[NO PLAYERS] The Kibitzer Klub: PB13 Map & Lurkers

[Bacchus]

You defend like a madman because you probably don't want your cities to be taken from you, not because you feel like your defense is going to change the outcome in the end.

No, actually, I couldn't care less for my cities for their own sake. I do play for the outcome, because I view making the conquest as difficult and the prize as sour as possible to the attacker firstly as a matter of fairness to other players, secondly as a matter of metagame as I don't want to be attacked in the future and thirdly as this being the only intelligible and measurable goal on which I can focus what scarce mental faculties I have. I really don't see any other goal I could get behind as a defender in such an asymmetric conflict, but it would be quite fun to hear out alternatives. The only semi-viable I thought of was maximizing the turns of survival, but because the way to do so is to plant a bunch of cities around the polar circles and generally marginal land, it felt compeltely arbitrary and gamey to me, as well as unfair to the other contenders (if I was pursuing this goal, I would only build as many units as required to safeguard the cities from a Cavalry attack, knowing that they would fall to Cannons).

Your enemy doesn't expect you to pillage all your tiles in a hopeless, inevitable situation like you were in.

Surely, after this whole discussion he does

If you doubt me go ask him, I'm sure he'd be having more fun if he wasn't facing the prospect of building everything from nearly zero in your former territory.

I really don't see why this should even enter into my decision-making. Maybe I should have just gifted the whole thing to him, that way he gets to have fun, and I don't have to play out the fairly boring defense turns. Everybody wins! Sorry for being facetious here, but the very suggestions that you should base your troop movements, build orders and research on what other players might find more enjoyable is too strange to comment on. Besides, the whole point of playing at RB is to be challenged, no?

"if it can't help you and only hurts the enemy, it isn't a sporting behavior"

This is going back to Gavagai's point — building units in your last city, even though they cannot prevent your destruction, but can only deal a bit more damage to the attacker qualifies as "unsporting behaviour". In fact, a whole bunch of actions qualify as such, the fact that you separate self-pillaging specifically is only down to personal preference, the logic behind it is exactly the same as pressing the "fortify" button, to ensure that, once I'm dead, the attacker at least has to heal or is more vulnerable to counter-attack. Actually, as you can see from this very game — it's a relevant game-wide consideration. I might be eliminated, but my effect on the game persists, and I am quite alive enough to see it and care about it.

On the jerkishness, I can only say again that I'm happy to play in games with clear honour rules placing this, or indeed any other action out of bounds. Enough people have said they see nothing objectionable in self-pillaging and whipping that you should take a step back and consider whether insisting that someone behaved like a jerk is reasonable.

[BRickAstley]

Question: in pb5 when scooter was finishing me off, I was very behind and doomed. But I did various stuff to delay that as much as possible and temporally recapture cities and such, with no hope of holding them or surviving.

Is that bad manner since I had no hope of survival and was just being a thorn to conquer?

I also whipped in scouts for bodies to make it take longer for my cities to fall. Is that bad manner?

[MindyMcCready]

Preview Edit: Mindy, I think you're wrong. Refraining from pillaging yourself when in a doomed position isn't rolling over at all. Defend as hard as you can, then die as best you can. Never surrender. But don't be a jerk while you die.

Fair enough. I consider scorched earth a valid tactic but I agree that it should have some tangible benefit to the defender in ETA to death or in ability to survive a future conflict.

I'm 100% of scorched earth as long as I'm not suffering from a terminal case of invasion. Deny the enemy anything he can use against me. But if I'm dead anyway, that's where it becomes a petty and spiteful action, IMO.

Unrelated, when are you going to sign up for one of these games? I'm sure that several people would jump at the chance to dedlurk you. (WilliamLP and AT come to mind! )

Not soon . I don't think that I could meet the PYFT requirement. The kids are signed up for too many evening classes. Maybe Civ6.

Yeah, WLP or AT lurking me. :LOL: I do wonder if they'd counsel peace as per their preference or if they'd want to watch me hit something while they're safely on the sidelines. It's easy to want war when you're lurking since you lack the whole 'my cities are growing up and productive' thing.

[Krill]

Would people really care if everyone agreed to whip only once a turn (and that they could not move away from the item whipped) and that pillaging non-resource tiles shouldn't happen?

Ultimately, I think most people care that players try to defend and don't give up stuff for free like Nakor basically did. I don't think they care as much that the prize be spiked, simply being costly to kill is enough to justify any concept of fairness and pillaging cottages isn't necessary.

[MindyMcCready]

Question: in pb5 when scooter was finishing me off, I was very behind and doomed. But I did various stuff to delay that as much as possible and temporally recapture cities and such, with no hope of holding them or surviving.

Is that bad manner since I had no hope of survival and was just being a thorn to conquer?

I also whipped in scouts for bodies to make it take longer for my cities to fall. Is that bad manner?

You were awesome in that game.

[Krill]

@Pindicator and BGN:

If Gavagai's arguments are really straw men, can you stand back for a second and earnestly explain the difference between having a garrison that is guaranteed to be wiped out in your last city, and having deleted that garrison? Seems to me, the only difference is how much damage the attacker will take. That is, the only reason to keep that garrison there, rather than delete it, is to damage the attacker with no benefit to yourself, as you are equally dead whether some attacking units were damaged in the attack or not.

Interestingly enough, the last city isn't the best example to use: if it is an obvious loss on your part (and no one is there to take advantage of damaged units once you are dead) you should actually delete your units if you want to cause as much damage as possible, because you are limiting your opponents opportunity to gain XP and produce a GG.

[Bacchus]

Games have rules. In basketball, is it arbitrary that players are expected to bounce the ball to run around with it? Perhaps, but it is an accepted rule of the game that all players must adhere to.

The whole point of this discussion is to establish whether there should even be a general honour rule against actions of this sort. I said from the start that I wouldn't mind there being such. At the moment there isn't, nor is the suggestion that the should be is anything close to being universally accepted.

On the injury question — depends on the sport. You can hit someone strongly on the head if it's boxing, not so if it's soccer. It is a part of a community's deliberation to determine exactly what sport we are playing, but I sure am not going to be apologetic for somebody's feelings being hurt for entering a boxing ring with soccer expectations. We play the game that's installed, the options I took do not use any exploit or bug and are considered by enough people perfectly unobjectionable. If we determine that the next match is soccer, rather than boxing, then sure punching should be avoided and if someone persists on punching, he should be reprimanded and penalized.

[Bacchus]

you should actually delete your units if you want to cause as much damage as possible, because you are limiting your opponents opportunity to gain XP and produce a GG.

I actually thought about that, and I'm still not sure whether the one action or the other was the correct one. This was also the reason I used ancient-era units to pillage, rather than to defend and largely deleted them afterwards.

EDIT: But again, BGN, Xenu and co would say that I shouldn't even be weighing the damage to the attacker's units against his XP gain, I should rather.... I'm not actually even sure what is the alternative being suggested here. Which is partly why this whole discussion is quite tiring.

[MindyMcCready]

Would people really care if everyone agreed to whip only once a turn (and that they could not move away from the item whipped) and that pillaging non-resource tiles shouldn't happen?

Ultimately, I think most people care that players try to defend and don't give up stuff for free like Nakor basically did. I don't think they care as much that the prize be spiked, simply being costly to kill is enough to justify any concept of fairness and pillaging cottages isn't necessary.

Yep, we're really getting into the whole Type1 vs Type2 error thing.

The worse play is to defend inadequately. So you have to allow for a bit of 'overdefending' and not come down too hard on it.

[Gavagai]

Would people really care if everyone agreed to whip only once a turn (and that they could not move away from the item whipped) and that pillaging non-resource tiles shouldn't happen?

Ultimately, I think most people care that players try to defend and don't give up stuff for free like Nakor basically did. I don't think they care as much that the prize be spiked, simply being costly to kill is enough to justify any concept of fairness and pillaging cottages isn't necessary.

There are obscure situations when whipping more than once per turn can make sense but they can be easily defined away. Given that, we can ban spite-whipping without much trouble, I would be perfectly OK with that.
Regarding ban on pillaging - I don't really understand that. There are a lot of instances when pillaging your own cottages can make a lot of sense. For example, you have an important city threatened and in a desperate need for some upgrade cash. And I don't think anyone can object against pillaging which Zulu team did in PB8 when they were on retreat but not really dying. So, I would be against such ban.