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

[Old Harry]

[Dhalphir]

I was very unhappy about the negative reaction many lurkers had to Bacchus' actions when Plako was invading.

As far as I'm concerned, scorched earth should be the only acceptable strategy when you are in a fight you absolutely cannot win. Taking it as far as pillaging your own improvements is an extra step that not everybody is going to have the inclination to put in the time to do, but I thought at the time (and still do) that it was an admirable effort.

A large part of why Plako always sat slightly behind Mackoti and Scooter is that both Scooter and Mackoti got gifted half of a neighbouring empire - multiple free wonders for Mackoti from M_H, and multiple free large cities with conveniently built infrastructure from Nakor to Scooter.

Plako did not get any of that - Although he did beat me fairly easily, he still ground through sixty longbows and got no city larger than size 2 when he did capture them. And we know what Bacchus did.

I'll reiterate - as far as I'm concerned, there's no good reason not to employ scorched earth when you are in a fight to the death and don't expect to win. And before you chime in with your nonsense, Gaspar, that has NOTHING to do with being a bad player or under-skilled compared to the rest of the playing field.

[mackoti]

I was very unhappy about the negative reaction many lurkers had to Bacchus' actions when Plako was invading.

As far as I'm concerned, scorched earth should be the only acceptable strategy when you are in a fight you absolutely cannot win. Taking it as far as pillaging your own improvements is an extra step that not everybody is going to have the inclination to put in the time to do, but I thought at the time (and still do) that it was an admirable effort.

A large part of why Plako always sat slightly behind Mackoti and Scooter is that both Scooter and Mackoti got gifted half of a neighbouring empire - multiple free wonders for Mackoti from M_H, and multiple free large cities with conveniently built infrastructure from Nakor to Scooter.

Plako did not get any of that - Although he did beat me fairly easily, he still ground through sixty longbows and got no city larger than size 2 when he did capture them. And we know what Bacchus did.

I'll reiterate - as far as I'm concerned, there's no good reason not to employ scorched earth when you are in a fight to the death and don't expect to win. And before you chime in with your nonsense, Gaspar, that has NOTHING to do with being a bad player or under-skilled compared to the rest of the playing field.

First of all lets say he true, plako wasnt slightly light behind me and scooter, was serious behind if he got a wonder was just becasue me or scooter didnt need that, about me getting superwonders is not very true again i got Sp which was useleful like nothing and colosus whci was useful but i had to make it abolete very fast casue of scooter.Me and scooter figted alot and used loads of resurces to anihilate reciproc if wasnt that game would have been ended vay sooner.

Second, dont foul you fighted beter then Mh, for example i seen you moving LBsow from cities(if i am wrong and was bachus sorry about saying this) to flat land only to be destroyed things which Mh didnt do and he whiped and fighted as hard as he could.And btw all cities which i got were size 1-2 and i got 6 cotages if not less from mh so i think your argument is prety null.

Why plako didnt atacked earlier and to get no MoM or GLH, becasue he decided so.Saying what you say is that my position was because of mh whcih isnt true at all, was becasue how i played and what decision took.Perhaps if i was instead of plako i would eliminated you and bachus (which played a strange game too) way sooner having that land faster.

[Fintourist]

about me getting superwonders is not very true again i got Sp which was useleful like nothing and colosus whci was useful but i had to make it abolete very fast casue of scooter.

Oh, I think free religion from Paya was very nice for you so I would not underestimate it.

Second, dont foul you fighted beter then Mh, for example i seen you moving LBsow from cities(if i am wrong and was bachus sorry about saying this) to flat land only to be destroyed things which Mh didnt do and he whiped and fighted as hard as he could.And btw all cities which i got were size 1-2 and i got 6 cotages if not less from mh so i think your argument is prety null.

After being attacked m_h surely played well and did what he could. The fact that m_h ignored your military build-up was the crucial point here. In hindsight your investment into military that early was your biggest risk, and also the game-winning move. Your climbing power was visible pretty early, m_h had enough EPs to see it and also had more than enough time to react, but I guess he decided to try a farmers gambit or just did not pay enough attention.

Here are couple of funny pieces from our turn reports. You can smell our desperation

Turn 115:

mostly_harmless still hasn't built any military, so offering this might encourage him to whip a bit harder...


You can see that his border is totally screwed.


You can see m_h's chariot here, he's got to realise what Yurimack are up to by now
Power - come on m_h!

Turn 117:

m_h built Shewedagon Paya in what will be YuriMack territory very soon


Power

On T118 the attack actually happened, m_h played early, you got the 2nd split, which meant that you managed to take 4 cities before they could produce a single unit. At that point the war was already won and you just had to grind through the units at m_h's capital.

Nothing away from you mack, it was an excellent attack, very well executed, but you also must be happy that you were allowed to climb to no.1 spot in soldier points without any reaction from a neighbor, who had a vulnerable border and who you already had pink-dotted.

EDIT: Btw, those graphs also show the military build-up between us and suttree. I think at some point we three were the top 3 military powers in the game. That's not what we hoped that our aggressive razing of suttree's size 1 city would achieve, but that risk pretty much back-fired..

EDIT2: And those graphs also show the more moderate military build-up between TBS and dtay that we talked about earlier.

[dtay]

EDIT: Btw, those graphs also show the military build-up between us and suttree. I think at some point we three were the top 3 military powers in the game. That's not what we hoped that our aggressive razing of suttree's size 1 city would achieve, but that risk pretty much back-fired..

Reasons I left a giant wonking, resourcless desert between our civs for so long... I remember thinking over and over "There's like 8 tiles between our cities, they can't be attacking me, right? right? please?"

And then some thousand years later I poked the bear

After reading your thread it seems like you were planning to attack me but kept waffling whenever the moment to make the decision came up, if I hadn't hit the capital do you think you would have ultimately declared?

[Fintourist]

Reasons I left a giant wonking, resourcless desert between our civs for so long... I remember thinking over and over "There's like 8 tiles between our cities, they can't be attacking me, right? right? please?"

And then some thousand years later I poked the bear

After reading your thread it seems like you were planning to attack me but kept waffling whenever the moment to make the decision came up, if I hadn't hit the capital do you think you would have ultimately declared?

Yeah, as mentioned you had a fairly small military earlier, but even if that desert would have been interesting for you (crappy land quality between civs is a great way to maintain peace ), you would have probably been completely safe as suttree forced us to keep a huge chunk of units on our eastern border and later we of course had mack to keep us busy..

Whether we would have attacked you.. Mmm.. Probably? We might have waited Commodore to pull the trigger first, because the duel between us would have probably been just a fruitless stalemate or at least a very long grind, which would have left us vulnerable to all the other directions. We had too similar production power and tech situation. So if Commodore would have backed off then the attack might not have happened? Well, that capital raze was a nice move anyways and a very clear invitation (at that point the winning chances were already long gone so it's possible that OH would have attacked you just for fun anyways)

[Old Harry]

Yeah, we wanted Commodore to pull the trigger first thanks to your defensive pact with 2Metra, the fact he had nothing at all to fear from you navally and because he'd proposed the attack in the first place. With hindsight I should have just declared on you on the turn we *thought* Com was attacking as a show of good faith, if he then didn't join in we could offer you peace and everything would have been fine . As it was you declared next turn .

TBH I was (and still am) too sleep deprived to make good decisions, as you could tell from my building you loads of lovely railroads to use!

[mackoti]

Free religon had a price i had to gave up on OR and i couldnt change back, becasue you know i wasnt spiritual.IN Mh defence i was alot at war sutree and even with you guys so he might he considered is not the case to prepare for war.And he always was right i was near about to atack sutree.

[Fintourist]

Free religon had a price i had to gave up on OR and i couldnt change back, becasue you know i wasnt spiritual.

Well, at that time you did not have religion pretty much anywhere so OR would have been pretty useless for you or at least demanded significant efforts to spread religion. I'm sure that's why you ended up choosing Free religion and only went for AP religion later.

IN Mh defence i was alot at war sutree and even with you guys so he might he considered is not the case to prepare for war.And he always was right i was near about to atack sutree.

Yeah, is that why you declared on us earlier in the game? We speculated about it with OH, but because we did not share any border it did not seem very likely that m_h or suttree would buy it.

[scooter]

The point I made re: Nakor, and that I still stand by, is the only difference between him and several other players on this forum who I have watched perform equally poorly in a losing military situation is that his every move was well-documented by his conquerors. I can mention countless examples by players on this forum of sloppy, lazy or bad play. But because Nakor did this in a high profile game, he got an unnecessary amount of crap in this thread. If you want a hardcore game, ask for one at the outset and gate the player pool. If you make a large game and let anyone join, then you're going to get some less-skilled players unbalancing the game. That's just a fact.

Do I wish everyone exhibited a basic level of civ competence and in the face of overwhelming odds could be untilted enough to perform their defensive duties admirably? Sure. But that's just not realistic. And given the nature of the community - or at least the nature this community used to have - I don't think its appropriate to shit all over people in a public forum because they don't meet a skill test when you knew what their skill level was like before they entered the game. That's true of any of a dozen players here who have performed similarly in games here.

And honest to god, the biggest factor for me:

Nakor asked politely for people to lay off AFTER large amount of criticism had been stated already. And then immediately after someone jumped on him. The Realms Beyond I want to be a part of respects someone asking specifically for people to lay off them. Period.

Anyway, I won't check this forum again, so if you have a response to me specifically, sorry. But since I was pointed to being addressed specifically, I decided I would respond.

+1 to all of this.

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Also, I guess I just don't quite follow the rationale behind complaining about fairness (of who got the easiest conquest or whatever) when this game was inherently pretty random and unfair. That was like half the point of this game. Did you see Commodore's start? He had almost no chance of victory from T0, and he's one of the better players here. If you wanted a fair, balanced game where skill is the only factor in victory, you signed up for the wrong game. And despite all the luck, I would still say skill was a major factor here - look at the top 5-6 teams and tell me that wasn't pretty much the exact 5-6 you would have guessed would be there at the end, maybe with the exception of the lack of the Lewwyn/Bigger duo.

I'm a firm believer in being allowed to complain in your own thread that another player got something easier, but personally attacking somebody in a post-game thread half a year later just seems like it's too far for my tastes.