you want to believe, it will not change objective reality.

[Zed-F]

The place for that reaction is in the lurker thread, not to throw it in Scooter's face. Otherwise it's like telling Scooter directly, 'hey, you're frustrated, and I don't give a damn.' If you don't give a damn, then have the common courtesy not to tell it to the person who's frustrated.

[Krill]

No, that reaction goes here from the point a player demands lurkers do what the player wants, as a straightforward reminder that no, lurkers do not respond to that.. I'd know, been there, done that, burnt the t-shirt. Whether I give a damn or not (at this point in time, about this game) is irrelevant, and I'm not fussed about how I'm going to be interpreted when I also point out that PB75 had some wonky gold trades in the late game.

scooter, I look forward to reading those suggested baseline rules. I might even respond.

[Zed-F]

This intent was not clear from your popcorn emoji, and deserved amplification to make your intent clear. Thanks for that.

[scooter]

Zero offense taken to the popcorn thing of course. This is objectively entertaining. This game has up until this point been boring. My one complaint aimed at the lurkers here is that I believe lurkers have an inherent bias towards preferring the game be interesting. Yuris getting a boost is interesting. So we're gonna let the sham slide because it's interesting.


10 hours and nobody has found an example of this degree of gold gift being allowed to pass without controversy. Weird. If this was normal, I'd think we could find one. After all, we have played around 150 PBEM/PBs over the years.


I have made a decision. I will play on, but I will no longer be reporting on this game. Apologies to Zed-F and Tarkeel who have been incredibly valuable. I'll send you guys some screenshots if/when good things happen. I will make the occasional exception to mock Superdeath when appropriate because he couldn't even be vaguely competitive fair and square and think he deserves it. This is the kind of thing he does because, quite frankly, he sucks at this game and thinks this is only because of spreadsheets. If you're gonna make a mockery of my game and my time, I'm going to punch back.


Finally, to illustrate how stupid this all is, I will point out the following. City and unit gifts are not banned in this game. Because we have seemingly decided it is acceptable to do anything not explicitly banned by the rules, maybe I should consider giving Cairo a serious lift. After all, it's in my interest to gain a war ally, right? Maybe we'll find out, maybe we won't. Hard to say.

[Qgqqqqq]

I think that's the right call, given there is clearly no consensus on an out of game intervention. I do think it is unfortunate that yet another game has led to drama and bad blood felt by at least one player. I wish we could have these games without that.

I think the playing the game to completion question somewhat interesting - is there an obligation to concede? Clearly not - but I know there's been a few games where that has come up recently. I admit there are few games I play late in single player. Perhaps three city elimination, or an alternative house rule can be used to bring a game to completion.

Finally, thanks for a fun read. (I will note that another source of lurker bias can be in favour of a well-reported player thread.) Despite my reservations going into this game, it has been an enjoyable ride from the outside.

[Zed-F]

Good luck going forward, Scooter. Hope playing without reporting is less time-consuming and hence feels less like a time poorly spent. Hopefully you're able to maintain a winning position. I don't think it's the right call to use others' game distortions as an excuse to distort the game even more -- the better thing to do is to put that energy into the house rules proposal -- but you gotta do what seems right and/or entertaining to you in these circumstances.