To rush or not to rush, that is the question

[darrelljs]

Our neighbors have made some baffling moves. I think we should rush them with Cats and/or Swords. I read through the FAQS and the Welcome page and I didn't see anything about this being a "friendly" game, so I think it should be considered on the table.

Thoughts?

Darrell

[sooooo]

Maybe. I'm not necessarily against it on moral grounds, but I don't think there's much point discussing it until we have metal. We'll find out that in ... ooh ... about 2 months

[Zeviz]

We probably could eliminate both of our neighbors even without Iron. However, that would leave us overexpanded, with economy shot by military research and buildup, facing 3 other teams that will unite against such an obvious threat. At least one of these teams is highly competent, and all of them are currently growing at least as quickly as we are. Such a scenario doesn't look very appealing.

On the other hand, if we invest heavily into economy while our neighbors go chasing religions and building wonders, we could be in a good position to take one of them out when they start fighting.

[darrelljs]

Hmm...here's my $0.02 and then I'll shut up.

Path #1, we go for as early a war as possible. We focus on Iron Working, Construction and Code of Laws. We form a research pact with PAL. We hit these guys now, while they've focused on non-essentials early in the game. We take out the two capitals and keep them, raze everything else. Then, we focus on cottaging every grassland tile in site. We have an entire continent to ourself and don't give a rat's butt about the other continent.

Path #2, we wait until the Classical age to attack. We give our opponents an opportunity to recover from their bizarre opening. Path #2 is the opposite of siezing the initiative.

sooooo,

You are right this won't happen for ages, but if we don't choose to go after it now, we won't research the right techs or build the right stuff to enable it. So I think we should make a decision on whether we want to try it or not.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

I support Darrell - our neighbors may be foolish at times, but presumably the other continent is not. We all know early expansion hurts the economy, but we also know land is power. I think it's best to grab a continent's worth of land now when the other continent can't do anything to counter.

Metagaming PS - However killing our neighboors will more or less remove diplomacy from half the game. Since this isn't as fun, the non-ideal path may still be a viable solution.

[sooooo]

[SIZE=1] sooooo,

You are right this won't happen for ages, but if we don't choose to go after it now, we won't research the right techs or build the right stuff to enable it. So I think we should make a decision on whether we want to try it or not.

Darrell

That's only if we want to research iron working before we want the tech for cottages. I was assuming our immediate tech path is agriculture -> pottery -> iron working. That'll take ... ooh about 2 months

Are you proposing iron working before pottery and/or agriculture? I think we need pottery first.

Whether we want an early rush or not, IW is a definite priority so I think we want it after pottery. Need some metal.

[Sullla]

Originally posted by darrelljs
Path #1, we go for as early a war as possible. We focus on Iron Working, Construction and Code of Laws. We form a research pact with PAL. We hit these guys now, while they've focused on non-essentials early in the game. We take out the two capitals and keep them, raze everything else. Then, we focus on cottaging every grassland tile in site. We have an entire continent to ourself and don't give a rat's butt about the other continent.

This is pretty much what I would like to see as well. However, we need - you know - SOME kind of resource before we're in a position to do any kind of fighting. Archers ain't going to cut it.

I think it's pretty clear that the tech path for the near future is Agriculture -> Pottery -> Iron Working. We really can't do much more planning than that until we see where the irons are located. (We'd better have some kind of hidden resource located in our capital! The "balance" on this map is just an embarassment.) Obviously we will need to evaluate the situation again at that point, to see if our neighbors are still vulnerable.

One thing we COULD do is tell PAL that we will research Iron Working and Construction for them, if we choose to enter into a research pact (which I think we should, to be honest). We could swap those techs for something like Alphabet and Metal Casting, or whatever. You get the point.

In the meantime, while researching up to Iron Working, we should continue to expand at the maximum possible rate. Our neighbors don't seem to be pushing expansion, so let's make them pay for it.

[darrelljs]

I agree completely with Agriculture -> Pottery -> Iron Working, followed by an evaluation of the situation. Surely we have Iron !

Darrell

[Zeviz]

I want to find out more about history of Demogames before we commit to this course of action. Remember, that we are representing RB here, so we don't want to be bringing rocks into a snowball fight if all past demogames have been friendly and focused on role-playing, rather than trying to win.

[darrelljs]

If the sheep invite a wolf to the party, they should expect to get eaten .

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Originally posted by darrelljs
If the sheep invite a wolf to the party, they should expect to get eaten .

Darrell

(Though I am on the pro-rush side).

Does RB's insistence on friendly play, no exploits, aversion to powergaming, emphasis on quality of reports over results, and reluctance to have competitive scoring mechanisms make us wolves?

I wonder what that makes the guys I play with each night. Thermonuclear bombs? Mass drivers?

[mostly-harmless]

I am against rushing our neighbours.
Rushes are normally frowned upon when playing the epics. And since we are to some extent representing RealmsBeyond here, it would be out of character if we rush or dogpile on our neighbours. It just does not feel right to me.
Furthermore, I see the potential in our team and in the map to dominate our continent by more peaceful means. We have outstanding experts on our team for all the facets of the game from city specialisation, mircromanaging to corporation management and many more.
How much more satisfying would it be to win this game by means of honorable gameplay.
Darell is probably right, stating that a rush is the most efficient strategy for securing the continent and running away with the game. If we have Iron, I believe we will all agree to that. But lets keep at that: agreeing that we could easily wipe out the roleplaying Templars and the unorganized Imperios with powerplay and then move on to keep the fun in the game for us and them.
Because not only will it mean the end for a lot of players but I also fear that the fun and interest in our team will reduce if we are "only" managing a lonely continent for ages and ages after exterminating our neighbours. The interaction with Imperio & Templars and the task to out-maneuver a human(team) civ when it comes to land grab, teching and wonder building is what elevates the experience of this game compared to "normal" MP or SP games.
And think about the future. We are complaining about, how the setup process took so long, how the map is so unbalanced etc. Lets host our own demo game for civ 5 when it comes out and invite teams to participate. In that case we might want to not have the reputation to quick rush the first civ we meet. Just a thought.

mh

[darrelljs]

Rushes are frowned upon because the AI isn't designed to handle them. You could argue neither are our opponents, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt .

@sunrise089 - RB does represent the things you mention, but it also represents high level gameplay. Just about everyone enters an event to win it, and they use their full bag of tricks to achieve the best result possible (variant rules aside).

I understand Zeviz and mostly-harmless; if we look at the old demogames and see that its basially a very, very slow game of D&D we can just play nice. I certainly don't think the game was adevertised that way, however. I re-read all posts by Rob in his RB thread, and I also read the FAQ post. Nothing indicates we need to adopt a peaceful strategy.

Darrell

[Sullla]

Originally posted by sunrise089 Does RB's insistence on friendly play, no exploits, aversion to powergaming, emphasis on quality of reports over results, and reluctance to have competitive scoring mechanisms make us wolves?

I wonder what that makes the guys I play with each night. Thermonuclear bombs? Mass drivers?

Just to clarify this issue, sunrise is getting the environment of Realms Beyond confused with the competitiveness. Friendly play and emphasis on quality reports are all about establishing a setting in which open communication and free exchange of ideas can take place. The fact that many (most?) other communities on the Internet like to mock lesser players and hurl around insults at "noobs" doesn't mean that the quality of play within them is any better. No exploits has nothing to do with competitiveness either. We rule out exploits because they are holes in the game's programming, whether it be Right of Passage rape in Civ3 or abuse of the missile bug in Master of Orion. These are not carebear measures to make the game more friendly, but corrective measures for flaws in AI coding.

As for the other two points, there's plenty of powergaming going on at RB all the time. Just look at the incredibly meticulous management produced by Muaziz and T-Hawk in the Dutch Masters game, for example. The only difference is that we mix up the scoring goals in each game, so that there isn't an endless repetition and perfection of the power options in each game. We also have competitive scoring mechanisms in about 60% of the games played, and our players clearly care greatly about performing well. The big difference is that at RB, the losers politely congratulate the winners and compare notes to improve their performance for the next time, rather than hurl insults at one another and scream about how the other guy is using haxxors.

In short, I don't think there's any less of a desire to win on the part of us who stick to Single Player competitions. The MP community is simply more in-your-face about doing so. (Sadly so, because I liked the games online, but I could not stand 90% of the people who played online, with their incredible childishness.) If aggressively moving after our opponents in this game proves to be the best strategy, we should definitely pursue it, and I think you'll find a majority of the team will agree. And when that time comes, sunrise and Atlas will be invaluable in explaining how to take down a human opponent...

But again, we still won't reach that fork in the road for a number of turns yet!