[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[WilliamLP]

If most of you guys don't want to keep playing, why don't you just call the game a draw or simply abandon it?

I'm not going to post any diplo in the tech thread, and I'm not sure if Bob is attempting to step in as a mediator or what but my stance:

- I believe this game is basically at an impasse at this point, where of me, Wetbandit, or Retep, any one of us could make either of the other two win. And maybe Boldly or perhaps Molach could as well.
- I'm happy to play to space victory.
- But, if neither Retep or Wetbandit is getting much joy out of this game, I'd be happy to call it an unstable tie and get on with life. (But, not as a concession to Retep yet.)

[Bobchillingworth]

Without naming names, "I am tired of this game" has been a common sentiment in player threads. Noble suggested in the lurker thread that an outside observer hint that there was no obligation for the game to continue if many of the players were no longer having fun. So when Xenu posted:

I don't mind leaving the timer at some ridiculously long setting so that I don't have to play turns more than a few times a week

I figured I'd try to nudge you guys into starting a conversation about possibly ending a game which seems to have been missing its spark for a while now.


If you would be happy with a draw, tie, whatever you want to call it, you might want to consider reaching out to your opponents to see if anyone wants to continue. I fear I've already pushed the bounds of lurker interaction too far, but it's painful watching multiple people complain about having to invest time in a game nobody particularly cares for.

[WilliamLP]

Well, it looks like we've got enough interest to keep going with this game. But what I wasn't reading was "oh my god, how could you even think of calling this early, I need to play!!"

Anyway, delaying war long enough, I don't think even I can get it wrong!








John Dodge will fall next turn. Horace Dodge hopefully will too. There's only 1 archer in the city, and I have 2 camels (1 a little wounded) and a horse that can hit it. If he whips a longbow and gets a good die roll it may delay Kuro's fate by 1 turn.

Are cities like this even worth the settler and effort?




I'm kind of thinking "no" since coast as non-financial is basically junk. (Seven's analysis that 1 pop costs, basically, 2F1C, opened my eyes to this.) But I'm going to settle the hill site just to do back-of-envelope analysis on finances before and after, more than anything else.

Anyway, I may need to re-think this whole game again after Kuro is finished.

The fun option is a tank roll over Oxy (). But if I'm going to do that, I might as well just formally concede to Retep since I'm virtually sure he'd get to space first. I have no idea how to play Civ in the late game, this much should be clear to all readers. I wonder if there's a realistic way to stop a spaceship against a vigilant opponent, while a little behind in tech. (I do know about the Commando move against Rego in PB1.)

[Plunder]

well, we could think about pillaging all the island towns of retep, they are hard to reinforce... maybe we can team up with boldy and/or wetbandit?
that would at least hurt retep's economy quite a bit.

[WilliamLP]

It's a thought anyway! It might be the option that makes this game most interesting to lurkers, heh. But...

- Retep has airships on patrol on his islands. Nothing we do is going to be that much of a surprise.
- He still has a tech lead, and a production lead.
- Hitting the islands really doesn't even hurt him very much, or help us very much.
- Bandit siding with us is absolutely not the rational thing to do, unless we're actually losing, since he is very close to be in a position to potentially win, himself. (And Xenu are pretty clear that they don't want to play king-maker in this game, which taking any side would mean.)
- It would ignite world war. Fighting could occur in anywhere in a rather massive area. This seems like a hell of a lot of work, every day.

On the other hand, I want to see what our tech rate is like vs Retep when we have factories and coal plants everywhere they matter. If we're a little ahead, the burden would be on him to stop us before the space race. If not, the burden is on us.

I'm warming up to the idea that if we're doing nothing, we might as well concede, unless we have a clear plan to shake something up and catch up.

As a side note, the race to Cristo with Bandit may be pretty important. (I go on the theory that if a wonder is good enough to be banned in some games, we should probably build it. ) Retep might even be considering it (as Spiritual) just for denial value.

[WilliamLP]

There wasn't much left to take out. I lost a sacrificial horse archer and a cannon which had 70% odds, but that's the end.

Kuro, if you read this I hope I didn't say anything personal earlier in the thread.




I can rename cities now...

But I stand by the fact that an unimproved capital clam at this point in the game can have no justification... Use as a worker and settler pump (despite being Joao), plan more tile overlap, double and triple-whip the heck out of it, repurpose into the most fantastic HE site ever, do something with that!




I assume Retep's power rise is most likely prudent defense. (We're now "friendly" neighbours.)

The game theory here is still kind of messed up, in the three way balance of power. If Retep wants to attack, my move would be to go total war on him and try to make him lose the game, since my chances would be dead anyway. I even think this is a rational move, in an iterated series of games.

What I don't get is Xenu and Boldly's insistence on playing turns longer than one hour when they hate this game. I guess it's kind of admirable in a way, to try to the end, but I don't think anyone would fault them for checking out and just building up defense and clicking next turn every day with extremely basic micro.

[Plunder]

I wonder if games get more interesting when there is a complete ranking of the players at the end of the game, rather than just a single winner.
It might provide some incentive for people that are not expected to win the game to keep playing. Maybe just to end up at place 3 instead of 4....

Or we could move a massive stack though boldies territory and sneak attack an important city of him.... :P

But who knows... maybe retep has just as little experience with the modern age as we have....

[Catwalk]

I wonder if games get more interesting when there is a complete ranking of the players at the end of the game, rather than just a single winner.
It might provide some incentive for people that are not expected to win the game to keep playing. Maybe just to end up at place 3 instead of 4....

I agree completely with this sentiment. If there was a reasonably practical and fair way to do it, such as through lurker votes, it'd be a great idea. Do you think it makes for a better game if a losing player does everything he can to hinder his worst enemy, or clings on to power for as long as possible?

[WilliamLP]

I wonder if games get more interesting when there is a complete ranking of the players at the end of the game, rather than just a single winner.
It might provide some incentive for people that are not expected to win the game to keep playing. Maybe just to end up at place 3 instead of 4....

I think that's a pretty cool idea! I'm sure a panel of lurkers could be easily found to rank the players at the end (other than the winner) by some set of criteria.

Or we could move a massive stack though boldies territory and sneak attack an important city of him.... :P

There's no land access through Boldly. Retep is nearly on his own island other than the long land connection over the far north, over many miles of arctic land.

We're not that far behind in tech. Retep is up Electricity, which is 4 turns for us. Other than that he has Democracy (pretty cheap at this point) and we have some insignificant techs like music, and horseback riding. (He actually never researched this!) It's not inconceivable that we could use a land advantage to get a research rate advantage and catch up between now and launch.

The way I'm thinking of this game, is that if Retep attacks, we'd switch to full war on him, for the mutually assured destruction metagame. And I think there's a good chance he'd do that to us too.

He does have more power than us as of now. And he's massing at an awkard time, when we're putting up factories and coal plants. I don't know if he's planning an attack or not. Going for Boldly (again) or Suttree might not be a bad move for him. We do have to be careful that he's not massing a bunch of destroyers somewhere to hit out of the fog, though.

[WilliamLP]

Still more stumbling around in the industrial age... Nobody ever reports this far so I don't have much of a clue how to play.

My idea is basically to saturate everything (that isn't a village or town) with SP workshops (with some water and windmills in there), then eventually work enough wealth to run the slider at 100% science. And work enough food for cities to work all their tiles, but not worry about specialists.

I don't really know how much military I need. We don't want to be extremely behind, obviously. I'm happy to build some tanks and bombers when I have them, if only to try and save Oxy from his hostage crisis situation.




It's a pretty big lead in land area, and growing in food. I'm building factories and coal plants right now but GNP will jump quite a bit when we can switch back to some more wealth builds.

Retep is showing Radio, which could be to try and deny Cristo. I don't know what Bandit is on Artillery for. I don't think he could be planning to attack us, because he wants to play this game out to the end, and attacking would probably be conceding to Retep. Maybe he wants to attack Molach eventually? I'd go flight before artillery, but then I don't know how to play this era at all, other from some comp stomps many years ago.