[no players] CiVI Lurking Part II: Sophomore Slump

[Kaiser]

Ok that is a good summary, thank you for the guide line.

[Mardoc]

Woden has two recent plants in the center of the map. I'll send a knight, 2 muskets, and 2 crossbows, and my battering ram to lay siege to them. It won't be a huge army, but it should be enough to take one of the cities, and at the very least take advantage of Woden being distracted with Alhambram closer to home
....

On the home front, I'm going to push expansion and infrastructure hard during this period. With any luck, I'll be able to get my economy into killer shape while Woden spams out military to save his empire

Again!

What will it take to convince OleDavy that it's really really hard to get your opponent to agree to a limited war?

I think the most frustrating piece of this is that he keeps being far enough ahead that he *could* win these wars, but he never commits enough to actually win them.

[Esteon]

Actually, at this point in time I believe that OleDavy is playing the worst game here (which surprises the hell out of me).
Not only his war plans are crazy optimistic, and war execution sloppy at best, but his frequent complaining is really strange.
Other players are either constantly fighting "against the wind" or have a fun idea/variant (wonders? religion??)

He really got the best start. Great land, barbs stopped Singaboy, TheArchduke botched the scouting...

[Mardoc]

his frequent complaining is really strange.

That part I do understand. Things don't work out the way he expects, which makes him frustrated. Granted, part of that is incorrect expectations, but if you can't rant in your lurker thread, where can you rant? And part of his problems really do come from Civ6 lying with the interface,

Also, he seems to have the attitude that there's First Place and the Losers. Which is why he's continually comparing himself to Woden instead of to his neighbors, and why his plans seem to be getting to be riskier and riskier. That's moderately common around here, but it leads to larger swings in morale than if you still rate second place as a good result.

[pindicator]

I think we're running into a bit of an echo chamber mentality here. Oledavy has every right to complain in his thread, and as someone who has played multiple games where things don't go right it's very easy to get down on yourself and lose the energy and drive you had when your plans were made and seemed bulletproof.

I didn't see any pictures of the Wodan cities he's planning on attacking, but if they're far flung enough then davy's plan might work. But he needs to acknowledge the risk that Wodan has sufficient forces protecting the cities and react accordingly.

Davy has been great on empire management and infrastructure building. His mistake has been underestimating the amount of troops needed to overcome his opponent. Calling him the worst player is kind of a stretch, it's just that his major shortcoming in this game have been very obvious to us lurkers.

[Mardoc]

Calling him the worst player is kind of a stretch, it's just that his major shortcoming in this game have been very obvious to us lurkers.

I didn't mean to give that impression!  My frustration with him is because he keeps almost playing a brilliant game.  Three wars in a row he's lost (at least compared to his goals) and yet none are crippling because he's making up for it elsewhere.  And because he's able to pull out approximate draws out of situations that should be losses .

Honestly, his game sense and strategic thinking is pretty good too. He's hitting the right targets for the right reasons...just not hard enough. And now that he has the lead in the east along with staggered DoF pacts, I expect him to dominate that half of the continent...hopefully before Woden or Alhambram has already won.

I just want to see one of his plans work out entirely.

[srgtb]

Oledavy hasn't done much worse than anyone else and better than I expected from the war results. I think overconfidence on how many units to bring was inevitable given the lack of multiplayer experience with Civ 6. All of the invasions would have eventually been successful against the AI.

I'm surprised Woden put walls in Pirate's of the Caribbean with his last great engineer charge. That is far enough in the back lines I would have saved it next to the city in case his eastern city needed walls. If an eastern player approached the engineer could teleport there and build walls the next turn.

[Brian Shanahan]

 That's moderately common around here, but it leads to larger swings in morale than if you still rate second place as a good result.

It's a common issue with any competitive endeavour. An interesting bit of research was done a number of years ago amongst athletes comparing the general performance satisfaction of medal winners in races, it found (naturally enough) that those who finished first were the happiest, but, interestingly, third place finishers were generally happier with their performances than second placers.

One of the hypotheses put forward for this was that bronze medalists generally compared themselves against the field as a whole, thinking that by finishing third they outperformed the standard; whereas silver medalists generally compared themselves to the winner, thinking that by finishing second they underperformed.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I think the concept of "limited war" is dumb if you cannot speak at all.

[Ichabod]

Great Generals stacking is a very poor balance decision by the Devs. Likely an oversight, considering they nerfed all the stacking aura bonuses. It has a chance to never be addressed, though, because the percentage of Civ players that go to war is very low, and it'll never appear as clearly as factory stacking.