[LURKERS] Mr. Gradgrind's Review

[Tohron]

The massive time-sink kills full-diplo right there. A gimmick set-up where some talking is possible could work but never full diplo ever. This is also why PMs (and chats) got banned in werewolf.

Goofy idea: Host a "twitter" game. Each team is allowed one 140-character communication to one other team per day/turn.

Then someone would probably spend the first 20 turns giving everyone the key to a word-to-ASCII-char-conversion code

[Mardoc]

I confess that I'm somewhat sad I've never gotten the chance for the full-diplo experience -- I like playing games with people, and while I'm enjoying my PBEM, no opportunity for banter and personality to shine through from my opponents is kind of a bummer. Also, I think it'd be fun to go RP in my official communications.

That said, I am willing to believe people when they tell me it was a fucking miserable experience that caused fplks to hate each other IRL.

Honestly, it depended on the people more than anything. I had plenty of fun with diplo games in FFH PBEMs, and plenty of fun with AI Diplo games. I'm sure it's possible to have an opponent who makes diplomacy no fun - probably if they're interested in winning at all costs.

That said, it's my experience that diplomacy generally helped the leader, not nearly as much as it helped dogpiles/etc.

Why? Well, partly because the leader tended to have the most carrots and sticks available: he'd be the one with the extra resources available for trade, the most cities for trade routes to connect to, and the biggest, scariest army. A lot of diplomacy is positive sum; the leader can conduct more of it and hence get the biggest bonus.

The other main thing the leader gets out of diplo is a lot of help in breaking up dogpiles before they happen. Long term NAPs and pacts, signed before being obviously a runaway. The ability to make plausible threats, like 'if you join in, I will devote my empire to ensuring *you* have no profit, even if that means I'm entirely eaten from behind'. And the ability to offer meaningful deals to backwards civs. First place and Fifth place can both be happy with a pact to divide the 2nd place empire, and they can make it work, too.

[Gaspar]

That seems like a ludicrous statement to me.

It might be, I must confess I have not read a single word in any thread other than this one and my own.

[Fluffball]

That seems like a ludicrous statement to me.

It might be, I must confess I have not read a single word in any thread other than this one and my own.

The war in short: Dreylin lost I think seven cities, and REM and Scooter I think will come out gaining more after settlers and and a DZ city claim, and Dreylin is STILL in contention for the win.

Dreylin gained 3 techs in like 7 turns before the war. The game was close to being called if no one did anything.

[greenline]

I confess that I'm somewhat sad I've never gotten the chance for the full-diplo experience -- I like playing games with people, and while I'm enjoying my PBEM, no opportunity for banter and personality to shine through from my opponents is kind of a bummer. Also, I think it'd be fun to go RP in my official communications.

that's what the tech threads are for

[El Grillo]

Now that some teams are considering teching to Flight, should we advise the players on rules for tile bombardment, turn splits, and worker actions? I think it would be unfun/unbalancing for the players to have some of their builds disrupted every turn due to clock rules, and it might be prudent to put out an advisory soon, before any of them commit to Fighters.

[Bobchillingworth]

Sounds like a good idea, it'd be a real shame if this game fell apart due to turn split acrimony lurkers saw coming weeks in advance.

[Fluffball]

BGNs recent posts about building up his military as his next move has a surprisingly huge impact on my view of the game, especially since his plan is to simply turtle and survive till the end. If he stuffs his land full of destroyers and medic CG machines guns and marines on railroads, even tanks and fighters will need some effort to get through that.

What that means is Dreylin's expansion options are limited to 3 hard targets, while REM and Scooter can rip Pindicator to shreds. I think of the 3 main nations, Dreylin has moved to 3rd place based purely on room for expansion.

Of course everything could change in seconds in a FFA (or weeks in this case). Perhaps REM accidentally collapses under a 2v1. Perhaps Scooter goes for Pindicator and gets eaten alive by a 4 turn blitzkrieg from Dreylin with transports.

[Commodore]

When it's down to five teams why not move the pitboss to sequential?

[Old Harry]

With a 48h turn already why not do it now?