Would you play to the death?

[Bananadine]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Basically I agree with you Bananadine, but I suspect that you just haven't been trapped in a late game situation where you can't win. They do exist, and they're not fun. If someone has 6 wishes for gems going off a turn, and you're just moderately powerful, then you're not going to beat them whatever you do, even with the help of allies (assuming the allies are of similar power to you). However, it will take them several turns to finish you off, and in the meantime you may have to invest hours of non-fun time.

I was trapped in such a situation in my last game, and it started out fun, but yes, it turned silly after a bit. I hope to mostly avoid this via appropriate victory conditions, as you suggest.

Originally Posted by thejeff

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.

That sounds like it could be fun! But more likely it would leave you feeling unimportant. Was it really in that person's best interest to use you as a moat, rather than simply taking over your land or letting the enemy take it over? Well, maybe it was. In that case, is such a situation common?

Originally Posted by thejeff

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.

They might only have gotten lucky. Maybe all the nations around them happened to attack others, leaving them to clean up independents etc. Maybe they started with a strong nation, and had good magic sites.

Back to cooperation: Suppose non-leading players band together against the leading player, until there's a new leading player. Suppose you happen to be the trailing player throughout. Is it really so likely that, now that the old leader is no longer the main danger, you are even further behind the new leader than you were behind the old one? That's tremendous chaos for y'all to be peeking through with your future glasses! And sure, you'd still probably be at or near the bottom of the ranking. But why wouldn't you have had fun taking part in the destruction of the leader?

I think you guys won't convince me to give up my plan just by talking about it! Maybe somebody else will pop up and do that though.