SGOTM 18 - BadCiv

[boak]

Should be able to see it in the trade conversation if he'll speak to us, minus the capital.

hes a minor civ

 

[Drachenreiter]

hes a minor civ

Well, safe assumption is that he has at least three, more than likely at least four, with five being a possibility. I don't remember his tech situation, but he has two wonders and their culture to boost his score a bit more, as well. Realistically we'll want all of his cities regardless, IMO. (Edit: Where's the list of which AI was given which wonders...?) If he has Great Lighthouse (which I seem to recall that he does...?), we'd have a relatively safe backline of cities using a boosted amount of traderoutes to help our economy. I don't see any reason to not get an invasion force up and running and hit him ASAP.

Also, perhaps we could go back to the turn order? Our entire game seems to have stalled.

 

[Tall German Joe]

is the most recent save uploaded? i could play some turns.

 

[johns5]

yeah go ahead please

 

[boak]

(Edit: Where's the list of which AI was given which wonders...?)

look through the big screenshot posts I did, theres definitely one of the wonders screen somewhere.

 

[kcd_swede]

Are you guys still in this game?

 

[Drachenreiter]

Joey and I have been discussing the game but haven't come to a conclusion. He believes the game is going terribly and that Mansa is going to be too far ahead to handle. I can see the merits of that point but still think we should keep going, at least to see if we can successfully invade Goldmember and incorporate his cities.

 

[boak]

have you guys been playing? wheres the posts yall. i thought it had been abandonned.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Really wished you had played on. As an observer, yours was the most outright fun thread to read in the early stages of the game. Will you come back and try again next game?

 

[Folket]

I do not see how this was a lost cause. You were about even to us and I never considered that we might fail the game.

It was fun to see a new team with new players come and it would be sad if we lost you.

 

[kcd_swede]

I do not see how this was a lost cause. You were about even to us and I never considered that we might fail the game.

It was fun to see a new team with new players come and it would be sad if we lost you.

I think things would have gone a lot smoother here had we assigned one of the sgotm-experienced players to the team. That's mostly a note to staff (myself included) if we get a whole gang of newcomers again.

 

[Gumbolt]

I think like PR they saw Mansa streaking ahead and saw an uphill struggle ahead. We nearly rage quit 2-3 times.

I think in this case it was more a case of King pin. Joey started the team and was leading the pack. When your leader vanishes so do the team. Shame really as the game was not looking too bad. Remember Mansa is not a unit spammer. Even with a huge lead he can be taken down with pults/HA/mace.

 

[Tall German Joe]

hmmm, I think you guys are putting too much blame on me. its true that once I gave up, the team was pretty much dead; however, before that happened, we had already lost 8 guys (including those we lost before the game even started). let me give my perspective here:

part of the problem here was culture clash, owing to the pedantic and archaic culture of this site - which is part of its charm for me, but didn't work out too well here. for example, the accusations that all the members of my team were duplicate accounts of mine scared away a few people, the harsh treatment of boak when he was caught with his fingers in the cookie jar scared away a few more, and the censoring of our posts by the mods was the last straw for others. etc etc etc. I expected this a little bit, but underestimated how drastic it would be.

the other part of the problem was our own lack of organization and huge disparity in skill levels among members of the team. as i had mentioned before, about half the team were noble-level, and the rest were between monarch and emperor. (there had been one other player around my level, but it turned out his account had been banned here years ago and the admins were unwilling to unban it for this succession game.) when we had done our own succession games on our site, it was very much "freestyle," where whoever's turn it was could do whatever they felt like, and the difficulty level was always such that the more experienced players would still be able to cover for the newer players mistakes without the game being lost completely by a 10 turn set. here, I tried to set the example that we need to take things slow and plan our moves, but I think I overdid it because the next few players seemed scared to even take a turn without express written permission, and the pace of the game slowed to a crawl. that was very boring for some, and we lost players that way. trying to go back to the more freestyle approach did not work either - it not only had strategic ramifications (e.g. we felt we wouldn't be organized enough for an early war despite finding those horses), but we were also unable to stick to any sort of plan. the combination of this + runaway mansa made me feel like there was no chance at victory from our current situation with our current level of play. maybe drach and I could have finished and gotten a victory by ourselves, but the interest in the game for me was playing with a big group of people. it didn't work out, c'est la vie, its not really that big a deal.

in the unlikely chance that you do get a new team in another succsession game, I do have one suggestion. if the team does not seem like they have any chance to win, please don't be so iron-handed with newer players. if the "boak situation" had been handled a little more gracefully (such as with private messages, rather than making a big show in the thread), we wouldn't have had any dropouts from that. even amoungst the players who stayed, it really felt like we were just making a show of it; there was a collective feeling that we were "done" after that.

anyways, apologies for wasting everyone's time with this. it really was a cool and exciting map + theme, so thank you to kcd_sweede for creating it! we had fun while it lasted.

 

[Tall German Joe]

I think things would have gone a lot smoother here had we assigned one of the sgotm-experienced players to the team. That's mostly a note to staff (myself included) if we get a whole gang of newcomers again.

I don't think that would have worked out, at least with us; I think that the assigned "SGOTM coach" player would just feel isolated and alienated... especially so after we started communicating more about the game by steam and our offsite forum than here after our posts started getting censored. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask, but I think it would be a big mistake to try to "inject" a player into a group that only had an interest with playing with each other.

 

[kcd_swede]

I don't think that would have worked out, at least with us; I think that the assigned "SGOTM coach" player would just feel isolated and alienated... especially so after we started communicating more about the game by steam and our offsite forum than here after our posts started getting censored. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask, but I think it would be a big mistake to try to "inject" a player into a group that only had an interest with playing with each other.

I think you are right. That's why eve though in the sign-ups it says we will disperse team that winn too many times and reserve the right to re-assign players, we haven't ever done it (other than for those who sign up as unallocated). We do understand that a team is more than just a bunch of players, its people who care about acheiving a common goal together.

I am really sorry that your team's reception was anything but welcoming. As for the enforcement of game's rules, we understand that individual mistakes should be handled by PM, but when the decision of judges affects the whole team, we perhaps erred in making this known in the team thread rather than by PM to all team members. Sorry... we haven't had to deal with inexperienced teams before and probably should be expected to handle it better. Each game is a learning experience for the staff as well.

You guys are welcome back, btw, and now that you know that respect for the rules is important for team play here, I'm sure there would be no problem with your team's playstyle. I personally admire how the spirit of a "succession game" was honored by you team. Would have liked to see you play more.

 

[pomthom]

I'd like to state for the record that y'all had the style I enjoyed the most. Go bad boys!

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Hoping you'll come back for the new game.