Eg replaying a few early turns
I'm not sure if it is a language thing, but to be quite clear... I did not replay the GOTM game. I played my game through to mid-2029. Then after reading someone's post, I started a new game of 2020, founded a city, fortified the rifleman, and watched what happened, like a movie replay, by repeatedly hitting Enter and seeing how the scenario ran for the years 2020~2022. I did
not replay my GOTM game itself, nor did watching the long-dead AI have an effect on any phase of it.
But this should not be allowed in the early stages of a game. So, where do we draw the line ?
Gaining knowledge of how a game (particularly a scenario) will unfold & then playing it should not. About drawing a line, I do see your point Peaster. Out of the general principle, in perhaps it could have been better to simply wait until after I killed the purple to even look (or read about?) the scenario start.
However, the same principle & question extends to a player being in a spoiler thread at all... before the game is done.
Its even less control there, as future events (in some games) could be read (e.g., you don't know where the line is until you've read what was posted), even if one did not want to hear about it. The general guideline of the past is to be well established in the game, then get into the spoiler thread and post about the progress. Each player decides line. In this particular GOTM (nothing remaining except mundane building), it was interesting to figuring out what might have been going on ~100 turns before. The start was clearly no longer was relevant to completing my game.
Continuing on the question of where is the line, in past GOTMs, we used to post maps, detailed discussions, etc. of progress. Today, there is the "spoiler" button (a new great feature), which can hide graphical detail from those that don't accidently want to see it. But the same issue...
when is it OK?
Should a player still working on a game be in a
Spoiler thread?
Why do we really play GOTMs? Its really up to the player, since discussion and learning and dissemination are part of the GOTM. I plainly post what I learn so that others may then learn & possibly improve their general gameplay, and that's my philosophy.
PS, Old-time players will probably already know this, but... I don't have a problem with others seeing and using my logs and strategy as a benchmark. If it helps people become better players, then I'm quite happy. To be fair, in the past, not all players in GOTMs of the past felt that way -- and in fact, some refused to post or talk about their games. And others would say very little. And that's OK too. But 5 years later, I see that players are still posting good/helpful/entertaining info -- many even with logs!