LURKER THREAD- No Players

[Papa Bear]

No major comments on the Greenland - England developments. It was bad luck for KSL to get Alex and on England, to boot. Which is why he decided early on to try something waaaay off the beaten paths. Which didn‘t really pay off. To be fair to him: nobody will probably EVER win a PB on a world map this size with this many players if they start in England.

It‘s going to be interesting to see how Flunky does with the Invasion of Japan. His opponent (playing the Sumerians) in Japan is one of our most beloved single player story writers (who has an ongoing „all leaders challenge“ with 40+ Leaders already played), but who is more of an „emperor level“ than a „deity level“ player). He has exactly zero MP experience whatsoever. I thus assume that Flunky‘s invasion will take him completely by surprise. Which should increase Flunky‘s chances, but he is not an elite MP player, either. He is not as good as JP, Dulland, Frozen, w-p or KSL are at „reading“ the game / his opponents / his own most sensible next moves. I would expect that he will not finish in the top five, although his neighbors, his leader and his resources are all clear pro factors.

[Papa Bear]

@Charriu:

What I meant by

"There is even an example in this game where someone is using the (in MP games) most useless of traits (PRO)."

is how Rob Anybody (China) is still holding on in the middle of North America, despite currently being at war with no less than four opponents. Okay, two of those opponents played their attacks really badly (Lao-Tse (Egypt) & Kendogan (Celts)), and one other war party didn't have that much to work with army-wise right off the bat (Obi-Wan, who stood in for the initial Korea player who got surprised by Rob Anybody in the early stage of the game), which also helped, but in a sandwich like the one he is in I've seen people do far worse...



That other thing

"We also see a quite unique strategy with one player in this game, which I‘ve never even seen in SP, by the way."

I was referring to is Frozen playing Spain. Of course it is just plain impossible to found five religions in a deity SP game, but trying something like that in a setting like this is an idea not many players would have had, I guess. He still has only seven cities, but the tech overviews in Jesper Portus' story tell us how far ahead he is tech-wise right now: the last posted overview showed him as having researched techs worth in excess of 26.000 beakers, whereas the second best player currently has about 10.000 beakers less. Of course this kind of overview does not reflect how close the followers would be if their next tech had already been researched, but it DOES give you an idea how nice it is to be able to go on 100% research while still saving money each turn due to the very lucrative hinduism shrine. His "problem" might be that another very good player (Dulland / Inca) is sitting right next to him with more and better land, who is one of three or so players with roughly 16.000 beakers researched so far, but who knows how that will go? Frozen has researched Liberalism and picked Nationalism recently and the more he extends that tech lead of his, the less likely it might become for one of his neighbors to challenge him. Our "pundits" pretty much expected him not to be a candidate for overall victory since this strategy became apparent, but I'm feeling less inclined to bet against him with every turn that passes...

And that's what I meant: Isabella certainly is not an "A" class leader, traits & starting techs are nothing special, UU&UB are not worthy of mentioning and the limited amount of land doesn't help, either. But to come up with a (crazy) strategy like this in that situation and to actually get away / succeed with it? Earns a lot of respect from me (I know the guy reasonably well, because I once was lucky enough to play with him as a team in another PB a few years back)...

[Miguelito]

Someone link Cuban isolationists please (re: never seen in SP, it's literally the classic for the old folks here, far before my time though. And of course not deity)

[Papa Bear]

Not sure whether the Lurker Thread is the right place, but certainly better than sd's story, so let me go through your list and give you my personal take (this is not a reflection of general Civforum attitude) here...


AP resolutions Diplo Win is off, everything else is on the table - what's wrong with them?

blockades I can not remember any discussions about them; since they are realistic as hell, they're allowed in our PBs - again, what's wrong with them?

active espionage (espionage is enabled in settings but no spies can be built; no limits on Great Spies) 

Switching your opponents' civics is off (that surely is overpowered, especially once someone builds Cristo Redentor), whereas other elements are all allowed. Rules are in place allowing both parties to implement counter-espionage. Throwing a city into revolt is a necessary tool for someone trying to prevent someone else's cultural victory (it played a huge role in the predecessor game PB73 and ultimately led to two players "winning" in the same turn) - why play without it?

nukes Are not allowed in this game / we do poll that before the game

War Elephants Yes, they are difficult to deal with / counter effectively - which is why their placement on the maps is usually not "clearly" in one player's domain but in border regions that several neighbors can get to

city and unit gifting (including city transfer as a part of a peace treaty) 

There are rules for that, too. Unit gifting is off completely, even unit naming has to follow rules (you can't name a unit "just looking" or "we come in peace" or something. Handing over a city has to be pre-approved by the arbiter, to ensure that "the spoils of war" can not be gifted away to third parties, for example.

Great Lighthouse The more experienced players are likely to ask for GPT payments halving the profits when signing open borders agreements, but that is a one-on-one issue between the builder / conqueror and his peers. Flunky just conquered it in this game and it is going to be interesting to see how players react to that. As he provides 5 coin trade routes to other players, the negotiations will probably be interesting.

Statue of Zeus Allowed over on our side - if I am looking at how wahl-profi took out BaII or how plemo conquered Firlefanzer, I doubt the SoZ would have made a big difference there. Same as with blockades, I can't recall anyone ever pleading for it to be removed.

Corporations. As they normally are, mining and sushi are the most imbalanced thing of all there are in BtS, agreed. Which is why their effect has been drastically reduced in this game. On / off / modified usually gets polled.

Sometimes certain leaders or traits (most of the time FIN) 

Can't really do that on a 52 player map, where choosing your leader / civ is not an option.


You are right with your conclusion, of course! It is interesting to see how what works that the other guys solved differently. I've got to read up on some of your other games... Any recommendations? I'd particularly like to read stuff your best players have written, just to get a feeling for how they'd fare in one of our PBs. With the notable exception of superjm, the RB players in this game did not do too well, so far. Even an experienced player like Donovan Zoi seems to be on the way out, as well (may have something to do with not playing with blockades over here, normally).

[Papa Bear]

Someone link Cuban isolationists please (re: never seen in SP, it's literally the classic for the old folks here, far before my time though. And of course not deity)

The "on deity" is what the "never seen in SP" was referring to . Of course you can achieve that on lower difficulty levels. I've written a story in our forum a few years ago in which 

• found at least three religions (in the same city)
  
• never to start a war myself (which is pretty much exactly the opposite of how I play normally )
  

were some of the goals I set myself in the starting post. I played Ramses on Emperor difficulty and after the game people complained that it looked far too easy 

[Charriu]

So I thought it might be useful to have a list of the different PBEM and/or Pitboss games.

I seem to remember that someone (Sullla?) made a list of PB games but I couldn't find it.  In any case, I started working on the PBEMs but then I thought it might be easier to "crowd-source" it.

So I made a Google Spreadsheet.  If you feel like it, feel free to update it with any PBEMs that you were in or know about.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...RMnc#gid=0

For a complete list with summaries of our PBs you best look there. I recommend PBEMs and earlier PBs still played on base BtS for a better comparison. I think the most famous report is still from Sulla for PB2: http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/RBPB2-1.html

[Papa Bear]

Thanks! I read a game report by Sulla on his own website some time ago. Where different Forums played each other, which made for very interesting reading (DZ played there in a de-facto alliance with RB...). But that was probably in the early Civ IV days...

[Charriu]

I try to keep some reasoning for why certain elements were banned. Keep in mind that I did not come up with the bans myself.

AP resolutions Diplo Win is off, everything else is on the table - what's wrong with them?

Diplo Win is off for us too. We also banned the following:

Declare War (on a non-member), Force Peace (between two members) and Assign City.

All because we deemed them unfair to some players and the players in question might not have enough agency in them.

blockades I can not remember any discussions about them; since they are realistic as hell, they're allowed in our PBs - again, what's wrong with them?

What annoyed most players here is not the the blocking of trade routes itself, but rather that you also can't work water tiles in the blockade radius, which is especially bad because the radius is so big.

active espionage (espionage is enabled in settings but no spies can be built; no limits on Great Spies) 

Switching your opponents' civics is off (that surely is overpowered, especially once someone builds Cristo Redentor), whereas other elements are all allowed. Rules are in place allowing both parties to implement counter-espionage. Throwing a city into revolt is a necessary tool for someone trying to prevent someone else's cultural victory (it played a huge role in the predecessor game PB73 and ultimately led to two players "winning" in the same turn) - why play without it?

This is a big topic. The short version is that many here deem the whole espionage system of BtS a very bad design. For example the city revolt option makes way to easy to capture cities. Why bother with collateral bombing down defenses, when you can just revolt the city. But I don't want to get to deep into this topic as it would blow up the discussion.

Statue of Zeus Allowed over on our side - if I am looking at how wahl-profi took out BaII or how plemo conquered Firlefanzer, I doubt the SoZ would have made a big difference there. Same as with blockades, I can't recall anyone ever pleading for it to be removed.

Many people here are very annoyed by war weariness in itself. This wonder made the effect of war weariness even worse, which is why it got banned. Most players think it's a mechanic purely for singleplayer with no merit in multiplayer.

[Charriu]

Thanks! I read a game report by Sulla on his own website some time ago. Where different Forums played each other, which made for very interesting reading (DZ played there in a de-facto alliance with RB...). But that was probably in the early Civ IV days...

You mean this

http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/ADG1.html

RBs proud team play. But it's actually late in the Civ IV days. I think it was played with almost the final state of BtS.

[Papa Bear]

Which mod do you use in other current games? Where would I find that (plus a description of what the mod does)? Funny enough, I just found a thread at Civforum, in which Frozen is asking if anyone would be interested to play with some more modifications than we usually do :D Maybe "yours" would be something for them?