A thought on the Talisman / Live on Pay-Per-View: Geo vs. Fyron

[Spoo]

I think that would make it more or less useless, since defensive structures play a fairly small role in the game by the time you would have the Talisman...

Ah, but how useless is a planet full of large weapon platforms that never miss? Of course, it would work better in a mod that increases storage space on plants. In Proportions or AIC, for example, defensive structures play a big role throughout the game (especially for homeworlds).

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Again, diplomacy is a very big part of the game. Have you ever heard of the team victory? The talisman player does not have to destroy everyone. His allies can very well win too. Your statements about the players all wanting to defeat the talisman so they do not lose is incorrect because if they ally with the talisman player, they will be quite capable of winning the game (assuming their alliance emerges victorious). They do not have to fight their allies later on.

Obviously my comments were directed towards a game in which only one person is the ultimate winner. I said as much when I said that allying with a tailsman player is a good way to guarantee second place at best. In a game with a team victory it would not be nearly as difficult for the tailsman player to find allies, and in fact he may find that he has his choice of who to ally with as everyone will want to have him on their team.

But your initial statment that I am objecting to made no such qualification. You did not say "Used correctly, the Talisman is an impossible trait to defeat in a team game." To add that qualification now after the fact changes the whole dynamic of the discussion.

Fyron, I am not arguing that Tailsman isn't powerful, or even in need of balancing. I am simply trying to get you to admit your oringinal comment was a gross overstatment.

It has nothing to do with controlling the other players, it has to do with using diplomacy to get some of them on your side. Failing on the diplomatic front means you are not playing well, as diplomacy is a big part of playing the game.

But diplomacy is just as important in a Last man standing game and in such a game you will find it tough going finding allies among experienced players, no matter how well you play that part of the game. You said it's about using dimplomacy to get them on your side. That is in effect controlling them. You are getting them to do what you want are you not? If you can somehow manipulate a player to do something that is counter to his interests in the game he has made a critical error. You cannot force him to make such an error. Not being able to do so is by no means an indication of poor play or a failure on your part. You can try and manipulate him to do so, but in the end it depends on how well how plays his game. And please do not respond to this by saying in a team game it's not against his interests to ally with the tailsman player. We have already covered that point and I think we agree on it.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
But, playing well (with fast expansion and such) combined with the Talisman does guarantee victory in most game situations (except when you get the other players to ally against you,

Well now, this is a few orders of magnitude less of an absulute statement then "Used correctly, the Talisman is an impossible trait to defeat."

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
No, that is exactly the same as what I said before because it is illustrating correct usage.

No it is not. Not to any reasonable logical thinking person. It is the difference between a flat, unequvocal statment and one with conditions and qualifications. My objection is to the unequvocal nature of your post, and so on that basis the two statments are worlds apart. If you hadn't way over stated your case originally and weren't too proud to admit it now you would would say you agree with me. If you don't you are not making an honest statement, because I know you are to smart to think that.

You are still going to have to explain to me how you can control the speed your opponent expands

No I am not, as I never said nor implied that you could.

Of course you didn't. But by saying you can beat the opponent by playing well without making any reference to your opponents level of play makes an assumption that you are playing better then your opponent. Since you cannot control how well your opponent plays how can you be sure you are going to play better then them?

You can play the best game you have ever played in your life, in fact you can play the second best game in the history of SE4 and still be behind you opponnent. And this somehow you define as not playing well? that makes no sense at all.

That is not what I said at all. I never said nor implied that you can not lose if you are playing well. Since you are missing my point and instead focusing on the term "playing well" instead of the actual content of the argument, let us replace it with "playing better" in this instance.

Are you actually going to sit here now and say what you really meant was that if you play better than the other guys and have the Tailsman you will win? Fyron, if you play better then your opponent you will win without the tailsman. What exactly is the point of that stetment? Another post-comment qualification to misdirect attention away from your obviously exagerated intital statement.

If the best game of your life leaves you far behind the competition, you need more practice.

You don't have to be far behind the competition. You can simply be facing several opponents allied against you all of which individually are no better then you. That is exactly my point.

Again correct, and again no one made this claim. But getting into fights against a tailsman player where all else is equal is suicide. The same could be said of anything in the game.
All else being equal, the player with dreadnaughts will defeat the player with frigates every time.

That is a rather contrived example, as the difference in magnitude is far greater than that between talisman vs. non-talisman.

Is it now? By what basis do you make this statment? I think you need to recheck your facts. The Tailsman costs 825,000 research points. The Dreadnaught costs 1,015,000 research points. Not a contrived example at all, and not even that much difference. But if you wish, make it escorts vs battleships. Battleships cost less in research (695,000) then tailsman and will have similer levels of success against escorts as tailsman vs non-tailsman, all else being equal. So my example was only slightly exagerated and is quite a bit more accurate then your original comment.

As Gravey said, you can try. But you can't guarantee this. It depends on the experience of your opponents. If they are aware of the effectivness of the Tailsman you will have an alliance of one, and that ain't gonna get you too far.

Only if you fail to convince anyone to ally with you. Awareness of the effectiveness of the Talisman will also allow them to be able to see that the talisman player would be a strong ally, as long as you tell them this. And, I never said you could guarantee getting allies.

No, you did not. What you said was, "Used correctly, the Talisman is an impossible trait to defeat." a statment which fails to even mention allies which means according to your statement allies are irrelevant.

Again you are talking about things totally out of your control and saying that you aren't playing well. That makes no sense.

No, what you say to other players is entirely within your control. It is entirely possible to gather allies in any game, if you are persuasive enough and if they have not already agreed to band together before you start trying to convince some of them to ally with you. If that happens, then either you have not met them yet and there is no chance of convincing them after they have already formed an alliance, or you are not doing very well with diplomacy, which relates back to not playing the game very well.

Once again Fyron, you can sweet talk them all you want, but if they want to win they won't ally with you. Not unless you limited your comment to allied victory games, but you made no such qualification until after the fact. Their chances will be much better by eliminating you first and then fighting it out with the non-tailsman players in a Last man standing game.

And what's irrational about ganging up on the Tailsman player? If you intend to even try to win it's irrational not to gang up on them and get them out early because as you said yourself allowing them to Last till the point of no return is a pretty sure way to guarantee you will lose.

The other rational possibility is to ally with the talisman player. You will only lose if you are their enemy. Being their ally will allow you to win (assuming the alliance wins). SE4 is not a one on one slugfest, you know (unless a game is specifically set up that way, which is well beyond the scope of this discussion).

It is not out of the scope of this discussion at all to talk about a Last man standing game. You know that. In fact your comment isn't even correct for a team game, because you still may be unable to get them to ally with you for whatever reason. That's my point. You can't make the other players do anything. Even in a team game where it may make perfect sense for them to ally with the tailsman player they may not want to for some reason.

Allying with the tailsman player is a sure way to guarantee second place at best. And who want's to be second?

Those that do not have such a huge ego that they only consider being in 1st place as worth their time for winning.

In a Last man standing game it's not an ego thing to want to be the Last man standing. It's the name of the game. Why play if you don't want to win? And if you aren't trying to win, why take the tailsman?

[ July 15, 2003, 02:40: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Taera]

only ways of winning against a religious raceagainst an equal or better player, as it seems to me is:
*luck with start
*luck with planets
*better racial setup (SO rare, given they get 50% aggressiveness)
*a mistake from their side

[Roanon]

Is there a point in arguing if the talisman can't be defeated at all "if used correctly", or if the talisman only can be defeated if a lot of luck is involved?
Either way, taking religious seems to be the only option if you want to win, barring some exotic setups. That reduces the options and variety of the game in an unfavorable way and therefore should be changed somehow.

Discussing diplomatic options and possibilities is irrelevant, as too many players are content with a sure 2nd place instead of having an uncertain shot at being the winner.

[quote]Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

[...] it is probably not a group of players you should play with again, as they are not interested in fair play, only winning at any cost.

So, the player taking religious is NOT someone only interested in winning at any cost? Strange argumentation here...
Or is being interested in winning generally unfair - as long as is someone ELSE who wants to win?

[ July 15, 2003, 03:09: Message edited by: Roanon ]

[tesco samoa]

all i know is that due to the time invested in playing a pbw game the talisman is either bull or bear....

I think it ruins a game in stock... but in mods where there is adjustments then i have no problem...

But it can be countered you just need 20 % and greater forces to do it

I personally do not like the talisman in stock. I perfer it as a mount with no damage or range bonuses. Or if its size and hit points are increased by 100 or 150 and its cost is tripled

But there are the counters to it... the Temporal Space Yard. The Replicant centre. They are unbalancing in their own ways but not as popular in the dicussions of unbalancing racial techs...

P.S. I do not hunt down and kill taliman lovers every game.... Only if I know that I think I have a chance in the mid game to get clobbered if i do not. Then i decide if it is worth the investment in the game.....
I have never played religous in a pbw game in my life... I have in solo games.... I always found the facilites to great to build right away ( their good but cost too much at the beginning of a game... so it kills my production as i just go click happy on them )

If there is ever a rth2 i will try one... as it makes sence in that game

[Taera]

I still think that the religious tech tree is an awesome economical tech tree on its own, even without the talisman in it. Wouldnt it be better off with replacing the talisman with something less combat-related?

[Fyron]

Obviously my comments were directed towards a game in which only one person is the ultimate winner.

That is not how the vast majority of PBW games are, so you are specifically narrowing down the realm of possibility. Any non-team game can end if only the members of a particular alliance are left, and they agree to end it. They are all the winners in that event.

You said it's about using dimplomacy to get them on your side. That is in effect controlling them. You are getting them to do what you want are you not?

That is the goal of diplomacy, yes. It does not require any direct controlling of them though.

If you can somehow manipulate a player to do something that is counter to his interests in the game he has made a critical error. You cannot force him to make such an error.

Forming alliances is not an error.

Basically, you need to stop limiting the game to the specific free for all format where there is no possibility for allied victory, as that is the only context in which most of your arguments on the diplomacy issue make any sense at all. In the more general sense, forming alliances is a standard part of the game. Noone has to stand alone unless they want to or get really really unlucky. I have formed tons of alliances in all sorts of games, and there has never been anything forced about them. I never had to control them into allying with me. It was simply "want to ally?" and "Sure!" (usually more verbose than that, but that is the basic idea).

It is the difference between a flat, unequvocal statment and one with conditions and qualifications. My objection is to the unequvocal nature of your post, and so on that basis the two statments are worlds apart.

My initial statement was not a flat, unequivocable statement. It very clearly has a conditional qualifier on it, "used correctly". Those two words make all the difference. It may not be the qualifier you want to hear, but it is indeed there.

[geoschmo]

I am not narrowing the realm, your initial comment contained no such qualification. It made no comment to the fact of allies or not. Therefore the allies must be irrelevant for your statement to be correct.

My initial statement was not a flat, unequivocable statement. It very clearly has a conditional qualifier on it, "used correctly". Those two words make all the difference. It may not be the qualifier you want to hear, but it is indeed there.

Please, really. You need to get a grip on your own arguments Fyron. Are you really expecting us to believe that by "used correctly" you meant to include a choice to only use it in games in which team victory is an option? What you meant was clear and well understood by everyone that read it. "used correctly" infers skill, and preformance in the game itself. It says nothing to anyone about a selective decision in game settings prior to the game start.

And by what basis do you claim the vast majority of games are not Last man standing? Have you been in the vast majority of PBW games? I think I might have somehting of an educated opinion on this subject, seeing as how the PBW server just happens to be sitting in my garage at the moment. I have been in scads of games and the large majority of them have had one of two endings. Either one person prevailed alone, or the game pretty much petered out and everybody lost interest in it. Of course their have been a lot that have had "team victories", wether offically or unofficially. I will grant that my personal experience may be slightly affected by my own personal predillection away form team games. But I am involved in many more games as owner and as PBW admin then I actually play in, so I think I can claim to know what I am talking about here. The claim that the vast majority of games are not Last man standing is a particularly ignorant one to make.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

I am no fan of the Tailsman myself. I used to think it was no great deal because of the research cost involved to get it, but too many people have learned more efficent colonization and research techniques now for that to still be true.

The biggest problem is not that it is undefeatable, because it is not undefeatable. But it takes a lot of effort to defeat. Personnaly I like to play the diplomacy game. I don't like big coaliitions early in the game. I like to have different alliances with different people over the course of the game and try to play one against the other. And I like to pick my allies and enemies on a geographical basis which I think is mroe natural for a strategy game. But having a tailsman player in a game takes that element out because you are forced to make alliances with everyone else and go all out to get them.

What has ended up happening to me in several games is we are able to knock off the tailsman player, but their presence has forced me to cooperate with a player that in a more natural game would have been my enemy. And allowing them to expand while I concentrate on the tailsman player ends up biting me anyway.

It doesn't bother me at all when the players in my games vote to ban the religious tech. I think the game is better without it.

Geoschmo

[Soulfisher]

But diplomacy (for the purpose of creating allies for you, the religious-tech player) will only work if you can find another player who is willing to ally with you -and- win the game with you as their ally (in other words, they are willing to share the victory with you). If all the players in the game want to be the sole victor, they may gang up on you to destroy you, then fight each other. Or they may ally with you against others, but then prove themselves backstabbers and attack you once your allied victory is assured.