I'm here. I only missed one turn, while dutifully waiting 45 hours for this turn to be relinquished. I have a hard time correlating that with abandoning my teammates.
Okay, no worries. It was more that we waited around for a week for you to play the previous turn when most other people appeared to be back. The lack of any posting was also a bit confusing. Glad to have you back, though.
But, I will admit to a lack of interest and am playing more for necessity than fun. I'm in 2 other games where everyone involved has a shot at victory because no one has sold themselves out to the frontrunner.
I don't think that's really a fair way of putting it. The alliance (or at least a form thereof) on our continent was forged soon after we all met, something like 10-20 turns into our game. Initially we thought we'd all be joining together to fight some other threat. Then, eventually, we figured out we were stuck on our own with no chance of contacting anyone else until post-Optics (a situation that most of the rest of you - apart from those on the southern continent - were not in).
The rest of the game was entirely the result of the fact that tech trading was on, IMHO. With only 3/16 nations stuck with no ability to contact anyone else, our only option was to pool all our techs together or die. If tech trading had been off, things might have turned out very differently indeed - nabaxo's very poor start (no Copper/Iron/Horses in easy reach!) probably would have been his doom, and then eventually either Carthage or myself probably would have taken over the whole continent. But with tech trading on, there was really no option but to form an alliance.
I might add that in no way was this "selling out to the frontrunner", because (1) it was so early in the game that I wasn't any kind of frontrunner, and (2) we were always equal trading partners (the others eventually gaining far more beaker-wise than I did).
Once you ally with someone far more advanced than you yet militarily weak (and then allow them to become even more advanced by not keeping them in check), it takes away from the spirit of the game since you stop working for your own victory and are willing to settle for second place. This game was fun for me (and presumably the others I was able to recruit) as long as there existed the opportunity to punish such a mindset. However, I feel that ship has long since sailed.
Again, I feel I should point out that this alliance didn't suddenly "happen" as a result of anyone trying to throw the game. The three of us had been practically forced to work together from the very early game due to the map. It could hardly have been a surprise that we continued to work together later on. What were we supposed to do anyway, start a long and painful war that would remove any chance of any of us winning the game while the rest of you plowed ahead? I'm sure some of you would have liked that, but it wasn't exactly logical to expect us to turn on one another as long as doing so was suicide. This was even more the case once the ridiculous 7-man alliance started up. For a long time we thought we were doomed when we saw everyone else in the world pooling their resources to work together against us. I think we definitely deserve some credit for pulling through so far. (Actually we haven't even pulled through yet, as there are a lot of extremely potent threats out there.)
I'll continue to fulfill my obligations even though a)our side is losing ground on every front,
I'll say more on this after the game, but let's just say for now that a large part of these losses could easily have been prevented. We've actually been quite bemused that we've been able to make headway so fast, and it's not because of any particular tactical brilliance on our part.
b)we are 4-5 techs behind in a "critical juncture of the game",
How is it our fault that most of you turned off research a dozen or more turns ago? It was your choice to go for the route of alternative benefits (presumably gold => units). You could have been at least on par with us technologically - if not ahead - but you chose not to compete.
and c)LP has the Space Elevator, proving my point above.
Yet you could have chosen a while ago given me a run for my money on that wonder via multiple methods, and chose not to. How is that my fault? With 5 people working together towards the common purpose of denying me the Space Elevator, it wouldn't have been hard to succeed.
Also, aside from the AI, only Irgy seems to have made any attempt towards the spaceship anyway. I'm a bit bemused by this, to be honest.
Sorry if I don't share Irgy's sunny disposition, but this game was pretty much decided once Elkad laid his fiddle at LP's feet.
I'll point out again that this wasn't any sudden action to throw the game; it had been building out of a necessary friendship since almost the start of the game. Also, may I ask again what the alternative was supposed to be? Elkad suddenly teaming up with nabaxo to try to wipe me out? That just would have been suicide for the three of us, throwing the game in an instant. Almost certainly throwing it to you... or
maybe Irgy/2metra. (No offence to Dave/BCLG, but I think you guys will probably agree you're not competing for first place at this point.
)
Besides, we seem to have a difference of philosophy here. With tech trading on, I view this as more of a "team" game. We have two teams at this point in this game - fairly evenly matched, in my opinion - and one of those includes myself, Elkad and nabaxo. If one of us manages to claim a victory, then in my view that is a team victory for us. As I see it, there can be no individual victory for me in this game - I simply could not have got to where I am without the wholehearted support and effort of my teammates. I know it, they know it, and you all know it. Assuming I win, they deserve every bit as much credit for the victory as me, in my view. I assumed the same would be true of your alliance, in that if any of you managed to win, it would be credited as a team victory.
If tech trading was off it would be a different story, of course. But to me, when you have tech trading on and form a strong tech alliance with other players, you can't pretend that your success is separate from theirs. They are as much a part of your victory as you are, and there's no way around it.
Elkad will correctly note some similarities to my rant at the end of the Cavalieros game, where a four team alliance pretty much ran the table for the entire game while I unsuccessfully gathered the rest of the world against them. Once the two strongest became permanent allies (enabled in-game), I had no problem declaring them both the winner rather than facing the inevitable onslaught from a 4-headed monster that had no interest in individual accomplishment. For sake of comparison: in a game I am playing now, the 4-headed monster broke up mid-game, allowing all kinds of new diplomatic options as well as a more satisfying game.
Out of curiousity, did that game have tech trading on?
In this game, I'll be a sport and not make such an declaration since I don't want to spoil the apparent surprise for LP. However, I will give him the credit of playing Civ the way it is meant to be played --- to win.
Well it appears we simply see things differently. Firstly, any break-up of our alliance at this point would be playing to lose (and throw the game in your favour). And secondly - in my view, everyone on my team is playing to win, because as I said above I do not think any victory achieved by any one of us can be counted as an "individual achievement" at this point. If I win, they truly deserve the credit for the victory.
This isn't the first game I've played in that's ended this way. A while ago I was in a game that eventually devolved into two massive tech alliances, except I was one of the junior members. When someone in our alliance won the space race (not me), that victory was very much credited as a victory for the whole alliance. You simply can't pretend that the individual that the game claims has "won" deserves any more of the credit than the allies that helped them achieve that victory, at least in a game with tech alliances.
Let me know when I can play.......
Hopefully Dave will get the old save up and running soon and post here when he's done so.
) This will at least give us 30 or so hours on the timer again rather than having to keep pausing and unpausing with a couple of hours left.
I will tell you my goals and intents in this game after it's conclusion. 
Will reply to some of your points at some stage... haven't been avoiding the discussion, just been snowed under with alpha testing as of yesterday.
