22-07-2003 07:48									#1
	A learning experience. Our successes and our failures. Suffering from ads?

I would like a listing of what people feel we have done right and what we have done wrong.

edit -
I am not looking at current events, mearly those in our past that we can look to and see - yes, good; or no, bad.

Last edited by GodKing on 22-07-2003 at 08:34

	22-07-2003 07:56									#2
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I think the game is not over yet and it's far too early to ask these questions.

--Togas

	22-07-2003 08:18									#3
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I've already posted a bit on my thoughts concerning this subject in the other thread GK started. Refer there.

	22-07-2003 08:29									#4
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Errors come to mind immediatly, as they are far easier to point out. That should not mean that we didn't do anything well. We did many things well. I am just doing what comes to mind right now and that is errors.

- First city location. I felt that it should have been placed on the ocean instead of only one square away. It would only have delayed settling of it by only one turn.

- city placement. Our cities were placed in order for us to take as much ground as possible. Of course with a starting position on the edge of an ocean....
Unfortunately, this sacrificed major amounts of produciton capacity due to corruption.

- Monarchy instead of Republic. I had no idea that monarchy was so worthless in PBEM. I almost always go for it instead of republic due to wieryness, but that apparently doesn't exist in PBEM.... for that major concept change, i wish it was noted in the manual or something.

- A good thing - moving our capitol.

	22-07-2003 08:46									#5
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I don't think it's ever too early for self-assessment.

It may help us identify weaknesses that we can address before the game finishes. It may also help us with other PBEMS, personal or DGs.

Having analytical members like E_T and roadcage.
Making piss-poor use of members like E_T and roadcage.

Knowing that our neighbours have early Middle-Age UUs and not preparing adequately for it. Regardless of diplomacy and all other concerns, this is their prime time to attack, and we shafted ourselves by not being ready for it.

Great Western Settlement, in general.
Not doing the Great Western Settlement earlier.

Our diplomacy in general has been superb. Trademaking, relations, PR.
Letting Lego off-the-hook for never living up to our early game alliance.

Having a fun, roleplaying time of the whole thing so far.
Not having more waterfall festivals.

	22-07-2003 08:52									#6
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I'd agree about not using ET and Roadcage as well as we should have. That is obvious.

Also, I agree that it is to early for such an accessment. Spain is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb! Huzza! She spurns the northern scum!

And as for Legoland...

When this cruel war is over and our military is build up again... We must strike for Lego Major!! Those plastic western devils cannot be tolerated for their betrayal!

	22-07-2003 09:07									#7
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quote: Originally posted by dejon Knowing that our neighbours have early Middle-Age UUs and not preparing adequately for it. Regardless of diplomacy and all other concerns, this is their prime time to attack, and we shafted ourselves by not being ready for it.

I know I harped on this one for a while way back when and I'll be the first to admit that the resource expense is questionable, but... Not planning to build a wonder and building The Great Wall as I was repeatedly arguing

But oh well, as I said, it's questionable whether the same shields for the Great Wall were better spent elsewhere... a good discussion to have, but I believe I was absolutely correct to argue VERY EARLY that The Great Wall was the #1 wonder for us if we were going to build an ancient wonder at all.

	22-07-2003 12:24									#8
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In my opinion there were two main errors:

Firts to throw ourselves in crazy projects that would efectively put us offline for an small or big period of time. Of course I mean switching off our two highest production centers, Pamplona and Madrid, for this capital switching instead of using them to boost our nation.

Second, and this is much less evident and I think we could learn a lot from it, assuming that every team would do what is best for it. Of course I am talking about GoW. It is evident that GoW's best interest was to attack ND's north, not only for corruption issues, but also because it is much easier to send reinforcements to ND's front than to send them in galeys, or even through NDs territory, against us.

And I also believe that the game is not over yet, but I don't think that friendly discussing our errors can hurt us. On the contrary, this a great chance to learn from them.

	23-07-2003 07:44									#9
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quote: When this cruel war is over and our military is build up again... We must strike for Lego Major!! Those plastic western devils cannot be tolerated for their betrayal!

I had completely forgotten about that. I suggest we PM them demanding at least three cities, all their gold, and three techs PRONTO.

	23-07-2003 10:30									#10
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Things that we did wrong (and this isn't the whole list, mind you)
Not setting a clear long term plan that would have gotten us to a better point than we are today, is one thing. Switching things in mid stream were a few others. Letting our personal likes/dislikes for other teams/team members color our judgement. Building things that were not needed in several cities at those points in time. Still counting on Lego's support after all of the centuries of trade deals and such that clearly had shown that they were not going to honor it. Fragmented directions of city build priorities, sometimes governed by the roleplaying desires of the cities' Govenors.

Things that we did right:
Getting our diplomacy in gear with GS and making fast freinds with them, just in time for them to help us out of this mess.
Our General Diplomatic Corps and the organization of Info for our team mates.
There are a few more, but It's getting late.

E_T

	23-07-2003 20:21									#11
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The team has made a decision I disagree with, but it is my team, therefore I stay.

Since we have to ask GS authorization about almost everything of importance, we will have a lot of time to discuss, and an obvious topic is the search of the causes of our failure. This thread is needed right now.

From the beginning, Diplomacy was declared to be THE way to win a civ game with humans; this was loudly reiterated at the beginning of the intersite game. What were the real consequences of this belief?

- the relations with Lego were never good enough as to bring them to stick to their commitments resulting from an early treaty;
- the relations with GoW oscillated from ambiguous to extremely bad without never give us a minimum control over them, not even an understanding of their aims; immense amounts of time and energy were lost;
- the relations with ND were kept by ND to a strict minimum, and had no positive or negative effect on the current situation;
- the relations with GS were kept by GS to a strict minimum as well, and that did not prevent them to apparently take side with us, despite our commitment in favour of Vox, which suffices to indicate that our diplomatic investment with Vox was inconsequential and therefore worthless.

This picture must be completed by the total subordination of our tech research to the diplomacy, with the immediate consequence that our progress resulted from opportunities rather than from our priorities, and the final desolating situation where we have to wage war without Chevalry.

I am conscious that this description can be biased and unfair; I nevertheless believe that, in addition of what was said in the above posts, it is the major policy matter which should be modified if the team was to play another game against humans.

	23-07-2003 22:09									#12
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I must agree that the relations with Vox Controlli were of few fruits, and I am a great part of that mistake.
Though I believe they were of few fruits mainly because we did nto commit totally to siding with them and helping them beat GS. Neither did we commit to helping GS totally, nor did we commit ourselves to helping and befriending NeuDemogyptica, not Lego, not even Lux, early on.
We also didnīt commit ourselves fully to REX like mad, or to Slow REX, closely packing cities. We did not fully commit to interventionism in foreign wars, nor did we commit to full isolationism, like ND did. We didnīt fully commit to a Lego like builder game, we did not fully commit to a mass army expansion, to a culture game, to a wonder game...
In part, because we lacked a long term plan like E_T did... this makes things too vague, and we tryed to focus on all, and we got nothing at all in the end.
This is my analysys of the mistakes RP did. I think it is a serious problem, but not one that canīt be surpassed. And I think that if we survive this war we can still win.
And yes, diplomacy proved to be of few worth for defense: keep your big stick nearby when making MPP...

	23-07-2003 22:27									#13
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This thread fails to do anything other than allow the bitter members of our team a chance to say "I told you so" and frankly, I have yet to read anything concrete or worthwhile in it.

Why? Because everyone who brings their beef to the table incorrectly ASSUMES that things would have been different IF we had only done something a different way. That assumption cannot be proven, nor can it be supported. We are dealing with humans in this game, and as we have learned the hard way, humans do not do things that are logically in their best interest, assuming of course that we could correctly identify what was in their best interest. We could do everything "right" and still get attacked. Funny thing is, figuring out what is "right" is not possible when we don't know all of the facts being used to make decisions, or when we cannot predict how the humans on the other end will use those facts.

This whining and crying over "We didn't get X team to do what we want" is pathetic and pointless. You CANNOT make someone do what you want. Despite GhengisFarbs blathering ravings in the public forum, we are not puppeteers nor have we ever been. So does that mean that we shouldn't have tried? Does that mean that next time we should all be isolationists and not make any deals with anyone? Does that mean that if we only made "some other deal" everything would be perfectly ok?

No.

MAYBE in the end of the game if the other teams will honestly say to us "if you did this, then we would have done that" will we be able to learn anything. Right now, it's just a bunch of b*tching and assuming and, frankly, it does nothing more than discredit and demoralize all of us into thinking that we didn't play this game very well, and therefore that we deserve to be teamed up against by GoW and ND.

--Togas

	23-07-2003 22:36									#14
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Yes, Togas, your are right. Self-criticism is pathetic and pointless.

Tell us the subjects we can talk about without hurting you.

	23-07-2003 22:55									#15
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We don't need the team to start disintegrating like this. I'm not sure where any of this is coming from on either side.

I do feel this evaluation is good for us if done without blame or bias. Despite the randomness allowed for by the mechanics of the game or the unpredictability of human interactions, those aspects do not negate the reality that there are measurable ways to improve individual or team performance.

Let's keep this positive. This does not diminish the experience or get in the way of the fact that the game still continues as we speak, unless we let it.

	23-07-2003 23:32									#16
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My post was almost evenly split between identifying successes and failures.

And I will repeat the point about identifying weaknesses that we can still address.

For example - having E_T analyse a turn/save almost always resulted in incremental improvements (shields/food/gold). Small differences, added up, can make a big difference. We should either have him investigate every turn, or more of us can learn to be as diligent in optimization.

Yes, my point about the middle age UUs is worthless to us at this point in this game, but it is a valuable lesson for the ISDG and other PBEMs.

Togas, I agree that this thread inevitably draws in those who are bitter about various things. Please also realize that it is as hard to write constructive criticisms without letting your feelings get involved, as it is to read them.

I don't think anyone is criticising your leadership of this team, and even if they are, I would be very surprised if they mean to do so in a hurtful way. You have done a wonderful job and should be proud.

Furthermore, if anyone is critising Togas' overall leadership, they'll quickly find a quality dejon-crafted rockspear up their @ss.

	23-07-2003 23:52									#17
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My point, which seems to be overlooked, is that nothing can be gained by our SPECULATIONS and ASSUMPTIONS and finger pointing. We are still in the middle of the game and all of the facts are not before us. Saying "if we only did this" or "if we hadn't done that" is just assuming that something better would have happened without having any facts or evidence to back it up, and such blathering idiocy is like listening to the Sports Talk radio jabber on about Kobe Bryant's alleged Sexual Assault case. Everyone has their opinions and none of them have any facts to support them.

So if you want to be Mr. "I Told You So" wait until this is done and then find out from the other teams what "mistakes" in their eyes we made, and what things we could have done differently.

--Togas

p.s. And, Davout, your attitude and sarcasm are NOT appreciated.

	24-07-2003 00:23									#18
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quote: Originally posted by ruby_maser I do feel this evaluation is good for us if done without blame or bias.

I also agree with this. If that thread is going to turn into just bashing it will be pointless. On the other hand if we discuss calmly and politely our failures this can prove really useful. Maybe each member of the team could point what he thinks that have been his own failures in adition to pointing the failures of the whole team.

	24-07-2003 00:36									#19
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* dejon smacks Togas with a large trout

Have I got your attention now? Why are you only reading the negative in this thread? A few people have pointed out our strengths, and at least one ( ) has offered an area in which we can still turn a weakness into a strength.

Since you obviously missed this above...

quote: Originally posted by dejon You have done a wonderful job and should be proud.

I should have put that in the present tense though - the game is not over yet.

	24-07-2003 00:44									#20
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quote: Originally posted by dejon [Since you obviously missed this above... quote: Originally posted by dejon You have done a wonderful job and should be proud. I should have put that in the present tense though - the game is not over yet.

I agree with seņor Dejon. Togas has done a great job, and no doubt it will continue in the future. My support is with him.

	24-07-2003 01:04									#21
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RPwise, I think we should've pumped the public forum with more spam. It kinda seems like we've been just quietly wilting away with the exception of the few publicised cases (Squid Wars being the major one, with others including the recent Trials and GodKing the Ghost.)

However, we still have a great chance to roleplay the ****ing hell out of the game. I do feel that we skipped over monarchy without enough beheadings, but a Communist revolution (as has been proposed) could be fun. (Maybe we can get Tassadar to join Roleplay )

	24-07-2003 04:08									#22
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Togas, I did not start and I do not think this thread is about disintigrating and destroying the team. It is about the purpose of us playing this game. To learn. One of the best ways to learn something is to understand the errors that have been made.

I was a terrible diplomat with GS. That is 110% my fault. I accept it. I admit it. I am to blame for it. However, if nothing like this is spoken about, nothing is done to point out these errors, than how will people understand and benifit?

I think this thread is highly needed, and should have been topped from the first day of this forum being open. There is nothing wrong with self evaluation, which is what this is about.

You are correct in that if it were a "I told you so" thread it would be pointless at best and destructive. It is not that.

GK