Pitboss 18 IT and Tech Issues Thread

[Old Harry]

Hang on? Is Krill really Q?

Also, I meant the question how it was written, when would Krill have won if he'd had our empire from say t200? Then when would he have won with TBS' empire?

[Krill]

Russian civ played correctly shouldn't have lost IMO, not from T190. Aztecs should not have been allowed to take over Pindictor/Dreylin continent, or if Aztecs were then it should have been "in exchange" for all of HAK, Wetbandit and CH/Oxy's Greece with a view to then move onto Plako and AT/moloch, finishing up with Domination by taking out William and dtay/myself. None of us would have been able to stop the steamroller that was Russia; if BGN hadn't accepted the peace offer I sent I expected to be dead in 5 turns in this version of the game.

EDIT: Yeah, I'm saying that you shouldn't have won. Also Espionage is bullshit.

[The Black Sword]

Domination doesn't seem feasible on this map. A proper defense can just give up the coastal cities and force their opponent to move through their territory 1 tile at a time. If you want to move 2 tiles you need to wait for Tanks, which was what T235ish? You can't get enough commando units from 1 or even 2 cities, if someone had that, to take on the army of an entire other civ.

[Krill]

If Domination is started on T190 then I'd say there were enough turns to march through territory, one tile at a time...but when you are rocking 4-5 promotion cossacks and the people you would be attacking have only just reached rifles, if even that advanced, then I'd say Domination is possible when you are attacking on 2 fronts at once.

[Ruff_Hi]

Here is an idea. Go back to a T190 save, convert it to single player and play it out as Russia. We can even make it an Epic Event ... we haven't had one of those for ages.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Xenu/Grimace, I've launched my spaceship. Here is the save. Let's roll the turn and let everyone log back in and take wrap up shots if that is their intent.

I'd be happy to play out my civ from T190 on without Krill's corpse strapped to my leg but I don't see what this would change. Do we have those saves preserved on the server?

And Krill, no. It would not have been possible to achieve a domination victory short of quitting my job and setting my marriage on fire, despite your contention and heedless of certain opposition from almost every civ who would have an interest in trying to win the game (in addition to those like you and Joey who just seemed to exist to cause me pain). You positioning units all over for me to have to kill or be collateraled/countered to death with free mobility via open borders gave my neighbors just enough time to tech to infantry rather than me roflostomping them with cossacks covered by fighters. At this point the cost was not worth the investment given the length of the game. It was apparent that TBS would go for culture by then. Also, many of the remaining continents were geographically wider than some of the ones that I conquered, making approach/attack by sea less effective and superior mobility by the defender more decisive. I could not churn out enough commandos to conquer all the civs you've listed, but I could have killed AT/Molach for sure without your intervention, and those were very likely to happen after I killed wetbandit leaving Ruff as a buffer to you even longer. But they got to infantry and I couldn't risk losing a chunk of my forces because you would have pounced the instant my troops were far enough away. The biggest deterrent though was lack of time to slog through even more conquest. This is a very real limitation.

My mistake was not trying to cut plako in half and give myself direct access to his continent but neighboring Joey even more was not much of an option given our spat. I think subsequent actions on his part have probably proven that this was a good decision. He would not have been a good neighbor.

[Commodore]

No comment at all on the BGN/Krill/GJ thing, when the egos of Titans go at it, mere mortals wisely cower.

I don't think 1, 2 or 3 is viable.
No. 1 because it's highly speculative and we just we can't go back in time and make GJ forget the offer.
No. 2. & 3. because nobody wants to reload back to t261.
In previous games people have built banned wonders and when they have finished them others have noted about the rules and those hammers simply have been lost (because it's players responsibility to be aware of the rules). If someone can come up with something creative that's great, but I think the first step anyways is to hear TBS's opinion so that we know if there is any controversy and need for admin decision at all.

Okay, well, I'm not sure if I am the right person to be PM'd as admin...the rule set is Plako's posting, I'm reasonably sure my quoted post...somewhere...was my view on how those trades should go. If anyone had noticed when the sale happened (and wasn't MJW), then probably fairly the trade would be rolled back. I suspect if someone built a banned wonder and it was noticed twenty turns later (hey, why is my war weariness so crippling OH WAITAMINUTE), I think the consensus would be the play on, with:
1. infraction victim allowed to bitch for a full two weeks after the fact and make passive-aggressive comments about the game forever after
2. infractee forced to wear a scarlet letter and convincingly argue why it doesn't matter
(NOT SAYING ANY OF YOU ARE DOING THIS NOW, JUST GOING BY HISTORY)
It sucks, of course, because TBS was playing with the knowledge of that spare artist; who knows what he would have done without it? Molach's post seemed hyperbolic, but honestly the fairest option really is a reroll back to turn 261.

In this case, it's a little sad to see such an awesome game end with controversy, but I'd say TBS won it; I believe him when he says the extra gold would have shaved off time by allowing dry-rushing. Of course, spies are stupid-RNG-heavy, so a lot of dice rolling in the coulda woulda shoulda. OH/Tourist played a brilliant game, and of the 3 within ten turns of victory right now, they're very probably had the hardest road since turn 100, and of the three they clearly have the best thread. Mass accolades.

If anything, this really does point to the need for an admin, one who writes the rules and then watches for them, particularly on such a huge game.

...and also, modern resources. I am an idiot and if you want to tar and feather me for those, feel free to do so from now until eternity. I am truly sorry.

[Mardoc]

Revisiting the subject of 'who cares?'

If you were going to design a game to determine the best player - you would absolutely not design PB18! You would have a mirror toroidal map, prescreen the player pool, allow (or require!) duplicate leader/civs, turn off events. You would have a 'best-of' series, to prevent people from just aiming for high-variance strategies, and give credit to people other than first place. You would disable all but one victory type. By that perspective, *every* winner of every game should have an asterisk.

Why didn't we set it up that way? Because it's about the journey, not the victor's table. It's more fun to have a game where you're creating the story of the world, than a perfectly balanced skill contest. More fun to have a game where everyone's working toward a different goal, where you can accomplish something even though you can't be 'the' winner. We spent a year and a half on this behemoth: 50 man-years of time! If the only thing that comes out of it is a winner, then we failed. If we got 50 man-years of fun, then it was a success.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Good post, Mardoc. I agree with most of what you've said. I enjoyed the game immensely, but I don't think I'll ever sign up for one of this size again. As much as I've loved developing my economy and waging bloody wars, it is far too time intensive. This is, for me, the lesson to learn for PB27. Whatever you do, don't let the map be this big. When the eventual sorting happens between food and predator, make sure the surviving players don't have an impossibly big job to manage. Whatever fun you may have had becomes a grind trying to play efficiently and well enough to continue improving position. And for those rump states that for whatever reason become regionally strong enough to survive (or not be worth the risk to conquer) but otherwise irrelevant, it must be a fate worse than hell to have to log in every day on a game that last for so long. I want to congratulate AT, Molach, WLP, and plako for playing things all the way to the end and not throwing in your lot to decide the outcome in a way that doesn't advance your own cause. You guys are good in my book. Others, thanks for keeping the turns rolling all the way to the end. TBS and OH/Fin, great games. Eventually I'll look around your threads and may have some comments to make.

For those who are easily offended and who may have pissed in my ear during the game, be forewarned. My thread likely is not going to be kind to you. And Commodore, thanks for making the map. I've complained bitterly about the resources for long enough so you're off the hook now. Let's do better in PB27. It isn't just on the map maker.

I would also like to say that it's unfortunate that the lurkers didn't come up with some sort of solution to TBS' coal situation. It shouldn't be the lurkers' job to fix every map issue, but this clearly had an impact on the outcome of the game when other players feel it is (wrongly) their responsibility to address the map imbalance by providing material advantage to a contender in a way that cannot be countered or accounted for. I don't blame Joey for wanting to help even things out, and I have not read his thread for what is probably a thorough exploration of the issue, but as a contender in the game I was very disappointed to see something happening that I could not have planned for and that, for a variety of reasons including map geography and distance, that I could do nothing about to counter. If TBS had been in the space race I would have sought a way to make the aluminum gift available to him as I did to OH/Fin, or have gifted both sets of mine to the lurkers. Or enlisted lurker support for Joey to give the only other resource away if he wasn't in the race. Or...something. I think we probably could have done something a little differently there. I'll refrain from making specific judgements, I suppose, until I've read Joey's or TBS' threads, if ever.

GG all.

[dtay]

Fwiw I was selling, not gifting, an extra Coal to TBS for I think 40gpt. Weirdly, for having no coal in my own, Whosit's or CH's lands I ended up with 3 coal at one point, 1 bought (for less than 40) off of BGN, 1 culture-stolen from the Hindu holy city cause I had artist-bombed it before Pind(and then Finharry) took it (ultimately lost this one) and 1 that popped on a mine.

Compared to xenu I think I (obviously) adhere to a somewhat looser principle of non-interference. Don't know that I could spell out precisely whatever my own self-imposed rules are, it's some weighting of 1) do the things that make your civ better, 2) Continue withing reason built-up diplomatic history with people from that game, 3) ceteris paribus don't interfere with the people trying to win.

2 is where the tricky stuff is, notably that phrase "within reason". I don't think the problem is a simple as that people act emotionally and do thing for revenge, or for returning favors. That is part of the game, you're playing MP, and frankly I don't think it could be effectively banned. The problem is the game of civ 4 isn't really designed well enough to create balance in such an environment, so some of the tactics available to players seeking revenge to trying to help each other are far too powerful. Great Person Gifting, City Gifting, and end-of-game research funding are obvious examples of tactics within the game mechanics that make it far too easy to help one player instead of another, with little recourse available to the 3rd party.

I feel similarly about things like spite-whipping multiple units in queue and self-pillaging improvement for denial. The motivation makes sense, deny things to your enemy. It's entirely within the game mechanics. I don't blame people for doing it. It's not cheating. But I think we should make it cheating. They're too powerful of techniques with no effective counter, and I think their presence makes the game worse.