Giant Multiplayer Robots! [Civ5]

Reported!

If you have a few extra of those pointy sticks, I could really use them about now. That buffalo is still trying to rape and pillage (he's already pillaging) Madrid. Didn't anyone get my SOS? Are you guys deaf? H..E..L.. P..
Let me try this another way HELP ME, I'M BEING INVADED AND I CAN'T FIGHT BACK!!!!! TO ARMS!!!!!! TO ARMS!!!!!!
AYUDARME!!!!! AYUDEME!!!! (Spanish for HELP ME, HELP ME!!!!!)

Unfortunately, the coastal route to your continent is too circuitous, and my people fear the ocean. Your only hope is if Attila aligns with you to strike at Maya while they're concentrating their forces on you. Otherwise, it's yet more conquered cities under Maya's militaristic arm.

If I haven't already mentioned this, I think the ability to traverse ocean tiles is placed too far down the tech tree in G&K for maps in which civs are separated my H2O. Maybe maps that don't place all civs on the same continent could use a slightly modified tech tree in which that ability is tied to an earlier tech? Not having all civs start on the same continent would be my preference, if not for this. :-(

Multiple Turns
Congratulations to the Huns for completing the Great Friendship Wall adjacent to Friendship City. It's a shame the rest of the world does not make as much of a concentrated effort to promote peace on their borders. Happy Turn 100 everyone.

RE: ocean travel
I think that's why most of us switched to playing pangea/oval for multiplayer. But even then, in another GMR game I'm on one side of the world and locked in by a neighbor who controls a strategic landbridge. This is probably for the best for me to avoid the dogpile, but that's another story.I had to develop coastal travel to start meeting the rest of the players. Or make peace with my neighbor, but boats were easier. You could always play archipelago to force more of an emphasis on sea travel or something like small islands, but I think most people prefer early player interaction in a multiplayer game.

Curse you Red Baron, er I mean Dead Buffalo. Beating up on a poor defenseless woman. Then you have the nerve to talk about making an effort to promote pease? Hipocrite, I say man. You are a hipocrite.

You have women fight your battles? I think I've found the cause of DB's effect.

Good fences make good neighbors.

Can you do something to stop Ramcats caterwauling? I'm trying to sleep over here.

G&K Virgins and Fox Back in the Hen House

Expecting these two games to be awaiting my orders this morning, I was bummed to find them stalled for over 24 hours. :-(

Found a glitch in the program that really sucks. If you have 2 fighting units in your city ( 1 there already that one that you were able to produce while being under fire), you must move your stacked unit. The problem is that the program does not let you attack those that are attacking you. This causes you to move your unit to an open area and thus makes it open for attack. Again I say. CURSE YOU DEAD BUFFALO!!!

It's actually not a glitch. You might not be able to win and advance in an attack, and then you'd be able to stack units in a town.

What happens if your city is completely surrounded?

Good question. This sucks. I have to waste a unit just so I can surviver one more turn. When under attack, we should be able to sstack lots of units in the city. After all, this is War.

You've survived more than one turn too many.

Maybe this has been answered previously, but why did Maya feel the need to attack Spain who, based on what I'm reading, is on the verge of extinction? Spain always held a solid third place on the leaderboard, so it wasn't because they were in first place or a technological threat.

Is there no room for expansion on the continent? I doubt that's the reason, since I've scouted unclaimed territory.

I can understand attacking Babylon, but why Spain?

Attacking a weaker player means you get their stuff without losing much of your stuff. Attacking a stronger player means you might gain some stuff, but you're going to lose a lot of your strength in the process.

Thank you, Capt. Obvious.

I'm trying to understand what motivates a player to attack a non-threat when another option is to found additional cities when there is still unclaimed territory. One reason to include AI civs (at a higher difficulty level, of course) in these games is to dissuade players from indiscriminately attacking other human players, since they'll take diplomatic hits from the AI players. For example, in The Fickle Finger of Fate game, when I declared war on Babylon, I had to consider how the four AI players would react. I could have continued the war, but I'm sure the AI players wouldn't conduct diplomacy with me if I had.

In G&K Multiple Turns, I've labeled db as a warmonger, so I won't conduct diplomacy with him. Unlike AI civs, I can't count on human civs to do likewise; I can only hope they frown on this behavior and enact sanctions against Maya. Otherwise, we might as well say "gg" to db and move on to the next game. :-)

Founding new cities improves your position, true. Taking cities from other players improves your position AND weakens the other player. Whenever possible, a move should be made that both benefits you and hurts others.

Or is that "obvious" as well?

Re-read what I wrote:

So the motivation in further weakening a non-threat is what? He was a non-threat to begin with, and it only serves to view the warmongering civ in a negative light.

Again, attacking Babylon made sense. But attacking Spain appears to be a territory grab that will hopefully result in diplomatic sanctions against Maya from Byzantium and the Huns.

Keep in mind that conquering cities can be costly to a civ's infrastructure, which is why I'm raising these questions. By the time a city falls:

• the majority of buildings are destroyed (certain buildings are always destroyed)
• population takes a hit (I believe)
• annexing generates a ton of unhappiness that persists until a courthouse is built; or puppeting adds a sizable amount of happiness, creates a city that can't be managed, and has negative modifiers to culture and science
• the amount of culture needed for the next social policy increases (I think the increase is the same, regardless of whether the additional city is founded or conquered).

The player also eliminates a possible trade partner, or, if not eliminated, makes it less likely the player will trade with him.

IMO, the infrastructure hits and negative diplomatic impact associated with further weakening a non-threat isn't worth it, making founding a new city (provided unclaimed territory exists) a better option.

I'm fairly sure it allows you to move through the enemy onto the nearest outside hex. Been a couple months since I found myself in that unfortunate situation. :(

There's no such thing as a non-threat. There's less of a threat, sure. But anyone can hurt you. But we could argue all day (sort of your specialty, Mysterio). I've made my point. You obviously disagree with my assessment. I'm ok with that.

I know I'm not in any of these games, but I do like lurk and follow some of the discussion that goes on with the GMR games (I really should put my hand up for one, but I fear I'd slow the game down with my SE Asia time zone). In short, I'm in full agreement with Nate.

Bear in mind that keeping a weaker player in the game will no doubt strengthen someone else if the initiative isn't taken to act sooner. "He who hesistates is lost" so to speak.

There will of course be times in a game like Civ where strategic or luxury resources may be few and far between. What if oil were scarce, and some rich oil fields were present in the weaker nation's land. It could open a bidding war to strengthen the weak nation as stronger nations try and outbid each other. That would be nice and lead to some interesting diplomacy. That's provided everyone wants to be peaceful about it of course. It could be that someone does just march in and grab it. It could be that the weak nation may favour one nation over another, which affords a huge benefit to the recipient, and who is to say then that the recipient doesn't use that benefit to wipe out someone else completely. That is how a non-threat nation becomes an indirect threat. If an opportunity presents itself to successfully conquer another land and improve a player's chance of winning, then it should be taken. Of course, that action may have ramifications based on whatever diplomatic agreements are in place and a warmonger may soon face the wrath of other nations who can identify the threat.

Civ has first and foremost been about conquest. If conquest is not desirable, then the game should be set to be always at peace (or alternately, gentleman's agreement at the start to no DoW). It would be intriguing to see how a game pans out where everyone is peaceful, but I fear both starting position (and immediate surrounding landscape) as well as Civ choice would bring such a game down to simple luck. That is where the conquest element comes into its own, to try and help level the playing field.

This is the type of response that makes me shake my head regarding public forums and wonder if it's even worth being a member of them. This is a discussion, not an argument. What part of my previous reply was argumentative?

Semantics :) Discussion, argument, disagreement, however you want to call it.

Sorry if you feel like I'm attacking you. I'm not attempting to insult you. I tend to tease people a bit too much, and I was attempting a joke about your past posting style from the Qt3 dom 3 and BF GMR thread. It was meant to be in fun; if it went too far, please accept my apology.

Oh, yeah--I was a bit dickish in those threads as emotions ran high throughout. Sadly, guilty as charged.

You were much more subtle in your use of the forum this time around to get everyone to attack deadbuffalo, though. :)

I don't know why it say it's ramcat's turn now.

What'd you do, drown him in a sack?

Did you eliminate his last city? If so, he still needs to play one more turn before the game skips him.

ramcat, I feel your pain.

I'll help him tonight by feeding him drink after drink at the Christmas party while he recounts the memorable battles of the Mayan-Spanish war!

Or perhaps you can remind him of all the times you've lost, so he doesn't feel so bad ;)

Since ramcat's been eliminated from G&K Multiple Turns and I have a GMR slot remaining, I'd be willing to create a new G&K game for him to play in. It would be on a Pangaea (not the Plus version) Fractal map (pure, random chaos!) with default settings. If there's enough interest, I'll make it happen. So please speak up if you want in.

EDIT: Pure, random chaos wouldn't be pure without random civ assignments, of course!

I'm in! Happy to take you two down again.

I think it completely unfair that I was taken out of a game wher I was no threat. Everyone should attacke that warmonger Dead Buffalo. If for no other reason than to avenge Spain. In other news, I'll gladly accept all of the free drinks tonight so as to drown my sorrow. (Boo Hoo).

In reality, I'm sure I lost because of my own mistakes. I didn't have a military worth talking about and I allowed the program to pick where my second city was to be placed. It was much too far away from my main city leaving me open for invasion from warmongers. We learn from our mistakes, so if I get the chance, I'll correct my mistakes and make sure I can defend myself in the next game. Look out Nate, You're on my list.

It's always good to have a list of people to get on your good side early.

I have all the DLC and expansion, so all I need is the GMR client? If it starts after Christmas, I'll jump in. The more the merrier? Like I said above, I'm not US, so I may slow the turns down, though I can certainly organise myself to jump in when you guys would be playing. I don't mind if you'd rather keep it with more favourable timezones however.

Yup. If you'll be playing under Windows, you'll need to register on the GMR website (you'll be assigned a unique authentication code for your Steam account) and download the GMR client (make sure you watch the tutorial video on the website). If under OS X, you'll need to register only and upload/download the save files manually on the website, since an OS X version of the GMR client doesn't exist, yet.

We tend to average one turn per person per day in games in which all players are in the US, so I don't think having at least one non-US player will impact the turnaround time too much, if at all.

Is there a reason you're not able to join before Christmas, since I was hoping to start the game this week? Civ V games played via GMR are asynchronous, so there's no need to be at your computer any longer than necessary to complete a single turn.

ROSTER FOR "PURE, RANDOM CHAOS!"

Mysterio - Host
Ramcat (he's playing, even if he doesn't want to)
Nate
Josho

I'm at five games now, but you're more than welcome in whatever I'm in next (I'm in Europe) so where already doing the international thing - although I'll argue it's the hardwaorking Americans causing the slowdowns, since I can take my turns at the oddest of times.