Re: [eia] losing players

["Kyle H" <menexenus@xxxxxxx>]

> Isn't the answer "Ask someone new to play"? I just don't see what you and
Jim
> are looking for here.
>

Didn't I describe later in the email exactly what I was looking for?

> You say this as though you think it's not rational. But if it appears that
> the game will end naturally before a patient style of play can pay off,
> doesn't that make a patient style of play a bad strategy in such a
situation?
> You're posing the question rhetorically, but what indeed is the point of
> surrendering when you expect someone to win before you can recover from
> surrendering?
>

I agree that this is a rational playing style given our current mode of
quit-after-three-years.  That's why I'm not interested in playing a
quit-after-three-years game any more.  After all, we could just say we are
playing the 1805-1807 campaign game.  Then everyone playing would understand
that there will be no looking to the future and you should go out with guns
blazing.  But my understanding at the beginning of both of our last
campaigns was that we were starting Grand Campaign games (1805-1815).  If
you think the game is supposed to last for a given duration, you play with
that duration in mind.  And, as I said in my last email, I'm tired of being
punished for being a sucker and playing the game under the guidelines that
we supposedly all agree to at the beginning.

> I have to ask again whether we've had anyone quit *because* they were
faring
> poorly. We've had several resignations coincide with players being in bad
> situations, but correlation does not causation make.
>

Joel, where in my email did I say that the player who quit did so *because*
they were losing?  You are reading way too much into the email.  All I asked
is what can we do to try to handle the situation (which has come up twice
now) that the country that is worst off needs a new player?  It seems to be
a reasonable question given our history.  But you seem to want to make my
question an accusation.  Where are you getting this?
    A while back some of us wondered aloud what the reasons were for Nate's
slowness to respond.  We wondered because we had absolutely no information.
You and Nate cleared it up for us, and now it is no longer an issue.  Why do
you keep bringing it back up?

>
> I doubt that there is any fair way to do this without altering game
balance.
> Take Britain and France as an example. The British player will almost
always
> have as a long-term goal the defeat of France. If the British player also
has
> to worry that if he beats France too badly that the French player might
quit
> and be replaced by a French player with easier victory conditions, that
will
> seriously disfigure the calcualtions that the British player must make.
>

    You are probably right about this, but I'd like to hear more.  Why would
the British calculations be disfigured if France's victory conditions are
changed to accommodate a new player (under the assumption that France is
getting its butt kicked)?

kdh

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