How to play when you have no chance of winning?

[Thoth]

I thought it had to be an attack against Jowy. Thoth only talked about city gifting. Only Jowy and Whosit gifted cities. Whosit was much less bad as he was gifting the cities so he would not have to hit 'end turn' untill Plako showed up. So Thoth was talking about Jowy. Now, that I've read your post I understand Thoth was just speaking in general and it was not an attack against Jowy.

Oh dear.

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.

I meant my post as a general rant about the attitudes behind the actions, not as an attack against any specific poster or player who might have made those actions.

I trust you know what you are talking about when you say the games are getting better at RB. I just brought up PB7 as a possible counter-example.

I did say "overall tone". There are plenty of exceptions.


But PB5 went off without animosity.

As have numerous PBEMs.



and based on my own personal experiences playing FFH games with people here and lurking some FFH/BTS games over the last couple of years.....

yes, RB is getting better.


Which is awesome, 'cause RB was pretty damn cool to start with.

[Gaspar]

Getting better is overstating - many of the really highly competitive games have had their own varieties of shenanigans: PBEM17, PBEM23, PBEM26, PBEM38 just to name 4 off the top of my head.

But generally as we realize something is abusable and cheesy, we take it off the table as an option, so in that way the overall tone of the games has improved.

At the end of the day most of us are highly competitive assholes. That will occasionally result in bad behavior/hurt feelings. Most of the time though, we're grown-ups about it and move on.

[Hesmyrr]

Ah yes, the intersite project.. Could I inquire whether the Realms Beyond group of players is big or not? If it is, which is what I kinda feared, it would definitely explain why sign ups for a new PB have been slow. We might have to wait until that is all over in order to start a new PB.

Well, depends. The number of lurkers and commenters is great. The number of really active contributors is not that large - I'd currently peg it at five peop. I think it's more that the RB demogame soaked up a lot of players, but then experienced a large level of dropouts and so on. People have learned to ration their commitments.

Speaking of intersite project, would that mean it would be acceptable for me to register for the group with intention of mostly observing? Since I no longer own copy of Civ4 for years, I have just been waiting for it to complete but if it do not require mandatory contribution and would take ages to finish, I would be very interested to sign up.

I also believe it's fine for clearly lost player to do whatever method they find fun as long as clear abuses are avoided. From what I've seen so far occurrence of game-long vendetta like option 1 generally arise from real (or perceived) offenses in that game; I assume someone who is planning to declare war will definitely note possibility of making permanent enemy when thinking about pro and cons of such an action. That is, "micro goals" formerly proposed in the thread is very likely to fall into option 1 in some form of another. While somebody being kingmaker is annoying it's inevitable unless he/she choose to be completely passive (since any active behaviour will affect others), which usually do not seem to be fun way to play. So I am little skeptical such behaviours can be regulated in pre-game rules discussuion, and that one should just seek to avoid clear abuses like city gifting and spiteful behaviour due to meta-game reasons.

[NobleHelium]

Most of the people visiting the forum are lurkers, yeah. Just send a request for membership.

[Hesmyrr]

Thanks for quick reply. The same way (Edit: of registering ) as the democracy game, right?

[NobleHelium]

Well you can globally lurk the democracy game if you're just lurking. There's a group for that.

[Tasunke]

I think part of the reason u almost always see a clear leader in simul games is because of map disparity. (using the map generator)

Tell me one simul turns game realms beyond has done. I was referring to my own experiences in simul turn (my natural hunting grounds)

[Qgqqqqq]

Umm... PB1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7.

[Tasunke]

Jeezus ... You'd think anyone with half a brain ppl would realize I meant simul turn. As in play the game in a few hours. As in the thing that 99% of games were originally played in (ie early days of gamespy), as in there are 3 main types of games: pitboss, pbem, and simul turn. You'd think when someone says simul turn ppl know what they are talking about. Btw, why are all of your posts flammatory lately? I didn't think that was your M.O.

I guess I refer to it as simul because I've played it on gamespy, hamachi, and direct IP, so to me its not just a 'gamespy' game

still, I can understand the confusion, because Pitbosses are also simul turn and turn timer. (just a much longer turn timer )

[Gaspar]

Jeezus ... You'd think anyone with half a brain would realize I meant simul turn. As in play the game in a few hours. As in the thing that 99% of games were originally played in (ie early days of gamespy), as in there are 3 main types of games: pitboss, pbem, and simul turn. You'd think when someone says simul turn ppl know what they are talking about. Btw, why are all of your posts flammatory lately? I didn't think that was your mo.

I definitely have more than half a brain and I thought you meant simul turn as in a simul turn pitboss. We generally refer to gamespy games around here as gamespy games.

A few of the "old-timers" here were competitive in that format - Speaker and sunrise to name two. It generally doesn't suit the RB-style though, so usually we only play random pickup games with each other.

For what its worth, your response was way more inflammatory than what Q said.