MP Game - "Throne Of Heavens", veterans and experienced players only (full)

[quantum_mechani]

I've trigger cheat detection in an SP Mackaka when I was alchemizing the income from many fire fetishes.

[Stormbinder]

Hey guys.

There are some temporary troubles with Throne of Heavens game. I've changed settings (increasing this turn's timer a little bit), but when I've tried to restart the game it tells me "game has been successefully restarted", but in fact its status is still "stoped". I've tried it several times, giving it time to implement the changes, but with no success so far.

I've send email to Mose, waiting for his reply now. I'll post here as soon as I'll get more information. Hopefully the game will be restarted soon. Stay tuned!

[Stormbinder]

The game is up and runing again, new turn 54 have been hosted.

My thanks to Mose for the quick intervention!

[Stormbinder]

Since the game is geting increasingly more complicated, and since some people have been asking for it, I am switching the game to 48h quickhost, if it is ok with everybody.

[Stormbinder]

Greetings all.

I regret to say but I am going to bow out of this game at this point.

About 5 turns ago Mictlan(Archaeolept) offered an "alliance victory" option to Pangeya(qunatum_mechanic) against my Vanheim nation, and Panquea accepted it. Frankly I was quite startled by such development, especially after all that Machaka controversity and discussions of "fair" and "not fair" victories and gameplay. IMO the idea from the begining of this game, which was even reflected in the name, was that "The Throne Of Heavens can have but one owner". (c) But as Archae told me, it was not officially in the rules, and it become clear to me that unfortunatly both Mictlan and Pangeya have different ideas of what constitutes a fair victory. They also both replied to me that they dislike endgames, and would like to be over with it as soon as they can.


My attempts to talk to Archae and QM against such "alliance victory" were not successeful. But I think that in the situation when Micltan alone was stronger than me (he had 10 times more SCs, more gem income, better reseach, much better army), him offering "alliance victory" to the 3rd major nation did not make much sense to me, to put it mildly. ;(


But this is just my opinion, clearly Archae and QM feel differently, or they would not go ahead with such "strategy". I am not going to start discussion on this. What I am telling here is my personal opinion, nothing else. Other people may feel differently.


All I can say is that if I wanted to win the game in such manner, I would won it twice already, beyond any doubts. As you all know well, Machaka offered me to do similar things by "throwing the game in my favor" on two different occasions, when he was still very powerfull nation. And as you know I did everything I could to refuse such victory, since I simply didn't feel there is any glory or fun in it. I also worked hard to find sub for Machaka, together with Zap, so I would not overun his huge empire in 2-3 turns as I would if it would be swithced to AI in the middle of the war with me. All these actions of mine were motivated not by masohism, but by simple desire to have "fun" and "fair" endgame, instead of automatic victory for my nation. And of course I don't regret it, since vitory does not mean much to me comparable to fun and challenging gameplay.



But anyway, enough about it. I don't want to start discussion of what fair and what not. I am just explaining my motives and feelings. If you guys will want to continue this game and will find a sub for me, I'll be glad to provide my password along with master password for the game. Although I must say that in this situation when 2 out of 3 major nations agreed to share "alliance victory", the rest of the nations don't have any chance to win, no matter who will play them. I could still struggle for a very long time in this game, since I have a lot of different resourses, unique artifacts and strong overall position, but such "endgame" simply does not make any sense for me.




To be fair, I want to say that both Archae and QM played well, and they lead their nations to become one of the major nations in the game by using good skills and tactics. I also freely admit that their combinded might is stronger than that of my nation, or any other combination of nations. I just wished they would not decide at the end to go ahead with "alliance victory" in such sitiation, simply because they "dislike endgames". ;(



Anyway, I want to thank each and every player in this game, both permament players and subs. IMHO the game was a real bLast. I think the house rules worked very well and prevented a lot of end-game cheese that plaqued so many other MP dom2 games. I hope you liked them as well.

I hope each of you guys had a lot of fun with this game. So my deep thanks to you all for all your time and efforts to create this great gaming experience, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Take care!

With best regards,
Stormbinder

[WraithLord]

My two cents.

Assuming that Pangaea and Mictlan have indeed agreed to an allied victory.
I think it is against the "spirit" of the game as I understood it.
The game was supposed to be FFA. With only one winner.
Deciding on "allied" victory in such a game spoils the fun of it for the other players (at least for me).
Anyway, this is my sentiment. Don't think I care much for continuing the game given the way things stand.

[Thufir]

Can I ask if this game is actually being played or not? The reason I ask is that Tyrant had recently opened a new game, got a crew signed up, and then stopped the game at my request when I screwed up my pretender upload. He did not immediately create a new game, and when he attempted to, the 23 game limit had been reached. Since no new games have been created since his attempt, that means that some older game must've been stopped and restarted. My best guess is that this is the game that's been restarted.

So, if you guys are not intending to play this out, can we coordinate w/ Tyrant to make sure that Tyrant gets the slot?

TIA,

Thufir

[quantum_mechani]

Ok, probably won't change anything, but here is my point of view:

Storm has indeed been conducting very aggressive diplomacy in this game, and I had already been considering a war with him at some point simply due to his obnoxious attitude. When Arch offered a combined victory agreement (presumably because he was also feeling the same annoyance at the diplomacy), this was a main motivation. In addition, from the graphs, he seemed the most powerful nation and it did not seem like the war was any kind of automatic win. Apparently Storm was also not sure how good his chances were, as he waited until 3 turns into the war to decide to quit. Lastly, I do dislike late game, and thus I saw the war as way of killing 3 birds with one stone.

The bottom line is that I do not consider it unfair to ally against arguably the most powerful nation, who has also threatend my nation in the past.

A final note on WQs: I have seen both the Queen of the Deeps and The Queen of the Lake under his control at different times. As far as know, neither myself or Arch has killed one. If Mackaka killed one, my mistake.

[Stormbinder]

quantum_mechani said:
Ok, probably won't change anything, but here is my point of view:

Storm has indeed been conducting very aggressive diplomacy in this game, and I had already been considering a war with him at some point simply due to his obnoxious attitude. When Arch offered a combined victory agreement (presumably because he was also feeling the same annoyance at the diplomacy), this was a main motivation. In addition, from the graphs, he seemed the most powerful nation and it did not seem like the war was any kind of automatic win. Apparently Storm was also not sure how good his chances were, as he waited until 3 turns into the war to decide to quit. Lastly, I do dislike late game, and thus I saw the war as way of killing 3 birds with one stone.

The bottom line is that I do not consider it unfair to ally against arguably the most powerful nation, who has also threatend my nation in the past.

A final note on WQs: I have seen both the Queen of the Deeps and The Queen of the Lake under his control at different times. As far as know, neither myself or Arch has killed one. If Mackaka killed one, my mistake.

LOL. I have no idea what you saw quantum but I never had 2 WQs, only one. Always had. You can see it swiming in the sea this turn, right under your nose. Not you, not Machaka, not Marignon haven't killed any WQs of mine. The only 2nd WQ that ever existed in the game was yours. You could not possibly see 2nd WQ under my control. And in the future at least have a decency to put "I think" when you write such statements. You would look better than, trust me.




I don't know how you could feel that I was the most powerfull nation when I was trailing Mictlan in all indicatiors except small lead in gold income and province number, while I unlike him I had been engaged in the difficult war for many turns. But whatever. I did wait for 3 turns trying to see if the situation was possible to salvage, simply because I invested a lot of time in this game, so I didn't want to quit immideatly, despite you turning FFA game into "team game". But I told you and Arache what I think about your "alliance victory" option very clearly, and you know what you have replyed to me, don't you?


And this is not just my opinion, as you can see from this thread Izaques (R'leh player) feel the same. I think Marignon also would join the same sentiments, although I am not going to speak for him myself, he can do it himself if he'll decide to it.



Finally QM if you really don't understand the difference between temporarely alliance, and "alliance victory", I suggest you think again about it, before posing more of your "facts". And if you dislike endgames in Dom2 so much as you say you do, I would recommend you in the future to stay away from the games against veteran players played on medium or large maps, or if you do play them find a sub for yourself at the end, instead of spoiling the game for other players.

[quantum_mechani]

Stormbinder said:

LOL. I have no idea what you saw quantum but I never had 2 WQs, only one. Always had. You can see it swiming in the sea this turn, right under your nose. Not you, not Machaka, not Marignon haven't killed any WQs of mine. The only 2nd WQ that ever existed in the game was yours. You could not possibly see 2nd WQ under my control. And in the future at least have a decency to put "I think" when you write such statements. You would look better than, trust me.




I don't know how you could feel that I was the most powerfull nation when I was trailing Mictlan in all indicatiors except small lead in gold income and province number, while I unlike him I had been engaged in the difficult war for many turns. But whatever. I did wait for 3 turns trying to see if the situation was possible to salvage, simply because I invested a lot of time in this game, so I didn't want to quit immideatly, despite you turning FFA game into "team game". But I told you and Arache what I think about your "alliance victory" option very clearly, and you know what you have replyed to me, don't you?


And this is not just my opinion, as you can see from this thread Izaques (R'leh player) feel the same. I think Marignon also would join the same sentiments, although I am not going to speak for him myself, he can do it himself if he'll decide to it.



Finally QM if you really don't understand the difference between temporarely alliance, and "alliance victory", I suggest you think again about it, before posing more of your "facts". And if you dislike endgames in Dom2 so much as you say you do, I would recommend you in the future to stay away from the games against veteran players played on medium or large maps, or if you do play them find a sub for yourself at the end, instead of spoiling the game for other players.

To accuse _me_ of spoiling the game for other players is absurd. I never suggested quitting without finding find a sub (unlike a few other players in this game). Is a semi-alliance victory ruining it for Ry'leh/Marignon? They don't really have a realistic chance of winning at this point, and a final war like this was coming regardless of where the sides were drawn. Am I ruining it for you by having a semi-alliance victory? As I said before we would have done a temorary allience anyway, so if you situation is as hopeless as you say, you would be dead either way. That pretty much leaves you arguing that Arch and I are ruining it for ourselves, and while I appreciate you concern, I'm afraid we will just have to live with it.

The agreement with Arch was actually a 'temporary' alliance, once you were finished off, we had talked about continuing the game a little while to find out who was the supreme god of the pantheon. However, as it is my guess that he would be significantly than me stronger at that point, it is most likely we would skip the formality for micromanagement's sake.

Anyway, whether a temporary alliance or game ending one, it dosn't affect your situation at all. The thing you overlook in all your Posts is that your diplomacy brought this on yourself, indeed it might have been more tactically sound to ally with you vs. mictlan. After all the threats and general machinations though, there was no way I was going to do that.

My point about you waiting 3 turns is still valid, why would you play them if you thought you had no chance and would quit in a few turns anyway? And if you could not tell for sure that such a war would doom you, how was I to know?

I'm beginning to think that anyone other than yourself winning this game would have resulted in accusations of unfairness.