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Please forgive. I write for a living and should be able to produce a more concise piece than this overly long reply.
"building 10 scouts in a MP game seems exactly to be the strategy that shows that you don't care about anything but winning. So much so that you don't even want to play if you can't win. Isn't that right?"
Yes, the "I will not play if I can't win" line of thought is likely to be a serious problem for PBEM and multiplayer generally. I don't think the scout strat is going to loom large as a particular issue, but not treating avoidance of disaster seriously will be an issue.
I agree with you in spirit about scouting. It produces an ugly game I don’t like to play. But you should realize that there are particular conditions where the scout strat makes sense, even for a player who takes the downside seriously. Basically, you need both a very large map and a minimal number of competing civs. Best of all is if you are the only expansionist civ and there are no AI civs that start out with “extra” units. (You reading this Eli of Persia?) In those circumstances, you are not likely to get surprised early, and will surely get nearly all the huts. Not doing the scout strat is leaving money on the table. Even then, my own temperament requires a compromise that puts a reasonable defense effort in place that would make Aeson shake his head at my conservatism.
The "fun" thing that gets Delmar’s goat is really quite deep in some of its dimensions. I personally have "hard fun" paying attention to detail and getting out of difficult situations. I like to put together "winning streaks" where I play out every start and need to pay serious attention to "not losing."
We ran a poll to see how often experienced player said they beat Monarch
86% said they beat it more than 90% of the time. I think this was not exaggerated.
With the winning percentage so high, many people find it boring to play by the book. Moving up in difficulty is not a good answer for some people. Some good players frankly tell you that they hate not being in control of the game and would rather try for the perfect domination game. They tend to reload if the early game is not up to their liking and they tend to play at a level where the AI is not a serious threat.
Is this behavior disgusting. No, it’s their own choice. But when you move to multiplayer, then there is a chance that it can become disgusting.
Before I ramble off the end of this thread, we are not going to solve the “I won’t play if I can’t win” issue since it extends to the real world. Some people are happy as big frogs in a small puddle while others work like mad their whole lives in order to rise to their level of incompetence. I like to mix it up with the latter crowd, which I detect is the prevailing rule in our little group.
"building 10 scouts in a MP game seems exactly to be the strategy that shows that you don't care about anything but winning. So much so that you don't even want to play if you can't win. Isn't that right?"
Yes, the "I will not play if I can't win" line of thought is likely to be a serious problem for PBEM and multiplayer generally. I don't think the scout strat is going to loom large as a particular issue, but not treating avoidance of disaster seriously will be an issue.
I agree with you in spirit about scouting. It produces an ugly game I don’t like to play. But you should realize that there are particular conditions where the scout strat makes sense, even for a player who takes the downside seriously. Basically, you need both a very large map and a minimal number of competing civs. Best of all is if you are the only expansionist civ and there are no AI civs that start out with “extra” units. (You reading this Eli of Persia?) In those circumstances, you are not likely to get surprised early, and will surely get nearly all the huts. Not doing the scout strat is leaving money on the table. Even then, my own temperament requires a compromise that puts a reasonable defense effort in place that would make Aeson shake his head at my conservatism.
The "fun" thing that gets Delmar’s goat is really quite deep in some of its dimensions. I personally have "hard fun" paying attention to detail and getting out of difficult situations. I like to put together "winning streaks" where I play out every start and need to pay serious attention to "not losing."
We ran a poll to see how often experienced player said they beat Monarch
86% said they beat it more than 90% of the time. I think this was not exaggerated.
With the winning percentage so high, many people find it boring to play by the book. Moving up in difficulty is not a good answer for some people. Some good players frankly tell you that they hate not being in control of the game and would rather try for the perfect domination game. They tend to reload if the early game is not up to their liking and they tend to play at a level where the AI is not a serious threat.
Is this behavior disgusting. No, it’s their own choice. But when you move to multiplayer, then there is a chance that it can become disgusting.
Before I ramble off the end of this thread, we are not going to solve the “I won’t play if I can’t win” issue since it extends to the real world. Some people are happy as big frogs in a small puddle while others work like mad their whole lives in order to rise to their level of incompetence. I like to mix it up with the latter crowd, which I detect is the prevailing rule in our little group.
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