Madness - 24 players, MA+LA, CBM 1.4 (running)

[Zeldor]

Situation like that happens, it's quite rare though.

[chrispedersen]

For the record, I also did not receive my turn, without asking for it to be resent.

[DonCorazon]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

For the record, I also did not receive my turn, without asking for it to be resent.

I noticed Jotun staled anyway. I realize it sucks to lose your pretender but it would be decent of you to play on and stick it out rather than dump this to a sub or just stale.

[chrispedersen]

Hey guys,

First: I had no intention of staling I had set it to AI and looked for a sub. But I have staled intermittently on several games recently.

However, said efforts were a bit sabotaged by KissBlade. And I have since heard about this in other games.

Usually I don't comment about games, but I've gotten so much grief about it, I thought I would comment.

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Everyone approaches a game with different strategies. There are bless strategies, rainblow pretender strategies. Hordes of undead strategies.

I personally consider Jotun one of the weakest of the giants. However, like other races, their pretenders are reasonable. And unusually we had fixed starts in this game. So I wanted to go for quick dominion kill strategy.

The vehicle for this was a Carrion dragon with Dom 10. To accomplish this, scales are mostly in the -2 to -3 range. I carefully maxed out the dragons combat ability by adding earth and death, having more than 203 hp and prot 20+.

In more than 10 test games, I was able to accomplish dominion death prior to turn 6. The quick accomplishment of a second castle balancing the lack of scales.

In this particular case, I got unlucky in at a couple of areas. First, despite the prot 20, the first couple of hits on the dragon yielded crippled and never healing wound. And secondly, dominion death didn't occur even though my opponent did not have an awake pretender.

The manual, page 93: gives a good reason why this strategy usally works.

My pretender, generates one dominion, and with my opponent having one candle (all he ever had) - I have two additional checks at 95% to generate two additional candles.

So, the math is (more or less)
Me: 1+2x95%
Oppeonent: three temple checks. Usually dominion is around 7. Usually, he will score 2 dominion checks. And, if a player did not prophetize its usually game over.

I don't want to get into math too much, but I'll note a few other considerations. If the player took an awake pretender there was about a 50/50 shot of intercepting it and killing the pretender.

Additionally, the rules on dominion spread favored me - because my opponents temple spreads could have spread to adjacent territories, which would have boosted the hp and strength of my god. (Strength is important as it affects the range of a dragons breath weapon.)

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So, none of this happened, my pretender died.

So what would you have me do? I think most people would agree the position is irretreviably broken.

I personally did not say anything, to avoid disturbing the game, but as other people obviously were, I thought perhaps to clear the air, or at least express my side of it.

The strategy I chose was an unusual strategy - but it was a legitimate strategy, with reasonable chances of success. And I didn't just choose it to spoil a game.

Is there anything significantly different from what I did, and a standard turn 6 bless rush? Other than losing, of course = ).

So, I think it is obvious that the position is broken; we have all dropped positions that we recognized as broken. In what way does me playing the position a few more turns make the game any better than setting it to ai? In what way is the game damaged by me dropping?

Or is the idea that I should have to play, and live with the strategy, ie., ' punish me' for trying a different strategy (and failing)? I don't think it makes the game better - but if its really necessary.. ok. Although my opponent has expressed a preference that I just resign.

As a note, I offered the position to my opponent - and even he didn't want it = ).

Anyway, I hope that removes a little bit of the mystery, and shows that I'm not just quitting in a fit of pique.

Best wishes..

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

...Although my opponent has expressed a preference that I just resign...

I'm sure it would break his heart to have the valley all to himself by turn 7.

[archaeolept]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

I'm sure it would break his heart to have the valley all to himself by turn 7.

wait, excuse me, I missed that part.

I said that I would prefer that chrisp continue to fight. My reference to resigning was in response to chrisp's pm upon killing my patrolling army and besieging my cap on turn 3: he asked me to resign, as he would also be getting a sieging army there in 2 turns (which was a lie, and funnily enough, if he had actually tried that he would have had a territory for his god to retreat to .

Here's from my own PM after chris announces he's going to quit:

you really shouldn't sub it out... those scales work if you get a quick kill, but otherwise will be horrendous. either fight it out (the best option), or if you can't bear you can follow your own suggestion and resign

I was just arguing against scamming some poor noob into taking over an awful position w/ LA ermorian scales and a dead 800 pt pretender, one unlikely to come back for a fair while, given jotun's priests...

As such, ChrisP's claim that I expressed a preference that he resign is a bald-faced lie. It was he, after jumping me and when I had a total of 11 troops left in the whole game, and no mages, tried to get me to resign, so that he would have a better chance... I'm happy to quote chris's own pms to me if he wishes.

Also, how the fsck do i get the whole valley to myself by turn 7 when I have 2 territories now, Jim? I have 2 territories, 20 troops, and an income this turn of a 100 gold - and somehow this translates into me having the whole valley? go f yourself.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by archaeolept

Also, how the fsck do i get the whole valley to myself by turn 7 when I have 2 territories now, Jim? I have 2 territories, 20 troops, and an income this turn of a 100 gold - and somehow this translates into me having the whole valley? go f yourself.

Excuse me?

Anyway, you are bounded by large indie garrisons. My point was that no matter how dire your situation may be atm, since most people are either already in, or about to start a painful early war - in about a year you would likely be one of the strongest nations in the game.

And I always thought you were nice.

[DonCorazon]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

I think most people would agree the position is irretreviably broken.

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Substitute wanted for Madness.
Early part of the game. You have 6 territories: Your nearest neighbor has 1. You have leads in research, dominion, army size.

You are playing Jotunheim. Are you giant enough?

Classic.

[KissBlade]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Second.. I would never *scam out* the position. I never have. I would tell (whomever expressed interest) the actual facts.

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

Classic.

Enough said. That and the Gath story only indicates that yes, my suspicions about your style of play has weight. And I love the fact that you conveniently have server problems the moment your turns turn things against you when previously and now, you could've easily posted for a postponement due to server issues.

[KissBlade]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

random bs

Here is the problem on how you handled your game.

You went into the game with an all or nothing strat in hopes of blind luck looking in your favor rather than actual strategy. I believe that you fully intended on quitting/subbing/staling if anything even went wrong with your start. I would not have minded this as much if not for a few factors.

After you got lucky enough to bump into a nation that didn't take a SC pretender god, you tried to get him to flat out resign to you to give you an undeserved leg up in the game. "It was he, after jumping me and when I had a total of 11 troops left in the whole game, and no mages, tried to get me to resign, so that he would have a better chance..."

This was annoying enough.

Second, if you truly decided your game is over (hardly since Archae is in an awful spot as well) then saying, "good game" and getting the last few turns over with would've been proper form. Heck, even doing some half assed turns or worse, staling is better form than /lying/ about your position to get a sub.

Also I don't believe a word you said about you couldn't expand due to losses. Your army graph never dipped and you had constant province growth.

As for your "test games" and claim that "the manual said it would work!" I don't know whether to laugh or shake my head.

As I said, I refuse to join another game that you're playing. Laters.