RB Demogame IT and Tech Issues Thread

[HitAnyKey]

Sad, just noticed the game got called. I was waiting for Q to play, so I could do my turn. Though mainly just so I could continue killing stuff of the Trolls, even though I knew by the end of it that Gillette would likely win. I'll try to type up some more details tonight. Gotta head off to work and can't access the forums from there, so can't post until later.

[plako]

Just took a look at your alliance forum and it makes me sad. Whole world aligned against us. I understand why Gillette is there i.e. to secure win, but why all the other teams? Just trying to spit in our cheerios or what?

[Old Harry]

Gillette and M3 were pretty tight all game and had been planning to take you guys on since forever (for us we thought attacking M3 would have just left us bogged down and more vulnerable to you - who knows if we were right - for M3 they were never going to tech far enough ahead of Gillette that fighting us would make sense, and any dogpile with Trolls against us would just crown you winners.) If you'd taken our capital but lost your army in the process I think M3 could have then rolled up quite a few of your cities, possibly leaving an even fight between a crippled Gillette (trying to get the other continent up and running) M3 and you guys. Although with your state property, Kremlin, police state fueled armies and statue of Zeus you wouldn't have been down for long.

I don't know for sure, but I think the reason TheStick carried on playing from such a tough early position (and did such a good job of it) was that he was having fun. I think having the chance of one last hurrah against the big bad Trolls and seeing what his civ could actually do was pretty appealing so we did whatever we could think of to make these last few turns as fun as possible for him (intel, airships, resources, reporting, etc). Whether that had any effect I dunno... I wonder if you'd offered him some help to take our island holding while you took the mainland he'd have agreed? I think we never had a NAP with Pirates all game, so there was no obstacle to them attacking us...

I find Q pretty hard to read - will be interested to read his thoughts at the time, but he was never really involved - just provided a bit of info every now and then. When you started selling him cities we thought you might bankroll him to wipe out Pirates while you took us and M3 out, but obviously not.

[darrelljs]

Given how likable plako, novice, zak, etc. on our team are, I can only assume the anti-Trolls alliance was in fact an anti-Darrell alliance .

Darrell

[TheHumanHydra]

Congratulations, Old Harry! Your second upset win!

Also I think some praise needs to be given to thestick and anyone who was helping him (edit: sorry, and Cornflakes) on the Pirates team for sticking (heh) it out after a major early-game setback - that's spirit! And to HAK, who basically played M3 solo most of the game - I was vaguely involved for much of that time, but HAK had the vast majority of responsibility, and these last few months I stopped following at all. I hope you're not mad at me, HAK, but I'll understand if you are.

To plako, please know that there was no rancour involved in our decision to oppose you. It was just that, well, if we let you win without any interaction between our civs, had we really tried at all? Between me and HAK, there was a strong sentiment of wanting to accomplish something in the game, even if it didn't lead to our victory (though I would argue opposing you was our best theoretical chance at victory). There was also, for me at least, a certain romance in forming a "Grand Alliance," like against Napoleon, and going out guns blazing. Though can I say - there was a point shortly before I stopped following where I began to feel, before some of the other players I think, the Grand Alliance could actually be successful, which I am happy to hear it was. But my role in all that was of course limited.

Anyway, congratulations again to the victors, to everyone for playing as long as they did, and to plako et al. for the amazing game up to where we dogpiled you - if this were a non-diplo game, you'd obviously have had it.

Off to read the threads! Edit: Er, apparently I can't yet. Nevermind.

PS - I think this game coupled with the ISDG may have some interesting things to say about the metagame in full-diplo games - may upset the conventional wisdom about dogpiles being nigh-impossible to pull off effectively. But what do I know?

[novice]

Good game, everyone.

[zakalwe]

I think taking out Gillette in a 1vs1 would have been plenty of challenge for us, so it's a shame that we couldn't see how that would have played out. After the first dogpile more or less forced us to concede the New World, we were on the clock to take out Gillette before they could consolidate their gains. The second/continued dogpile put an end to that ambition very effectively. So I'd say both dogpiles worked, although the second one didn't make much sense except to make sure that Gillette would be the winners. (And the first one put TEAM out of the running so it arguably didn't work for them.) I honestly expected the other teams to stay out of it and just try to catch up while the two leaders dragged each other down.

We did play the diplo game ourselves, so I guess we can't complain, although our diplo was mostly focused on trying to get people to leave us alone. I do think our early peace deal with TEAM was a great example of a genuine mutually beneficial deal that would be impossible to implement in a no-diplo game. Still, my overall conclusion has to be (and you'll just have to trust me that I don't mean this in a bitter way) that playing Civ4 with diplo enabled is ultimately unfulfilling and bound to end in frustration.

Good luck making sense of our forum structure.

(It might actually be best to have an admin merge several of our threads, if anyone intends to read them.)

[Qgqqqqq]

Just took a look at your alliance forum and it makes me sad. Whole world aligned against us. I understand why Gillette is there i.e. to secure win, but why all the other teams? Just trying to spit in our cheerios or what?

I was basically lost from the start so I never really took a side. My one ambition was to secure game-long NAPs so I didn't have to do any fighting, with a bit of restoring TEAM to before the peace deal. Both of which I managed, if through gold rather then war
I thought Trolls was far into the lead in the initial stages, and only really realised their plight after the period where thestick played the turns, which is why I was open to the city deals. I had a very strange diplomacy this game, centred from my initial war with Trolls and knowing that I needed peace at any cost (and sorry about the second payment being late, totally forgot) and my paranoia when the Pirates seemed to be plotting war. That last was my one regret, as I ended up buying 15 maces for no real reason - there's a hilarious bit of diplo with Cornflakes that I don't think I really reported where I found out that they weren't coming for us and started threatening war
Those two things, bizarrely given the circumstances, basically meant my only real diplo and the only team that I had any real contact or rapport with was Trolls. I'm glad that they also weren't certain about the deal - I went away from that really worried that I'd been noobishly generous for the peace, so its good I didn't fail too badly there.

Oh and sorry to everyone for the countless times I was late or needed a pause, and even the occasional reload

[YossarianLives]

GG everyone, congratulations Old Harry! I just want to say that Old Harry not only conducted diplo masterfully, but he also played a really strong, solid game of civ. He recognized our strengths and made the most of them.

From my perspective, I was convinced Trolls would win and the dog pile was just a last ditch effort all the way until Plako quit.

[Cheater Hater]

Yeah, I also have no idea how Gillette would have had any shot against Trolls in a fair fight--keep in mind that a lot of our mainland defenses came from the rifles M3 lent us, and I don't think we could have won with just Smoothfoundland (SFL), especially since Trolls still had a production advantage between Police State and the Kremlin.
I also wonder what would have happened if Trolls would have offered us a long-term peace offer that was too good to refuse, and then overpowered M3 and Pirates--we would still have SFL in that instance, but there was still a lot of development left there (we had just started settling the inland as we were focusing on our economy and getting our own rifles), and having our army isolated would be a disadvantage in the next war. Even if the war continued, we assumed we would be at a distinct disadvantage once Trolls got Combustion. I may have just been under-estimating the impact of M3 and especially Pirates on the war though, as I wasn't actively involved with the war actions.