Ministery of information?

[DeepO]

Something that, in hindsight, set us apart from the other teams in PTWDG was the level of analysis we performed on our enemies, and the information we had of the world around us. In many cases, this has saved our bacon.

Therefore, I propose to focus even more on this: it's best to use your strengths to the max, and it seems this is one of them. Traditionally, we had 3 schools: Military, Building, Diplo. I propose to add a fourth: our own little NSA (or KGB).

I'm certainly willing to do an analysis from time to time, when I see something interesing. And I'm sure vulture (if you're still around? haven't seen you yet, I'm afraid) would be a good person to coordinate stuff here. So I'm Chinese-volunteering him for the job

DeepO

[Arrian]

Chinese-volunteering? Is that like "Shanghai-ing" ? Seems so.

Would you say that the demographics screen in CIV provides more info, less info, or about the same as the CivIII version?

-Arrian

[Krill]

More, without a doubt.

The graphs show you each teams MFG, GNP, and crop yield history, for example. We never had that in Civ3.

[Cort Haus]

More info, or so it seems to me. The only meaningful graphs in Civ 3 were Power and Culture. Now all of them are useful - and they show trends better than the numbers.

[Arrian]

I figured. By the way, I'm SOOOOO happy they changed the graph display with the 1.52 patch (based, it appears, on a fan mod of the graph?). It's so much better!

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Maybe the first goal we can start on, is to figure out general information on the other teams.

Like I said elsewhere, Sarantium is for me the team to watch. Not only are some excellent players present (a.o. Fried, who lead the MP testing group, is regarded as possibly the best CIV MPer, and co-authored the official strat guide), with some excellent diplo guys too (Beta, and Trip)

The one that might surprise me the most are the ACers... I suspect they might play very well, but from what I know of them (not that much) they might be diplomatically isolated. A bit the NDers of last time.

The Mercs might get interesting, I certainly hope they start either very close, or very far away. We agreed to include them, so we should definately use them.... even if beating them would certainly be a cool thing to do too. I wonder if we can first take some cities, than demand peace and as part of the peace negotiations demand some military help for the next 20 turns as well

Then... the Horde. What happened with these guys, can someone explain to me the situation of the C3CDG in 2 paragraphs? I know of bad feelings, I don't know what happened at all.

Who else is in?

DeepO

[Arrian]

I agree your take.

I think that the AC'ers may present us with an opportunity. If we happen to find ourselves near them, we could go out of our way to befriend them (the way GoW did with ND in the PTWDG, much to GoW's advantage).

The Mercs... as much as I support them being in the game, I'm dubious as to how well we're going to interact with them. I thought I had a good rapport with UnO, and then witness today's bs in our public thread. Clearly he can't let the PTWDG go. Ugh. I hope they're far away.

I don't really understand what went on w/the Horde. It seems a member of theirs cheated... sorta - somebody used access to a poster's account to deliberately screw over the poster. When this was discovered/disclosed, some Horde members appeared seriously defensive/defiant, and pissed people off by not immediately accepting that what a member of their team does impacts their entire team. But that was in another game and appears to have been handled. I personally, therefore, approach the Horde with an entirely blank slate.

Also in... Banana, right? Sorta like PTWDGII Sunshine? I have no idea. Easy going... maybe kinda Vox-like?

-Arrian

[DeepO]

UnO won't be a problem, I think. He really didn't mean it, but yes, I has a long memory of sometimes smaller things. He's certainly one to respond with caution to. What happened today is just one example of us failing in public, taking a bait. UnO will leave plenty of baits around, it's our responsibility not to fall for it.

Horde: for me they certainly start with a blank slate, but still I think it's important to know what really went on. Who was involved in this? Krill, I've seen you posting quite agressively towards them, where you on one of the teams most disadvantaged and disgusted?

DeepO

[Arrian]

Well, it's an example of ME failing in public, yeah. You did fine. I added a smoothing-over post, and I consider it done now.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
Also in... Banana, right? Sorta like PTWDGII Sunshine? I have no idea. Easy going... maybe kinda Vox-like?

Better to have Grog ready when they get really easy-going

Vox is in too, of course. In the end, they were easy going indeed, and not a lot has changed in their team (except for Beta leaving). We could see a whole other Vox if they get a good starting position, however they never stroke me as being brilliant in playing Civ. Diplomatically, they held good relations with all teams, though, and that was not solely because of Beta.

DeepO

[Krill]

The Horde, in C3CDG: Bunch of Warmongers, sword rushed me on turn 30 with about 10 swords (we used a starter pack to speed the game up), but accepted a peace treaty and an alliance that netted them some settlers from us, and a future ally when they came to attack a team they did not like, Babylon (Betas' team, with Kloreep, ET...old school demogamers). Horde played a diplomatic game, playing each team off against the others, and eventuially amassing a sodding huge army, probably approaching 100 units. The Public forum was similar to that in the PTWDG, actually worse, as one entire thread, with about 400 posts in it, got deleted by the mods.

The Cheating incident...one guy, James the scot, creating a login, "Planet", along with some other friends, and got the login to join babylon, and could see the private forum. Later on, he created a second login, James the scot, the one he uses now, and joined BOH for real. No one knows what happened, other than Planet was used from the same IP address that Paddy the Scot uses, from his home network.

In summary, I would trust BOH as far as I could throw them, as I had no choice but to ally - Ally or be squashed like a bug. Let me reply with my own personal opinions though.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
Well, it's an example of ME failing in public, yeah. You did fine. I added a smoothing-over post, and I consider it done now.

-Arrian

Oh, I take the blame as well, I might have primed you into taking a bit more agressive stance, while it wasn't my intention. It doesn't really matter in this case, just a quick reminder how easy it is to lose control over the public forum.

DeepO

[Krill]

I was BOHs' ally

[DeepO]

How come James the Scot wasn't removed from the game, if everyone believed him to be the same as Planet?

Quite a mess, it seems. I can see some serious issues rising from such a situation.

DeepO

[DeepO]

So, basically, Beta, ET, and Kloreep were the ones most likely to hold grudges, right?

DeepO