"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
After the game had ended, I (as every intelligent and sensitive human being) wanted to see how I was perceived and (as every normal human being being a bit egocentric) wanted to see how you RB guys enjoyed the game and if a credit was given to me and Sommers for organizing the biggest civ4 game ever being played.
A simple search for "2metra" showed ~100 instances where my nick was being mentioned in the RB ISDG thread. So far, so good for my humble person, but having the naivety to go on and start reading in what context it was used brought mixed feelings to me and had shown me some things being said that look funny or plain wrong in the light of the past events Well, some had my faith in humanity restored too. Few random lines:
Fluffyflyingpig guy which I dont knew till now is commenting on the ruleset discussion: "Too bad this means we'll miss the comedy of reading the mangled ruleset that 2metra would try to push out. Oh well." and then in the proposed second edition of the ruleset he proposes, RuffHi asks him what 3-4 rules means and he replies he does not know what those rules means. OK, I might be not modern incarnation of Hamurabi, but lol, what is wrong with you fluffy man, why would you mock others for their rules which you never saw but propose rules which you dont know what they means or what is their purpose?
Nikolae Carpathia makes a prediction: "Poly are not going to win. They are going to be a vassal." At the time the game ended Poly had the biggest land and GNP, biggest army and was one of the 3 world superpowers.
Scooter said "we have the troll Sommerswerd running the CFC team and the known cheater Calanthian running the Poly team. I don't like this." At no point Sommers was running Team CFC, nor Calanthian had played a single turn for Poly as far as I know.
Words of wisdom here from Mostly Harmless: "I really think those endless discussions between RB members and Sommer and metra should stop over at the CFC forum. Move them to PM or something if you like to argue with them endlessly.
We appointed LP as the sole spokesperson for a reason.
I think any more arguing over the spy settings will not help making us appear like normal civ players for the other 7 teams in this game."
Which leads me to another thing I never understood. When you appointed LP as your spokesperson in setting the rules and presenting RB, I was scandalized, as I knew LP's reputation from games I played and followed and had no high opinion on him especially regarding the rules manipulating and breaking. I wrote to some RB guys that I see this appointment as not great move on the RB part and gave examples where LP was caught double-moving and cheating and was told the "LP stands to the highest of RB standards regarding rules and honesty" to which I simply decided it is not worth to try argue further. Ironically 1-2 years later many outraged RB guys declared they will never play in a game where LP is in again and as far as I know LP just dropped from playing any further RB based games.
Further ahead Nikolae Carpathia says "Poly and CFC have already aligned against on us. It doesn't help that 2metra's started the diplomacy with them on day 1, trying to isolate us." providing a link where I posted at Poly to announce the ISDG and invite them to join in. Ironically I used almost the same text only changing names of sites when posted to invite RB too. What diplomacy is inviting someone? The replies had varied drastic on the two sites though.
There were tons of arguments about civic switch and religion switch missions destroying the game to the degree that RB was discussing if they are going to play at all in such an unfair and unfun game. The fact that not a single civic switch mission or religion switch mission was executed in the whole game proves you were flat out wrong. (Not to mention mo st of the most vocal guys who was preaching against those missions never saw them or their effect in-game - like thinking once switched you get the anarchy as if you switched civics yourself - "it is not fun spending turn after turn in anarchy when someone repeatedly switch you between civics". Your biggest fears were for nothing.
From Ruff: "BTW - I would make the very first rule that no player can be an organizer and no organizer can be a player." I dont see the logic in this. Did the guys from Apolyton banned from playing the first ISDG? I think no. Was Twinkletoes banned from playing at RBPB9 when he was the organizer and he said the rules? No. The rules were proposed by the organizers, were discussed at long and deep and were then voted by the teams. I dont see whats wrong with that.
Ruff mentions earlier "so-called organizer of the game.
To be clear, Sommers and I were not "so-called organizers" of the game, we were the ones who organized it.
And I cant see where all the hate you threw at us for organizing this came from. Did you had a great time playing it? Did you enjoyed it? Did you organized internal RB democracy multi-team game shortly following the anouncement of ISDG2012? Can some admin help with giving the statistics of the forum when was the highest activity in posts and hits in the history of RB forum? Or the most new registrations per month? I can bet 10 beers it will all somehow fit in the ISDG timeframe. So looking without prejudices, what were again your complains and sore feelings about the ISDG for?
1. This game came way after release that it wasted so much potential so it's not very impressive. The fact that this was the biggest doesn't change that. The cause of this was constant patches and expansions making a demogame too hard to before.
2. Apolyton didn't have MZ when RB was playing with them. The player who would have taken control of RB if it weren't for MZ was Ozzy who is much weaker and Apolyton probably would have bombed hard and become a vassal.
3. I think scooter was exaggerating the situation of Sommer and Calanthian to so his dislike of them playing. They really did not play in this game so if scooter was right or not cannot be proven.
4. Lord Parkin was just a mouthpiece through which the rest of the team spoke to avoid spamming CFC. He was picked because he got in first and he has thick skin. LP could probably sneak into another game in here and is not playing because he's in med-school and doesn't have the time.
5. Sommers did 'out-of-game' diplomacy without any hesitation when someone messed up a unit movement. So RB is right to be paranoid about an organizer using his position to gain an advantage in the game. The other players you talk about were very trusted so they were allowed to be organizers and players even though it's a conflict of interest. I think he was only talking about Sommers and didn't mention him by name to be polite. Also the fact that Sommer did oog diplomacy makes RB correct in considering a possible CFC and Apolyton alliance from turn 0.
6. People didn't do the switches because they were so broken. For example Templars last turnplayer strongly pushed not using them. I think the option of "no swaps" didn't win because of poor organization not because it was the most popular. RB didn't know that at that time.
7. This game was not well-liked at all by RB. Other then the BS and the fact they lost, the main-turnplayer taking over really killed the enthusiasm. In fact only people with a history here was allowed to play as to stop someone from making a dummy-account and reading RB's notes. So not a single new-member was pulled in the game in the first place. Now you might say that the poor experience was RB's fault and I cannot prove you wrong. But that doesn't change the fact they had a poor experience and are right to not be happy about this game.
From Kyan about me and Sommers: "You don't think i've been this pleasant because I actually like him, right?
They're idiots whose only strength is they like arguing. My strength is i'm a sly bastard and decent at civ. Let's see which one can win you an ISDG eh? lol"
History showed who was right and who was left.
From Mostly Harmless: "I bet a couple of beers that metra is just Sommers alt-account on CFC. wink" You dude owe some beers.
And Lord Parkin follows: "This had occurred to me as well."
The fact is the first time I saw someone pretending to be someone else in civ was LP pretending it is some friend of his at the ISDG warm-up game after he quit and came back to play few turns later as substitute Next time was the RB team captain Sulla creating Mikehandi's fake identity. I think you call this sock pupet. This term I first heard here.
from Scooter: " I don't think we can equate Metra's actions to actual cheating." LOL, how you dare use my name and the word "cheating" in one and the same sentence? Why? Because I told you you cant really dictate the rules and because I am not worshiping your expertise and perceiving of what is OK and what is not OK in civ? And because I dislike whole teams being called idiots for not accepting your dogmas?
from LP: "Really, this game would have started at least a week ago if not for the presence of Sommer and 2metra." Man, this game would had never happened in the first place if it was not the two of us. Way too arrogant from someone who disappears from the game few months after it started.
Kyan is having a blast here: "I doubt a lot that they're the same guy. I'd bet a lot of money against it. However, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find they chat on gmail or skype or similar and discuss the game." LOL, man, what is wrong with online communication about favorite hobby? I do chat via gmail or skype with a lot of guys, never though it is something strange or unusual...
from Bobchillingworth: "one team is captained by openly hostile semi-literate dickheads". Just for the record, Sommers is an advocate IRL and I have studied Economics in a college. English is my second foreign language and I have another after it. At English I always had only what is equal to USA "A" grade, same with Literature. So you might come up with any offensive word you know, but "semi-literate" is plain untrue
Also I loved how there was a discussion on the reasons why we joined Team Gilette in the RB Demo game. We were accused of being spies and even there were suggestions that Gilette post intentionally dis-informative things like "you must tech all the prerequisites" so we poor guys who soak up each and every word get this as highest wisdom and apply it in playing Team CFC lol. Or there were warnings to not go too excessive about reading demographics so we dont see how it is done. Poor guys... The irony is the rejected Yossarian who we accepted in our team was the one who did great job of reading demographics for Team CFC. And about us being spies some guy/girl Amelia said: "If he wants to spy on our strategies he could have applied for global lurkers and get knowledge on all 5 teams, which makes more sense."
Sunrise: "I don't think sommer or 2metra are idiots" Thank you good sir
(December 6th, 2014, 14:54)MJW (ya that one) Wrote: I call BS.
1. This game came way after release that it wasted so much potential so it's not very impressive. The fact that this was the biggest doesn't change that. The cause of this was constant patches and expansions making a demogame too hard to before. Tell me in which other Civ4 game there were 9 sites teams playing and the number of initial team members were 200 or more? Patches? Last patch was 3.19 which came like 3-4 years before ISDG2012. Show me the game you organized so we can compare which was better
2. Apolyton didn't have MZ when RB was playing with them. The player who would have taken control of RB if it weren't for MZ was Ozzy who is much weaker and Apolyton probably would have bombed hard and become a vassal. This sounds like pure nonsense to me - who was going to take control over RB and why? MZ was in the team since the first week or so. Do RB guys know personally all of the Poly team and their play strength? Do you know all of them? Because I do know most of them and played with them, but I never heard of you.
edit: BTW, it is not very nice insulting other players and putting them labels and making speculations about what would had happened
3. I think scooter was exaggerating the situation of Sommer and Calanthian to so his dislike of them playing. They really did not play in this game so if scooter was right or not cannot be proven. This is my reading too - he was exaggerating and speculating to make others look bad
4. Lord Parkin was just a mouthpiece through which the rest of the team spoke to avoid spamming CFC. He was picked because he got in first and he has thick skin. LP could probably sneak into another game in here and is not playing because he's in med-school and doesn't have the time. LP being mouth or some other part of RB body with making noise capable opening, I was said he stands to the highest RB standards. And the fact you say he "could sneak" just proves my point that he is not viewed as honorable community member.
5. Sommers did 'out-of-game' diplomacy without any hesitation when someone messed up a unit movement. So RB is right to be paranoid about an organizer using his position to gain an advantage in the game. What is out-of game diplomacy? Discussing things which are not connected with in-game game logic? Do you make in-game diplomacy about misclicks? Are they at all part of the game logic and flow?
The other players you talk about were very trusted so they were allowed to be organizers and players even though it's a conflict of interest. I think he was only talking about Sommers and didn't mention him by name to be polite. Also the fact that Sommer did oog diplomacy makes RB correct in considering a possible CFC and Apolyton alliance from turn 0. By saying those others are "very trusted" who you mean? Do you ever know who were the organizers of the Poly ISDG? You imply that the others are not trusted? Why would I or Sommers be not very trusted? Because you dont like the way one argue or the fact he argue at all? What is the real reason that someone is untrusted? Who gave permissions to the Poly organizers and to TT to play in the games they organize? Special comitee? Where it is so I can apply for a license? Come on, man...
6. People didn't do the switches because they were so broken. For example Templars last turnplayer strongly pushed not using them. I think the option of "no swaps" didn't win because of poor organization not because it was the most popular. RB didn't know that at that time. Oh, you knew all people's opinion and reasons? How nice of you. Not that it is true, but it is a good attempt. Had you read all the discussion threads or they came one by one from each team and stated to you why they did not used them? I call this empty argument. "No one used them, so people should had knew how bad they are". You keep the line of belittling everyone else opinion - everything you dislike is because of poor organization, not because this is their vote and their will. lol
Cant comment on who the last turnplayer of the Templars was and what was his opinion.
7. This game was not well-liked at all by RB. Other then the BS and the fact they lost, the main-turnplayer taking over really killed the enthusiasm. In fact only people with a history here was allowed to play as to stop someone from making a dummy-account and reading RB's notes. So not a single new-member was pulled in the game in the first place. Now you might say that the poor experience was RB's fault and I cannot prove you wrong. But that doesn't change the fact they had a poor experience and are right to not be happy about this game. You guys might hate me for that (if you are not already hating me for telling other things already), but I saw this in RB first. People dislike losing. I think this is somewhat connected with their great ego and expectations. A number of the presumed expert players have expectations for winning the game. And when things come out not that good, they suddenly lose interest. Some of them take the courtesy to claim some RL stuff coming in, some studies, increased workload and so on, while some just stop playing. I never seen so much drops when things go bad in other sites where people are less competitive and OK - they play civ worse. But they play and they enjoy their small goals. I can go on another 3000 words in this, but I wont. Short story is the first Poly ISDG was considered by RB badly organized and with bad settings and awfully unfair map and I can agree with that, but RB did way better. Kept together and at the end they won. And as a result the Poly ISDG is perceived as a great and enjoyed game here at RB. Why? The setup was the same shit, the map was way worse, the rules was way more broken - with tech trading and espionage and so on, but it was still a great game. What is the difference? For me it is RB won the earlier one and lost miserably in this one. Simple explanation. Would love to hear other takes at it.
What became of the RB home-grown and set-up Demogame? Teams ended ran by 1-2 underdogs and was called. The big names disappeared from the teams before mid-game. Did RB community was more excited about the perfectly set-up RB demogame? Or they liked the outcome more? I cant tell. You tell me, you seems to be quite well informed and speaking about quite a few sites.
BTW, my case about admin saying the RB forum statistics stays.
2metra, I'm not certain what you intend to accomplish here, but calling out a dozen people for posts made two years ago isn't going to yield you the forum equivalent of a box of chocolates and apology sex. Every time the ISDG comes up you appear and alternatively needle and patronize the community. RB lost. Okay, we get it. But please, enough with the lecturing, gloating and presumptuous attempts to make us confess our sins from a game we all left behind long ago.
I don't think you're a bad guy. I definitely respect you more than when you first started posting here. But you've made your point several times now, and it's time to move on.
After the game had ended, I (as every intelligent and sensitive human being) wanted to see how I was perceived and (as every normal human being being a bit egocentric) wanted to see how you RB guys enjoyed the game and if a credit was given to me and Sommers for organizing the biggest civ4 game ever being played.
A simple search for "2metra" showed ~100 instances where my nick was being mentioned in the RB ISDG thread. So far, so good for my humble person, but having the naivety to go on and start reading in what context it was used brought mixed feelings to me and had shown me some things being said that look funny or plain wrong in the light of the past events Well, some had my faith in humanity restored too. Few random lines:
Fluffyflyingpig guy which I dont knew till now is commenting on the ruleset discussion: "Too bad this means we'll miss the comedy of reading the mangled ruleset that 2metra would try to push out. Oh well." and then in the proposed second edition of the ruleset he proposes, RuffHi asks him what 3-4 rules means and he replies he does not know what those rules means. OK, I might be not modern incarnation of Hamurabi, but lol, what is wrong with you fluffy man, why would you mock others for their rules which you never saw but propose rules which you dont know what they means or what is their purpose?
Nikolae Carpathia makes a prediction: "Poly are not going to win. They are going to be a vassal." At the time the game ended Poly had the biggest land and GNP, biggest army and was one of the 3 world superpowers.
Scooter said "we have the troll Sommerswerd running the CFC team and the known cheater Calanthian running the Poly team. I don't like this." At no point Sommers was running Team CFC, nor Calanthian had played a single turn for Poly as far as I know.
Words of wisdom here from Mostly Harmless: "I really think those endless discussions between RB members and Sommer and metra should stop over at the CFC forum. Move them to PM or something if you like to argue with them endlessly.
We appointed LP as the sole spokesperson for a reason.
I think any more arguing over the spy settings will not help making us appear like normal civ players for the other 7 teams in this game."
Which leads me to another thing I never understood. When you appointed LP as your spokesperson in setting the rules and presenting RB, I was scandalized, as I knew LP's reputation from games I played and followed and had no high opinion on him especially regarding the rules manipulating and breaking. I wrote to some RB guys that I see this appointment as not great move on the RB part and gave examples where LP was caught double-moving and cheating and was told the "LP stands to the highest of RB standards regarding rules and honesty" to which I simply decided it is not worth to try argue further. Ironically 1-2 years later many outraged RB guys declared they will never play in a game where LP is in again and as far as I know LP just dropped from playing any further RB based games.
Further ahead Nikolae Carpathia says "Poly and CFC have already aligned against on us. It doesn't help that 2metra's started the diplomacy with them on day 1, trying to isolate us." providing a link where I posted at Poly to announce the ISDG and invite them to join in. Ironically I used almost the same text only changing names of sites when posted to invite RB too. What diplomacy is inviting someone? The replies had varied drastic on the two sites though.
There were tons of arguments about civic switch and religion switch missions destroying the game to the degree that RB was discussing if they are going to play at all in such an unfair and unfun game. The fact that not a single civic switch mission or religion switch mission was executed in the whole game proves you were flat out wrong. (Not to mention mo st of the most vocal guys who was preaching against those missions never saw them or their effect in-game - like thinking once switched you get the anarchy as if you switched civics yourself - "it is not fun spending turn after turn in anarchy when someone repeatedly switch you between civics". Your biggest fears were for nothing.
From Ruff: "BTW - I would make the very first rule that no player can be an organizer and no organizer can be a player." I dont see the logic in this. Did the guys from Apolyton banned from playing the first ISDG? I think no. Was Twinkletoes banned from playing at RBPB9 when he was the organizer and he said the rules? No. The rules were proposed by the organizers, were discussed at long and deep and were then voted by the teams. I dont see whats wrong with that.
Ruff mentions earlier "so-called organizer of the game.
To be clear, Sommers and I were not "so-called organizers" of the game, we were the ones who organized it.
And I cant see where all the hate you threw at us for organizing this came from. Did you had a great time playing it? Did you enjoyed it? Did you organized internal RB democracy multi-team game shortly following the anouncement of ISDG2012? Can some admin help with giving the statistics of the forum when was the highest activity in posts and hits in the history of RB forum? Or the most new registrations per month? I can bet 10 beers it will all somehow fit in the ISDG timeframe. So looking without prejudices, what were again your complains and sore feelings about the ISDG for?
Move along...
Edit: crosspost with Bob. Yeah, we've covered all of this ground plenty of times. I don't mind reviewing what happened in game and discussing different views on the game itself, but endlessly discussing the meta surrounding the game is tiresome and serves very little purpose other than to antagonize the community and relive old arguments that are better left in the past. We're hashing out stuff about the setup phase all this time later? Let's just let it go.
There were a bunch of posts in the isdg forum that were unnecessarily dismissive of other players, which I didn't appreciate. But let's be realistic - there is nothing quite as fun as slaging other teams off behind their backs! Death to CFC!
Sian: "in terms of conquest targets i would schedule them second, after Germans (given if they stay alive till that point) ... while neither the strongest or the weakest team, other than Germans they're certainly the most annoying ..." Sian is talking about Team CFC. All this said while discussing how to pink-dot us and how to get away with it making it looks like something normal and playing it friends. What annoyed you so much man?
again Fluffy: "RB: general dislike of CFC scumminess" Good man, you deserve more upvotes :b:
Speaker about me asking that the RB turnplayer who is blocking the other turnplayers from joining the game: "Connectivity issues have been present in Civ4 MP since day 1. Some players, even with all appropriate ports open and firewalls disabled, simply can't connect to each other. That guy is a jack ass, but then again, we all knew that already, right?" Yeah, right, you and your band know things.
Fluffy coming up with an ideal lie about the blocking from the RB turnplayer : "Let's just publicly blame an anonymous RB person behind a national firewall on CFC and move on. Bonus benefit of making 2metra look rude."
Azza on me pointing out RB should had paused for CivFR after RB were given reload: "Is he seriously implying we deliberately did this to fuck civFr over? What an absolute cock head."
At least some were more favorable to my humble person - Old Harry: "I don't see that in his post Azza - he just says we were careless and gives the reason. The pause after a reload is something 2metra has been keen on because he wants the game to be scrupulously fair, while we don't like it because everything is slow enough already. I guess in this case he's right..." and KJN: "While I'm all for ignoring 2metraninja and he is being needlessly provocative, he is correct here. Team RB didn't act sportsmanlike after the reload had been granted."
Scooter on who was orchestrating the dogpile against RB: "CFC pretty much from what I understand. It sounds like they've basically dictated and the two clowns to our west have nodded their heads willingly for months now." Of course everyone is stupid for not playing the way RB wanted.
So much for now and I have 2 full pages of hits to read
(December 6th, 2014, 16:40)Bobchillingworth Wrote: 2metra, I'm not certain what you intend to accomplish here, but calling out a dozen people for posts made two years ago isn't going to yield you the forum equivalent of a box of chocolates and apology sex. Every time the ISDG comes up you appear and alternatively needle and patronize the community. RB lost. Okay, we get it. But please, enough with the lecturing, gloating and presumptuous attempts to make us confess our sins from a game we all left behind long ago.
I don't think you're a bad guy. I definitely respect you more than when you first started posting here. But you've made your point several times now, and it's time to move on.
For you especially, I think you owe me an apology. I never ever called you names. I find it rude and cowardly to call someone insults when hidden behind internet
![[Image: Kv3L9C7.png]](http://i.imgur.com/Kv3L9C7.png)
Well, some had my faith in humanity restored too. Few random lines:
