30% Iron Civer Tournament

[McMeadows]

By the way it's around 1500 BC, and SoZ is there for a little while now.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by bongo
When taking over this posistion I was quite shocked to find a SGL waiting for me. While a SGL is a nice thing to have in single player it can be quite dangerous in PBEMs due to the 'dogpile-effect'.

you can say that loud. i even built a peaceful wonder (pyramids) and took a peaceful goverment (republic) and this was still a reason (not the only one, but it was mentionned explicitly) of 3 ganging up.

now that you guys speak of this... the trade embargo went against me too. 2 players were writing that they were "struggling" and couldn't offer anything now. the 3rd player kept answering my tech trade offers with "accepted" without even offering anything in return. later on it was clear that it was an embargo. imho a braking of rules... but that's over for me anyway, so... shït happens

What's next? A 3-front coordinated invasion?

that's pretty much what you can expect. except if you can take out one oponent straight away, you won't have any chance at all in the long run. they'll research at more than the double of the speed, have 3 times more units and resources, will trade luxuries freely. you may be able to cope a few dozen turns, but basicly you're doomed (except at least 1 enemy withdraws from the alliance).

that's the point i chickened out and pillaged by improvement, sacked my cities and gave up. i thought it's better if no one gets the cities and land than any one of the "bad guys". it may have been a feeble move by me, but at that point i had lost all fun in the game.

[bongo]

If a player manage to get ahead of the other, either by luck or skill, the rest will gang up to crush him.

Even though it looks like some of the rules were made to negate this effect, those rules have no effect at all as some players just chose to ignore them.

A tip for the Final: Turn SGLs off, anyone who gets one is doomed anyway. Might as well save people the agony of having to choose between being dogpiled and disbanding a SGL.

[sabrewolf]

maybe in future it really should be something rommel proposed to do: no communication AT ALL except over the diplomacy screen and unit renaming. and even the latter could be misused (eg: "xyz got SGL and leads in points. interested in beating the crap out of him?") or shorter...

i know multiplayer is all about diplomacy. but if it gets that far that you're punished for being the strongest and getting lucky, then it's not diplomacy anymore.
i mean... imagine the whole world militaristically ganging up on the USA today? or against britain 2 centuries ago?

didn't and doesn't happen...

[McMeadows]

i mean... imagine the whole world militaristically ganging up on the USA today? or against britain 2 centuries ago?

didn't and doesn't happen...

Maybe because Brittain, neither the USA is playing a game in which there should be an eventual winner... As we all can see, bongo (and in the other game sabre) is (was) going to win if the others don't (didn't) sit down and smoke a peace pipe. Bongo is still not even near losing. It was him who started a war with the Vikings by a "sneaky" attack. It's all in the game.

A SGL can also be applied to celebrate a period of wisdom. Less awarding on a short term, but probably more on a long term. It fits into strategy games to think about these disicions. It's not a SP and if you (in general) always want to be able to exploit luck to the fullest, play SP.

Or...

Go start a silent tournament.

[jshelr]

"imagine the whole world militaristically ganging up on the USA today? or against britain 2 centuries ago?

didn't and doesn't happen..."

No, they were busy ganging up on France instead.

[jshelr]

Let me post my opinions

1) none of the 3 civs violated the common understanding of etiquette. We behaved by the rules as written. It is not impolite or morally reprehensible to try to achieve cooperation toward a common goal.

2) tech embargos, which is what this is since there are no roads to the mongols, are better explicitly announced than secretely conducted. Under Rommel's interpretation, tech agreements would simply not be mentioned. That's worse, not better.

3) unlike SP, it is indeed the case that you can't simply race off to a tech victory or a land-grab victory. Small or backward civs have a chance by cooperating.

This is not SP, but it is strategically interesting. I think more interesting.

[jshelr]

Rules must say what they mean and mean what they say. Nationalism does not permit civs to agree not to trade technology with a third civ. Therefore, the rules we agreed to do not prohibit this activity before nationalism.

[jshelr]

embargos are for lux and strat resources

[jshelr]

If we want to extend this to tech trading, we need to think long and hard about the wording. This is an area of cooperation that would be nearly impossible to prohibit short of silent pbem.

[smellymummy]

trade embargoes (with nationalism) can also cut off trade routes iirc, so they are certainly different than 2-3 players agreeing to not trade with another player.

i think 1-2 (item d) is clear and explains very well that trade embargoes are not to be allowed without nationalism. it does not state that when players start agreeing to not trade, that such a thing constitutes the same as a "trade embargo".

[McMeadows]

Let's not fall over how we spell the words. I think we all agree that a declaration of not trading techs is approved of by single nations and if 3 nations do it at the same time after some discussion about the situation in the world it should be ok too.

It's been a long and fruitfull day mister chairman. Let's close the curtain on this issue and celebrate the brink of a new day..

Good night from Europe

[Moonbars]

if 4 people play a game, and only one can win and there is nothing to be gained finishing second, you will always find that the other three will try and take that player down.

The best way to do that is to form an alliance.

If you are in the lead and not expecting this, you are being very very stupid.


What this means is that the rules of this tournement, which are designed to give everybody a fair shot, will be pushed to the limited as people invest time and passion into winning. in MP, there is no re-load, so all decisions need to be enacted in such a way as to give your nation the best possible chance of victory.

The rules need to be there to stop people stepping over the line into "unfair" tactics and strategies, but everybody should be aware that this is a competition!

[snoopy369]

Wow, this is getting interesting ^^

I'd have to say, about the 3 players ganging up, that:
* it only happens when 1 develops a substantial lead over all 3 others
* even then, it's not impossible to work something out: particularly with the weakest player. Make an alliance, get them to "bandwagon", because the weakest player has nothing to lose. Worst case scenario -- they finish 2nd, instead of 3rd (which would clearly happen if they ganged up against you).

It's quite a realistic situation, and is not far from what happens in the real world. Nations that have a lead and don't try to get allies (like the France 1800 example) have little chance and get decimated ultimately by the ganging up of threatened powers. Nations that *do* try to recruit allies among the weaker powers generally convince some of them to "bandwagon" along with them (like the US and Britain, for example).

I've not really gotten far enough in to most of my games to try to use this tactic (and I'm not Alexman so I don't have the opportunity often anyways ^^) but certainly early game diplomacy helps a *lot*. If you have a partnership with another player from the moment of contact (say 2000 bc on average) then you'll have a much better chance at keeping that partner even when you're on top of the world, and if you keep pumping him/her with help even after he/she can't reciprocate anymore, there will be no reason for him/her to switch sides.

^^

Tech trading embargo: I'd consider this to be against the rules if and only if it's covert. I'd definitely consider it against the rules to have a covert tech trading embargo because the point of the rules -- not the letter -- seems (to me) to imply that basically anything not specifically prohibited is ok, *as long as transparency is maintained.* I don't think secret agreements of any sort are appropriate. (But that's just me. Maybe I'm misreading it?)

[smellymummy]

secret agreements are fun though