[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Bananadine

You are still only talking about one opponent. What about cooperation? Have you considered this? Cooperation is potentially HUGE.

Cooperation is huge, of course. And if you can hook up with a powerful ally, might even let you survive the current fight, but though you stay alive, you're still way behind the curve. You've lost forts, mages, research time, gems, even those provinces you get back have unrest and pop loss. Again, early enough that's all recoverable. Later on, much less so. Consider research: Not only are you behind in research, but you've got less mages researching and less resources to get more so you're falling farther behind with every turn.

The first game I quit on, I was losing a war against one of maybe 3 major powers. One of the others was helping me, well keeping me alive really. I had nothing researched beyond 4-5 level and maybe 5-6 provinces at any given time. A couple of raiding parties out. Every time my enemy would siege my capital, my ally would drop an Air Queen on him because I had no chance of breaking siege. He could have kept me going indefinitely or at least until he started to lose, but there was no way I was going to get beyond nuisance.

Originally Posted by Bananadine

For a non-hardcore player, you seem know an awful lot about what happens when a hardcore player plays!

I've been playing for a long time, but mostly SP. I'm not really very good at MP, which is why I keep getting into these hopelessly outclassed situations.

Originally Posted by Bananadine

You seem to be assuming the two players in your scenario are of roughly equal skill (that, for instance, the one with the queens won't use them stupidly while the one with the armies cleverly takes advantage), but reality is much more complex than that.

I guess I was figuring that into the "outclassed assumption". It's not like I'm going to give up at my first sight of an SC. Now, when one destroys my main army, I see others in his backfield and any counters I can come up with are 4-5 turns away...
I'm assuming that someone far enough ahead of me to be moving into the late game(SCs) while I'm stilling stuck in the midgame, is probably at least as good as I am.

Originally Posted by Bananadine

Ahhh and so a much bigger subject opens up. Is learning fun? Should it be? Is it better to accept pain while learning now, so that you can experience finer enjoyment later, or to... haha well I prefer not to get into all that.

Learning is often fun. Learning by having your face ground into the dirt isn't. Nor do you really learn a lot.

Originally Posted by Bananadine

Rather, what I'm wondering now is how a person might find enough folks interested in playing in a "hardcore" way to actually explore this matter. (I've suddenly put "hardcore" in quotes because it is kind of a stupid word.) That wouldn't be hard in Starcraft would it? Or some other huge game like that. Not in chess, obviously. Hm! Starcraft and chess aren't for people like me, people who love chaos and backstory and rich, colorful drama that comes from more than just cold, pure strategy. I think I want to roleplay, to some extent! While playing to win.

I didn't play much Starcraft, but it's a much faster game right?
Playing to the bitter end is one thing when it's a couple hours, another completely when it might require a commitment for several months.
From the games I've played and from reading some game threads here, the most common victory condition is consensus. The players agree that someone is clearly enough the winner that there is no point playing it out the rest of the way.
It also seems to me that most of the non-newbie players are pretty good about not giving up too early. Which is different from promising to play to the end regardless of the situation, but might really be close enough to get you most of what you want.