If the new game will be a 12v12 without neutrals, I’ll think about it!
Have Fun Keith!
Gixxx
Keith, you’re joining… Game 81 - sorry for hijacking your thread… 
I can confirm that this is true, and that he strenously argued against having me join the DS or inviting me into the Yahoo group. I can not confirm what I think of Gixx as I’m way too polite
It is disappointing, very disappointing. There is lots to play for still and you have huge armies and macro economies on your side. I’ve noted in the past few games since returning to ME-PBM that people tend to want to drop on the FP side if they’ve not steamrollered the DS by turn 10, I was hoping this game would be different.
C’est le vie.
Tosh. I don’t know if it’s possible to file a grievance against you with Clint but I will look into it.
You wanna know what really ruins the “spirit of the game”? Its how people complain about stupid crap like this whole “Rhudar declaring early” crap. Its his nation to run, and if he wants to go DS on turn 0, by the good lord above, let him do it! This is only my second ME-PBM game, and it really sucks to see grown men crying about a game. I dont care if i step on any of your toes here, because from what i’ve been able to read, it needs doing.
This has really left a sour taste in my mouth, to watch how you guys continue to argue about the “spirit of the game” when your not taking into consideration that you are poisoning the game for those newbies and younger players that look up to some of you. To tell you the truth, my personal belief on this game is that the FP still have a fighting chance, but they won’t take it because now the game has been thrown outta whack because of something that happened on turn 0!!!
Don’t be surprised if I don’t show up in another game, because reading all of this bull has really put me off ME-PBM. I think i’m going to finish this game, then i’m done. Thanks to you all for ruining the fun for some of us.
Oh Jesus, here’s a tissue. The only one crying is you.
My hat is off to the Dark Servants for winning this game. They have out played us and they have way out diplomed us. You want us to keep playing in a hopeless cause for what? So you can enjoy some more fun turn results when we have zero chance of winning? Your entire depth of experience leaves you woefully unprepared to understand how out of whack this game is.
I’ll give you a point of reference. I’m playing the BS in game 76. We have been pounded from the start. The easterlings, similarly, declared for the FP on turn 0. The WK never communicated with us and was bankrupted. The FP have played a marvelous game - they had the Dragonlord out of Mirkwood by turn 5. We can’t afford to hire all of our characters, we have to shuffle gold every turn just to keep the remaining DS’s afloat. The Market has been expertly depressed so that all commodities are at 1 except Mithril and Mounts and they are very low as well. And despite all of that, we DS’s have a good fighting chance in this game - even with Rhudaur armies on the IK capital and the fall of the Dragon lord’s second capital in Mordor. They have FP armies in Mordor and we are not out of the contest.
Now, compare that to 81 - the turn 0 declaration went to the DS’s. The Market is hyper-inflated. The WK is expanding his empire. The Dragonlord is still in Mirkwood. You have a 3-2 neutral advantage and the two neutrals we have were looking for a very long game and were not on a war footing. One of them is directly responsible for undermining our opening strategy by rescuing the QA with gold, by blocking our navies, as well as helping to inflate the market - a benefit entirely for the DS’s by amassing huge gold surpluses and buying out commodities. Yes, he declared for us to keep the game going, but not a single troop of his has seen battle against you, and based on your agent advantage, none are ever likely to. We are not in Mordor. We will not be in Mordor on turn 13 (game 76 comparison). We will never be in Mordor.
I’m not sore about losing. I learned a lot from this match. But I do realize when I am beaten. You win. Don’t be a sore winner.
You don’t see what I see.
And to your point about turn 10 - the FP have had to have made progress against the DS by turn 10 (you call it “steamrollered” I call it progress) or it becomes a DS blowout (like this game). I don’t expect you to agree - I’m sure your team has had a fun game - by what we have seen it sure looks that way. I’m equally sure you would like to continue having fun turn results.
If you will recall my previous statement:
I wish I could say that the DS are winning the game because of “luck”. You have played well. I have nothing against a neutral jumping one way or the other.
Hmm if that’s whining maybe you should look up the word whining.
Bottom line - the DS cleaned our respective clocks. The market made the game unwinnable but the DS team won it. Now it seems the DS team is reluctant to accept their victory.
There is also a difference between “possible chance to win” and “no chance to win”. I would keep playing if the former were true but it is nonsense to keep playing under the latter conditions.
I learned a lot from this game that I will apply in future games.
hmm… the huge difference is that Cloud Lord, Dog Lord and DarkLt had each others mail address/phone number 15 years ago.
What they didn’t have was Rhudaurs mail address, so they couldn’t contact him from the beginning.
Btw, I’ve never had any problem with neutrals joining from turn 0, “because they wanted to try it”.
What I dislike is neutrals joining from turn 0 because of contact with one team, as that’s not how the game was “meant” to be played. I would never cry about it though.
Btw, the argument of NW being to one-sided so Rhudaur should go DS… does that mean Easterlings should go Free???
While I agree that a Rhudaur going Free is utterly dull and boring, the game was designed for the NW to be Free-people domain.
My point about spending the first turn consolidating your nation/forces, was that Rhudaur doesn’t have to fiddle his thumbs the first turn, he can actually prepare for whatever side he choses to join and STILL make a difference.
I should also note, that my problem with this would never lie in the unbalancing factor.
I wouldn’t mind having 5 neutrals against me, I’d loose, but they’re entitled to join however they like.
My problem solely lies in joining on turn 0, because you know people from that team.
Matter of fact is of course, that very few players join a game without thinking about strategy even before game start, so most neutrals allready have a plan of which side they’d join.
Especially nations like Easterlings and Rhudaur.
So I could understand someone who wanted to go DS and who discovered he liked the team, going DS on turn 0.
But declaring on turn 0 solely because of the team you’re joining is weak, imo.
Currently in a game where I think the neutrals would be best of joining my opponents, but this would of course end the game very fast.
So being a neutral is a delicate matter… do you go for game-balance to prolong the game, or do you go for the side which is most likely to win?
Crying, huh. There is a difference between crying and being dissapointed. But whatever, believe what you want, because the “spirit of the game” was broken, now the game is pretty much over.
If you ask me, the people who drop because they feel the game is over are the one’s who are breaking the spirit, because they drop at a moments notice when something doesnt go their way.
IF you knew me, you would know that i’m the farthest thing from a sore anything. I’m happy to admit defeat, but i have the guts to make it interesting too. Im happy to declare victory, as long as credit is given to the other team for a good game.
And besides, you ALL know that you had a good game. Some things didn’t go your way, i get that. But all in all, you guys had me and some of the other guys sweating bullets at a couple of points. I understand that things go wrong, but dont let that be how you guys go out of this game.
I personally believe that of the two games that i played, that this one has far surpassed that of the other one (NM 62) not because i got attacked by 4 nation’s cav armies and nearly lost, but that in this game, i saw more experienced players on the other side, and wanted to gain a bit of knowledge from this game.
Though you have to admit. Listening to 20-30 year old men arguing about which neutral goes where, when, does get a little taxing on the nerves.
So here is my question to all of you guys that keep arguing about turn 0 declarations.
Do you want to choose where a neutral goes, and take the nation out of the players hands?
Do you feel there should be a certain window that a neutral must decide (like turns 5-10)?
I don’t have an absolute problem with neutrals declaring on turn 0. But I think that when it happens the other neutrals need to recognize that it is severely imbalancing and prepare for an earlier declaration than they might otherwise have wished. Now that may be presumptious. It is based on the premise that most players want the game to develop through the early game into at least mid game if not late game for an entertaining contest. Also, the FP and DS’ need to identify this imbalance and act aggressively in regards to it. We did neither in game 81 and failed for it. The other neutrals in game 81, universally, told us that the Rhudaur turn 0 declaration was no big deal because our team was stronger and winning the game. Even when the Dunlendings revealed his deceit, the rest of the neutrals told us that they didn’t see the game as out of balance and were not ready to join us - understand that this was all couched in the context of them wanting a competitive and fairly balanced game. So as the weight of 11-10 took it’s toll and became 12-10 we were still told, “no, you guys are still winning”. I am not going to reveal what was necessary to finally secure the Harad and Corsairs on our side until the game is over, but the fact is that when they finally did agree to join us it was too late. The market was already out of control. The DS’ already had dragons in armies everywhere it mattered and we were losing on all fronts.
So, does that mean we lost because Rhudaur declared on turn 0? No. Not at all. We lost because we failed to secure the support of any neutral nation in time to counterbalance that factor and we went on to lose 3 of the 5 neutrals. Further, the 3 that went against us were interested and prepared to strike militarily while the 2 that joined us were not.
So to those of you neutrals that wanted a longer game, all I can say is that you misread the true balance of the game. Perhaps it was the pro-FP propaganda that was so nicely written by Ian that made us look so strong or the fact that we did win the artifact race - but in every other concrete way we were losing and the Easterlings declaring DS was the nail in our coffin.
Now, on the otherhand if each of those neutral declarations were made for the DS’ was made with only the objective of winning, then that’s just fine. When I play a neutral I am playing to win, not extended the game.
So which is it guys? Did you make your declaration to win or to achieve a balanced contest? If it was to win, congratulations - mission accomplish. If it was to achieve a balanced contest - you lose too. Either accept victory or accept the consequences of piling on.
This is a very real possibility when perusing this forum. We’re all here to spend our money…we want max entertainment value from it. If the game cast 0.25 a month, people wouldn’t get so upset. But this is the forum…it’s always been this way, in fact, has been quite tamedly civilized for a few years now…disappointingly so to some… 
Hear Hear. Couldn’t agree more.
However, those people that drop when the game is hopeless are not dropping at a moments notice. This game in particular we have had a number of things go against us and we still plugged away. It is so abundantly clear at this point that the game is a DS blowout.
Please see Banal’s comments concerning game 76. I still feel we have a slight chance of winning that game and we are still at it. As long as I see any chance of victory at all I’m in the fight. And if we talk about how long I have been playing strategy games - let’s just say I have been playing longer than most people on this forum have been alive. I may date myself a bit but I was playing PBM games in the early 80’s when they were still snail mail only.
The point of game 81 (not true in every game or even most I’m sure) is that every step of the way we were being told by every neutral (all 5) that we were winning the game. Rhudaur is DS from the beginning - the FP are winning. The Dun go DS shortly thereafter - the FP are still winning the game. The Corsairs and Harad go FP - the FP are really winning the game now so the Easterlings have to go DS to prevent a total FP blowout.
I would really like to hear how the DS convinced the neutrals in this game to join them because the DS team was “losing”. And I mean this in all seriousness. The DS team did a great job in out diploming the FP team.
Though I fully believe the Easterlings did not join the DS team from any sense of play balance - he joined to win - which is what neutrals do. I also believe the most disappointing thing to most players in this game is how quickly it became a DS blowout. The DS team obviously wants the game to continue - I’m sure - especially the Easterlings. If I were in their position I would want the same thing.
Congratulations to the DS team on a solid win.
Would the game have gone differently had the duns gone free? What if it were a 4-1 split w/ rhudaur going dark alone…what about rhu/one southern neutral dark and duns/ea/other southern free?
It’s hard to say how neutrals make/break a game I think. I also think the market has been high and I think that has made an impact overall.
For the sake of my posterity; it was said I was definitely going dark…and that isn’t the case. I actually had planned out in detail what to do/ask for/go get as a free nation and I was prepared to do it.
If I had this game over I might have gone free…but then who knows how the other neutrals would have responded…did my decision as a neutral have anything to do w/ what they decided…I’m going to ask them off board and see.
remember that I joined as a neutral b/c for all my years as a player I didn’t start playing neutrals until this game. I don’t know the minds of neutrals very well from their viewpoint just how I see them as aligned.
I know Cardolan’s viewpoint b/c I’ve played them a few times…I know the Mirk’ well b/c I’ve played them all now…
So more neutrals for me for a while in 1650.
I will say this too…Jake the IK in this game is young (what just 16-17?)…but he’s right on spot when he sees people dropping…however, that is indy games and so now when I do sign up for an indy game I leave space/time/money open for a second or third position. It’s just part of the deal now.
Jake! Try 4th age or even 2950…I’ve never played 2950 before…I’d even join up a new game with you though they take forever to set up…don’t give up playing b/c of one game man…we’ve all had “bad beats” to use a poker phrase…get up and fight on boyo.
Go ahead and do that if you want!
Would be nice to meet you again, but not on the same side!!!
This is nonsense, as I have told you in private emails.
I had balanced my position so that I could join either side.
Then 2 FPs told me that both Harad & Corsairs were joining the Free.
From my viewpoint that meant that if I joined the Free too that the game would have been over - an easy FP victory.
So I joined the DS.
I don’t see your issue with me to be honest. You tell me that me joining the DS meant that the DS win. From my viewpoint if I joined the FPs then the FPs win. That sounds like a very balanced game to me - only 1 nation difference. And if you are right about me - that I just join side that I think will win, then I made the harder choice.
I am amazed that some FPs can be saying that they have lost the game with the Harad & Corsairs having just joined them. The rest of the FPs must be in a serious mess if that is true. It doesn’t look that way to me seeing the Eothraim and South Gondor turning up on 3 of my towns this turn.
Is this all just a whitewash? Or is it only the Sinda & Noldo who think the FPs have no chance? Can we hear from the other FPs?
How about the Harad & Corsairs - are you insulted by this dismissal of your relevance?
Tony
Easterlings
I have, I can’t think of any gaming community where accusations of being a cheat can be levied so wrongly and without a shred of evidence. If you aren’t removed from his board or censored in some way then the community of this game, and the policing thereof, is a joke.
Much like yourself. “Have fun!” etc.
Being accused of being a pre-aligned neutral in one game is hardly the same thing as being labeled a “cheat”. If you feel that you have been personally attacked, please e-mail your grievance directly to "me@middleearthgames.com" and make a reference to the “Game 81” thread on the forums. Gixxer has had very strong opinions in the past, and hopefully he will continue to have them. I personally think that his presence on this forum is a positive one overall. This forum, much like the rest of the Internet, often requires thick skin. You get accused of something, you make your case, you move on.
P.S. Calling the administrators of this forum “a joke” (which would include Clint) is not necessarily the best way to spur them to action in your favor.
Aye, some people are merely saying it’s “against the spirit of the game”, no one here has accused anyone of cheating.
Besides, if people were accusing others of cheating, they would likely have written it to ME and not on the boards…