The others

[Tiberius]

Trust no one

[Tiberius]

Did you see the member list for the Gathering Storm team ?

alexman
alva848
antoniomilla
Arrian
asleepathewheel
Conqueror
DeepO
Dominae
FrustratedPoet
gooberboob
JTFreak
Konquest02
Meshelic mail
nbarclay mail
notyoueither
OPD
Randolph
Sir Ralph
Soren Johnson Firaxis
Theseus
Velociryx
zeit

Soren Johnson, Firaxis ?
At least half of them are deity players (Arrian, Dominae, Theseus, notyoueither, Sir Ralph, Velocyrix, etc). They have excellent posts in the strategy forum. Only Aeson is missing

Jesus Christ! I just hope we won't start near them.

Edited: Bah, deity, not emperor. Deity players.

[vondrack]

Tibi, stop trembling!

All those guys have proven so far is that they can effectively route the AI. That makes me respect them in the SP, but that's just about it. They have almost no experience dealing with human opponents (with the exception of nye and Soren, I believe).

Believe me, they can't think up anything miraculous we would not be able to handle. Besides, most of what they can come up with has already been made public in their numerous (excellent) posts. That is OUR advantage. We know how they tend to think and we know what they are likely to do. OTOH, they know very little about how we are going to play the game. People calling themselves "builders" are often misunderstood.

Much more than a "builder", I consider myself a non-agressive player. That says nothing about how capable I (and anyone else in this team) am able to conduct military campaigns. Warmongering is so effective in the SP, because the AI is not able to effectively coordinate its troops, often doing things that are utterly silly for any decent human being.

Should they wish to wage war, I say: let's have it their way. It's very likely, they will be surprised.

But seriously, I am convinced that the starting position will be what will more or less forge everyone's destiny. There are so many good players in all the PtW demogame teams that I would be surprised to see a team developing a significantly prevailing strategy.

EDIT: replaced shivering with trembling... forgot that one shivers from cold, but trembles from fear...

[Tiberius]

Thanks Radek, I feel fearless and daring already

Seriously though, I'm not shiver...ahh... trembling, just wanted to make a point that the GS team has excellent players, who possess outstanding understanding of the game's mechanism (see Velociryx' or Alexman's posts). I don't fear them... too much.
I know that not only underestimating your enemies is a big mistake, but also overestimating them.

This being said, we are here to win. (but maybe not by force )

I wanted to say something else, actually: I've seen an interesting thread where the warmongerers (edited: The Glory of War team) made it public that, at request, they are willing to act as mercenaries, hired by one team against another one. Good to know that. Maybe at some point we will use them (however I'm not saying that we should trust them, not at all; only use them.. and maybe blame somebody else :twistedevil: ).

[lmtoops]

Playing against human opponents is what worries me. War against the AI is very predictable. The AI offensive strategy always sucks and their defense is very predicable. With CIV, I have no experience against human opponents.

It's good to know that we have several players with the experience that I lack. I will listen and learn.

On the other hand, I am no fool. In the beginning, I will vote on the side of a strong defense and extreme caution.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by lmtoops
On the other hand, I am no fool. In the beginning, I will vote on the side of a strong defense and extreme caution.

This is perhaps what is common to most if not all of us here at the Legoland team. We focus on defensive, rather than offensive strategy. I personally think that many SP strategies will be hardly usable/useful in the MP, especially in the demogame, where there are so many eyes watching and so many people ready to point out an obvious mistake that one can trash his game with if playing alone.