Beyond the Pit [Pitboss Diplomacy Game] [Organization Thread VI]

[OzzyKP]

I usually do not comment on voting results, there are always weird votes.
But this time, I think it's a bit weird that Portugal whiped out all Khmer kolonies and got as much military votes for it as the Khmer got.

Maybe people have sympathy for the underdog up against a much larger foe.

[Pitboss Spain]

I thought military votes were also for seen smart military moves, and not just for winning the conflict? That would be self evident in the game score

[Pitboss Portugal]

sympathy for the underdog

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Khmer considered to be a super power? Also for the record Portugal was fighting Khmer's Modern Armor when we did not even had the tech. Also Khmer had the 3rd largest army, still has. So please consider that next time you say that they were the underdog. Hmm I will have to find some time to write some stories and share some war facts - that may give us some votes next time.

[Pitboss Rome]

Without getting into the details, I think this does show why the whole military votes idea is flawed (and since I have the most, I have no self interest in saying this). Almost nobody has any idea as to whether I did or didn't conduct some very clever moves against Sparta in this recent war. How could they? They aren't watching each move - all they get is stories about the war, which are judged in the stories category, and are not always completely truthful (speaking about the Spartan ones of course ). Or they just see the winner, which isn't quite what these votes are about.

[Robert]

I kinda agree with Rome here.
I tried to make some overviews to show what's going on but I understand that not everybody can do that, it takes some time.

I didn't want to start to debate over this single issue, it's just an example.
It's indeed about smart moves / good tactics indeed. If that's the reason for people to make a certain vote, then that's ok of course.

Anyway, all I'm saying is: keep paying close attention to whom you vote for.

[OzzyKP]

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Khmer considered to be a super power? Also for the record Portugal was fighting Khmer's Modern Armor when we did not even had the tech. Also Khmer had the 3rd largest army, still has. So please consider that next time you say that they were the underdog. Hmm I will have to find some time to write some stories and share some war facts - that may give us some votes next time.

Haha. The gap between the 2nd largest army and the 3rd is greater than the gap between the 3rd largest army and last place. It seems pretty clear who is the underdog in this conflict.

And I don't have any problems with the military vote category. Everyone is free to vote based on their own criteria with as much information as they have available. I was always annoyed at the start of the game when Raz got lots of story points for his crappy two sentence "my warrior climbed a hill and saw a beautiful sunrise" posts. So even when all the material to make decisions from is available to everyone, people don't necessarily vote like I or others would expect.

Such is the trouble with democracy.

Personally I'd give Portugal more points for war than Khmer as well, but people are free to make their own choices. This was a tough month with military too, so many wars going on. But if people don't know how great someone's military victories were, then they haven't done a good job in the propaganda war spreading the news of how great they've done.

[St Jon]

What I don't understand about this month's votes, most of all, is how anyone voted for Maya on Military when they didn't fire a shot!

I do agree with Rome over the 'only 3 votes idea' for future games. It seems that the big losers have been Portugal and Khmer. They both have regularly posted intelligent IC little Tales of GENUINE accomplishments and IC Diplomatic Propoganda against eachother but have gained precious little reward for their efforts. They are overwhelmed by Greece's stunning Maps and Artwork, Korea's fabulous Stories with lovely matching pictures, old Mayan creativity with great little short Stories, Piercia and old Japan likewise, Ozzy's stunning theatre - now he has started posting, Rome's great Diplomatic and Military Propoganda and even Russia's attempts to convince the World that all her enemies are sexually deviant mass murduring torturers.

In Diplomatic it is just the same as Portugal has grown vast with barely a War which not only shows fabulous IG skill but no little Diplomatic brilliance as well. To have become that large, almost certainly enough to win the Game, with little bloodshed, means that what was going on behind the scenes was very clever indeed. Khmer have managed to dominate an entire Continent when all logic would have said their neighbours should have united against them and that shows huge Diplomatic skill as well as IG ability. Rome has risen high not just through Military skill but by securing strong Alliances which have allowed her to be secure in her homeland so allowing her to expand overseas. These are examples of great Diplomatic skill but will never be reflected in any Votes.

Bizarrely, I reckon Military is the easiest of all to Vote for of all. To defeat a Civ of equal or greater power does not require evidence of single battles to judge. To win a rapid victory through good planning and surprise is evident for all to see. Ozzy's against Spain was wonderfully calculated. Even though it ended in defeat Greece/Japan's attack on Rome/Russia was superb and could easily have succeeded. The Roman Victory in Maya/Korea and up to the door's of Athens is easy to see but it has meant that Portugal's victory over Khmer has again been largely forgotten.

Barring some massive Alliance against them Portugal will win, sorry Rome but they will, and yet in the Diplo-Game Score they are destined to finish below now dead Civ's. Their Story-Telling has not been glamorous enough, their Diplomacy not obvious enough and their Military ability overlooked due to a World War and the fact that they were fighting 1v1 against another Super-Power. This is unfair and poor recognition of just how well Portugal has played BtP.

[Robert]

Ok, let's save the rest for when the game is over

[Pitboss Celts]

It was not a wrong key pressed but a wrong decision made (influenced by alcohol, etc.)
For the record, if we reload it's up to Maya to do what he wants, but in general a mistake made should not be correctable. Not even if a wrong key was pressed. I have made mistakes as well in the war.

But like I said, I'm fine to leave it up to the Maya if we reload.

This sort of mentality makes me question the integrity of the game. Mistakes should be correctable. Robert, if you were not the beneficiary here, would you continue to hold that position or would you be on the side of Maya to get the city to the correct civ?

[Pitboss Celts]

Wait your are confusing the whole issue here, We had a rule to wait 6 hours and then move. After what happened that time it was decided to drop the 6 hr rule and go with the turn order. Khmer did broke the turn order by taking his turn. Doesn't mater if you had waited 108 hrs Ozzy.

What happens when someone is in a a war with multiple civs? Do all participants take a vacation and miss turns until that one person plays and the rest of the world moves on? This does not seem like a logical solution.

[Pitboss Japan]

Mistakes should be correctable.

It's not that simple.. where is the borderline where we allow or disallow correcting mistakes?
-misclicked on my worker so it takes one more turn to finish an improvement..
-misclicked on my unit so I lost it..
-misclicked on a unit so I lost the battle..
-misclicked on a unit so I lost the war..

Those are all mistakes but i think we all agree that they are not correctable.

[Pitboss Rome]

Well yes, but the truth is that we have almost never had people asking for mistakes to be corrected. There have been a few cases - each of which have obviously been mistaken single clicks which have a major impact. Russia listed the only ones I knew about earlier - Russia clicking and ending up at war with me, Spain clicking and giving away the wrong city. Celts are right - this is a similar case - Maya clicking wrongly and giving the city to the wrong person. Both you Japan and Russia said it yourselves in your first response to this incident. Its exacly the sort of thing we would just correct next turn. Except this time for some reason the beneficiary of the mistake is refusing to, and isn't even responding to the discussion on here. The 'I'll say nothing and they will all forget about it' response. We even paused the game, but then unpaused it without resolving the issue. Strange isn't it - we had two requests for a pause at the same time. One from a long established player, the other from a new player. Lots of talk on here to deal with the issue of one of htem, but the other one is ignored (not decided against, decisions of course go one way or another, but ignored).

[Robert]

The difficulty here is not that a mistake was made like "I give Sparta by accident ot Rome instead of Wonsan".
The problem here is that Maya could give the city to Sparta or to Rome, he was under huge pressure from both, then he decided very quickly in a semi-drunk state.

I have two pm's from Maya, first he says: "Oop, I gave it by accident to you, ow well, I'll make a cool story about it" and then a few hours later: "Please reload" (and some more).

Who says it's not Rome that builded up much pressure to Maya that the Maya finally decided to change their initial opinion.

Anyway, I have offered the city back to the Maya (in-game) with the message that he can do with it whatever he wants, no bad feelings or whatver. He didn't accept the city.

And now I'm about to sign a peace deal with Rome that includes Durango to Rome, so there's not really an issue.
But once again, this s not a silly mistake! BOth options were open. That's something uncomparable with a war-by-accident or a city trade instead of an open border trade.

[Pitboss Rome]

Well we probably retain a different story in our heads on this one.

But I recognise from civ stats, that while I didn't know this when I wrote my post above, in fact Greece handed it back before I wrote that post. So I apologise for the suggestion that Robert was ignoring the issue. And I recognise that you have acted against what in your heart you think is just, for the sake of the game. Thanks for sorting it out.

[Pitboss Greece]

It was already promised in post #156