Game Discussion IV

[Theseus]

Thus, in addition to considerations re conventional forces, they would have to have been thinking about each other's nukes as well. I maintain my point.

Whatever... game's over, and congrats to everyone for having played such an interesting and intense game. I still can't think of anything comparable in the strategy gaming world... once we open the forums, and maybe some people contribute to a history and some stats (for instance, total number of posts!!), we can get some publicity for it.

EDIT: Interesting timing too... sort of a capstone for Civ3, with Civ4 publicity a-building.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Master Zen
Moreso I am quite at liberty to mention whatever I want, whenever I want even if the base quote I'm refering to is yours yet not everything I want to say is a response to you.

That's all I wanted to point out. Thanks.

Read carefully what I wrote: "I kinda note that some of you imply..." That is a personal perception that can be right or wrong. I felt you implied it, you say otherwise, so my perception was wrong.

The announcement I was referencing was when GoW and ND went public with the shared victory pact. You can feel whatever you want, I just wanted you to address me properly rather than addressing a nebulous "some of you".

What on earth does that have to do with what we're discussing? I am answering your post with my own interpretations of things, not with affirmations on the way you or your team thinks. If you want to clear up my erroneous assumptions or implications please do so but nowhere have I stated that your opinion is that of someone else's.

X: "My personal opinion..."
Y: "That's your personal opinion..."
X: "Duh!"

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Theseus
Sorry, MZ, but I just don't buy that. Your joint war on GS would have been significantly different if you had been forced to fully defend your homelands against each other. Playing for joint versus sole victory did that for you both.

My point is that with nukes and with a RoP which was impossible to cancel, both nations were at the mercy of the other's RoP raping, and after nukes, both nations were at the mercy of the other's nuclear annihilation attempts, hence fully defending our homelands would be... well, practically impossible anyway.

Anyway, once the public forums are open you'll see for yourself how some of us were quite paranoid of an ND backstab at the end.

[asleepathewheel]

Frankly I'm just suprised that two teams would want to get together for a joint victory. It strikes me as a real meh way of ending a game that stretched over two years.

I'm especially suprised that ND would go for it, as they easily could have won by themselves at a few different points in the late game. I expected them to have more of a killer instinct. Gow, I'm not so suprised, as it would have been quite a feat for them to win the game singlehandedly with the yellow menace due south.

You are right, MZ, that GS would never consider a joint victory. Call it pride or ego, but we were in this to win or lose for ourselves. And lose we did, fair and square. Victory alliance or war alliance, the difference matters not for the outcome of GS. Our fate was sealed after the destruction of Legoland left 3 powers. Our mistake was assuming that the remaining powers had the same goal: to win. We thought that we could prove to unbalance the power on Bob, one way or another, and then move on from there. We never even considered a joint victory scenario against us. Our downfall, to assume that each team wanted victory for themselves We were outsmarted in that regard, I guess.

Hats off to the victors, it was a fun 2.5 years

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I'm especially suprised that ND would go for it, as they easily could have won by themselves at a few different points in the late game. I expected them to have more of a killer instinct. Gow, I'm not so suprised, as it would have been quite a feat for them to win the game singlehandedly with the yellow menace due south.

Actually both teams had more than one chance at wiping out the other. I'd say,

ND's chances:

- During/after the Luxian War (GoW no iron!)
- Before the Bobian War (Gow's Riders far away in the east heading south)
- In the middle period between the Bobian and Lego wars (about 25% ND conventional superiority, we only had 10 defensive units)
- During the Lego War (90% of GoW's army in Lego)
- Before the GS War (ND had 100 tanks!)
- On the turn after getting nukes (we spent our first turn's nuke production on bombings and had none to spare)


GoW's chances

- During/after the Bobian War (larger war production, we had about 40% more mounted units at war's end)
- Before the Lego War (25-50% conventional superiorty, ND didn't have tanks, we were mobilized)
- On the turn we got nukes (no explination necessary )

[asleepathewheel]

I said easily win for a reason, you know 25% superiority would still have to be well played to win decisively, which would be required in a Bobian war, such as against spain..

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Donegeal
Okay, then we play this out to the vote.

Too late. Two teams played out much of the game based on their own privately made up rules.

The outcome is spoilt no matter what happens.

That does not mean that the game is not over, it most certainly is. However, it also means that I will never consider either 'winning team' to have won any more than a block of cheese.

[Master Zen]

"Much of the game" = 1080 AD ---> today?

/me throws a cheesecake at nye

[DeepO]

Personally, I've got to agree with my team mates. First of all, it doesn't matter for us, we lost, and we knew we had a huge chance of losing right after the Bobian war. But losing to a shared victory is an anti-climax, as not everyone is playing the same game.

Compare it to the Lego war: even if Lego was conquered by 2 teams, these teams were allied but not in any special way connected. We were defending against GoW at the time, in case ofthem trespassing we could have delivered a serious blow to them. Our territory was not empty, our defenses were not converted into offenses. At the time, we kind of knew that GoW didn't have the same problem with ND, which was strange. You can say the shared victory treaty only came later, but it was certainly apparant then that it wasn't a normal friendship between two nations. Compare that to the GoW-GS alliance, which didn't even had a treaty in place to divide the spoils of war (wasn't necessary, we felt, there weren't going to be any spoils), nor how to proceed whenever the war finished - one way or another.

So is this a fitting end to the game? No, not in my eyes. But, I think the nature of Civ3 mp is such, that it is not possible to play a decent modern era game with nukes. These are too inbalancing in itself, so it doesn't matter whether there is no winner in this game, only losers (Lux, Lego, RP, GS, and Vox too as we had to save them from extinction) and survivors (ND and GoW). Even if ND and GoW wouldn't have used a combination of a shared victory and nukes to win, the end would have been anticlimatic. Nukes alone will do that.

But at least we could have had a chance at surviving instead of losing if there were only nukes, and no locked alliances. Now, there was no chance, the moment that treaty was signed the game was over, and you could have declared the same kind of victory. From our side, it would have felt the same.

So, for me, I've got to congratulate the 2 survivors. But in the same breath I want to express my gratitude for all involved. This was a fantastic game, and even if the end could never have been the resounding victory this epic adventure deserved, it was a real treat to be part of it. Part of that was the strategy and tactics involved, but most of it comes from interacting with both my team mates, and others... thanks everyone!

Oh, and bring on the CIV mp demogame, I certainly want to be a part of that.

DeepO

[bongo]

What difference would it been to the
other team if GoWND changed the "joint victory" bit to "wipe everyone else off the map then enjoy a 20 NAP or whatever before duking it out against each other"?

You would still have been dead.

Ah, you don't get to se an end-game showdown but thats about it

[DeepO]

Bongo, do you really think that GoW would have given you nukes if they were going to fight you later on? And don't say that you could even have agreed to a 20 turn NAP, followed by a conventional war. Sure, this is possible, but it too changes the victory conditions. You disadvantage the other teams.

2 vs 1 is not a fair fight in most cases, but at least there is some notion of fair play even if the outcome is near certain. But, with different victory conditions, this was never a fair fight. Lego has the full right to say that the way their war ended was cheesy, but at least it was a fair fight.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset with ND or GoW. And seeing the number of Stormians commenting over the last day on the same issue, you might get the feeling that it was a general, deep feeling that we felt betrayed. This is not the case. I don't need a place to vent, I just want to state my opinion. And that opinion is that there are no winners in this game, as the endgame was rigged. Does it matter to us? Not really... there was only a very small chance we could have made the final stage of the game so I don't feel cheated out of a victory. And I guess this is the same for the other Stormians, or comments and debate here would have been very heated and intense. But, you cheated yourself out of a decent victory.

Again, I don't see a way in which this could have ended decently, nukes in mp are simply not a good design feature. But at least they are in the game, and everyone knows what to expect.

DeepO

[bongo]

Originally posted by DeepO
Bongo, do you really think that GoW would have given you nukes if they were going to fight you later on?

I it had been part of the treaty that's exactly what they would have done. Nukes were also important in taking out you guys.

And don't say that you could even have agreed to a 20 turn NAP, followed by a conventional war.

I saw that kind of deal in one of the ironciver qualifier games, I don't see why we couldn't do the same here.

Oh, who said anyting about a conventional war btw Seriously, we could have agreed to whatever kind of rules we wanted. Only fight with Paratroopers? Very silly but doable

Sure, this is possible, but it too changes the victory conditions. You disadvantage the other teams.

So true, then again, most agreements between two team put other teams at an advantage. It's kind of why you make them in the first place.

Again, I don't see a way in which this could have ended decently, nukes in mp are simply not a good design feature. But at least they are in the game, and everyone knows what to expect...

As we all have learnt now, nukes are only one of many things that are not implemented very well even though they are equal to all. Railroads, combat settlers and the ridiculous advantage to stacking(pre-nukes ) are other concepts I hope work better in civ4

[zerialienguru]

I think its useless to discuss the "what if"-situation.
If GoW and ND had no alliance, both teams had other ways to play the game. You should know that we give GoW each turn a lot of gold (about 600) for their researching, without this gold, GoW could not reasearch space flight so fast. There are to many "what if"-cases to analyse the last ~80 turns i think.

[Krill]

600 gold is a lot of gold to ND? I would of thought 600gpt would be more likely...

[zerialienguru]

Per turn, yes