My first win on Immortal... Just not any fun.

[Nilmerf]

Step 1: Go into WorldBuilder and delete barbarian galleys that are rowing back and forth in the polar ice caps.
Step 2: Pretend they froze to death.

 

[King Flevance]

Step 1: Go into WorldBuilder and delete barbarian galleys that are rowing back and forth in the polar ice caps.
Step 2: Pretend they froze to death.

LOL.

I agree on the higher levels. I like playing XXL size maps, marathon, and raging barbs and get a random civ. I will never play diety with those settings because 1) You need to play with a civ that starts with hunting to be able to get to archery in time to stop the barbs. You also need a tile with at least 2 in your BFC - 3 is better (plains hill) as 2 is cutting the wire. SO really to beat these settings, 1/2 of the civs are not an option and even when left with the ones that are valid, it relies on a proper map generation. Your intial tech path and build queue are preset. Etc. This is not fun for me. And since it is not the settings I have always played (since 1) I feel I am in a sense cheating. As far as I am concerned, playing on the largest map with raging barbs are the settings of the game. ANd I do feel that playing Inca vs. 1 on a duel map on deity and winning is not a valid victory as it is in the same boat as worldbuilder. And I personally feel changing settings to suit difficulty level is right next door to cheating.

That's just my take on it though. I enjoy monarch and the choices that come with it. I plan to try out Emperor again soon but am trying to get my win rate a bit higher on monarch first. I doubt I will move above Emperor on here though. I have never went above Emperor on any Civ game for these same reasons. I have tried them out, but I always head back down to the upper middle of the difficulty levels.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^ There is a difference between cheating and merely picking easier/harder settings.

 

[King Flevance]

Depends on who you ask. Some people consider turning on raging barbs and building the Great Wall as cheating. Some people consider using Inca on a duel size map as cheating. I agree there is a difference but sometimes it is a fine line. These settings I mention are the ones that feel "hazy" for me, so I don't care for it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Depends on who you ask. Some people consider turning on raging barbs and building the Great Wall as cheating. Some people consider using Inca on a duel size map as cheating. I agree there is a difference but sometimes it is a fine line. These settings I mention are the ones that feel "hazy" for me, so I don't care for it.

It's not debateable at all ---> those things aren't cheating by definition.

However whether or not they are lame/should be done is very debateable .

Of course using Inca on any sized map is questionable, as is marathon . But regardless the game is meant for fun, and all of this is within the rules.

 

[obsolete]

It may very well be debatable. I wanted to try out the same thing with TGW in a deity teamer way back. But both Snaaty and my other team-mate voted against it believing it was a form of cheating. So we dropped the raging-barbs bit.

 

[Yoshimune]

I just consider all the other civs as my raging barbarians...

 

[MyOtherName]

Depends on who you ask. Some people consider turning on raging barbs and building the Great Wall as cheating. Some people consider using Inca on a duel size map as cheating.

And some people are flat out wrong. There's a difference between the actual rules set forth by the game, and the artificial rules some people like to layer on top of it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It may very well be debatable. I wanted to try out the same thing with TGW in a deity teamer way back. But both Snaaty and my other team-mate voted against it believing it was a form of cheating. So we dropped the raging-barbs bit.

People believe inaccurate things all the time, even very skillful people.

A vote arguing it "too easy" would have made a lot more sense.

 

[kochman]

Heck, you could still lose the race for the GW, and they you are hosed... so, its definitely NOT cheating to set the settings that way. The settings apply equally to every one on the map... that's pretty fair.

 

[King Flevance]

Wow, you guys really got hung up on that. I suppose no one likes being called a cheater though. I am not saying anyone who plays different settings than I do is a cheater. I think my 2nd post was taken out of context. IN that context, anyone who plays below Prince is a cheater too.

Depends on who you ask. Some people consider turning on raging barbs and building the Great Wall as cheating. Some people consider using Inca on a duel size map as cheating. I agree there is a difference but sometimes it is a fine line. These settings I mention are the ones that feel "hazy" for me, so I don't care for it.

The bolded part is where I agree turning off barbs is not cheating. Neither is building TGW, its kind of it's whole point of existing. None of these settings I have mention are technically cheating in the same sense as WB. But I have only said they sit right next door to world builder for me. As you are still essentially altering game perameters to make your victory more obtainable for you.

The underlined parts go together. It is a fine line because of it changes based on who you ask. In all civ games, manipulating the AI in diplomacy or employing tactics the AI does not understand is sometimes called to the forefront as cheating.

These two lines were not a dig. "Depends on who you ask" was not me quoting you TMIT and saying, "Yeah, but you're a cheater." It was simply me stating what I have seen countless time on here.

The settings mentioned in the last part mean all the settings from that post and the post before. Not soley off this post. (Outside of TGW as I agree with kochman) I rarely ever build it but its because I get beat to it and don't make it a priority. I could go both ways with raging barbs turned on.

since it is not the settings I have always played (since 1) I feel I am in a sense cheating. As far as I am concerned, playing on the largest map with raging barbs are the settings of the game. And I do feel that playing Inca vs. 1 on a duel map on deity and winning is not a valid victory as it is in the same boat as worldbuilder. And I personally feel changing settings to suit difficulty level is right next door to cheating.

I wanted to grab this and repost it here because It is a very relative part to my second post. I am speaking for my own preferences here. By raising the difficulty AND turning off raging barbs AND/OR shrinking the map, I feel like I am cheating. I can't help it, I just do. These aren't the settings of the game for me. ANd they make things easier in the same sense as just going into worldbuilder and giving myself ivory would. Like I said, this is where "it gets 'hazy' for me" or is right next door to cheating.
It IS stacking the deck. (Notice I did not say in your favor) I have seen some people including you I believe TMIT mention the AI's flaws with marathon in waging war. One could make an arguement about how I play marathon and call me a cheater because of that. Like I said, I don't think it is - as I am hoping Better AI mod will eventually solve that problem. But if it doesn't I ain't gonna play epic to appease some "hater" in the community. I will gladly accept my "cheater" label by that person and play my game.

It's not debateable at all ---> those things aren't cheating by definition.

However whether or not they are lame/should be done is very debateable .

Of course using Inca on any sized map is questionable, as is marathon . But regardless the game is meant for fun, and all of this is within the rules.

I was gonna quote this and put "Touche" as the response but I didn't. I am stating the second line and in my opinion it shouldn't be done - in any of my games - because I believe it to be lame. For me. I don't give a rats rear end how other people play just as I suspect no one cares how I play. And that's how it should be really. Otherwise, these boards would be rather monotonous.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I was specifically pointing out that other people who feel game settings are cheating outright are wrong, not you of course.

And playing raging barbs + gwall + monarch is still a lot harder than playing settler, and yet nobody mistakes the latter for cheating even though the advantages are magnified profoundly relative to anything you can do on monarch via game settings. People like to make up definitions (I've seen it with more than just "cheating"), but that doesn't change the meaning of the word in reality, just misguided perceptions on it.

 

[MyOtherName]

Wow, you guys really got hung up on that. I suppose no one likes being called a cheater though.

You have the cause wrong. (At least in my case) "Artificial rules" is a pervasive problem in gaming -- and in real life too.

David Sirlin has a good chapter on it in his book playing to win. He's linked a couple interesting articles off of this site -- such as this article whose main story is a team of little girls playing a full-court press, or the story of twixt.

I have played ostensibly competitive games where everyone knows one particular player is going to win if things continue as is, but yet they absolutely refuse to directly act against him, or even to stop cooperating with him!

It's really, really frustrating to play games with people like that, and I take some offense when people try to impose that behavior on others.

(Okay, I realize you weren't trying to impose it, but you were at least validating that mindset....)

 

[King Flevance]

It's really, really frustrating to play games with people like that, and I take some offense when people try to impose that behavior on others.

(Okay, I realize you weren't trying to impose it, but you were at least validating that mindset....)

It is valid. It's a game. To say that the mindset "It's not if you win or lose its how you play the game" is not valid shows that you should be offending yourself then by imposing your view of how to play on others. As you are imposing the mindset in your post that it IS if you win or lose that matters not how you play the game; which is pervasive. Get over yourself.

 

[MyOtherName]

It is valid. It's a game. To say that the mindset "It's not if you win or lose its how you play the game" is not valid shows that you should be offending yourself then by imposing your view of how to play on others. As you are imposing the mindset in your post that it IS if you win or lose that matters not how you play the game; which is pervasive. Get over yourself.

We can have a culture where people play games with each other, or we can have a culture where people pressure each other into conforming to arbitrary and often unspoken rules. I've chosen which I prefer.

Applying peer pressure to squelch a tactic you don't like, IMO, is a very, very poor method of "playing the game", and deserves to be objected to.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It is valid. It's a game. To say that the mindset "It's not if you win or lose its how you play the game" is not valid shows that you should be offending yourself then by imposing your view of how to play on others. As you are imposing the mindset in your post that it IS if you win or lose that matters not how you play the game; which is pervasive. Get over yourself.

He didn't convey his point very well, but it is quite valid. The issue is not when someone does not play to win, but rather when people who have mental blocks against playing to win argue against the validity/fairness of those who do.

My experience is a little different from his. As a good player in games of the past, I am used to getting dogpiled (very common for 3 people to gang up on me in mario kart back in the dorm days). I would *much* prefer that they do that rather than saying I'm so good I can't play (which would be so lame that the only way to make it worse would be to introduce a pretend excuse with that as the real reason). Rather, if they did *not* dogpile me, they had no realistic chance and they knew it. Which way optimizes their chances to win? If someone playing with them refused to do that, then the person who would eat complaints was *me*, because some slime bucket utilizing made-up rules wouldn't cooperate with the other players (this slime bucket was usually the greatest offender of complaints). He wanted it both ways ---> use and even impose made up rules but still win. This came close to getting me punted out of the playing rotation despite the fact that I was actually playing by the rules and *not* doing anything perceived as cheap!

Of course I did like some reasonably dirty tactics, like throwing fireballs or pikachu's thunder across the map to damage people w/o risk in smash brothers. I was #2 in that game at first on my floor (eventually getting good enough to beat the #1 guy straight up), but the whining over my tactic was IMMENSE. Why? Because it was perceived as cheap. The guys below me hated it, and would on occasion threaten to not even play if I did it. The #1 hated it too, but he didn't complain. His reason for hating it was that it lowered the chances for him to win, and thus he rather sensibly targeted me ...but only when doing so was advantageous for him. Those 1 on 1 fights and the judgment to engage them were part of the reason I was able to get better and skill in that game got *quite* lopsided, as it seemed like we were the only 2 people who actually improved.

Interestingly enough, I learned a thing or two over the years about human dogpiling in gaming. The way to play out of that position is to create incentive for the other players to abandon their alliance sooner...that is to say after I'm gone one of them would have to win, and so each of them will want to betray the others just a little bit sooner so that they have the leg up after I'm gone (thus they might turn-coat after I'm weakened or in rare cases even before). This is essentially the only way to force equilibrium between skill disparity ----> I certainly lost sometimes, but still won often enough, and that was true of the dogpilers too. The slime bucket was the big problem in that play group, whining all the way through. Fortunately, the others were too mature to fall into that pace and he wound up being the one that virtually always lost (dying first meant giving up the controller). Oddly enough, I had some incentive to *not* target him because he sucked and leaving him in increased my odds of not dying first.

Anyway, I could cry "cheating" on their ganging up all day and so could anyone else, but it isn't and artificially pushing pretend rules would make the game less dynamic. There's no room for opinion on this...there are things that violate rules and things that do not. Things that do not are not cheating. Find something else to call them.

Artificial rules in this sense are a problem in civ because 1) players who use them improve more slowly and 2) if people successfully impose them on others, they can actively inhibit progress.

Even that's fine if it does in fact make the game more fun to people...but misleading people as to what is and is not cheating is another matter.

 

[King Flevance]

I don't get where your point is.

We can have a culture where people play games with each other, or we can have a culture where people pressure each other into conforming to arbitrary and often unspoken rules. I've chosen which I prefer.

The latter?

I have played ostensibly competitive games where everyone knows one particular player is going to win if things continue as is, but yet they absolutely refuse to directly act against him, or even to stop cooperating with him!

It's really, really frustrating to play games with people like that, and I take some offense when people try to impose that behavior on others.

This here is you directly insulting people that do not conform to your arbitrary and unspoken rule that they MUST attack him in that scenario. Could it be that the reason you are offended when people try to impose this other behavior be because you are trying to impose a behavior that is in contrast to it? Do you understand the double standard rule you are enforcing in your own arguement?

Not once have I called people cheaters. I actually felt I should come out and clarify that even. When you play other players, you get what you get as far as other competitors. There are casual gamers, hardcore gamers, and all kinds in between. Who knows why they wouldn't directly attack the leader? It could have been because they honestly didn't care at that point and were actually content losing the game but continuing to manage their empire for a bit longer and observe the winner's tactics they had used for the remainder of the game. Just be glad everyone didn't just drop out. More importantly who cares? Why didn't you attack him directly? Did you? If you did, did you not play the game as you felt it should be played? If so, then what is the problem?
Suddenly, what you are left with is that the problem is THEY didn't play the game the way YOU felt it should be played. If you want to control people's diplomacy in the game, attack them and make them vassals.

Applying peer pressure to squelch a tactic you don't like, IMO, is a very, very poor method of "playing the game", and deserves to be objected to.

I agree.

 

[Windsor]

.there are things that violate rules and things that do not.

By "rules", do you mean the game mechanics or how the game was intended to be by the game designers?

That's not necessary the same and the latter is not always clear.

 

[King Flevance]

Anyway, I could cry "cheating" on their ganging up all day and so could anyone else, but it isn't and artificially pushing pretend rules would make the game less dynamic. There's no room for opinion on this...there are things that violate rules and things that do not. Things that do not are not cheating. Find something else to call them.

Why? To cater to fragile egos? I am communicating a point here. To me, it feels like cheating. That is how I am communicating my feelings on the topic at hand. IF you can relate to something "feeling like cheating" you can relate to my views on this subject and understand my point of view. If you find this insulting it is your ego that is not in check, not mine. I have not slandered anyone in anyway. I have simply stated my view of why I do not like to approach the higher difficulties. I ain't even gonna say that I would win if I did or that a diety victory is not an achievement.

I ain't calling anyone a cheater, never did. My statement was it felt like cheating to me... for me... in my single player games. That has nothing to do with anyone here. This thread is about the OP won on immortal and found it unfun due to lack of options in the playstyle required to win. I agreed and added in this little extra thing that has bothered me since 4 came out. It was really nothing more than some expectations of the franchise going unfullfilled but nevertheless existed. I cannot have fun limiting my options for the sake of saying I beat diety or what have you. If you can then by all means have at it.
My goal has always been to see how far I can move up on MY settings which in my mind are the REAL settings. If that statement is offensive to someone then they need to realize that people DO have different perspectives in this world. Especially, concerning recreation. I haven't told anyone "how they have to have fun" playing a game. I have seen others tell others this though.

 

[MyOtherName]

This here is you directly insulting people that do not conform to your arbitrary and unspoken rule that they MUST attack him in that scenario.

Arbitrary and unspoken? How is playing towards the objective of a game arbitrary? And a specific feature of my example is that things were actually spoken!

And it's not like this example was about a group of non-gamers who are just looking for a group activity to pass the time -- this was in a tournament at a major gaming convention!

(just to clear up any confusion that may have arisen, this example wasn't a came of Sid Meier's Civilization -- it was a game of Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization)

*: For the record, I have no problem with such activity, as long as everyone knows up front

Why didn't you attack him directly?

Wrong side of the board: I couldn't make an attack on my own, I don't remember if I could even reach him. I did make an attack earlier, which is when I learned of their strict pacifism: they assumed I and the guy I attacked would automatically be in last place because of it. I hope I broke their groupthink by placing middle-of-the-pack. (I'll never find out, though)

Not once have I called people cheaters. I actually felt I should come out and clarify that even.

If you really aren't trying to demean people, surely you can at least understand how people would get the wrong idea with comments like:

• "feels like cheating"
• "none ... are technically cheating"
• "next door to cheating"
• "MY settings ... are the REAL settings"

For the record, I think playing a "no aggressive barbs & great wall" variant of Civ 4, or other similar thing, is perfectly fine. Similarly, I would have no problem when nobody attacks someone running away with the game in a "no combat" variant of Advanced Civilization. (although, I would take it as confirmation that "no combat" is a poor variant rule. )