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

[Zed-F]

I think Mack has been his own worst enemy since his setback at FinHarry's hands, and so don't find his complaints in regard to his rivals' conquest prospects compared to his own to be very compelling. He's constantly annoying his neighbors but not really getting any substantial gains for his efforts, because he keeps changing the target of his aggression; he should just pick one decisive thing and do that. Compared to his lack of decisiveness, the relative ease of conquering m_h vs Nakor is really small potatoes.

[pindicator]

Agree with Zed. Mack is seriously overestimating scooter's position. Sure, if scooter gets left alone and I'd he gains a desire to max out his position he could eventually catch up. But from those demos I would guess scooter is still behind in tech compared to mack and Commodore and maybe even plako by now.

Also, it looks like Scooter's decision to go after Lewwyn was the right one (although he got seriously lucky in the execution). Mack needs to use his MFG to take out FinHarry, but he doesn't seem to have the will to take on a tough fight. Instead he's going around the world looking for easy victories and making enemies all over.

[Krill]

I'm sure that many people could analyse mackoti's position and the decisions he has made but trying to limit it to the most basic concept is that mackoti has constantly focused on present advantages rather than future strengths in how he has developed his civ, but has focused on trying to extend the game with his actions by giving NAP and taking forced peace for minor concessions.

[Ichabod]

What are the chances of Mack having friends, though, even if he acts like a good boy? He's number 1 in score and demos and he's the one more likely to win. Why would anyone want to ally with him? Especially considering that everyone that helps the number 1 player usually gets massacred in the lurker thread and by the general opinion...

I was nice to FinHarry (and they were nice to me) through the whole game and they still attacked me (I'm not complaining, by the way, it was their prerrogative). And that's considering I didn't have any chance to win. So, what can the leader of the scoreboard hope to achieve by being nice?

On a different subject, I guess I should have used the AI-Diplo NAPs that everyone has running around. That's probably what made FinHarry and dtay so safe to attack me, they probably had a NAP with each other and FinHarry had one with Mack, most likely... (now I'm complaining, though I admit it was within the - possible interpretation of the - rules. I also accepted fish for fish deals that were probably trying to say "let's be friends", so I'm a bit guilty of this AI diplo attempts myself. Although one could argue that fish-for-fish is very different from the 40 turn NAPs through gold trade - if you want proof, I had a fish-for-fish deal with FinHarry when they attacked me. No one will say they broke a NAP like people would say if we had one of those gold NAPs)

In a sense, the "don't be a jerk" rule actually hurts some of the players and ends up being a very unfair rule. I'd never do Gold-NAPs, peace time double moves, cheesy gifts (plako complained about me giving a city for peace to FinHarry, but I needed that NAP - they would take the city anyway and this way I could at least get my sea safe. What he didn't say, at least I didn't see it in his thread (I admit I just skimmed through it), is that he tried to buy that same city from me in that exact same turn, for 400g or something - so, giving cities for peace is bad, but selling cities under threat of capture is okay, it seems), any focused attempt to communicate meaning through AI diplo (like: "let's attack X player in X turns" or something - maybe not qualitatively different than fish-for-fish, but definitely quantitatively different, enough to fall under a different step on the jerkness scale), and so on. So, yeah, the rule actually makes my game way different from other players' games, in a way that I can't do anything about (because it's not a decision by the game admin that will make me change my concept of "jerk").

Here's the post by plako that I refered above, by the way:

Old Harry now owns the big island north from me. Ichabod had non-existent defenses there. Lastly he gifted size 16 city to Old Harry against peace. Managing and keeping large nation safe after Astronomy is hard, but Ichabod really didn't even try here . Too many incidents like this in this game. I'm glad city gifts are banned in PB18. In this case Old Harry had no chance to continue towards Ichabod's main land (He has Huge army there). The difference between gifting and capturing the city is huge to Old Harry, but wouldn't be much for Ichabod.

[Ichabod]

I feel the need to add that, in the end, it is just a game, so it doesn't matter that much. Just wanted to give my 2cents on the issues I've seen discussed here.

[Mardoc]

I think part of Mack's pessimism is that he's comparing himself to the world. He's second or third in a number of categories - but always to someone else than the last category. Commodore has more commerce, plako has more cities, Scooter has better targets - but they all have weaknesses, too, that Mack's not looking at. None of them has a well-rounded empire as strong as his. But he's not looking at it that way.

I'm starting to think I like Commodore's chances the most, mostly due to morale. Him or plako.

@Ichabod: what Mack could achieve, I think, is non-interference. He's got enough of a military and navy that no one can really profit from war against him. But he's pushing people, and maybe some of them will decide they don't need profit, just the satisfaction of revenge.

I do agree with you about the diplo moves. If you're going to try to circumvent the rules like that, just don't bother declaring 'only AI diplo' in the first place. But I don't have any idea how to change that aside from Krill's suggestion of banning city trades. Which, come to think, might make the coded diplo harder, at least, by making the geographic things harder to communicate.

[Krill]

Honestly I hate that people are thinking about using gold as NAP. I don't particularly want to play another AI diplo game because the players have started to ascribe meaning to specific offers. I don't know what to do about it though.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Outlaw using gold to convey numbers? Similar to not using city names to spell out messages, so it has precedent. The eventual outcome of what Mack is doing(offering NAPs and then following through on them) is pseudo full diplo, which would suck.

[pindicator]

Honestly I hate that people are thinking about using gold as NAP. I don't particularly want to play another AI diplo game because the players have started to ascribe meaning to specific offers. I don't know what to do about it though.

Agree with you there. I think one of the big driving factors of starting AI Diplo games was to get away from NAPs. Having them creep back in is not fun to see.

[Krill]

Honestly I hate that people are thinking about using gold as NAP. I don't particularly want to play another AI diplo game because the players have started to ascribe meaning to specific offers. I don't know what to do about it though.

Agree with you there. I think one of the big driving factors of starting AI Diplo games was to get away from NAPs. Having them creep back in is not fun to see.

I look forward to the next new diplo method but I suspect it may be no diplo whatsoever except cease fires.