Would you play to the death?

[thejeff]

A common debate. The simple answer is that it's a game. It's supposed to be fun. People stop playing when it stops being fun. Some will stick it out longer than others in the hopes that it will start being fun again or because they feel an obligation to help keep it fun for others.
People also find different parts of the game fun. Pretty much everyone enjoys winning against a good challenge. Many also enjoy putting up a good challenge while losing. Few enjoy getting slaughtered. Some only enjoy winning, but I suspect they're mostly new players, since they can't win all the time in MP and will likely give up playing.

Personally, I find much of the late game micromanagement tedious at the best of times. If I have to put an hour or more of work into each turn without any real hope of victory, it gets very old very fast. If I'm actually being killed fast enough, I'll probably play it out until at least near the end, but I'm not willing to play out a losing war for months on end.

Due to the way 4X games tend to work, it's very hard to come back if you've fallen too far behind in resources or research. If you're in late midgame when your opponent has dozens of Tartarians and is Wishing for Seraphs, you really aren't going to make much of a difference in the game. Even if he isn't bothering to squash you quickly because he has other enemies.

I agree that people who quit after losing the first major battle are frustrating. But there's a big difference between that and playing to the bitter end no matter what. The problem is that, from what I've seen, often that losing series of battles isn't very interesting. It's having your gem/gold income drop drastically as Ghost Riders hit 4-5 provinces a turn, while you sacrifice everything you've got to stop one of several armies and each turn more uber SCs join the battle. But it's still going to take a dozen turns or so to actually die. Which at late game pace is going to be a month or so.

If you're going to start a game with this kind of commitment, I strongly suggest reasonable victory conditions. It seems to me very rare that a game actually comes down to the last two players. Either victory conditions are met while there are still more players or the outcome is clear enough to all that they concede.

Is a master chess player who sees mate coming 5-6 moves out and concedes a quitter, or does he just have the grace to acknowledge the inevitable?

[Bananadine]

Originally Posted by sombre

I wouldn't join a game where I was going to be forced to play to the bitter end. The end is bitter for a reason - it's incredibly boring. I mean being the underdog or bit player is one thing, certainly, and quite the lark, but being forced to take turns where you can do virtually nothing but wait for your opponent to get round to stomping you is far from my idea of fun.

How long do these turns take? It sounds like you and thejeff are imagining big battles in big games between medium-sized or large-sized nations. What about when you're down to just one province, early enough in a game that you haven't gotten past level 3 or 4 in research on any magic path? Is it really so tedious to give orders for a dozen mages in one province?

Originally Posted by thejeff

Personally, I find much of the late game micromanagement tedious at the best of times. If I have to put an hour or more of work into each turn without any real hope of victory, it gets very old very fast. If I'm actually being killed fast enough, I'll probably play it out until at least near the end, but I'm not willing to play out a losing war for months on end.

Yes you are. That is what multiplayer Dominions is: a losing war, for almost everyone. Ten or so enter a game, and eight or nine of them lose. If, partway through the game, somebody thinks he's winning, then maybe he's applying more genuine skill at it than his rivals are--in which case I have no grounds for criticism--or he's just making an educated guess, in which case there's only about a 10% chance that he's actually right. Delusion!

It sounds like I'm being priggish about this. I do know what you mean by "losing war"; I know the difference between a feeling of doing well and a feeling of doing badly, and I know you can easily have that pleasant feeling of doing well, along with a challenge that any of us would enjoy, for a long time... and then lose. It sounds like that's the kind of loss you enjoy. I enjoy it too.

Originally Posted by thejeff

Due to the way 4X games tend to work, it's very hard to come back if you've fallen too far behind in resources or research. If you're in late midgame when your opponent has dozens of Tartarians and is Wishing for Seraphs, you really aren't going to make much of a difference in the game. Even if he isn't bothering to squash you quickly because he has other enemies.

Tartarians and Seraphs! Again, I'm not just talking about the late game! But even in the scenario you describe: Your foe has other enemies. Are you and they, together, strong enough to beat the nation that has been beating you? If you are, then why aren't you trying to help them do it? Why aren't they trying to help you? Ah, but if you did work together with them, then maybe you'd all beat the big guy... and you'd still be smaller than your allies, who would quickly become your enemies, and the whole thing would start over, right?

Well, maybe sometimes. But not always. Even the winning players, in the games I've played, never seem to be sure they're winning until the very end. Why are you so sure that you know better than they do?

Originally Posted by thejeff

I agree that people who quit after losing the first major battle are frustrating. But there's a big difference between that and playing to the bitter end no matter what. The problem is that, from what I've seen, often that losing series of battles isn't very interesting. It's having your gem/gold income drop drastically as Ghost Riders hit 4-5 provinces a turn

Again with the late-game straw man. In my simple model of the phenomenon, there are two possibilities: Either one nation is truly so strong that all the others together couldn't beat it, or not. If there is such a nation, then the game should automatically grant it victory. If not, then no one present knows who is going to win, and the game should go on.

Originally Posted by thejeff

Is a master chess player who sees mate coming 5-6 moves out and concedes a quitter, or does he just have the grace to acknowledge the inevitable?

I don't know a lot about master-level chess, but I'd guess he's being graceful. But Dominions is very different from chess, and ordinary, multiplayer Dominions with miscellaneous people from the forum is FAR different from master-level chess. In Dominions, a queen (of elemental air) can beat a whole army! There are many ways to turn major battles with just a few well-chosen spells. Chess may be complex, but it is much simpler than Dominions, even when only two Dominions players are present.

And multiplayer Dominions in general is much more complex than one-on-one Dominions. But I see almost everyone in the games I've played behaving as if there's not a whole world full of rival nations out there. If you're beaten down until almost nothing is left of your nation, then are you really left with no choice but to wait until you're destroyed? If you're really not strong enough to defend yourself at all, then your opponent would be negligent to refrain from finishing you off. In the game I imagine, where everybody has committed to honestly try to win no matter what, they would just finish you off, and take the spoils. No problem.

But if you're strong enough to make it painfully expensive for them to finish you off, then you have power. Where there is power, there is hope; and if you don't respect that power, and hold that hope, then you've given up on part of your chance at being the best player you can be. Yes, it's just a game. It's also just something you spend hours and hours doing. Why not do your best, even in leisure time?

Well, not everybody has to be hardcore. It's okay to relax your brain and stop trying very hard... sometimes. But I would like it if there were more people who were hardcore, in this particular game, so I am promoting my view of things.

Then again, maybe there are plenty of people like that, and I just don't know how to find them. Dudes with many victories and thousands of forum posts. It's not like there's a handy index somewhere, of players who are serious about improving! Not that I know of anyway.

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by Bananadine

But if you're strong enough to make it painfully expensive for them to finish you off, then you have power. Where there is power, there is hope; and if you don't respect that power, and hold that hope, then you've given up on part of your chance at being the best player you can be. Yes, it's just a game. It's also just something you spend hours and hours doing. Why not do your best, even in leisure time?

There's two other advantages to playing until the bitter end in multiplayer as well which most don't recognize. First is the player who does play to the bitter end is better to have as an ally because a player who quits because his game is over will decrease the chances for his allies as well. At the very least one should defend while farming gems to the allies. Any ally who fights to the bitter end is more appreciated by the others on his current team.
Second is when a player does quit because it's clear his end is arriving eventually other players will begin to remember this breaking point for future games... this might be the number of provinces, stealing their capital, etc., , but after several games a pattern begins to be recognized by repeated players. The point being is if two players are about equal in size and strenght I think all of us would attack the player who is more likely to toss in the towel the fastest.