No, I disagree. The plan was always to make this forum public; I just haven't had the time to go through and do the writeup which explains everything yet. So let's turn this post into an endgame summary for this forum.
Why did we lose this game?* Geography: Our land isn't bad in and of itself. Compared to a randomly generated map, it's actually quite good. However, compared to other player starts on this map, it's rather subpar. I don't think we had the worst position (that would be poor Nakor) but I would say we had one of the weaker ones on the map. I haven't looked at the analysis of the map as yet with that external tool, so this could be incorrect, however that's how both Speaker and I felt. We only had one river in our territory (the one at the capital which everyone got), which is a pretty big deal. I'm not counting the few extra river tiles we poached out of what should have been Adlain territory. We also had a lack of food resources, especially in our tundra south and northern land extension. Hardly any cities had more than one food bonus, and where we did have more than one, it was invariably at coastal cities with no production whatsoever. Great for whipping, good for commerce, terrible for any kind of serious military production. Yes, we were able to get the same ~25 cities as plako and luddite and Parkin. No, they were no equal in quality to the cities that these teams had. Out of the 24 cities we settled, 4 of them - FOUR! - had no food bonuses whatsoever. Again, have I mentioned that we were somewhere between #1 and #3 in Land Area for the whole game? We made due with what we had, but it was scant going the whole time.
Happiness resources were also a major, major concern. Please kindly go back and read the ridiculous song and dance we were forced to do in the early game to keep our cities happy. While most teams easily claimed silver, furs, and other resources in food-heavy regions, we had to claim these same resources in food-poor tundra regions, and force border expansions on top of that. Our team had to rush Code of Laws, found Confucianism, and then use Spiritual swaps to Caste System with forced Artist specialists just to get beyond 5 happiness. Yeah, we could do it and it was a sweet play, but that kind of stuff invariably sets you back. Our tundra south was just shit, and I make no apologies for stating that. Then we would look at what other teams had in their tundra regions, and it was so, so much better. (Try looking at Parkin's northern region and compare, for example.) I think this was a simple mistake on the part of the map team, as they had such a large area to cover, and yet it did hurt us significantly, especially in the early game.
So we were able to mostly keep pace in expansion, by focusing entirely on Food and Commerce. But since our cities were mostly glorified fishing villages, we had no choice but to sacrifice Production. If you look at the Demographics, we were never better than middle of the pack in Production, at best, and often were as low as #7-8. This despite having some of the most total pop and land area in the game, which shows how badly we suffered. That meant that we could never make a real effort at competing for wonders, made worse by the complete lack of stone and marble on the map (a GIANT stealth buff to Industrious trait). For example, we had Nationalism tech only 2t after Parkin, but how in the world could we possibly beat him to Taj Mahal with no marble? It wasn't even worth the effort, and that of course set up the massive Golden Age that decided the game in the end. Our weak Production greatly limited what we were able to do, and it always bothered me throughout the game. But... with weaker land, you can't have everything. Food and Commerce are much more important in Civ4 than Production, so we sacrificed the weakest element.
In the end, the players in this game were too good. Unfortunately, this was not the Aployton Demogame where the other teams just sucked and we could massively outplay them to overcome a geographical handicap. We still were in a damned good position, running over Adlain and establishing ourselves as the #2 power, until events on the other side of the map with Parkin brought the game to its conclusion.
* National Wonders: This was another issue throughout the game. We didn't get enough out of these, even though I tried to focus on them. Again, the low production of our cities and lack of stone/marble were crippling blows to our civ in this regard. It took so long to build Moai that we had to delay it until the Medieval period, which was suboptimal but what could we do? At least we got value out of that. Heroic Epic required a war and a unit with 10 XP, so we waited on that until fighting Adlain, and the game was over before it did much of anything. Because we didn't have a unit for Heroic Epic, I also ignored National Epic (by not researching Literature tech) which hurt further. The big question was, where the heck could we build National Epic? Our Great Person city for most of the game was Teoihuacan, which had absolutely no production at all. Again, it was a glorified fishing village. We could do awesome, creative stuff there with Caste System and Pacifism... but that only works for so long. That city could never build National Epic without marble in any reasonable length of time. And if not there, where else? Remember, almost no rivers in our territory, few places we could even build farms. I couldn't find another good spot for it even if we had had Literature tech. So that was another national wonder that went to waste - just didn't have the land to make it possible.
We also had no good place to build the Forbidden Palace either, which was a massive help to other teams on this map. No, I didn't forget about it at all. I saw just how much it was helping Parkin and plako. We were going to build it in Adlain's capital, and simply ran out of time to make it useful. Where else would we have put it anyway? In one of those lousy northern cities with extremely limited food? Bah! Adlain's capital was the best spot for it, and if Parkin hadn't become such a runaway, our plan would have worked perfectly.
* Diplomacy: I thought we played the diplo game well this time. The funny thing is that I did nothing differently this time around, just tried to make friends in the early game with everyone and wait to see what would develop later on. For whatever reason, having the "Locke" name seemed to make everyone like us. (I think this is conclusive proof that name reputation was a gigantic factor in Pitboss #2, and all that stuff that other people wrote about "not targeting Spullla because of names" was a giant pile of bull, but I'll leave that up to individual interpretation.) We were well liked by everyone, and had no real enemies in this game. Early on we could have potentially gotten into a fight with Nakor, which would have been disastrous for both teams, but instead we offered a fairly generous split of the land in the east, and went on to become good friends. Notice also that we didn't let past animosity with Nakor be any kind of a factor in this game. (And honestly I *STILL* don't like Nakor, who was willing to throw away his own game just to spite Parkin! Who does that?! Just because we benefited doesn't mean I like the idea.) After that it was peaceful expansion, with a planned buildup to an attack on Adlain using Liberalism -> Nationalism -> drafting, all of which went more or less perfectly. We had that all set up as early as Turn 75 or so, when we started planning the Confucianism grab into Caste System/Pacifism -> Great Scientists to clear Philosophy and Education. It was a beautiful plan, the only problem was....
... you can't control what's going on elsewhere on the map. The geography enormously favored Parkin by giving him a ridiculously isolated start (seriously, WTF was up with that?!?) and then he benefitted from a huge break of luck when mackoti and luddite got into their early war. That set them both back enormously, crippling mackoti and forcing luddite to ignore everything to his east, so Parkin expanded in total builder mode with no pressure whatsoever. Parkin's gameplay of "I will build every wonder in the game and have absolutely no military" is pure suicide in 90% of games, but it worked out in this game because of 1) the stupid defensive protection of his starting position, with oceans and narrow 1-tile choke points all around him and 2) the emergent gameplay of other teams going to war. Furthermore, plako got into a long war with Warlord/WarriorKnight to the south, which removed any possible pressure on Parkin from the south. So once again Parkin got to play superbuilder, with zero military, and no one ever calling him on it.
In Civ4, you only have X amount of resources to spend. When you play better you can stretch what you have and build mud bricks without straw, but there are ultimately limits. For example, you can expand OR you can build wonders OR you can build military. You cannot do all three at once; normally 2 out of 3 is the best you can do. When someone tries to do the first two, as Parkin clearly was running in this game, the response is to go in there and take their wonders and cities away from them. What's so frustrating about this game, what kills me and Speaker, and is that we *KNEW* what Parkin was doing, and we were prevented by the distance of a Huge map from going over there and doing anything about it. That's why we rejected the NAP offers that he presented us with. I mean, why the hell would we sign an NAP with someone who has no military?! It makes no sense. He was obviously trying to cover his own ass while he continued to play wonder builder. The whole thing was clear to us, and yet all the other teams in position to do something were apparently fooled badly. Huge maps can be really cool with the big spaces for expansion, but the one drawback is that you cannot influence stuff on the other side of the map until late Rensaissance or Industrial eras. By that time, by the time that we were ready to swing into lategame with our conquest of Adlain, the game was already over. What could we do before that? Spend 20 turns walking maces over to the border? Heh. Not likely! We needed more luck to break our way on the other side of the map, and it didn't happen.
As for some of our endgame allies, I'm sorry to say this, but they were complete idiots. Yes, that means you plako! Plako had this giant military left over from the Greece war, and meanwhile Parkin was sitting there on his border with absolute nothing while continuing to tech ahead and build wonders. But plako refused to do anything because he had signed some kind of riduclous NAP (why you would sign that with someone who had no military is mind-boggling!!!) and then felt honor-bound to adhere to it. I asked probably 3 or 4 different times for luddite and plako to throw away their stupid NAPs, which they even admitted they had been tricked into signing, but no one listened to "Locke" who they assumed had no idea what he was talking about. Sigh.
If you want to know when the game was lost, it was when 1) luddite/mackoti fought their stupid war, giving Parkin vastly more land than he should have had 2) plako did nothing with his huge military advantage while Parkin ran through triple Golden Ages.
I'm aware that Parkin would have gone into Nationhood if plako had attacked and started drafting units in response... which is the whole point!!! Make him use his GA on building units, not pure teching and infrastructure!!! Instead, everyone sat on their hands and let Parkin tech Railroads/Combustion, then saw their wooden fleets sunk immediately by destroyers. Great plan guys. Give the runaway - who is teching much, MUCH faster than you - a full 50 turns to prepare for an attack. I'm sure that will go over well [end sarcasm]. We were not optimistic about the whole attack on Parkin, Speaker especially, but we felt we had no choice but to participate. When it failed, and failed spectacularly, that was essentially it.
Diplo addendum: regoarrarr + sunrise, I have no idea what you were thinking in this game. With apologies for the tone of this message, you played horribly in this game with your "moving on the first turn" and Great Lighthouse opening, and then effectively vassaled yourselves to the runaway to allow him to win easier. Yeah, I'm sure Parkin was a "great guy" who returned your penchant for extremely long chats, but he totally played you in this game. Your clock manipulation games that allowed Parkin to crush the other teams was... distasteful, I'll leave it at that. Maybe with your help we could have done something about Parkin. Maybe. You were not in mackoti's or Adlain's hopeless situation, so there was no reason to toady up to Parkin. Again, with aplogies, I think your game was horribly played, and I'm kind of disgusted with how you facillitated Parkin's win.
["But Sullla, tell us how you really feel!" "Oh if you think that's offensive, wait until Speaker and I start explaining why we thought Parkin's play was extremely lucky and oftentimes downright noob." "Eh, I liked that Locke fellow a lot more..."]
* Endgame: We had two different plans for potentially winning the game once it became clear that Parkin was the runaway civ. The first plan was to build the United Nations and use the population advantage of Locke/plako/Nakor/luddite/Moogle to vote one of us the winner. This required all of us staying alive until that point, as well as one of us researching up to Mass Media. It was a bit unlikely, but not totally impossible. The other possibility was winning by Culture, which we were using as our main plan. We had a very real chance to do this, and I believe that in a straight race we could have won by Culture around T280, which I think would have beaten a Parkin spaceship. (Remember, the spaceship has to first have the whole tech tree researched, then build all the parts, and then wait 12 turns for the thing to arrive at its destination. I think we had a good chance.)
Both plans, however, were contingent on Parkin not attacking our team. We very badly needed about 20 turns to finish conquering Adlain and then reposition our military units (which were entirely in the west) over to our eastern shore. If we had gotten that time, then yes, it might well have been a game. But as soon as Parkin declared war and started razing our coastal cities, the game was up. We could have held onto our core cities (Parkin only had rifles, after all, and amphibious rifles do not beat redcoats unless attacking with overwhelming odds) although it would have taken a lot of whipping and drafting. And that's the whole point right there: we would have been forced into a very painful whipping/drafting cycle, which would have set up back substantially in making progress towards Mass Media or Culture. Parkin could also coastal blockade every one of our cities on the sea, which was a lot of them, even if he couldn't take them outright. Basically, he would have forced us into doing what Speaker and I did to Nakor at the end of Pitboss #2, where we captured no targets of strategic value but completely destroyed his economy by forcing him into a heavy whip/draft cycle.
Again, a lot of peope read this as "Locke" acting like a bad sport and not wanting to play on. It was not acting in poor sportsmanship, but rather Speaker and I being able to see that we were in the equivalent of a mated position in chess. We could see full well what was going to happen, as Parkin would shut down our economy while he then would grab Assembly Line tech, build factories everywhere, probably found a corporation or two, and would snowball even further ahead. I mean, is it really necessary to play that out? If we were left alone and given time, we had a slight chance to do something. When that didn't happen, the last doors closed on this game. We could no longer reach Culture before Parkin could reach space, and he could tech his own way to the UN and bury the victory vote with ease. GG.
What's interesting is that Parkin's victory in this game is what should have happened in Pitboss #2. When all those military attacks did so much damage to our India, what should have happened was another team on the other side of the map (who would have been peacefully teching/expanding the whole time) should have become the runaway civ. That did not happen in that game due to a combination of three things: 1) we had the ridiculously broken Elizabeth of India pick combo 2) the revolving door Inca leadership played very poorly until slaze showed up, when they should have been a superpower 3) athlete, Whosite, and slaze - the three teams best in position to take advantage of our war - all fought very long and destructive wars with one another, which let us pull ahead. In this game, Parkin played smarter than the teams in Pitboss #2 and reaped the rewards. His religious play (AP/Sankore/Spiral) worked extremely well, and the Mausoleum/Taj triple Golden Age was the game breaker. Kudos on a job well done there. Now, for the part of this writeup that people will hate the most...
* Why We Are Not Impressed With Parkin's Play: First of all, absolutely nothing mean intended against Parkin, who is a genuinely nice guy and won a deserving victory. However, I want to point out why Speaker and I don't think that Parkin was quite as brilliant in this game as a lot of lurkers seem to believe. In list form:
- Poor leader/civ choice. Taking Egypt (before a leader) was a weak choice in the snake pick. I don't even think Egypt was that great of a civ to have in this game. De Gaulle was probably the worst leader taken in this game, aside from maybe FDR (mackoti). Just because you make it work doesn't mean it was a good idea. Let me remind anyone reading this that the players had no idea what the map would look like before the game started. Yeah, Industrious was great when it turned out that there was no stone or marble on the map. Yeah, Industrious was great when it turned out that Parkin had no neighbors close by and no competition for land. De Gaulle/Egypt also meant an early Stonehenge build, which we called before the game even started, which leads to my next point...
- Stonehenge before settler. Look, again with apologies, but THIS IS THE NOOBEST OF NOOB BUILDS. Honestly, this is a terrible decision any way you spin it. We make fun of teams that do this online. In the Apolyton Demogame, Imperio did this and it probably cost them the game, giving our team time to go and grab our metal/horses at Cape Town. Once again, the complete dumb luck of having a Huge map (unknown before the game started) where Stonehenge was a great build, plus the further luck of the most isolated starting position on the map, made this work out. But was it really a good idea? Try this mental exercise: swap Parkin's start with Nakor's start. Now the Stonehenge first build is a horrible idea that results in Parkin getting squeezed into a small empire. Or how about this mental exercise: try the Stonehenge first build on the Pitboss #2 map where everyone was very closely packed together. Now maybe Parkin doesn't go Stonehenge before settler on those maps, but then the leader/civ pick goes to waste. The point I'm trying to make is that this was an awful idea which happened to work out due to very fortunate starting circumstances. It's the equivalent of going All In on a gutshot straight draw in poker, and then hitting the nuts on the river. As it played out, it's an awesome move that puts you ahead. But... it wasn't a good decision!!! You tried something silly and got lucky!!! Remember, analyze the process, not the results.
- Settling pattern: Parkin settled his first 4 cities in a straight line: Magadan, Evermore, Felidae. They are in a straight line to the southwest. Again, we generally call this "cool game play" online because it's a very foolish way to act. The cities at the end of the line were undefended and indefensible if anyone tried to attack them. Parkin continued doing this throughout the game, setting very aggressive cities far, far away from his capital and then backfilling in more cities later on. Now once again, this ended up working in this game, much like it worked for us in the Apolyton Demogame where we did the same thing. But in the Apolyton game, we did it out of sheer desperation, because our starting surroundings were shit and we had to take risks to be competitive. Parkin's surrounding land was really good and there was no need to play that way. It worked out perfectly: no one ever challenged him on land, and so he claimed a huge amount of territory, with no military, while building wonders. The game... is not supposed to work that way! I don't know what else to say. The *ONLY* reason why this worked was due to extremely favorable/defensive local geography, and the wars that luddite/plako had gotten themselves into, plus regoarrarr doing God knows what with his crazy Great Lighthouse strategy.
Here's another fun mental exercise: let's say luddite and mackoti work out a borders agreement instead of going to war. As it played out in this game, mackoti's cities were also settled in an indefensible straight line away from his capital. We know what happened: luddite attacked, mackoti lost all his cities, and became a nonentity. But let's say luddite/mackoti get a border deal done. Now luddite turns his attention east, and he sees a lone line of cities strung out, completely undefendable, while Parkin is building multiple wonders in his core cities. It is... exactly the same situation as with mackoti, who was doing the same thing while building the Pyramids. So if luddite goes east instead of west, Parkin gets totally crushed, and becomes the "mackoti" of this game instead of mackoti, left with a half-dozen core cities while luddite takes most of that south. Meanwhile, mackoti would have been the runaway in the north, running mass Representation specialists and with a ton of land.
My point is that settling aggressive cities that you can't defend, while building wonders, with no military, is simply not good play in MP. Now it worked in this game. It worked. But I cannot, CANNOT say that this was good play. It was lucky, pure and simple. Parkin won by doing things that would have gotten him killed in most games.
- Non Aggression Pacts: I hope this game has helped to show the folly of these things. Parkin did a masterful job of convincing teams to sign extremely long term NAPs with his civ, despite having no military forces whatsoever until the final 25 turns of the game. This was his finest play of the whole Pitboss, in the diplomacy. Why plako or luddite were willing to sign these things, and for insane lengths of time (70, 80 turns?! WTF?!?) is beyond me. This was what really won the game.
But once again, it relied on good fortune. For one thing, there was no guarantee that teams would be foolish enough to sign these. For another, there's no guarantee that humans will stick to deals just because they signed them. We would not have done so (well, we wouldn't have signed one of those deals in the first place!) and you can make of that what you will. When you have obviously been duped into a bad deal, and are going to lose the game if you do nothing, I don't understand why anyone would continue to sit there taking no action. When another team is settling cities on your border, with no military units in them (as Parkin was doing to plako), and continuing to tech past you with absolutely no units while you sit there with the world's #1 army by far... well, the joke is on you if you do nothing about it! NAPs are just agreements in the end. Of course you should uphold your deals, but it's not the end of the world if someone plays out a well-timed stab. Look at mackoti, who attacked luddite before their NAP was up. I had no problem with that at all - they were obviously long enemies, and if he waited then luddite would have had rifles in place in all his border cities. So mackoti went in early and razed 2 cities, nicely done. Then you have even more farcical stuff, like Parkin supplying a slew of resources to mackoti to prop him up in his war against luddite, and then luddite sitting there saying "I can't do anything about Parkin since we have NAP." Get real, dude! It's just a deal in a game, and your teams were obviously antagonists. Adhering to the exact letter of the law when the spirit of it was so clearly broken already... bah!
I fully realize that this could well make people trust me less in future games, but I'd rather be honest about it. I won't sign any long NAPs regardless, so it's kind of a moot point. The only long NAP we signed in this game was with Nakor, which was us completely playing him anyway, as it ensured that Nakor had nowhere to go and would be stuck as a second-tier power, while clearing us to go and conquer Adlain. Honestly, here's some general advice for these games: if someone else if offering you a long NAP, you should probably never take it because they wouldn't offer it if it didn't benefit them more then you. Anyway, the point is that signing long NAPs and then assuming that no one will ever break them is another luck element. If plako had ignored his NAP and attacked around Turn 160, then I genuinely believe that Parkin would not have won this game, or at least not so quickly. He would have been forced to spend his Golden Age building units, he couldn't have reached Combustion, and we could have pinned him inside his territory with ships that didn't sink on the first turn of the war. When Speaker and I play, we always assume that the other players are going to backstab us (see: Dantski border in Pitboss #2) regardless of NAPs. I think that Parkin's decision to sit in dead last in military power, even as late as Turn 170 when he was the clear runaway and had a huge territorial empire, was incredibly reckless and foolish. Once again, it did work out in this game, and it turned out that Parkin didn't need a military until the very end because no one tried to attack. But it was lucky, again. When you're at the top of the scoreboard, you need to build a military immediately. People are going to come after you. Parkin was #1 in score starting around T125. He built no military until T180. You should never be able to sit in first place for 50 turns with no army in Civ4. Yeah, you can tech faster when you aren't paying any unit support costs, but it's insanely risky and generally a poor idea.
- Conclusion: So Parkin did play very well, especially diplomatically, but he was EXTREMELY fortunate in all manner of different things. Many of the things he did would have gotten him killed in a normal online game. Now you always need some luck to win in these games: we had our luck too in past games, like the Whosit mismove in Pitboss #2, or some of the Templar moves in the Apolyton game. My point is not so much to disparage Parkin (who genuinely played well this game) but to point out just how strongly chance also broke in his favor. If we were in Parkin's starting location, and had the same stuff break our way, I think we win this game in a cakewalk (and make all the arrogant comments you like about that!) I don't think this was a very hard game for Parkin to play. I mean, he sat in an extremely defensive position and built wonders for 200 turns, never with anyone putting even the slightest pressure or competition on his civ. We should all be so lucky!
Well this is running to 5000 words so I should wrap it up here. Congrats to the winner for a game well played. I'm happy with how Speaker and I played here, and genuinely don't think there's a whole lot more we could have done. I'm nonetheless frustrated with the outcome, as I fully expected to win and wanted very badly to win again. But... I guess you can't win them all. Please feel free to post what you think we could have done differently to win this game. I'm really interested in that, because I honestly don't see what we could have done to change the outcome. Like I said, you can't change the other side of the world on a Huge map. Ah well.
- Sullla