[LURKERS] Sweet 16: Civ Party Fun Time and Philosophical Debate

[Hesmyrr]

So this is the pitboss where smurfs came to die.

[SevenSpirits]

Serdoa, I'm sure you are sick of hearing this and rightfully so, but I want to explain why I really disliked this map.

1) Clearly defined territory. You're not going to settle on someone else's continent. Your own continent has a single, only mildly negotiable border in it. It's pretty boring.

2) Not enough neighbors. This is tied to the first point. The game will just play out in a more interesting way if players have more than one (overland) neighbor to worry about.

3) "Duel" starts. In theory this might work out in a game. In practice, it means that the game is all about getting lucky with your neighbor and other players getting unlucky. Again, if people had multiple neighbors, this doesn't happen.

4) Some "duel" starts and 4 people on a larger continent. In theory being on this continent is just better than being on a duel continent. That's because with multiple neighbors you have more incentive to hold back on aggression, whereas on the duel continents, to some extent you're playing a zero-sum game between you and your co-inhabitant. In practice, maybe it swings the other way: If you're conquering a neighbor, it's better to then be along than to face off against another player who also conquered a neighbor on the same landmass. Of course, maybe it will swing even further back to the first way. Conquering 3 neighbors is even better than conquering 1. No matter how it plays out, it's all about who you are next to. There is just the luck of where you are placed in relation to the other players. This luck is exacerbated so much by a map which has these equally-sized, clearly delineated continents with players evenly parceled out over them.

5) Tropical flat climate. It seemed to be this map was a bit too green and also not hilly enough. Production was so hard to come by and that really hurt with no marble or stone. I guess some variation from the norm is nice, but this particular variation has been overdone for me.

6) Mirrored but not fair. This is a psychological thing, but it's really annoying to see that the map is kind of mirrored (e.g. those guys have a continent the same shape and size as we do, with a slightly different set of luxuries, similar capitals, etc) but not actually balanced. I saw some discussion about Gavagai's start being unintentionally strong but the one that jumped out at me was Mikehendi's. SERIOUSLY? That's like retep's start except the corn is riverside, the fur is replaced with ivory, and he's on a plains hill. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. And I know it's not that you buffed all the starts on that continent because Gaspar, his neighbor, has a start that's a tiny bit worse than ours.

[SevenSpirits]

I can see it both ways. It's definitely not ideal and maybe even a little bit dastardly to sign up late if your skill level is significantly different from the average (due to very high or very low skill). That said there was no rule about player skill in this game, and those signing up had an opportunity to arrange for such a restriction prior to confirming their participation.

I see Bob's point too about pitboss games not starting too often, but at a certain point I fall back on the RB 'play the hand you're dealt.'

I would have preferred to sign up for a more-veteran pitboss, and it took Krill's prompting for me to sign up. But I certainly don't feel bad about it. Which pitboss was I supposed to sign up for instead?

PB4 and earlier: didn't want to play PBs yet
PB5: RBmod, not very interested
PB6: Team game, not interested at the time
PB7: Hey, I DID sign up for this one
PB8: RBmod, not very interested
PB9: Explicit greens game
PB10: I organized it and signed up for it
PB11: Explicit greens game
PB12: I opted not to as the field was pretty green
PB13: RBmod, not very interested
PB14: Joke game with diplo
PB15: RBmod, not very interested
PB16: Field didn't look TOO green to me and I was willing to sign up and play as a dumb leader like Montezuma

So it's not just that there haven't been a lot of options recently, there haven't been a lot of PBs for me to sign up for EVER. And, I did try to sign up in a way that I could easily and politely be denied the spot.

[Krill]

If people don't go and sign up for a ToW game I'm in favour of conscription.

[Gaspar]

Alright, I've tried to very gracious and accommodating at the endgame here but a bunch of you can seriously go and fuck yourselves.

I'm really sorry that the lurkers desperately wanted to see if Sullla's 178th replay of his PB2 masterpiece could have toppled Seven's empire but 1. It couldn't have and 2. As a player, my job is to do the best thing for my empire. You guys have this misguided notion that somehow unless you're winning you're not allowed to go to war. Well, here's the deal - both of my neighbors - FIN/ORG and PHI/FIN, I might add - had seriously outteched us. And lookie here, games over and I lost a grand total of zero cities to them. Meanwhile, I razed or captured 5 of theirs. Those razes/captures allowed us to improve our border situation on both counts, adding to our long-term survival. Look, this isn't SP - tech does not uber alles in war. Numbers uber alles.

Gavagai played us to a draw which was largely beneficial to him as ahead - he played a better game than us, though I would argue flawed.

Mike/Sulla? A huge part of his lead was an insane farmer's gambit. If I can call him on that and don't - well, I don't think I'm doing my job as a player.

But mackoti, scooter, Catwalk, Serdoa - the four of you all basically accused me of being a poor sport and a game thrower at least once. All four of you would have lost this game as well, one. And all four of you can go and fuck yourselves.

[scooter]

But mackoti, scooter, Catwalk, Serdoa - the four of you all basically accused me of being a poor sport and a game thrower at least once. All four of you would have lost this game as well, one. And all four of you can go and fuck yourselves.

Happy to talk about this via chat when I get a chance, but I really don't believe I ever did that. I think this is the exchange in question?

I'm kinda hoping Gaspar/Noble leave Sullla alone, mostly because I'd like to see a true horizontal vs vertical scenario actually play out. I still think Seven wins this game, but I'd rather that be decided by the decisions of Seven and Sullla rather than Gaspar/Noble.

Right. So convert everyone else to AI and let them go at it? Civ 4 isn't played in a vacuum. The decision by NobleGas to attack affects Sullla as much as the decision not to attack affects Sullla.

..? I'm not saying anywhere in there what anyone SHOULD do. It's Civ, do what you want. I don't think they're making a good decision at all, but they are more than welcome to make it. Just saying that I was rooting for them not attacking as a lurker who is only following this game for pure entertainment.

I expressed that I was rooting for you to not make the move you did, and I expressed that I didn't think you made the best decision at the time. I think those comments are fair game, and the latter is could definitely be an incorrect opinion on my part. Rooting for you to do something different so that the game can be more entertaining for me to watch is what lurkers do.

I think that's pretty different from accusing you of throwing the game or being a poor sport, and I don't think you did either. If there's something worse that I said in here that I'm forgetting, I'm happy to answer for that too.

[Gavagai]

For the record, I think that Gaspar's second war (with Mike) was the right call in contrast to his first war (with me), though pretty desperate. Mike was one tech from Muskets and two tech from Cuirs and after Bantams gone Gaspar was his best target (backward tech and lots of useful wonders). What else could he do in this situation but try to weaken Mike via a pre-emptive attack?

[NobleHelium]

All right well, I think smurfing is ridiculous and offensive behavior. What right do you have to cause all future newbies on RB to be viewed with suspicion? I once signed up on the Paradox forums after having viewed a number of threads, and made some inside jokes that I had gained knowledge of from reading the threads. I was called a sockpuppet for a good several days and I had to link to my decade-long history of using this username on the internet as defense. That was not a good feeling. It was kind of funny the first time, and at least that was a diplomacy game, but to do it twice is just ridiculous. Not only that, you used someone else's identity and claimed to be that person. That's just unethical. Or immoral. It's so outrageous that I don't even know whether it's immoral or unethical! Oh and you posted in the lurker thread. It doesn't matter whether there was any spoiler material in the thread at that point, many people start posting plans immediately and lurkers often comment on that. And if you say that you didn't read anything in the thread, well then clearly everyone should be allowed to post to a thread without actually reading it then.

No, I don't like Commodore smurfing either, and I don't think there are any excuses for using a smurf in a regular game. If you want an anonymous game, that's perfectly fine - you can propose one. Of course, proposing such a game would reveal that you want to play in it, so I hereby volunteer to organize an anonymous game for anyone who is interested in such a game. PM me if you are interested.

But Commodore's reasons for smurfing are at least better than Sulla's. Now I'm working off the assumption that your reasons for smurfing in this game are the same as PB4 - you think people are going to scrutinize you and dogpile you as soon as you join the game. Well, quite frankly, that doesn't happen. The consensus best player in every game does not get dogpiled. In fact, I'm not sure if they've ever been dogpiled since PB2. People are less likely to attack good players, because they don't think they can win.

Everyone carries the burden of their own reputation. My reputation is that I say everything curtly, I remember obscure game mechanics, and that I correct people all the time and some people get offended because of that. Well, guess what? I probably only correct about 10% of the mistakes that I see. And I correct people because I'm trying to help them, not because I think it's funny. If you get offended when I correct you, I'll just stop correcting you - it's your loss. Commodore's reputation is that he is a crazy warmonger that gets into a grudge match with his neighbor every game. Your reputation is that you play a vertical expansion game that undervalues courthouses and wonders and overvalues tech. Oh and that you're afraid of your reputation.

And, I'm sorry to say, but you're not the best player on Realms Beyond. There, I said it.

[Dhalphir]

I don't think realistic dogpiles are even achievable in a game without diplo.

[Bobchillingworth]

They are, just really difficult / unlikely to pull off. Check out FFH PBEM XXI in the Completed Games section sometime. That game saw every other nation dogpile and eventually overwhelm the runaway civ(s) in an astoundingly well-coordinated military effort considering the ban on diplomatic communication (there was a no-diplo banter thread). Granted it used FFH, but I don't think the mod differences were particularly relevant there.


That's just about the only example I can think of, though. Might be some BTS no-diplo games where a couple civs have torn apart a weak team, with one joining out of opportunism, but dogpiles against game leaders are rare even with diplomacy (and successful efforts almost unheard of). You essentially need a group of people to all serendipitously be on the same wavelength, and/or reading and reacting to the state of the game in the same fashion.