(August 11th, 2015, 11:41)dtay Wrote: 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.
Spite whipping is annoying but I've also been guilty of it previously. See retep's fight against me in PB11, The Game that Never Happened. I also reconfigured resource tiles out of spite to deny him happiness. I see both sides, but it is an unfun mechanic. Games are supposed to be fun, so for me this is where 50/50 calls like this should be decided, on the side of "is it fun or not?".
Dtay, I inadvertently left you off my list of good with me folks earlier, although Joey and Krill aren't castoff sub-humans. I'm just annoyed with their play in this game. I think your revenge was well within the limits of fair play, and Joeys too once I've taken a step back. His army positioning, while inscrutable in the context of "why in God's name did you not just kill AT/Molach already", makes sense in the context of me being the only likely threat to his empire, so I can live with that at the end of the day. Krill is another thing and I'll just have to ignore playing in games with him if he can't tolerate losing any better or I'll just have to rush him and make us both lose and be done with it. But I digress.
I cancelled the coal deal when I realized you were making a net 32g/turn profit. I figured if TBS wanted to pay 40g per turn he could pay it to me rather than you. I don't know who ended up losing out on access to coal by this but I suspect it doesn't matter much.
I like your three rules for playing out the string. This is a good starting position for fair play. Number 2 is obviously subjective but I think with lurkers paying attention this ought to be something that could be reeled in a bit by gentle admonishing as needed in each situation. I wonder if that happened here with Krill focusing what seems like his entire late game on spiking my wheels.
But it's done and that's that, so fuck it.(August 11th, 2015, 12:09)The Black Sword Wrote: As I said earlier, I felt I was following the rules I had been playing by all game long when I made the offer to buy the artist. And I think it's clear a lot of other people, both players and lurkers, thought those were the rules too. According to plako my trade offer was illegal though. He wrote the rule, I'll take his word on what was meant.
So, first of all I'm sorry to FinHarry and others who were felt hard done by. Having someone gain an advantage illegally in a tight game is not a nice feeling.
I don't think this game really have admins but if you want to wait for Sulla/Sunrise/Comm to propose something, that's fine with me. I don't think it's an enviable task for them though, because it comes very close to actively choosing a winner. I'd prefer to come to an agreement ourselves and I have a suggestion;
Reload to turn 268, have someone send me the 3,250g and play from there.
T268 is the turn I rolled my last artist and I stopped really optimising Basilisk Caves and Elensefar in case it failed. IIRC, you hadn't really started hitting it yet with espionage. Additionally, I'd like to set the timer to 12 hours or less and just let everyone else's turn roll. Both of us ignore military stuff and just play quickly through the spies and gold part. I think it's fair to say that I'd need to make a pretty major mistake for military to matter at that stage. I think this would be a disadvantage to me for a variety of reasons, but I guess I'm the one who broke the rules.
BGN or others: Obviously speak up if you feel there was something you were going to do that wouldn't be taken into account.
EDIT: Crosspost with a few.
The gong, once struck, cannot be unstruck. I don't know if going back in time to replay anything really serves anyone's interests. For myself, I do not want to replay turns. Is T268 the right turn? I thought it was further back that the GA deal occurred. This shows on T260 a GA on the way to your lands:
I certainly do not want to go back in time and make all of those moves again. I don't know what impact that would have had on my play had the trade not occurred but I'm not interested in replaying turns again. I do not think that I would have enough units to fight through your army to get to one of the critical cities in time no matter what I do. Even if I play to a different outcome the result would ring hollow to me. Best to leave that can of worms unopened, I think.
Someone mentioned unit gifting. I'd like some input on that. I have certainly gifted units in this game when it suited my strategic aims, but I wonder if Joey's gifts can be cast in that same light? Or rather if they are an attempt to speed the end of the game, which does not help his civ improve its position?
Anyway, I don't want to replay turns. Based on what has occurred the best I can do in any circumstance is second place. If I don't win, the rest of the outcome doesn't matter. I enjoyed playing the game and that's good enough.
(August 11th, 2015, 13:00)Old Harry Wrote: That's an ingenious offer TBS, thanks. For full disclosure you're right, we were out of military options and through espionage I don't think we can slow you beyond t274 even without your new bags of cash, so I'd be aiming for a tie (or a coinflip, which I don't think is fair after this much effort) so I think you get to claim the win whatever happens from here, it's just that you might have to share.
Are you happy that I read the last couple of pages of your thread yesterday? I think the only thing I learned was that you knew where we were landing our spies. If so then we could perhaps even blitz through it tomorrow or Thursday evening with a ten minute turn timer and use of the pause key - I don't think five turns of spy logistics will require that long to run. I'm on rboldharry at the usual if you want to chat while we do it.
I think Mardoc wins post of the thread though - this was a random game where hut/neighbour/event/dice luck had a huge impact. So quibbling over this at the end does seem a bit petty, but damnit, have you seen how long I've put into this game.
If you guys want to play it out like that I'm ok with it. The only thing is that OH's task in trying to break through your defense will not be successful without a little help. Also, I don't remember the last turn I hit with EP sabotage. Given that a couple of your cities are just over this turn, this could push your victory by a turn at least if I'm not playing anything, and is highly dependent on RNG giving a similar result to what has already occurred.
If you guys want to go ahead, by all means do so.
