Sirius Intra-Team Pitboss Game!

[Lord Parkin]

In a simultaneous turn Pitboss game like this, it's overflow that determines who gets a wonder if it's the same turn, not randomness. I had about 400 hammers of overflow into The Internet the turn I built it.

And I can top your 4 base hammers away last turn: I was quite literally 1 base hammer off getting it a turn earlier. I was so freaking annoyed when I logged in last turn to see I hadn't got it then. In fact, I was set to get it with about 40 hammers of overflow on the previous turn, but extra war weariness popped up during the turn which I didn't notice at the end, which took 2 citizens off tiles and reduced my hammers per turn by almost 50. The most annoying thing was that I had a happiness resource that I was switching between my civs which could quite easily have fixed the problem had I noticed it.

I didn't mention it before because you didn't get The Internet that turn; if you'd have gotten it, I would have been inclined to ask for a reload or at least compare overflows.

So basically, it sounds like I would have got the wonder either way. Rest assured that it was not arbitrarily decided.

If you'd prefer not to play on at this point, that's fine... although you have so much espionage that I think you'll catch up those techs in no time anyway. Plus we're almost at the end of the tree anyway, so soon there'll be nowhere left for me to go and you'll catch up to par pretty quickly. It'll then come down to hammers (and a bit of strategy), not commerce.

Anyway, if you'd rather concede, I'll understand, though it'd be a shame. Would certainly free up some time in my evenings though, I guess...

 

[Irgy]

Ok, that's actually how I thought it should work. However I thought it couldn't possibly be overflow because I had a ton of it, but if you missed it by 1 base hammer yourself that would explain it. I'm still mad about it though, getting it because you screwed up would have been just as satisfying, if in a slightly different way. But you're right it's probably not an "injustice" in that case.

I really don't think I can catch up the techs in time, 16k EPs sounds like a lot but it's only 2 techs at this stage of the game. You'd be about Future Tech 10 by the time I finish the tree, and a proper space run should be finished (or launched anyway) before Future Tech 1. Plus I was kind of hoping to catch up to your 32k EPs, otherwise I'll never build anything you don't want me to. I really don't have any advantage to try and leverage to compensate for my weaknesses any more.

But, it sounds like you'd prefer to play on so I'm not going to quit on you. It'll be interesting to watch what you do to me in the end game anyway if nothing else.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I'm told Space Race is rather difficult when your opponent has a lot of espionage, but I don't know for sure. I may not go that route anyway. Happy to see the game through to a final battle if you'd prefer. I don't want to rob you of a decent endgame.

 

[DaveShack]

You could have avoided that war weariness...
I figured it would cruise through to space with my continent left pretty much alone.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Wars make life a bit more interesting, I guess. Although I wouldn't have declared on you in particular if Irgy hadn't done so first. I was quite content to just go after the AI's and leave you alone, but Irgy wanted to go after you so I figured I might as well grab some of that land while I could if you were going to be eliminated anyway.

I think that might have been your last turn, by the way. Not sure what you want to do at this point... as I said earlier, if you want to check in on the game periodically I'm happy to provide you with my password (or I guess you could just load up one of the AI civs then set them back to AI when you're done). Alternatively, I can post regular updates/screenshots in the thread so you're not out of the loop as host.

 

[Irgy]

Well, no offense DaveShack but you did seem to be the softest target, and the geographically closest for me too. If it was single player then either of us would have just cruised into space, knowing the AI was incompetant, but as it is we need to compete.

And since Lord Parkin and I have made a fairly ridiculous peace deal, so the only way we can compete now is to jump in on each other's wars and ninja-loot the spoils

 

[Lord Parkin]

Well, no offense DaveShack but you did seem to be the softest target, and the geographically closest for me too. If it was single player then either of us would have just cruised into space, knowing the AI was incompetant, but as it is we need to compete.

Indeed...

And since Lord Parkin and I have made a fairly ridiculous peace deal, so the only way we can compete now is to jump in on each other's wars and ninja-loot the spoils

Heh, that's true I guess. By the way, I'm happy to consider city swapping if you want to arrange our cities on the new continent better or in a more aesthetically pleasing way (e.g. continuous borders rather than bits and pieces all over the place).

 

[DaveShack]

No worries, I was actually a little surprised it wasn't sooner. Don't really know why, but I'm always thousands of hammers / espionage / beakers behind, pretty much every game. Maybe it's just the land most of the time? Vast areas of jungle this time around...

 

[Lord Parkin]

It's probably a combination of bad luck with starting positions and not expanding aggressively enough early on. Pretty much the key to getting ahead in any game is to expand as much as possible, as early as you can afford to. That, and warring strategically as well as nabbing one or two key wonders, will help to get you ahead. Of course, it was a bit easier for me with double Financial civs, but not hugely so. Having an island to myself helped far more - it allowed me to freely spam wonders (even more so than in the Warmup game) without needing to worry about anyone "poaching" them. When you have almost all the wonders in the game, it puts you ahead rather a lot.

Irgy wouldn't have been so advanced either if he hadn't been partly riding my coattails most of the game - we had/have an agreement where he can freely steal techs with his Spies, and we've set up a city specifically so that missions are as cheap as possible for him. So in that sense you didn't really have much of a chance of keeping up anyway without similar allies on your own continent.

So it's a combination of factors really, some out of your control. But if I had to suggest one thing to improve your average standing across games, it'd be to expand more aggressively in the early game.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Game seems to be down...

 

[DaveShack]

It popped a message saying failure to create an autosave for you.
Game bounced, looks like it's paused.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Thanks, thought that might have been the case. Works now.

 

[Irgy]

Congratulations to Lord Parkin, on his Domination victory!

A full writeup of the English-Mongolian story is on the way for anyone interested. It would be great to hear other people's stories too. The winner's story is probably a bit dull though - "lead the whole way and smashed everyone else to bits, with a bit of help along the way from that sucker Irgy, the end" : P~

 

[Lord Parkin]

Thanks Irgy. You've certainly been a very sporting opponent, even in the face of a complete runaway rival.

Even with the little doubt over the eventual outcome for a while now, this has still been quite an interesting game for me from several perspectives. For one thing, I've learnt a whole heap about the power of espionage, both when used cooperatively (sharing techs without tech trading on) and destructively (the Spaceship is certainly really, really hard to build playing against a human opponent with enough espionage). I've also enjoyed toying with some of the more modern units that I hardly ever get to play with in games.

In my view I did get a particularly nice starting position in this game, which helped to secure an early lead. Being a team of 2 players on a continent with only 1 other half-team made for a very easy free capital steal early in the game. That certainly helped to push me off to a nice lead.

Civ/leader choice was quite important in my view as well. Financial is powerful enough as it is, and double-Financial is almost overkill. Left to expand peacefully for the whole early-mid game, that trait alone accounted for a lot of my tech lead. Of course, having one Industrious civ was very important too - it enabled me to hog pretty much all the wonders in the game. Having only 2 other Industrious civs in the whole game, 1 of which I killed almost straight off the bat (Louis) didn't leave room for much contest over the wonders. (I still maintain that Industrious is an underrated trait - as long as you know what you're doing strategically and diplomatically, it's far better than most alternatives.)

The Aggressive trait, and access to +1 movement ships (+2 after navigation), as well as Amphibious Riflemen/Infantry, actually mattered a lot less than I thought. I probably could have substituted Ragnar for any other Financial leader with almost identical results. Huayna, of course, was more important (solely for his Industrious trait).

When Corporations came around, the game started getting really silly. Having +15-20 food and hammers in every city was truly overkill, and pretty much sealed the game (if it hadn't been sealed already). I've said before that corporations are extremely powerful (and probably come too early - especially Sid's Sushi), and the end of this game was certainly one of the best examples I've seen of that. (Probably the best example ever was in a game that finished last year, which also had no tech trading - Return to Duniapetu. I ended up with an even higher base score there.)

Anyway, that's the short version. Might make some more detailed comments later. Thanks for the game, everyone!

 

[Lord Parkin]

Oh, I should mention for those interested that it turns out the Internet would have had no effect either way on the game, because we discovered 1 team counts as 1 player for Internet purposes. In other words, no free techs are distributed unless two different teams have access to a tech - so with only Irgy and I playing, that wasn't going to happen. Good to know for the future, anyway.

 

[DaveShack]

Congrats!

I have been so distracted that I never noticed it was over. The answer to "what happens to a pitboss after it has been won" is the process stays active but it doesn't seem to be possible to log into it any more.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Also, the timer remains static and doesn't advance to further turns. I seem to recall from things I've heard in the past that if you want to continue after someone gets a victory, you have to be present in the game when the turn flips, take a save, then reload that save. (Or just be the host and reload from the start of that turn I guess.) Of course, in this particular game no need to. However, I wouldn't mind if you could forward me the final save if you have it Dave - I'd quite like to watch the replay. (Or maybe Irgy has the replay file stored on his computer, as he was logged in at the flip?)

 

[Irgy]

Where would it be if I had it?

 

[Lord Parkin]

It should be in your documents if you have it. For Windows 7, it'd be:

C:\Users\(Username)\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Replays

 

[HUSch]

LP
You must be first in the fixed queue of players, to open in simul PB the game at Hotseat. It's the same when you make the save. You see in the civstats, that we are behind mav and before CDZ, mer and Quat. I don't know if Amazon is before or behind us. If Mav is destroyed, then perhaps we are first.