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

[Reay]

Hmm strange, I did not automatically receive my turn. I had to request a resend from Llamaserver.

I am guessing problems with either Hotmail or Llamas mail server. I have never had problems with his server before though.

[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.

[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

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.

[archaeolept]

i think your analysis is faulty. you can't compare getting dominion deaths in test games against the AI and against human opponents. the AI is stupid, and might not preach, and often has horrendous dominion scores - how did you determine the AI had dom 7?

also, as a minor note, the second wound was chest wound, not crippled, which is very minor for a zero enc pretender.


anyways, I personally have no problems w/ you staling out - my income is currently about 10% that of the leaders'

fight on though if you wish - i'm of course game.

edit: MA Mictlan is proud to point out that they doubled the size of their empire last turn! who else amongst you can say the same!11

[chrispedersen]

Damn...

A few points arch might be right that it was a chest wound - I don't have the turn result from turn 2, yet overall what I said was roughly accurate. The combat results (crippled chest wound) in the first few hits was fairly unlucky (especially against pd chaff). And I do believe I got a NHW .. but if it was later..mea culpa.

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

Third, As I had already said to you I wasn't continueing if I lost, I really think my wording actually reflected the available options. However, arch if you would rather I said 'my opponent has expressed a preference that I resign rather than sub the position out' I accept that.

Likewise, I did say I was sending a force to get there in two turns. That was the plan. Casualties made it not work. I don't think its appropriate to call that a lie either. I'm a pretender, what I project to happen doesn't necessarily come true.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Regarding the strategy, I simulated it many many times, both versus myself, and against AI's.

I wasn't saying that the average AI Dom was a 7. I was saying that I expected good results against players, as the average bless in MP seems to be around a 7. Plugging that into the formulas for dominion spread, and empirical evidence suggested reasonable prospects of success.
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I really do not want to ignite a fire storm. Nor do I want to impugn arch in any fashion... he has been the model of good sportsmanship.

Hell, I can only hope if someone dropped a dragon on me on turn two, that I'd respond as graciously. Again, it was only because I was getting a lot of questions (and some quite unkind remarks) that I wanted to explain a little bit about the strategy, and why dropping was a reasonable course of action.

Best to all

By the way.. I *am* having a problem with the server. I have tried on multiple occassions now to submit a turn, and it continues to reject the turn saying wrong turn number. The last time, for turn 7. I have restarted the turn from scratch, deleted the .2h file.. and still no luck.