[SPOILERS] PBEM17 Lurker thread

[novice]

My three favourite quotes from this thread:

The skill level of this game is certainly very high. It's been a joy to lurk.

I think the lurkers got their money worth in every respect. It was a joy to play as well, most of the time.

I would just like to add a belated comment--though keep in mind I haven't been lurking very closely--that it would really, really annoy me if Kyan manages to use murky diplomacy to glide to another effortless win.

I think once you get enough hypercompetitive nerds in a room for long enough, feed them exploits of the strong and merciless, we're just going to fall on one another like rabid dogs.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="3"]SevenSpirits[/SIZE]

Seriously, Dave seems to be completely misjudging Nospace.

* He thinks they are in a better position than they are. (They are probably in the second-worst or worst position IMO. He's considering a massive dogpile against them because it's "necessary".)
* He thinks they consider him an enemy.
* He thinks they are trying to trick him with everything they say.

Most recently,

Nospace: Hey friend, would you like to make some mutually beneficial trades?
Dave: [After replying] I can't believe I fell for their ploy and replied. I want to kill them now.



Dave, after the game, I'll be curious to hear how much of your negativity towards them was carried over from what Kyan told you, how much was a matter of convenience (nice to be in a majority alliance against a common enemy), and how much was you just misjudging them.

It was a little bit of all three.

In my first chat with Kyan, he portrayed them as a serious threat to win the game and suggested military action against them with Darrell at some point. It was also just really convenient to use them as a paper tiger to form and remain in a three civ alliance. Portraying them in this light was diplomatically expedient. This is a case of me trying to fit their actions to my preconceptions.

That being said, looking back, my overreaction truly is hilarious I seriously misjudged them going into this game - probably one of my bigger diplomatic failings.

Dave is astonishing. (Though he's cool and I like his updates.) He loaned StM a bunch of East Indiamen for FREE? Less than free - StM doesn't even have to pay nearly full price for any he loses.

That goes past stupid and borders on intentionally throwing the game. (With the caveats that it's clearly not actually intentional, nor does it appear at this time that it will cause StM to win.)

It definitely was not an intentional move to throw the game. This is an example of me just being naive and bad at making deals. This was before I had read many games on the site, so I had no idea at what I should be asking for in a deal like this, or even what the typical hammer = gold exchange rate was.

What a slaughter.

You can say that again

[oledavy]

And the award for most prescient post in the lurker thread goes to.....

Wait, was the AP Diplo Victory vote banned? If it wasn't, oledavy and StM easily have enough votes to combine and win the game out of nowhere.

Had Darrell or NoSpace posessed Tatan's foresight, we would have had a very different ending.

[darrelljs]

Had Darrell or NoSpace posessed Tatan's foresight, we would have had a very different ending.

There's no foresight necessary...I saw the vote called . I just didn't think you were serious. Mea culpa .

Darrell

[oledavy]

[SIZE="3"]Gaspar[/SIZE]

Having just played a game where I was part of a team that built a navy for someone else, I can say conclusively you don't ever want to be the one without the army.

QFT.

I don't want to pile on Dave here, its just with the caliber of play in here, a lot of his "outside the box" type decisions really stick out as poor.

Yeah, I was just way out of my league in this game to begin with. Bad empire management didn't do a whole lot to help either.

This whole last dogpile is just stupid anyway. Rego and Darrell were pretty much neck and neck and simply because Dave sort of walked in with all these bizarre preconceptions but is skilled at catherding there's a 3-on-1 on Rego.

uhhh...I blame Kyan That being said, it took some diplomatic effort imho to stay in a majority and make sure the world's ire was not directed at you. So I feel like this is a little unfair.

Nukes or no nukes has nothing to do with this. The reasons this is a slaughter are as follows:

1. #1 and #1a are dogpiling #4.
2. #1 and #1a are dogpiling #4.
3-99. See 1 & 2.
100. Darrell and nospace are vastly superior players to Dave.

Nukes wouldn't be relevant in this game since the two players who have a chance to win have a game-long MDP.

QFT. (I seem to be using that a lot)

EDIT: Crosspost with Darrell

[spacemanmf]

Had Darrell or NoSpace posessed Tatan's foresight, we would have had a very different ending.

Or... you could just not have selected it.

We could have captured one of Shoot's cities to prevent it. However, there was doubt about whether that would work. In hindsight, it probably would have (subject to 6-7 marine defenders being enough to hold mackoti). But given my objections I didn't want to go there and risk ending the game in cheap fashion. In the end I managed that anyway.

David: or we could reload if you and Darrell feel strongly enough about this before I call for the AP vote.

This in particular made me feel you wouldn't object to what I did but I can understand why you did. Reading back after the event you perhaps meant reloading once you had already been voted for.

I think perhaps that brutal last turn in which you lost 50-60 units didn't help your mood...

[oledavy]

Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure a land unit walking onto an enemy fort kills all ships on the tile the same way capturing a city kills all the ships docked inside.

Dave could be in for a nasty surprise. Undefended forts are a liability.

Was aware of this mechanic, thus stacking fortress Stalingrad with land units when I moved my navy back in for cover.

[oledavy]

What I'm most perplexed about is why many folks (or at least the ones that have posted) seem to feel that the problem is largely about the reloading. From my perspective, gifting a city for the sole purpose of preventing an opponent's victory is unambiguously cheating. The reloading is just a small dollop of foul icing on top. It doesn't matter whether there was a reload or not, gifting that city was cheating either way IMHO.

It seems bizarre that there are so many rules and expectations about not gifting cities for reasons of collusion, e.g. to prevent an enemy from taking a city that they were about to capture/raze, or to allow an ally to gain use of the MoM for a Golden Age. And yet when it comes to gifting a city to directly determine the outcome of the game, no one seems particularly up in arms? Very strange.

I think lurkers felt this way about it because there existed a precedent for city-gifting to forestall a AP victory (PB1). It's almost universally regarded as a cheesy mechanic, thus making city gifting 'permissible' to prevent it. Fighting fire with fire as I said in my thread. That being said, I concur with your point: that it is just an extension of other kinds of city-gifting cheese. The best solution is just to ban the diplomatic victory in all future RB games.