Foreign Policy: RealmsBeyond

[YossarianLives]

So I'm wading through this thread, and I'm going to just comment on the highlights as I go. Hope you guys don't mind!

Awesome! I was hoping we could hear from some of our new RB members about what was going on over on your side of things.

In terms of it being an aggressive plant, of course it was, won't deny that for a second. It violated no agreements, but it toed the line of the spirit of the initial correspondence - absolutely. It's civ. It wasn't my call really nor my main preference, but I was ok with it. An emotional reaction from your team is very reasonable in that case - we had a similar one with the Taj/marble stuff later in the game.

Yeah, that city plant... I was PISSED! I don't remember what came first, Starfall or your refusal to help us during the Spanish war (and I think you even helped the Spaniards? Can't remember exactly). But between those two things, our fate was pretty much sealed.

One thing I find super interesting reading through this is it seems you guys fell into the same thing we did. I felt in our diplo discussions, many of our players were overly-fixated on your team - reading lies/deceit into statements Caledorn said to us that clearly had none, etc.

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I don't quite know why both of our teams seemed to unhealthily fixate on each other. I don't know if it was just some of the pre-game disagreements or what, but it had a pretty unique effect on the game and both of our choices. The paranoia factor itself played a lot into the settling of Starfall, I know. From reading your threads, it seems you guys wanted to rush to that spot too for the same reasons as us.

When neither side really trusts the other to be friendly longterm (and I know from being on RB and now from reading your threads that it was definitely true), you tend to just try to "get yours" and defend yourself. I get the distinct feeling that silly stone was going to be the end of RB/CFC relations regardless of who settled it. Darn you plako for putting it there.

Well, we were the two best teams going into the game, and the first two teams we each met, and direct neighbors, so I do think it made sense that we focused on each other more than anyone else. But all the pre-game drama (both at RB and over here on CFC) probably did color that focus in a more negative light than it could have.

now neither teams are going to win when I think we had the two most deserving teams

What?!?! Come on, man. Team CFC is totally going to win this thing!

And wow I write all this up only to scroll to the next post and see that Yossarian already answered it . Ah well, I'll leave this in just to confirm it wasn't really a reference to your leader choice, but it is funny that it turned out that way.

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Oh it happened again, I type out a big explanation and Yossarian sagely points it out just a few posts later.

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So yes, your C&D guy was doing so well that he knew our builds better than me.

And typing every action and city output up into the planning spreadsheet, ugh.

Our micro planning was very good, and Sullla did an excellent job of turnplaying while the job was following the plan and reporting every turn so we could have good discussions about it.

Having a spreadsheet to follow lasted until liberalism or so. It got really hard to maintain towards the end, as we got up to 17 cities. It wouldn't have been reasonable without having as many people willing to work on it as we did.

Wow, can't even imagine the amount of work and effort that took. Very impressive!

As a member of the second group, the inexperienced howling for blood, I can say this is uncannily accurate and quite hilariously so. Smugness was a problem, as was the hidden assumption that having more experience and knowledge in how to optimize Civ IV mechanics automatically translates to being better at strategy (that transcends even the specific game being played) and reading human nature, and so on. At times the more experienced Civ players aggressively shut down discussion from some really smart people whose ideas ought to have been considered. And there was an idea that if you weren't willing to contribute to an actual micro plan, you needed to just shut up.

There also were a great number (as many as 50 perhaps) and variety of players following the game and chiming in at various points, with a wide spectrum of attitudes including about CFC.

I think a really strong point about our team is that we've been encouraging input from everyone throughout. I know that I felt very comfortable jumping right in with my thoughts and opinions, even though I was brand new to CFC at the time.

 

[talonschild]

FWIW, I'd be interested in hearing the rationale behind declaring CFC out of the running.

Might I express my admiration at that truly magnificent microplanning. And welcome aboard. Now that all y'all are here, I'm realizing just how much we could've benefited from your input throughout... Well, here's hoping y'all plan on joining in for the remainder.

 

[vranasm]

heh nice comments...

I have to say that RB clearly run best MM plan and I think it served as a point of their doom.

In our team there was a lot of .... discussion about early 40 turns where we could have been much better off with quicker setup, but the team wanted slower approach and as it turns out it served us reasonably well that we were not the target of the big dogpile but team RB was.

I think that in MP the most important thing is not to paint big red cross on yourself with good micro in cities .

 

[SevenSpirits]

I think that in MP the most important thing is not to paint big red cross on yourself with good micro in cities .

I disagree. I think we just had poor diplo. Not that scooter did a bad job, but that he had to represent an extremely varied set of opinions which were inconsistent with one another and included a lot of meanness and snobbery. With strong, consistent diplo there wouldn't be a problem.

 

[talonschild]

Aye, most of the sacrifices we made were aimed at more concrete long-term gain - the placement of our capital, for instance. I thought so, anyhow.

 

[scooter]

I disagree. I think we just had poor diplo. Not that scooter did a bad job, but that he had to represent an extremely varied set of opinions which were inconsistent with one another and included a lot of meanness and snobbery. With strong, consistent diplo there wouldn't be a problem.

Part of what was so difficult was that it's really important that your diplomacy and your strategic plans are cohesive, which I don't think we ever really had. Our strategic plan was to make the choice that most pissed someone off (settling Starfall, settling Brick by Brick, taking every German city as quickly as possible, etc.). My job basically turned into fallout management half the time which was not really what I expected going into it. I don't think that's a completely invalid strategy if you can genuinely use those moves to run away with the game, but our lead wasn't nearly big enough to justify that type of decision making. Our in-game play pretty much dictated that our diplo focus was to delay a dogpile until it was too late rather than being able to focus on finding a strong ally - because who wants to ally with someone who claims way more land than expected and pretty much refuses to try to make up the difference. (Also, the refusal of CivFr to do so much as reply to our emails pretty drastically changed things.)

Also, like I've said before, I think our best move probably was to work with CFC to divide up the world, but with the general distrust between the two teams, I'm not convinced at all there's a way that was ever going to work.

FWIW, I'd be interested in hearing the rationale behind declaring CFC out of the running.

Sorry I didn't mean to make any premature predictions or even be a damper. Honestly I'm not completely up to date on the whole situation, so I could very well be wrong. That comment only came from the general feel I got from chatting to a few people that are more "in the know" than me that things were tough right now.

 

[talonschild]

Or it could be that I'm a fountain of boundless optimism.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Part of what was so difficult was that it's really important that your diplomacy and your strategic plans are cohesive, which I don't think we ever really had.

Yeah.

This seems like a drawback of having a large team, and also a drawback of the only leader-like figure on your team having the diplomatic skills of a... having no diplomatic skills. As someone primarily on the micro side, it felt hopeless to try to coordinate micro actions diplomatically, because our foreign policy was heavily influenced by reactionaries (and people dismissive of diplomacy) so we had no moral standing on anything. Micro really should be subservient to foreign policy needs.