[LURKERS] PB27 Map & Lurking: Walking in a :weed: wonderland

[The Black Sword]

Taotao/mack are lookin' pretty good

Yeah, I thought he was doing well but I didn't realise how well until this update. He's got 8 workers and a decent infra set too. So far Comm and Tao look like the two leaders of this T65 update. Tao still has a late game Org to kick in though.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Kind of crazy to see HAK in such a bind by the appearance of one axe and spear on T67. One archer would probably be enough to dissuade an opportunistic attack. Two archers and that border would be safe for a good long while as long as he kept an eye on TheWannabe's power graph. High variance/risk plans are fun and all, but you still have to build some kind of military or a stiff breeze will blow you over.

[BRickAstley]

In this game: everyone complaining that everyone else is settling in their direction.

[GermanJoey]

In this game: everyone complaining that everyone else is settling in their direction.

hehehe... first they complain the land is too good and then they complain they don't get enough of it. hmm, maybe one thing is related to the other...

[The Black Sword]

I'm not sure who taotao is, I can't remember that name, but from our neighbours he is playing the strongest game.

Looks like Serdoa missed where Mack signed on with Taotao.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I think it's only fair that somebody tells Serdoa that it's Mackoti. I'm tempted to ban the reddog account for a while because Mack's smurfing is so dishonest. That way he'd have to log in on the forum and post with his real account. I don't want to abuse admin power or anything but Mack has refused to acknowledge the con or respond to me when I've tried to engage him on it. We've done the smurfing thing before and it isn't justifiable anymore. I see no reason to allow Mack an advantage by a letting him hide his involvement. I can't prove that anyone else is smurfing in this game, so this isn't a witch hunt against one person. But "reddog" is documented as Mack.... Why should he be allowed this advantage?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Shit, actually there's something else I didn't realize until just now. Mackoti was in the group of forum users who were receiving the map creation PMs when we were in the early stages of discussion, and was in the group of users who had access to the subforum where the map details were discussed in depth. He never posted in those conversations by PM or in the subforum, but I don't know what he read, if anything. But he did have access to the completed map. Maybe I'm not giving him enough credit for honesty and maybe he didn't use that access, but I have no way of knowing and it won't look good to the other players. So, with all that said.... What can or should be done or said? I'm certain that Mackoti shouldn't be allowed to hide his participation in the game, that's an unearned advantage. I don't think anything can be done about the possible map info problem though, since nothing can be proven regarding it.

[Bobchillingworth]

That would be a definite abuse of your admin powers. Smurfing is not nor has ever been prohibited at RB. I'm even sympathetic to Mackoti- he obviously wants to get back into MP without the baggage that being arguably the world's best Civ player carries. If you keep hounding him about it he'll probably just disappear from RB again, and I'm not sure what benefit there is to that for anyone. I'm not certain where this concept even began that players have a "right" to know who they're up against. We don't ask new forum members to submit a resume detailing their prior MP experience & overall skills, so why should talented forum veterans have the special privilege of carrying an albatross around their necks? Unless they're playing in an explicitly low-skill game, which isn't the case here.


That said, feel free to call Mack a hypocrite, either privately or in his own thread; IIRC he was one of "Barry's" critics and even titled one of his threads something like "smurfs out of RB".

[GermanJoey]

I don't see anything wrong with it. Brick and I talked about it in their thread:

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid563442

The only reason he wants to use a smurf is because he feels like people unfairly discriminate against him because of his reputation. For example, in PB22 Commodore and Gawdzak refused to give him open borders for ICTR even though his situation was quite bad because "it's mack and he's going to run away with the game." Here, he's not even the main turn player. The Dutch civ is in such a good position right now primarily because of taotao's solid play and close attention to detail during the first 50 turns, for which Mack wasn't even around yet. Even now, despite mack being very involved (is this the most actively mackoti has ever posted in a thread? sure seems like it!) it still feels like taotao is the primary driver of the civ. mack suggests things but he goes with what taotao wants But, already every other player is calling it mackoti's civ. That's not fair to taotao.

Besides, Commodore openly outed him in taotao's request for a partner thread.

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=7814

If you want to mention to Serdoa that taotao has a playing partner, by all means. If anyone of them asked if reddog really was mackoti, I would tell them.

[Old Harry]

I think it's only fair that somebody tells Serdoa that it's Mackoti. I'm tempted to ban the reddog account for a while because Mack's smurfing is so dishonest. That way he'd have to log in on the forum and post with his real account. I don't want to abuse admin power or anything but Mack has refused to acknowledge the con or respond to me when I've tried to engage him on it. We've done the smurfing thing before and it isn't justifiable anymore. I see no reason to allow Mack an advantage by a letting him hide his involvement. I can't prove that anyone else is smurfing in this game, so this isn't a witch hunt against one person. But "reddog" is documented as Mack.... Why should he be allowed this advantage?

I'd give Mack one more chance to come clean, I'll ask this if you want:

I will answer to xenu here.I want slowly to start playing civ and i dont want other people to treat difernt tao as i will not participate that much.

Mack - it seems like you're participating quite a lot, don't you think it'd be fairer to let your neighbours know?