Scorched earth

[Baalz]

Rytek said:
I hope you are not refering to my fight to the last stand in Dolphin as Argatha vs your Sauromatia?

No, of course not. As Llamabeast point out, I'm not talking about doing things that screw up your opponent to give you a better chance of winning, and I'm not talking about fighting to the bitter end. You were a great opponent and I appreciate the extra effort you put in to playing until the bitter end - it's almost always more fun to play against a person than the AI and I know it's not the most fun thing to do to keep playing after you've been crippled.

Szumo said:
I do scorched earth tactic when i'm ganged up upon so badly that i have no chance of surviving. Did it in Afterthought and in Nuance, both times Baalz was one of the people attacking me, so i might be the one who is he mainly referring too - or not

I don't really want to get into "so and so annoys me", but FWIW I wasn't really talking about you, probably for no other reason than your scorched earth haven't really inconvenienced me too much because of how things played out. This does get to the crux of my question though, and Nuance provides a good example if things had played out differently your scorched earth could have been extremely annoying. If, for the sake of argument, I had attacked you by myself in Nuance and been winning while Arco successfully attacked Abyssia then your scorched earth would likely have had the result of leaving me in no position to have any chance of challenging Arco for the win. This seems just spiteful, why do you want to do your best to make sure I lose to Arco (who, for the sake of those not in the game, had chilly relations with Szumo)?

So, to be clear, I'm not talking about fighting until the end, I'm not talking about trying to screw over somebody who violated a NAP, and I'm not talking about doing things that give you a short term boost when you've still got a slim chance of pulling something off. I'm talking about actively doing your best to destroy value for the intent of screwing up the person who is invading you, out of character (nobody is talking about LA Ermor), and with no gain to you. Sending gold/gems to unrelated parties, razing labs/castles, pillaging your capital (when you have no use of the gold), etc. These actions are not justifiable within the framework of "I'm trying to win and I fight to the end".

Why, at the point that you decide to throw in the towel, do you want to do your best to make sure I lose against the next guy I fight? This is the part that seems to me like very bad sportsmanship, and I'm trying to understand what the justification is. The closest thing to a justification I've seen seems to be that you're (in character) bitter about being invaded. This seems like a pretty weak justification if you haven't really been roleplaying up until the end. The people saying they do it just to make the conquest of them as unpleasant as possible haven't really answered my question as to why - is it because you're bitter about losing, or is it because you want to deter aggression in the next game?

Again, to reiterate as many people seem to have missed my intent, I'm *only* talking about things done solely for the purpose of spitting in the eye of the guy who has defeated you.