[PB70] Lurking under the tables

[greenline]

Unrelated, but what previous diplo game would have the record for being played the most cleanly? (ie least backstabs or rule disputes)

[Commodore]

Pretty open-and-shut. By a strict reading of the rule, if Mjmd wants to declare war on Bing and then offer the city in a peace treaty, that'd be legal. Given Mjmd's proclivities, that's probably more valuable to Bing than anything else, it at least gives him a 10 turn period where he cannot be NAP-stabbed.

[xist10]

If there was no war/peace and that is the rule they agreed on then yes, the trade is against the rules and a reload should be made.

I don't see how what city was traded makes a difference?

I'm not sure, but I think there is a bit spite on scooters side involved.
And maybe this has no effect, but like scooter wrote, there was no big effect (buildings) that scooter wasn't allowed to get both cities with the peace treaty and Mjmd vetod this. Scooter has to play by the rules, Mjmd has to play by the rules.
And there is bit of effect: I'm not sure if Bing/Charriu are at war. Charriu wanted to declare, but I think they are at peace in the moment ? This would mean, Charriu is unable to recapture the city.
And 53 points could even be more then 1 city, but I don't think so.

[Tarkeel]

If there was no war/peace and that is the rule they agreed on then yes, the trade is against the rules and a reload should be made.

I don't see how what city was traded makes a difference?

I'm not sure, but I think there is a bit spite on scooters side involved.
[...]
And 53 points could even be more then 1 city, but I don't think so.

Yeah, that was why I asked if he could see which cities were involved.

[Commodore]

Wait, why is that a confusion? Mjmd admits it and clearly didn't consider it a rules violation:

T168

Conquest of Charriu is going pretty good. Sold NE city to Bing. I couldn't have taken the culture of the crab he settled for ages ago and my army will be headed back after current conquests so unsure Charrius NE city will fall.

We would have been treated to a long explanation involving legal theory if he had.

[Tarkeel]

Wait, why is that a confusion? Mjmd admits it and clearly didn't consider it a rules violation:

Honestly, I haven't had it in me to read his thread after the grandstanding around the NAP-stab.

[Qgqqqqq]

Sounds clear cut to me. Should have caught it earlier.

[Tarkeel]

This came up in the discord, and warrants a reply in here:

If the map was a bit chunkier, wouldn't have literally all but 3 cities be coastal. Probably my only complaint about the map @Tarkeel

One of the issues with civ4 maps is that the dimensions have to be a multiple of 4, and when you have 5 players in a somewhat mirrored map, then dimensions have to be a multiple of the lowest common denominator of 4 and 5, which is.. 20.
The other part of it is the balance between distance and number of tiles available; tilecount was already on the high side of what you'd asked for.


Another part of it which I didn't reply in the Discord is that it should be clear pretty early on that water was important on this map, and so coastal cities were both a boon and a liability to be balanced, which I don't think any of the players really thought too much about.

[scooter]

Also, in Discord, Charriu is being astonishingly passive in reaction to Mjmd's attack. He is apparently just planning to give Mjmd 400 gold and Open Borders back in exchange for being allowed to resettle the city uncontested. Wow. My first instinct in Charrius's position would be to threaten to escalate the war to majorly unpleasant levels for both sides unless I am allowed to resettle the city for no payment at all.

Yeah. Mjmd is in an amazing position, and is just now getting the main benefit of his ORG bonus. Meanwhile Scooter seems to be the only one interested in stopping him; Charriu is doing his own thing, Bing is floundering about (and propped up by Mjmd), while Superdeath seems to mainly wait for something to happen. I wonder where Cornflakes disappeared to?

I'm relieved to know lurkers noticed and reacted to this stage of the game. I thought I was crazy for how confused over this I was. I don't remember whether I ranted in my thread or not, but I was just so confused and a bit frustrated how blase everyone was about his position. In retrospect I was obviously justified to feel he was going to run away, and I think the ho-hum attitudes was mostly inexperience from other players.

Mjmd and Scooter is trying to sort out a naval treaty limiting the number of ships in the ocean between them. I'm waiting for the realization that the there is only one moebius sea, so where would the limit be?

I definitely knew this, and I'm sure Mjmd did too. In practice though they were two distinct seas in that a 2-move Galley would take an eternity to "switch sides." Even with Galleons they were pretty much totally independent fronts.

I’m response to scooter’s latest post: If AP victory is enabled but requires 100% of the votes, doesn’t that make it effectively impossible to win with, especially in a human game?

EDIT: You got me scooter, looks like I need to check my sarcasm detector

HAHA nailed the prediction. I know a <quiet subforum> <post> <instant lurker thread reaction> pattern when I see it.

Bing's goose is cooked absent outside intervention, yes.

Anyone else thinking that Scooter should be weaving in more horse archers? Skirmishers are pretty good on defense but they do not trade well against HA outside of walls and having 2-movers would make the capital much much more vulnerable early on.

Yeah this would have helped my hypothetical invasion, but I believe I did not even have HBR, nor did I want to delay Astro by a couple turns to tech it. Though, in retrospect, the stab may have been avoided if I was 2T later to Astro, so... lol.


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As for the NAP-stab comments, well, it was very interesting reading all those right now without having actually seen much of Mjmd's thread and his commentary on it. I've avoided it so far, but your comments in here make it sound wilder than even I expected.