[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

Scooter is frustrated with the way this is going to the point of saying he doesn't want to continue the game that is obviously won, and your reaction in his own thread is ? Empathy much?

If this were single player he'd clearly have put the game on a shelf and moved on to something else. When you are getting to the point where even the clear game winner no longer wants to continue, and there is no resolution coming from the lurkers, something has gone seriously off the rails with the game.

There have to have been at least some other players who have complained about playing out the string on this, right?

[Krill]

Yup.

Because every other reaction would be a lie. And the demand that lurkers jump to is laughable at best.

I haven't been lurking this game at all until I saw the lurker thread post. There's plenty to talk about after the game, but not here, not now.

And on a personal level, about empathy: believe what you want to believe, it will not change objective reality.

[Zed-F]

The place for that reaction is in the lurker thread, not to throw it in Scooter's face. Otherwise it's like telling Scooter directly, 'hey, you're frustrated, and I don't give a damn.' If you don't give a damn, then have the common courtesy not to tell it to the person who's frustrated.

[Krill]

No, that reaction goes here from the point a player demands lurkers do what the player wants, as a straightforward reminder that no, lurkers do not respond to that.. I'd know, been there, done that, burnt the t-shirt. Whether I give a damn or not (at this point in time, about this game) is irrelevant, and I'm not fussed about how I'm going to be interpreted when I also point out that PB75 had some wonky gold trades in the late game.

scooter, I look forward to reading those suggested baseline rules. I might even respond.

[Zed-F]

This intent was not clear from your popcorn emoji, and deserved amplification to make your intent clear. Thanks for that.

[scooter]

Zero offense taken to the popcorn thing of course. This is objectively entertaining. This game has up until this point been boring. My one complaint aimed at the lurkers here is that I believe lurkers have an inherent bias towards preferring the game be interesting. Yuris getting a boost is interesting. So we're gonna let the sham slide because it's interesting.


10 hours and nobody has found an example of this degree of gold gift being allowed to pass without controversy. Weird. If this was normal, I'd think we could find one. After all, we have played around 150 PBEM/PBs over the years.


I have made a decision. I will play on, but I will no longer be reporting on this game. Apologies to Zed-F and Tarkeel who have been incredibly valuable. I'll send you guys some screenshots if/when good things happen. I will make the occasional exception to mock Superdeath when appropriate because he couldn't even be vaguely competitive fair and square and think he deserves it. If you're gonna make a mockery of my game and my time, I'm going to be snide back.


Finally, to illustrate how stupid this all is, I will point out the following. City and unit gifts are not banned in this game. Because we have seemingly decided it is acceptable to do anything not explicitly banned by the rules, maybe I should consider giving Cairo a serious lift. After all, it's in my interest to gain a war ally, right? Maybe we'll find out, maybe we won't. Hard to say.

[Qgqqqqq]

I think that's the right call, given there is clearly no consensus on an out of game intervention. I do think it is unfortunate that yet another game has led to drama and bad blood felt by at least one player. I wish we could have these games without that.

I think the playing the game to completion question somewhat interesting - is there an obligation to concede? Clearly not - but I know there's been a few games where that has come up recently. I admit there are few games I play late in single player. Perhaps three city elimination, or an alternative house rule can be used to bring a game to completion.

Finally, thanks for a fun read. (I will note that another source of lurker bias can be in favour of a well-reported player thread.) Despite my reservations going into this game, it has been an enjoyable ride from the outside.

[Zed-F]

Good luck going forward, Scooter. Hope playing without reporting is less time-consuming and hence feels less like a time poorly spent. Hopefully you're able to maintain a winning position. I don't think it's the right call to use others' game distortions as an excuse to distort the game even more -- the better thing to do is to put that energy into the house rules proposal -- but you gotta do what seems right and/or entertaining to you in these circumstances.

[scooter]

Still no examples of this type of behavior being acceptable, huh? Weird.

I think the playing the game to completion question somewhat interesting - is there an obligation to concede? Clearly not - but I know there's been a few games where that has come up recently. I admit there are few games I play late in single player. Perhaps three city elimination, or an alternative house rule can be used to bring a game to completion.

Definitely no obligation to concede. But ironically, I think better players would have conceded awhile ago. I suspect some of this is powered by naivety. Despite all the sham of this, I still got to Airships before my top competitor got to Frigates despite the latter getting hundreds of gold in charity. And I will get to Destroyers before he gets to Airships and will get Kremlin before he gets Ship of the Line or whatever else. I may get to Steel too before he gets Chemistry, hard to say. It's a 2T tech for me even after finishing Physics just now. Drydocks + Kremlin with perfect vision and first strike from Airships will be extremely funny at least?


All that to say... I have been hesitant to say things like "this game is not loseable for me" because that's how you become a meme when you do actually blow it. But this game has been over for awhile. All this gold gifting sham is doing is making it take longer and making it more tedious.

[scooter]

Another day goes by with none of the lurkers who think I'm wrong able to produce a single solitary example of a gold gift of this magnitude being considered acceptable despite over 150 games spanning over a decade to choose from. Maybe someday we'll see evidence in favor of this decision. Until this happens, no screenshots for any of you. If you think I'm going to stop being petty about this, then this must be the first thread of mine you've ever read.


Also, I tallied it up by checking my old reports, and between Bing and Superdeath, we'll have seen 1,500 gold funneled to Yuris in an effort to prolong this game for no reason. 1500g is pretty close to equivalent to a gift of the entire tech of Chemistry. My estimation of Yuris' true tech rate is this was worth around 8-9T of tech for him. I had a golden opportunity this past turn to press forward and fork a bunch of his core cities that I think would have quite likely seen one burned, but instead I had to withdraw because the SD gold gift speeds Frigates by a couple of turns, and Chemistry came in. The razing of a core city probably pushes him to concede, but instead we have to pretend there's still hope.


GLHF with the dozen airships completing end of next turn. Steel in 1, Taj in 2, Kremlin in 5, and that's without anyone helping me. Superdeath, buddy, if you wanna fund me too I could get Destroyers quicker. I will even gift you some because this is not explicitly banned which means it's allowed I have recently learned. You know where to find me.