HOTW XII Diplogame Organization Thread. Part 2

[Diplo Inca]

Well I see what Russia is trying to say - But there is only so much we can blame the 10 tech rule.

Sorry Russia but you even didn't have Pottery up till last session - A tech which reasures you that you stay at par with most people technologically. Now saying that the game is going to get only worse because some didn't even bother working on their sci well I'm sorry but I disagree.

And instead of being sarcastic

"So, oh well, enjoy your time, I guess. I'm going to enjoy mine to the utmost"

Give us a solution!!!!!!!!!!!

I like Carpathia will give you a tech (not sure what that is solving)

[OzzyKP]

Inca is right... and so is Russia.

I knew the 10 tech trade rule would have this effect.

[Diplo Inca]

Yes I agree the technological gap will only widen! I am open to solutions.

Currently the only way i see is to gift techs to Russia?

[Diplo Russia]

Sorry, but it's hard not to be sarcastic when you have the equivalent effect of Gary Kasparov coming down and telling you that there's no reason you should be stresssed out about what chess pieces you have left versus your opponent, because he's beaten someone with the same setup before.

To compare the reference...

As great as it is, Ozzy, that you won your war in the game with inferior troops technologically, bear in mind that you guys are all eons better than I am at this game. We're talking a situation where there's some chap who likes to play civ three or four times a month in his spare time who saw a Diplogame concept and thought to himself "Wow. That's kinda cool. It's about the diplomacy and not the 'I rule you at Civ', and that's an idea I enjoy. Kinda like RPin' while civvin'!" against a bunch of people who can regularly win ladders.

Ok, so you beat him while you were technologically impaired. That's fine. I can't do that against you people. You'd all smite me. Even if I wrangled in something diplomatically, the war might start decently, but the end result, if I'm not at least on par technologically or a little ahead, I'm probably going to get schooled. I accept this as a consequence of not spending as much time as others here playing the game. So that leaves me with this problem.

Ozzy, your suggestion was to wage war and demand tech, there's two problems with that:

1. The aforementioned problem that I don't have the skills to be able to win such a thing when I'm already at a major disadvantage, and I sure don't expect anyone to go easy on me, either.

2. Russia, ICly, has absolutely no reason to go to war with anyone. Good relations with Mali and Inca. Cool, but relaxed relations with America, and everyone else is too far away for Russia to think either way about them. So what you're saying is not plausible in the spirit of Diplogames, as that would be me, the player, fabricating a reason to go to war for strictly OOC reasons, which I thought was directly against the spirit of Diplogames. If I'm wrong about that whole spirit thing, just replace me now, that's the whole reason I was playing.

And CS: It's not about being last. I don't care about being last, I expected to be last. As I said above, I'm playing against Clanners and Ladder players, and I am neither of those. Being last doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that the "tech blocs" (because it wasn't the alliances that bothered people, it was the tech groupings) are still there. There's a small group that are way the heck ahead (likely from making all of their trades with each other), there's a small group that fills the middle of the pack (likely from making all of their trades with each other), and then there's a small group of us that are way behind. So in essence you've just made the Tech Blocs more clearly visible with your method to remove them.

Which I suggested was going to happen when I saw the rule that there was a 10 trade limit per civ.

So that gives us a further problem, now those of us who are not in one of those blocs are falling way behind. There's people getting Education and Gunpowder and I just got construction. This is far worse than otherwise.

Inca: Yes yes, pottery this that and the other thing. I fell behind because I missed it because of the barb problem, that's all well and good but not the point. With the current setup as it is I can make no comeback because I can't befriend someone and bribe them with resources and whatnot because they don't have any trades or are covetting the one or two they have for good techs.


I've offered suggestions. I've offered suggestions so many times until I was blue in the face and everyone shot them down during the build up to the game without even thinking about them because they were certain their idea was better, and I don't have anymore suggestions to give.

I gave what would have made some better rules, imho, but they would have had to have been there from the start in order to be effective, because now the suggestions I made would be moot because people would have already broken the rules.

So forgive me if I'm a little sarcastic, but "I told you so" doesn't have as much punch without it, and I'm a bit aggrevated at the witty snips that came back when I suggested I'm having a problem with how the game is running.

[Diplo Inca]

Russia U rare totally wrong about having tech blocks in this game!!

I personally I am not aware of any tech blocks, and for the record the two most advance civ curently Holland and Inca haven't made one single deal between each other, they even do not have open borders!!!

[Diplo Russia]

Fair enough, though that is how it appears to those of us behind.

Also, I should stress I'm not looking for handouts, I just think it's lame that I can't do much for trading any techs because everyone's already traded all of theirs and so I can't even make any sort of crazy arrangements for it, because no one in their right mind would trade techs that are strategically valuable for resources.

The 10 tech trades thing would not have been as bad, imo, if No Tech Brokering was off, because then someone behind would still be able to get some of the good techs from people in the lower-middle section of the pack through a "multi-tier tech trade", but I don't have that ability since they can't trade away the techs I would have any interest in.

But the two things combined are going to just make a "haves" and "have nots" grouping. Far worse than before.

[Diplo France]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Inca is right... and so is Russia.

I knew the 10 tech trade rule would have this effect.

Well so did I Ozzy. I think people are forgetting that I proposed a better rule.


1.
The 10 voucher system. Its great because it has backward compatibility with the 10 tech rule, the only difference is that civs can also trade their right to trade techs.



2.
Or perhaps a more conservative solution is needed. If you guys still remember we discussed having a weekly vote on which of the technological weakest civs would get one “charity” tech (it would not count towards the 10 tech limit for the guy that gives it, the only condition is that the "benefactor" dosent get any tech in the trade).



I think we should adopt my first or second proposal. Both are minor tweaks to fix a rule that does what it is supposed to (prevents top-player alliances and tech blocks) but has a few side effects that need to be killed.

[Diplo France]

BTW Russia you are wrong on tech blocks. If you read the story thread, where people are supposed to reveal their trades you will see that there realy aren't tech blocks.

[Diplo France]

Originally posted by Diplo Russia
Fair enough, though that is how it appears to those of us behind.

Also, I should stress I'm not looking for handouts, I just think it's lame that I can't do much for trading any techs because everyone's already traded all of theirs and so I can't even make any sort of crazy arrangements for it, because no one in their right mind would trade techs that are strategically valuable for resources.

The 10 tech trades thing would not have been as bad, imo, if No Tech Brokering was off, because then someone behind would still be able to get some of the good techs from people in the lower-middle section of the pack through a "multi-tier tech trade", but I don't have that ability since they can't trade away the techs I would have any interest in.

But the two things combined are going to just make a "haves" and "have nots" grouping. Far worse than before.

I dissagree, most civs if they are smart only trade expensive techs. So there are plenty of opportunities for lower tier players to rade with middle tier, and middle tier with upper- since if they are smart they coordiante on what to develop.

[Diplo Russia]

Originally posted by Diplo France


I dissagree, most civs if they are smart only trade expensive techs. So there are plenty of opportunities for lower tier players to rade with middle tier, and middle tier with upper- since if they are smart they coordiante on what to develop.

Except that is what I'm saying is the problem.

If they coordinate what they want to develop, you have the situation where 2 or 3 top-tier Civs have developed the most important techs, say Education or Gunpowder, and the middle-tier Civs have developed the less important, but also useful techs, say Feudalism and Monarchy.

Since the lower-tier are going to not be able to trade directly with the upper-tier, they're left out of the big techs, like Education and Gunpowder, and unable to trade for them because of No Tech Brokering AND the 10 Trades rule in combination.

Whereas if you only had one or the other, then they'd be able to trade with the upper-tier for other techs, because the upper-tier wouldn't be concerned they're wasting their precious few trades for fluff techs, OR they'd be able to trade with the middle tier for upper-tier techs.


Example. And for this I'm making up techs so bear with me.

Let's say that Inca has Gunpowder, but not Education or Monarchy (they just never got around to it), Mali has Education, but not Gunpowder or Monarchy, and Russia has Monarchy, but not Education or Gunpowder.

Russia is bottom-tier, Mali middle-tier, and Inca upper-tier.

Russia is only concerned with Gunpowder, Inca wants BOTH Monarchy AND Education for Gunpowder, but does not want to use up 2 trades (they may only have 1 or 2 left) in order to get it, the following trade decision ends up going through:

Russia trades Monarchy and a few fluff techs to Mali for Gunpowder, Mali trades Monarchy and Education for Gunpowder to Inca.

Inca only sees the trade with Mali for Monarchy+Education, Russia sees Gunpowder for Monarchy plus, we'll saaaay, Music and Drama (useful, but not "necessary" techs).

This leverages the fact that the Upper-Tier Civs are going to be stingy with their trades, because they're going to have less of them and want greater value for their trades, because their techs are worth a lot more, and the fact that the Middle Tier is going to be balanced on it, and the Lower Tier is going to be just dumping whatever they can to get that one tech they want.

Inca would not trade Gunpowder to Russia in this case, because they could only get Monarchy (as they would likely have Music and Drama already, and Russia has nothing else to give), so they're going to hold their 1 tech trade that that would cost them, since they could, instead, get it from Mali for 2 techs that come to a greater value than their 1.

But with No Tech Brokering on, it would have to all go through the respective civs, and Inca isn't going to "waste" an extra tech trade to make the same arrangements.

So yes, it's possible for Lower-tier to trade with middle-tier, but the problem is that you can't get the techs you really want to make use of because those are, in a great many cases, already received in trades from the Upper-Tier.

Make sense?

Again. I'm not looking for "charity" or "handouts". I'm looking for a fair system that allows me to offer what I have and still be able to get something useful, because right now I can only get things I have neither need nor want for.

[Diplo Russia]

As an aside, France's voucher system would also indirectly allow for that, in a way, because Russia, in that example, would be able to replace Inca's double-trade of Gunpowder by handing them a voucher for one of their trades, making the cost:

Inca: 1
Mali: 2
Russia: 4

Instead of:

Inca: 2
Mali: 2
Russia: 4
(With No Tech Brokering)

Or:

Inca: 1
Mali: 3
Russia: 3
(With Tech Brokering)

[Diplo France]

That is what my two proposed systems do.


Even the second one is not charity, since the "donor" civ can demand anything they want except tech. And the recepient civ can choose which civ to trade with.
And don't forget you need to be voted in, you don't automaticaly get it with score.

Also you can trade for the techs you really need because even midrange civs will sometimes aim for expensive techs like Astronomy in hopes of trading them off to as many civs as possible.


Please comment on my two proposed systems or come up with your own. Also, try writing being active in diplomacy, I mean diplomacy is what brought me from last place and tech oblivion. Also have you taken a look at my proposals? I mean you can trade something with a big civ for "gian pile of gold(tm)" which you can use to run a huge deficit or you can go for GP, and trade your GP for an exepnsive tech.


Also please write stories, I liked your early ones.
Don't forget you can win just by getting subjective votes.

[Diplo France]

I take it you support the voucher system? Ironicaly so do I, plus we can apply it to this game instantly.

2/9 In favour so far.

The last time Carpathia voted my proposal down, I have no idea why, others seemed to like it.

[Diplo France]

Also you can't change no tech brokering now, its too late.

[Diplo Russia]

I know you can't, I was just saying. :P

And yes, I always liked the voucher system.

I'll be posting either tonight or tomorrow in the story thread. I've got to catch up on it hardcore, because I've finally got a bit of free time. I've actually been posting here during the periods where I need my brain to relax.

And yeah, I got your proposals, I'm pondering.

Also: I'm not concerned about "winning". I'm concerned about "having fun". I'm not really a "winning is everything" type person, if I have fun playing the game, it doesn't matter to me what the statistics say, I still "won", because my time was well spent.