Chairmen NobleHelium and Gaspar Demand Your Presence in the Collective

[NobleHelium]

I'm thinking many people seem to find games unenjoyable when there's a large talent disparities in the game. We've always taken an approach at RB that we pretend like such disparities don't exist in signups because we don't want to turn away signups and/or offend people, but it might be good in the future to try to plan games for players of similar skill levels. For example, I'd happily play in a game that included you, Commodore, and a couple similar people because I'd feel like that was roughly in my range of skills and that makes for a fun game. In contrast, I know if I played in a game with Seven/Novice/Mack/etc, I'd have to spend enormous amounts of timing planning and micro'ing just to last a respectable amount of time before they left me in the dust, and that wouldn't be fun for me at all... but give me players of my skill level, and I find a lot of enjoyment in the game because I don't feel like I've lost on T0.

I've said for a while that our supposed "niceness" in signups is actually disingenuous and actually not as nice as being more exclusive in assembling the correct group.

I'd like to actually invite some similarly-skilled players to a game, but there are two issues:

a) Gaspar keeps whining about not playing again.
b) Most of the people who aren't too busy and are around our skill level are Americans.

[Gaspar]

Thanks for the kind comments, scooter.

Its actually funny, before the diplo burnt us all out I thought PBEM14 was a really great game because we were all relatively the same skill level, or at least within a standard deviation of one another (Serdoa might have lept past the rest of us since with his newfound spreadsheet genius.) So I wholeheartedly agree that games should be setup a little bit more with that in mind. I'm also sure my last three full games where I was beating my head in against mack/N7, mack and having my head beat in against broken ass Keelyn haven't done a lot for my morale.

I actually had been thinking about proposing a sort of "second-chance saloon" sort of game where people took a second go around with a Civ/Leader pairing they didn't win with partly because it would sort of organically create the player pool that I'm interested in. (Also because I'd really like a second bash at Izzy of China, who I could have done a lot better with.) But I've sort of backpedaled because I think I just need to step away a bit.

Honestly, I really am largely having fun with this game for all my bellyaching. Playing the turns with a teammate has been a very different experience and I think its helped make me a better player on a micro-level, even if I also think that maybe my macro level decisions have suffered for it. But regardless of game results, it has been a good time overwhelmingly.

[oledavy]

Just wanted to echo Scooter and Luddite's sentiments and say I'm really sorry to see you go Gaspar

EDIT: Crosspost with Gaspar & NH

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Boy you ain't going anywhere

[Ichabod]

Thanks for the kind comments, scooter.

Its actually funny, before the diplo burnt us all out I thought PBEM14 was a really great game because we were all relatively the same skill level, or at least within a standard deviation of one another (Serdoa might have lept past the rest of us since with his newfound spreadsheet genius.) So I wholeheartedly agree that games should be setup a little bit more with that in mind. I'm also sure my last three full games where I was beating my head in against mack/N7, mack and having my head beat in against broken ass Keelyn haven't done a lot for my morale.

I actually had been thinking about proposing a sort of "second-chance saloon" sort of game where people took a second go around with a Civ/Leader pairing they didn't win with partly because it would sort of organically create the player pool that I'm interested in. (Also because I'd really like a second bash at Izzy of China, who I could have done a lot better with.) But I've sort of backpedaled because I think I just need to step away a bit.

Honestly, I really am largely having fun with this game for all my bellyaching. Playing the turns with a teammate has been a very different experience and I think its helped make me a better player on a micro-level, even if I also think that maybe my macro level decisions have suffered for it. But regardless of game results, it has been a good time overwhelmingly.

I'm planning a new FFH Game as soon as PBEM X is over and I need players. You are recruited to play that game. There'll probably be a game with diplomacy, so get ready for it.

[Gaspar]

Just to get thread a little bit off Gaspar-melodrama:

Noble: well if your objective is to not finish last clearly we should give our HAs to mackoti
Gaspar: lol

[Mardoc]

I'm planning a new FFH Game as soon as PBEM X is over and I need players. You are recruited to play that game. There'll probably be a game with diplomacy, so get ready for it.

Hey, y'know, Gaspar may be unburned out by then! Seeing as it's, what, 2014 before that one finishes? :neenernee

As for the actual game at hand - well, it's hard to comment when all your pictures are blocked by my workplace firewall. I'll try to come back with something significant tonight, but I suspect you've said it all.

[Gaspar]

So quick picture for the dedlurkers (I assume mackoti posted this in his thread.) I think we may need to recalculate our assumptions about how the game is going to turn out. Also need to decide if its worth sniping Lewwyn from the north so mack doesn't get everything.





Worth noting: we just ran a scout through Lewwyn's territory and pretty much everything is defended by roughly one unit since he was streaming everything to the front. Astute readers will note that the purple area in that screenshot was all aqua last turn, mackoti detonated the Music GA in the area.

The non-Knight stack is highlighted. There are also roughly a billion knights in the area.

[NobleHelium]

Here's why I said mackoti should have attacked N7.



He's definitely doing well on his attack on Lewwyn though. But there aren't that many knights that we can see, we only saw ten of them. He probably has like 20 tops.

[NobleHelium]

While N7 are furrowing their brows and fiercely contemplating recent developments, I present a mundane yet totally awesome worker plan.



The plantation on the dye is 3/5 done. ^p means shift+p, the shortcut for plantation. We have majority culture on those jungled resources, the tiles will flip at full EOT.

Turn 102: P13f, S13f, V2f, Zf
Turn 103: Pf, Sf, Vf, Z79r
Turn 104: P79^p, S79^p, V79r, Z2m
Turn 105: P2m, S2m, V2m, Zm

No, we don't have Construction yet.