[PB59 Amicalola] The Vespertine Hour(s)

[Amicalola]

I'd love to see you finish the game. It has been an incredible journey and it deserves a rightful ending. If you take a week or two or longer per turn will you be able to keep going or is it like Krill says with no chance to play at all anytime soon?

The main reason I don't want to leave the game is because I've loved having such an active thread over the last couple of months. It's really made all the difference. But ultimately, I just can't justify it. I think the game has been taking over my life in a way that is not healthy, and now that I'm out, I already feel a huge sense of relief. A friend invited me over for dinner last night because of some of the personal stuff (basically a pretty nasty breakup/housing situation), and I almost said 'No thanks, I need to play my [6 hour] civ turn instead.' I'm not really comfortable with that being my instinctive response. 

The breakup was probably coming anyway, but it was a bit of a wake-up call, I guess. Civ4 Pitboss is a fun hobby, but not when it takes over the rest of your life. I am genuinely sorry though, I do sympathise with this perspective a lot.

[DaveV]

I remember when Civ 4 came out and Firaxis made a promotional video of a meeting of Civ Anonymous. I found it cringey at the time, since it was showing people who had suffered serious consequences in their lives because of playing too much civ, who were then sitting around chanting "one more turn." I sometimes feel as though these Civ boards are the sort of enabling as I read about with, say, pro-anorexia groups: someone posts a picture where they are unhealthily underweight and people respond with "you look great! Keep it up!" To be good at Civ, you have to have at least a somewhat obsessive personality, willing to devote your time and energy to wringing out the last hammers and beakers from every turn.

Also, the lurkers can be like the crowd at a gladiator combat: as the combatants are hacking each other to death, the viewer says to his neighbor, "the swordsman should have parried in quarte, and the guy with the net should have feinted to the left and thrown to the right."

Good luck to you in your personal life, Amicalola, I hope this works out for you. You don't owe the strangers on this board any more of your time.

[Cyneheard]

I remember when Civ 4 came out and Firaxis made a promotional video of a meeting of Civ Anonymous. I found it cringey at the time, since it was showing people who had suffered serious consequences in their lives because of playing too much civ, who were then sitting around chanting "one more turn." I sometimes feel as though these Civ boards are the sort of enabling as I read about with, say, pro-anorexia groups: someone posts a picture where they are unhealthily underweight and people respond with "you look great! Keep it up!" To be good at Civ, you have to have at least a somewhat obsessive personality, willing to devote your time and energy to wringing out the last hammers and beakers from every turn.

Also, the lurkers can be like the crowd at a gladiator combat: as the combatants are hacking each other to death, the viewer says to his neighbor, "the swordsman should have parried in quarte, and the guy with the net should have feinted to the left and thrown to the right."

Good luck to you in your personal life, Amicalola, I hope this works out for you. You don't owe the strangers on this board any more of your time.

I'm going to second this. Letting a game end because it's consuming players' lives is a good thing. I do not for one second regret when I pushed for an early end to a Pitboss.

[Sullla]

Believe me, I understand your situation since I've been in the exact same position and I completely agree that you're making the correct decision. I deliberately stepped away from taking part in Civ4 Pitboss/PBEM games because they inevitably took over my life in an unhealthy way. My personality just does not allow me to play these games in casual fashion, I always get sucked in until I'm spending hours each day planning and playing and reporting each turn. That was fine as a college student a decade or two ago but it's not sustainable any longer; I'm not sure if it was a good idea back in the day either. The Pitboss #2 game from the early days of Realms Beyond MP might make for a great read in retrospect but everyone involved took it way too seriously and I wasn't in a healthy place mentally for much of that span. More recently, I walked away from a near-certain victory in the Civ6 PBEM7 game where we very likely would have won the game if I had kept playing the turns for another month or so. However, it was the right decision at the time and I don't have any regrets about offering the other teams a draw. I was moving into a new house and planning a wedding and absolutely did not have the time to devote multiple hours per day to running turns in a Civilization game. I felt immense relief at stepping away from the game and that was the sign that I was making the correct decision.

So no, you shouldn't feel bad about ending this game where it stands now. I'm shocked that you were able to run an empire with 180 cities for as long as you did. I hope that you enjoyed the wild ride while it lasted, can look back at it with fond memories, and shouldn't need to feel any guilt at calling it quits. Time some time off, relax, and get back to a healthier mental space. Thanks again so much to you and the other competitors in this game for providing us with amazing reading material over the last year.

[Miguelito]

From the PMs

I will post a wrap up,  but I  believe I am 9 turns away from launching the spaceship. I would guess with you still lacking Apollo that I'd be faster? If I could hold that timeframe I'm pretty confident that I'd be able to defend it,  as I have some remote places to switch the palace inbetween.  However you have surprised me with campaign speed before so I might be wrong.  I think it's also pretty likely that you would break through my defenses and delay the ship. I have been pretty portions to blunders (lately letting myself get nuked in that Laz city in spite of my better knowledge - in fact I cash rushed the shelter that very turn,  but failed to draw the consequence. So I feel that you have been playing a lot more carefully and creatively than me, and it's literally that you would overwhelm me, also considering your tremendous hammer edge of whips are factored in. That might just allow you to drown me in jets and nukes off subs, which it feels really impossible to defend against.
I don't know if domination is feasible for you within 20 turns,  I guess you would need to conquer at least 2-3 more subcontinents, and then spread borders there,  to hold enough land? I guess Piccadilly and Lazteuq/GKC would be feasible,  but it's a stretch.  I was certainly determined to defend those and was hoping for defender's advantage to carry me. Picc's especially was pretty defensible now with no ports for you to conquer, and my army on transports in the inner sea.
Whatever, in my thread I've parted some 80-20 or 70-30 odds in your favour, assuming you would overrun us,  but that was gut feeling mixed with frustration over own errors.

I would just write the game down as inconclusive and move on.

That's interesting, I was planning on going for Domination, not Spaceship. I had assumed that was common knowledge, more like you say in the second half of your message. I had no plans to go for space since about T200, since I knew I could never compete with either you or Piccadilly. I had been thinking of my Domination as a crazy <1% longshot until very recently though, when it became a serious proposition.

I did have a plan to carry it through (post-Cairo, I mean), and I'm mostly convinced it would have worked. I'd love to explain it to you and hear what you think of it, but if you've asked for a replacement perhaps I should hold off? Either way, thanks for understanding my situation.

I'm not sure if I could have achieved Domination within a 20-turn timeframe, it would have been pretty close. I was planning to tech Robotics + Stealth and then put the rest of my money into upgrades for the rest of the game, since I wasn't competing for space.

I think this discussion is interesting enough to carry on in public

I think your military victory would have involved just breaking through our defense on one side and then plough through from there, unstoppable, forcing concession. Your great advantage was that I had to split forces between two fronts (from where I could not easily airlift substantial material to the other side), while you could choose to concentrate your already superior power on either side.
If you managed to break through even just to Mjmd's or Jowy's core within the next 8 or so turns the spaceship would have been significantly delayed. Once it launches, it really is a question of whether you can attack on all fronts due to palace hopping, and that is of course tricky.
The other question is of course nukes. But I think you could actually allow yourself to split stacks, so the effect would have been limited.

I see that you were considering an attack on Piccadilly's core. That would have been the preferable option for us I think. We still had stronger troops on that side of the map (moreso after I allowed you to nuke the better part of those in Persia). I also had taken care not to leave any ports for you to conquer.
And if Ichabod joined in, we either just nuke him, or if that's not feasible we retreat forwards into Picc's core. If he gets Jowy's core then it doesn't help you towards domination (but the spaceship is delayed). I think your feasible path to domination was Lazteuq-GKC-Ramk probably.

I did not rule out your spaceship because with us getting even in MfG, I could imagine you putting all of that into Research/Wealth, while pressing on with whipped unit, forcing us to dedicate hammers (which where not all that impressive anymore) to military. But yeah, basically I feared to just collapse on either front, probably the Persian one, really fast. Seeing as you apparentlywhere preparing to start whipping out the invasion force just t252 it is conceivable that I could have finished the spaceship. Again, my feeling for modern era dynamics is really bad.

If you are interested, feel free to log in, the password is pf.

[Charriu]

I think another important factor here would have been civac and what he would have done when, you Miguelito, would have gone for space.

Regarding Miguelito's eastern border. My plans were to capture the last Mjmd city (finally). With that I would have hoped or tried to gain peace with Amicalola at the right time. I would not have signed open borders with Amicalola. That of course would have locked out all naval attacks on Miguelito's eastern flank. the only option would have been for Amicalola to break through the Ramk/GKC isthmus on land.

[civac2]

I would have done nothing. I had some nukes and a bunch of commandos but any action against Miguelito would have just been kingmaking as I had no chance to win myself. I think I mishandled my economy pretty badly. Winning against the huge shrines and corp HQs would have been hard regardless.

[Amicalola]

From the PMs...
...I think this discussion is interesting enough to carry on in public

I think your military victory would have involved just breaking through our defense on one side and then plough through from there, unstoppable, forcing concession. Your great advantage was that I had to split forces between two fronts (from where I could not easily airlift substantial material to the other side), while you could choose to concentrate your already superior power on either side.
If you managed to break through even just to Mjmd's or Jowy's core within the next 8 or so turns the spaceship would have been significantly delayed. Once it launches, it really is a question of whether you can attack on all fronts due to palace hopping, and that is of course tricky.
The other question is of course nukes. But I think you could actually allow yourself to split stacks, so the effect would have been limited.

I see that you were considering an attack on Piccadilly's core. That would have been the preferable option for us I think. We still had stronger troops on that side of the map (moreso after I allowed you to nuke the better part of those in Persia). I also had taken care not to leave any ports for you to conquer.
And if Ichabod joined in, we either just nuke him, or if that's not feasible we retreat forwards into Picc's core. If he gets Jowy's core then it doesn't help you towards domination (but the spaceship is delayed). I think your feasible path to domination was Lazteuq-GKC-Ramk probably.

I did not rule out your spaceship because with us getting even in MfG, I could imagine you putting all of that into Research/Wealth, while pressing on with whipped unit, forcing us to dedicate hammers (which where not all that impressive anymore) to military. But yeah, basically I feared to just collapse on either front, probably the Persian one, really fast. Seeing as you apparentlywhere preparing to start whipping out the invasion force just t252 it is conceivable that I could have finished the spaceship. Again, my feeling for modern era dynamics is really bad.

If you are interested, feel free to log in, the password is pf.

It would have involved breaking through on one side and ignoring the other, just as you suggest. And you're also correct that I was planning on ignoring Charriu/Laz, and hitting the Piccadilly continent. But my specific plans changed and developed a bit after I stopped reporting, most importantly my timeline sped up. I actually would have started the whipping campaign this turn, with ~15-20 nukes and a few dozen Modern Armours, plus some extra misc. stuff. My specific plan was to hit Frozen's entire mainland core on T252, with about 20 nukes and commando tanks, capturing outer-coastal cities and razing the rest. I had 4 commando GGs, which were all able to upgrade to Modern Armour the turn beforehand. I would then have tried to paratroop onto Frozen's inner-islands, though that's probably the diciest part of the plan.

Crucially I would have captured Cristo Redentor (logistics were a huge problem for me after about T230). I would have swapped into Universal Suffrage, resettled all of Frozen's razed cities (maybe 6-8?), rushed airports->bomb shelters in them, and been able to start airlifting troops onto the continent relatively freely. The other reason for hitting Frozen is because I could have cleared out your defenders before sending the nukes in, so SDI wouldn't have been a problem.

Then I would have either hit Piccadilly's territory or Ichabod, maybe both at the same time. I would have been producing at least 50 Modern Armours for the front per turn, which I think(?) would have been overwhelming but I'm not certain. With plenty of nukes on top, of course. On top of my MFG, I think whips would have accounted for at least 10,000 hammers per turn of unit builds (more initially, but slowing to that), because I could 'sustainably' whip at least 100 pop per turn by now (happiness was becoming a problem in my core, but without teching it's not that relevant anymore. Tarkeel's continent was still pretty happy).

If you had launched the spaceship, I wouldn't have tried to stop it (that seems impossible to me). I would have just kept pushing and pushing for as much land area as possible, regardless of who I had to take it from. I probably would have tried to capture the whole of that third continent, to keep the half closer to me safe for border pops. I don't think I could have slowed you much )beyond forcing unit builds), but I think I had a good chance of beating your timeline regardless. What do you you think, a sound plan, or a ridiculous one?

I don't think I had any chance to beat you in a head-to-head space race. With mostly wealth builds on both our parts, your economy was still much better than mine (they always talk about the +25 food, but never the -40 maintenance ). Additionally I couldn't produce the actual parts very efficiently at all, where I assume you could, like Piccadilly.

If you want to log in to my civ, my password was 'thicc'. It was a dumb in-joke with friends that lasted less than a week after the game starting.

I appreciate all the other comments, I will respond to them all later today.

[El Grillo]

Congratulations a well-deserved joint win, the poor people of the Vespertine Empire can finally take a well-deserved vacation alongside their great leader.

[Lewwyn]

Congrats man! You absolutely made the right decision. You know I've been right there in that place too and obviously it's one of the reasons I'm not playing any games right now. I'm just so happy the map got an epic story played out over it. Just fantastic!