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

[Zed-F]

He's already called the game a farce once. If one's best competitor has been on autopilot for months because of lack of time to commit to the game and nobody volunteering to take over, I guess one could say that. I would say that a draw is more true to the actual state of the game, though, as well as more reflective of the game as of the time competition stopped being pursued vigorously by the front-runners.

[Whosit]

Maybe the game should just concede to Commodore for being the Ice King.

[spacetyrantxenu]

He must first complete his conquest of the north!

[Fintourist]

Reading an active lurker thread of an own game for a first time, pretty amusing. For example this was awesome (need to check the relevant threads for reactions..);

Commodore found out their neighbors are pindooter on turn 2.

DO IT!!!! I mean, I only need any one of 17 other players not named Yuri/mack to win. That seems a lot more likely than picking one team out of a lineup this wide. What could possibly go wrong?

But I reserve the right to get help finding the right avatar for you to use for a month, I'm not very creative with that kind of thing.

Cool.

Yuris wins, I get to pick your Avatar for one month.

If anyone else wins, I'll sport whatever you can find (with or without help ) as my Avatar for one month.

So who won...





About selecting tech in the early game:

Edit: Old Harry got bit by the same tech-select error! If this is really a difference between sequential and simul, that'd be VERY hard to catch in a sandbox.

Apparently we weren't the only ones And yeah, that works differently in PBEM, SP, hot seat games.. Totally surprised us..

Whatever, it's done. Little bit of a setback, but we'll be OK. Not nearly as big a setback as discovering Commodore's scout in PB8 was :P.

Well...someone get that man to a bar.

And now a Lewwger/Azza replay? This should really be titled Pitboss 13: The Grudginating.

Ha! That's exactly what we expected when we revealed the map there. How on earth did that continent become such a peaceful place for the first 150 turns...

We've had some embarrassing rollovers in this game, but here' a new low:

Suttree made peace with Mack in return for Barcelona. Right. What is the point of that? Happy to just let him win and get the game over with quicker Suttree?
...
AND THEY HAVE OPEN BORDERS AGAIN! This *&%$#&* is just gifting our front cites to Mackoti. I'm not happy about this.

That's pretty terrible sportsmanship. Worse than Nakor by a fair distance!

The Babylon thread has gotten really hard to read with all their sophomoric, uninformed criticism against Suttree for not gifting them his empire and against others for gifting their empire to other superpowers.

Ouch! I don't know if they're that bad, man. I think they're just frustrated- from their perspective, suttree gave up a long time ago and is putting up an enormous defense against them while gifting cities to mack. Meanwhile Pindicooter are looking to run away with the game after Nakor put up one of the weakest defenses ever seen.

Hmph. Yeah, we celebrated victories and good luck in our thread, but (especially I) also ranted about the bad fortune and disappointments. Of course I could also keep the thread without emotions, but I'm not sure if that would be better?

In this specific situation suttree did not do anything wrong technically and that is why we did not complain to game admin about it. It is/was also clear to us why suttree did it and from survival perspective it makes sense, but I'm sure you can still understand that it is frustrating to see a city gifted away in a peace deal when you have an army one tile away from it (mack had also) and generally have a highly defended border while the other side is empty and up for taking (there are of course reasons why things were like that).

It seems very obvious to me that all Commodore cares about right now is playing Sim-Canada.

Commodore! This was the case way too long! You should have joined the party earlier!

On a related note, still taking opinions (with associated reasoning) on the effect of the changes to tech costs and known tech bonus affecting research rates, particularly by the front runners such as mackoti, and those that are now tech laggards like Finharry.

TBH, I like the increased tech costs especially for these big games. It forces players to keep developing and acquire more land as one does not really get anywhere in the industrial era with 10 cities (I did not do any math so maybe those costs work in smaller version also thanks to map size modifies? My gut feeling is that in PBEM setup they might be too expensive). I think it's good that known-tech bonus was lowered in updated version of the mod, it might still be a bit too high in PB18. Not sure about that yet.

Apparently leaders weren't too happy about the tech costs but I think they were about to reach the end of the tech tree fast enough and space was not too far away anymore.

Team Babylon's success is also good for Mack- they'll be encouraged to spend more time thinking about making gains against Ichabod, and less coming up with insane plans to raze random Ottoman cities.

Insane plans is a pretty accurate description. But hey check our last turn report! At least those suicidal plans could have been excuted as well.

So what are the chances Finharry are going to understand commodore's diplo? It seems like they're pretty unsure in their thread

sounds like they nailed it:

Hmmm.. Interesting stuff.

I don't think Commodore is warning us, because I don't know how he would have gotten the info that dtay is attacking us in 25 turns. Dtay would not have asked him to do it, because we don't share border with Commodore. So yeah, I interpret it as an attack plan, but who knows how serious that is.

With Mackoti starting every post with a restated 'prisoner's dilemma" the attack may even happen... oh but by then mack will have tanks and bombers? Oh never mind. sorry FinHarry, thats probably a bad sign!

I'm loving how Old Fin have completely misinterpreted Commodore's diplo message about Dtay.

So... Did we miss something or get the messages..? I'll need to study Commodore's thread..

Wow, these guys succeded to bring me into "ban city transfer" camp...

Anyone with a quick recap of what happened? Was this all about the shrine city?



Ok.. first 1200 posts quickly checked..

[BRickAstley]

Yeah, that's buried somewhere, check Scoopin's thread I think.

Also, this game had over 2000 more posts in player threads than any other pitboss game in RB history. Now that is helped by the fact that there were 18 players, but the reporting seemed to be of good quality and quantity most all of the way around.

[dtay]

Sooo, still reading through everything, but one quick humorous reply: In case it has not become obvious over the last year, no I am not Sulla

I would like to second that the commodore/scoopin situation at the beginning is hilarious, and yet surprisingly led to game-long peaceful coexistence.

[BRickAstley]

I would like to second that the commodore/scoopin situation at the beginning is hilarious, and yet surprisingly led to game-long peaceful coexistence.

In retrospect, it's not too surprising: It's much easier to play peaceful and hope the other person won't start anything than to resign yourself to another long drawn out war.

[Fintourist]

I have to say this made me really angry again.

Haven't commented on my game in this thread.

But...

I'm getting a bit tired of my name being used over and over again.
Pindicator and Scooter outplayed me completely. I would have whipped everything if I'd gotten to Feudalism (just a few turns more) and had units (LB's) that could defend a bit against Knights.
I never got there, and was sick of it. But they played better. They won.
Therefore I didn't whip my complete civ into the ground.

Of course I did stupid things in the end with only 2 minute logins. Sure. Agreed. Point taken.
But I still think that whipping everything down to size 1 when you don't build anything that can actually do something is and never has been an obligation in these games.

So.

There's that.

BTW: I know I'll never be as good in this game as a lot of people on this site. I play for the fun of the game and a very small chance of doing something that matters. I don't have the time to invest hours and hours into single turns. I'm not that competitive. I just want to have some fun.

I was expecting an apology, but apparently you think that what you did was okay-ish and reasonable?

There were 17 others playing and hoping to have a good game. Have you ever enjoyed playing a board game, sports or whatever and then in the middle of the game someone gets angry and quits leaving everyone else thinking how to continue with a broken game? If everyone would act like this all the games at RB would be ended at latest around 50-80, because people would feel like their winning chances are gone and just quit. We are playing a game, which does not end when the first player loses and it is necessary that players still try to find new goals or at least somehow manage their turns when they have lost their chances for the 1st place. (Part of the reason why this game turned out awesome is that most of the people still kept trying and played until the end despite the fact that only couple of players really had a shot to win this)

Have you realized that there are people out there enjoying the competition and putting effort to perform well? Some spend more time some spend less. There are obviously lots of luck factors etc. that will affect the outcome, but the whole point of the game is that you try to play as good as you can and the result of the game is at least somewhat determined by how well one is playing. The way you quit the game and dropped the ball completely distorted the competition and overshadowed all the efforts that other players were making in order to improve their position.

No, I'm not saying that it can be expected that one puts enormous hours for fighting a losing battle, but I think that at least using promotions on your units and whipping defenders is reasonable. Actually thinking about the situation for 2 minutes would of course be nice as well. Other players who had to fight a defensive war manage to do that in 5-10 minutes. I am sure that even pindicooters did not want the war go like that even though they benefited from your lack of actions (I want to take nothing away from their great performance).

Just for the record, you said that whipping would not have done anything in your case. If you mean that you would not have won the war, that's true. But already producing archers or spears would have caused casualties, wounded attackers and slowed down the attack (which also can have a major impact for the overall outcome of the game)

If this way of behavior does not suit you, please announce it before it's too late so that a sub can be found or at the very least AI can defend.

Reaction from Dhalphir:

Even an axe or spear whipped helps. A spear is strength 8 against a strength 10 knight even before city defense bonuses.

This is not a discussion about your skill as a civ player - you probably outclass me in that regard anyway. It's about effort.

I don't buy your excuses of being "sick of it". It doesn't take more than two minutes to whip every city.

Gaspar:

There are a lot of bad civ players on this site, much like there are a lot of great ones. Welcome to the internet.

The only reason Nakor keeps getting picked on here is because scooter and pindicator documented it well in an entertaining thread in a well-watched game. I can think of many people who have been easy marks in many games and they don't get talked about so often. You have two choices - accept it and move on or be more restrictive in who is admitted to what game. But its not very becoming to keep beating the dead horse.

And Dhalphir, who the fuck appointed you guardian of fair play? You've got some compulsion to comment on every topic like you're the moral authority of RB instead of another mediocre player in a sea of them. Just shut up.

Novice:

That's pretty presumptious of you, Dhalphir. Nakor already explained that he had a strategic reason behind not whipping the cities - he wanted to wait for Feudalism.

That was a strategical mistake IMO, but there's a difference between honest mistakes and bad sportsmanship.

Cross-posting with Gaspar and Lewwyn.

Other than simply defending Nakor because he is otherwise a nice guy (which I'm not disagreeing here), I don't really understand the reactions to Dhalphir's comment. Maybe you weren't completely aware of the game situation? I'm not playing against Gaspar anywhere, but novice I'm sure that you and Krill are putting at least some kind of an effort in PB18 based on the amount of thread spam. Would it be okay for you if I would now say that I'm not interested in playing the game anymore and just gift all my cities to another civ?

Here are some relevant posts I found from pindicooter's thread just in case someone thinks I'm over-exaggerating:

Nakor just played. 5 minutes, 0 whips. I can login at lunch time and do things if it's obvious. However, I won't be home again and around until late tonight. I forget pindicator - did you say tonight is a bad time for you? Although given yesterday's brief pause, the turn will roll much later so we should be fine either way.

Nakor played and ended turn. 5 minutes, no whips. He's whipped twice during this entire war. Shrug. I can probably take a look in a couple hours.

I gave you the log yesterday so I won't do the usual blow-by-blow with full odds and whatnot, but it wasn't a particularly tough battle. Just 2 units.



Easy. Second battle was a walk. Also, kind of ridiculous.



Yes, that is the blue glow of UNUSED PROMOTIONS. Unbelievable. I know he's putting in minimum effort here, but I don't think this does the word minimum justice.

Blah. This is an incident that I was hoping to be just one of the bad moments that can be forgotten. I'm bringing this up because Nakor's post indicates that he does not realize the magnitude of damage that he did to the game and the same thing could happen again. I'm sorry for being so harsh and negative. I hope that this is mostly just a misunderstanding and I'm sure Nakor is a really nice guy. However, if the attitude towards "how to play things out when one has lost winning chances" only reaches "we agree to disagree" level of understanding, I don't think that playing an enjoyable game e.g. in PB18 is possible and we are probably just wasting our time there.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ha, I had forgotten about the avatar bet after a year. I think we'd have to call it a no result since the game wasn't conceded to Mackoti and he isn't being proclaimed the "winner".

[novice]

Maybe you weren't completely aware of the game situation?

I was quite unaware of the game situation, for example I didn't know about the unused promotions.

I would have whipped everything if I'd gotten to Feudalism (just a few turns more) and had units (LB's) that could defend a bit against Knights.

It's just that some players are simply this bad. That is still a different matter from

Would it be okay for you if I would now say that I'm not interested in playing the game anymore and just gift all my cities to another civ?

This is obviously not OK.

I think the outcome of PB18 will be hugely influenced by the actions of non-contenders. Not out of malice, but just because some players will benefit more than others regardless of what you do. So do your best and aim to play a game you can be proud of, like you managed admirably in this game.