Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[Old Harry]

[spacetyrantxenu]

He was expecting you to cry them.

And he was right...

Ok, Ichabod wins this round. Once again the simplest answer turns out to be the correct one!

We Gaspar so much. Never die of an aneurysm!

[Gaspar]

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Gaspar's misery is a source of inspiration and joy for the masses. Thank you, sir!

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For me, given an equal time horizon, I'd rather worry over being dead than actually die. This case, though, presents an opportunity. If you take the economic route and TBS routs you, the game is essentially over and the time horizon for your misery is short. That is, if you believe concession would occur during your collapse. However, if your demise would not cause the end of the game, you would have to suffer both the active loss of the game and the infamy of being just another pindacator () to fall to the sword of the Superstation. I don't know if you can live with that.

So, for me, the question is if you die hard to TBS does the game immediately end? That answer will help sort out all the rest.

----

Even on vacation, Trolling Xenu trolls trolls who troll Gaspar while himself trolling everyone. What kind of a hater do you have to be to troll on vacation?

[NobleHelium]

I make no guarantees related to the game ending when Commodore is involved.

[Gaspar]

For me, given an equal time horizon, I'd rather worry over being dead than actually die. This case, though, presents an opportunity. If you take the economic route and TBS routs you, the game is essentially over and the time horizon for your misery is short. That is, if you believe concession would occur during your collapse. However, if your demise would not cause the end of the game, you would have to suffer both the active loss of the game and the infamy of being just another pindacator () to fall to the sword of the Superstation. I don't know if you can live with that.

So, for me, the question is if you die hard to TBS does the game immediately end? That answer will help sort out all the rest.

I'm not looking to escape the game per se - the game is fun in its own way most of the time. That said, while TBS has been the leader since t75 or so, the obvious winner from t125 or so and the overwhelmingly obvious winner from maybe 15t after that, it has only been maybe the last 10t or so where I've felt even the 0.5% chance of me winning has been snuffed out. I would venture in all the parallel universes that derive from this point in time that don't have someone incompetent taking over for TBS result in him winning. Or more succinctly, TBS has a 100% chance to win and everyone else has a 0% chance to win. While there can still be fun had if you look right and we've still not really scratched the surface of the value of MoM which was a long term investment made several months ago, there probably isn't a lot of point in playing a game that is totally decided. The only reason I imagine we're still playing is that of the 3 players in a position to make the concession happen, I'm the only one talking about it. Commodore will pretty much never concede and Thoth isn't reporting. So because the lurkers don't want to rock the boat, the only way this game is ending is if I bellow in the tech thread. I've been hesitant to do that but eventually I will if nobody else takes the initiative to end it in the shadows.

As far as how this relates to the primary concern of how we defend, well, I don't fear getting eliminated in the same way you guys seem to fear for me. While I have no doubt that a concerted push from TBS could wreck me, it is going to take precisely that - a concerted push. I just don't believe that TBS has any interest in doing that. The leader doesn't want to end the game, most players have a lot of fun playing from a leading position. He attacked Oxy because it was time for a leader to expand and because as Mongolia, Cavalry were the last chance to get value out of his Civ's UB. Given his John Wayne fetish, I'm sure there was some appeal to playing with Horses and Guns. And he really hadn't carried out a full-scale military operation - I'd imagine he thought that might be fun. Attacking me won't be fun. It will probably be successful, but running your army into a boatload of siege and cities stuffed with more units in one city than Oxy has in his whole empire isn't fun. Its bloody, it is a tiresome slog. Like I said, he WILL be successful. But he's not going to enjoy it.

Ask yourself this: If you were in TBS's position would you rather run your stack of 20 Cavs and 20 Rifles into Gaspar's city with 20 Medieval units and 10 Cats followed by another city with 20 Medieval units and 10 Cats and attacking the guy with the best production capacity to replace those units as they die - none of the first cities to fall would make a material dent in my production capacity. Or, would you rather go back to playing SimCiv and get all the first to bonuses in the early late game, sweep all the Industrial and Modern wonders, and maybe come back later with Tanks and Bombers when all that crap Gaspar has stuffed into his cities is a whole lot less relevant? I think 99 out of 100 people will pick the latter. And I think TBS will as well.

That said, this doesn't mean we have to stop defending tenaciously. It just means we don't really need to be panicking. Maybe Noble will talk me into teching Steel anyway (this was really all him, I was 100% planning on teching through RP at least before grabbing Steel) because Noble is inherently 1. Obsessed with the other players far more than I am and 2. Very concerned about having things like getting his ass kicked by anyone sullying his reputation. I prefer to win and I prefer not to lose cities as well. But this game is at that point where the pop-up box tells you its the End of History and TBS wants "just one more turn" and let's not pretend anything we really do matters.

[spacetyrantxenu]

What kind of a hater do you have to be to troll on vacation?

Isn't it part of the RB ethos to seek greater challenges? It's hard to hate when you're having a good time, but greatness is not born out of doing what is easy, but rather comes from doing what is hard.

[NobleHelium]

Hey now, you and I both know that I don't give two shits about my reputation. However I subscribe to the pain aversion school of philosophy and I do not like to get my ass kicked.

[pindicator]

I think discounting any chance of a TBS defeat, while probable, is not accurate. We could have a racist email surface, or a video of him doing large amounts of cocaine while in police custody, creating a public outage large enough to force him to sell his team. Probably won't happen, but that doesn't mean it can't.

tl; dr - you're pretty much boned here

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I think discounting any chance of a TBS defeat, while probable, is not accurate. We could have a racist email surface, or a video of him doing large amounts of cocaine while in police custody, creating a public outage large enough to force him to sell his team. Probably won't happen, but that doesn't mean it can't.

tl; dr - you're pretty much boned here

Georgian here (by the grace of god)... that one stings.

But, the possibility of TBS and the racist email popping up is non-zero. TBS is headquartered in Atlanta. Conspiracy time!