Commodore. And some for counter-espionage with plako, though I think he should have soon all the techs I have. I guess I'm only up Communism on him by now.
There really is not much point spending on anyone else. xenu and Zulu are neither threats nor have they any other techs than Commodore for stealing (if any at all). slow is too far away, Lewwyn/Bigger I'm not sure what they are doing. Whatever it is, they don't have anything worthwhile to steal. They will soon get a counterespionage mission from me, as they are spending heavily on me.
Have I forgot anyone? Ah yes, plako. He would be a great target to spend on, but he had used counter-espionage against me earlier and is lately ALWAYS the first to play the new turn. So even if I "bombed" him with EP, he probably could make a counter-mission before I could steal.
(June 22nd, 2013, 10:14)Serdoa Wrote: Well, that has changed now, I have Grens and will have Steel soon + Rifling hopefully as well. If we continue this game I will try to take him out. Not sure if we do though as slow has decided to attack Commodore and if he has to divide his attention, he might not be able to take out Zulu. If he can't do that, he can't compete with plako. But if he can't compete with plako, plako might decide to strike at me, just to end this game quicker as I'm the only contender left then. That would mean I can't go attack someone, but without more land I can't win either.
If I understand this correctly, you can't keep up with Plako with your current land. If you don't attack someone Plako wins for sure. If you do attack someone, Plako will maybe attack you back. Some chance is better than no chance, right?
The thing is I might not be even able to win if I take someone elses land. After all plako isn't just going to sit there and do nothing. Even if he isn't attacking me, I have to produce units to attack someone. But that hurts my teching power. So he gets ahead in any case. Attacking me is just making sure that I am out of the running while not attacking me MIGHT in theory make it possible to use the newly taken land to close the gap to him. The question then is just how long it takes before that happens. I have a bad grip on normal-speed as shown several times already, so I am not sure if it would be early enough to make a difference or not.
But to be quite honest, the gist of all my rambling is: Yes, theoretically there might still be a chance for me. But realistically I'm not really interested in 4 hour war-turns for the next few weeks, especially with my vacation coming up. plako has played a very good game while I made errors at the start, with the 3rd city and late game now with not expanding properly (I knew I had to, but delayed all the time for a multitude of reasons). So in my opinion he really has earned this win more than I do.
And also, my turns take even now at least 30 minutes, an hour or more if I play properly (what I haven't for a few weeks). This game simply reached the state in which I stop in SP normally because it just takes too long for me to be fun anymore.
As another rambling: I'm second in food with 714 or some such. plako is first with over 900. Why could Merohoc not build as many units as xenu did, not caring at all about winning or losing and just trying to hurt the attacker as much as possible. Not a fun way to play imo, but it would have been sooo much better for me
Not happy that we keep on playing. I don't want to ramble on about that, but I don't think one player should put his own interest over that of all others, especially if it means that anyone else has to invest 100+ hours more into a game that is basically concluded. And in our case, everyone did state that he is fine with ending it, except one player. If that player did have a shot at winning I would be fine with it, but he hasn't. His culture-attempt won't work (that's the only victory-condition he can be eyeing + he got at least 1 GArtist + he is pushing culturally for some time now). If plako isn't stopping it, I will. Which of course will put me behind plako for certain and will cement his win. Unfortunately I can't tell Bigger that.
Again, your not willing to go to war against Plako, cause the turns will take too long, but your willing to go to war with Bigger, seems a little hypocritical.
BaII Wrote:Again, your not willing to go to war against Plako, cause the turns will take too long, but your willing to go to war with Bigger, seems a little hypocritical.
Ok, in general I think some lurkers misunderstand that the players are not primarily playing for the amusement of the lurkers but for their own. I don't really care in the slightest if everyone would like to see me going to war with plako when I personally don't believe there is a point in doing so. Yes, it might be fun for YOU, but it is not fun for me. For me it means investing absurd amounts of time for nothing. I have 2/3s of the cities plako has. I have less pop, less mfg, less food, less GNP and less land. I have a neighbour that is behind a bit on tech but not as much that I can simply roll over him and that also has shown that he will make it as costly as possible for me. I doubt I will take any cities with more than 1 pop remaining if I attack xenu. Apart from that I have another neighbour that has absurd amounts of troops on my borders despite his CV-attempt and another one that is right now in a war and will have nothing better to do than attack me as soon as I attack plako because it is the only fucking logical conclusion to come to. Oh, and did I mention that despite me having the highest MfG for quite a long time in the game I do not have any navy to speak of. Currently probably even xenu has a stronger navy than me.
So what's exactly for me to win if I war with plako? Right, nothing. The only thing I MIGHT achieve is opening the game for others so that they can win instead of plako. And that is helping me how exactly? Not at all is the answer. Why should I invest 4+ hours per war-turn (+ most preparatory turns probably) only so that I can play on even longer without a chance to win? Just because some lurkers would like to see it? Go play your own game and screw with your own time, but don't demand it from others.
Now, for your point that I'm hypocritical: Going to war with Bigger will end this game. That's the whole reason I would do it. Trying to paint it as somehow the same thing as going to war with plako simply shows that you don't understand the state of the game. That might be because I report badly, but nonetheless you allow yourself to judge me without having enough information just because YOU seem to feel entitled to be entertained by me or in general the players of this game. And you are not. Plain simple.
Edit: No longer relevant; the post to which this was responding has been deleted.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
After having calmed down a little bit, I will try to explain that a little bit more. Not so much because I feel I have to but because it might help that one or the other to understand better how I judge games. So in my opinion - which could be flawed and / or not take everything important into account - there are two parts to judge your position in a game.
1) Cold hard numbers. That's simply what you get by looking at Demos. If someone has a GNP of 4000 and you have 400, you probably are not going to win. If you have 100.000 soldier-points and your opponent has 2.500.000 you probably will get rolled soon etc. There really is not much to talk about in those circumstances, as it is obvious to anyone that his chances are nil. Though it gets harder when the numbers are not as different. Lets look at the number for this game between plako and me (of the top of my head)
GNP: ~3000 to ~2200
MfG: ~800 to ~700
Crop: ~950 to ~740
Cities: ~45 to ~28
So, from the numbers it hardly is any discussion who is winning. Now there are certainly ways around this. For example, I will get Biology in 3 turns, which will up my Crop to around 800. I could also pave over a few workshops to get maybe to 850 food. Plus some newly founded cities for 900. Great... only that by doing so my MfG will drop to 600. And plako won't sit around and wait, so he'll probably be at 1050-1100 Crop at that point as he has still room to grow his cities.
And that actually is one of the points were it stops being simply looking at numbers. If plako would have simply grown quicker vertically than I did, I could catch up. But he did not. He also grew quicker horizontally. And I simply don't have as much peaceful expansion room left. That does lead into the second part already though. Before we get to that, I'd like to point some other things out which aren't seen by looking at these numbers:
a) plako has MoM and according to my counts has not had his 3-man GA yet. I did already.
b) plako has many more cottage-cities. I do have 2.5 (!) throughout my empire, 2 of them former BRick-citis and honestly not that strong to begin with.
2) Geopolitical situation
That's much harder to judge obviously as there are no numbers helping you. But if we look at the PB8-map it is obvious that plako has no contender left. He has the whole Merohoc-lands as buffer between us, thats easily 10-15 rows of tiles that he won't miss that badly if he lost it. He has in the south slowcheetah, which does not really have any good attack-angle as far as I can see it and who also is tech-wise not in a position to compete (you need better tech and more production to attack someone, not worse and less...). Leaves Commodore to his east - though that's a pretty far east and with some scouting-boats plako can easily see him coming and kill him before Commodore can unload his boats.
Therefore, plako just has to make sure to appear strong and can be reasonably certain that no one is attacking him.
Now, lets look at my part of the world. I have plako to the east whom I have to at least put reasonable defences up against, else he might take it as invitation to raze a few of my cities. He could do that because he don't need to take them. If he just brings enough to raze half of the cities I took from BRick (and he could do that amphibiously even, without me seeing him coming) I'm for all purposes out of this game. I need to also have reasonable defences against Commodore, else he might decide to leave the Zulu and just have fun with me. And I have to have defences against xenu because for some reason he has devoted his game to make mine miserable. If I take him out, I have to worry about an even longer front to plako + a really long front to Commodore. AND opening a new front to slowcheetah.
On top of all that, Bigger goes for culture. I could now decide not to stop it and simply wait for plako to do something. BUT the 3 cities that Bigger has chosen for his CV-attempt are in the middle of his empire. No one will simply raze one city, you will take more out of him than that. Which does mean if I let plako do it, I might be able to catch up to plako... till the cities he take start to become productive. At that point I am squeezed in from both sides by plako. Or if he is not successful Bigger will win via CV - which I'm sorry but in my opinion he hasn't earned the win (plus I'd be third instead of second...). Either way, I don't win that way.
Now I know the counter-argument is that if plako stops him but needs to invest so much, I might be able to compete with him even with the cities he takes from Bigger. Especially if I join in from the other side. But that would mean I have to invest in military as well, making it again unlikely that I catch up. Most likely end-result is that plako and I both take half of Biggers land and we are in the same state as before when compared with each other.
Ok, that was now much rambling about the actual game. In theory you can apply this to any game though. Just look at
a) expansion (horizontal and vertical) prospects for every player
b) neighbour-situation
c) tech-situation (especially military)
and try to make logical decisions for everyone playing. If you do that for this game you should come to the same conclusion that I did: I can't win if no someone else is willing to sacrifice himself to hurt plako.
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So, having stated all that, I hope it is a little bit more understandable why I really don't see a reason to go to war. I'd like to say that I also find it pretty funny that I am urged to play in a way that will cost me per turn several hours while I know that many RBers themselves are not finishing SP-games to the actual win-condition, because it becomes boring and tedious to move all those units at the end.
Also from what I could gather, I am pretty sure that I am urged to go to war with plako not because anyone believes that I would have a winning chance by doing that (=for my own good), but because it would open the game for others to get back into the running and / or enable Bigger to actually get his CV. I mean that's what it boils down to, right? Serdoa and plako war with each other while Bigger sneaks in the CV. Hooray, the underdog wins...
