At what point do you surrender?

[tonydowler]

Here's a question for you warlords - at what point do you surrender a game? I want to be a good sport and provide a significant challenge to my foes, however I also don't want to be belabor the point after I'm soundly defeated. What are you standards? Personally, if I'm running low on cash and being pushed back on two fronts, I think it's time to drop out and let the victors fight it out over my lands. Am I throwing in the towel too early?

[KGB]

Tony,

This was discussed in another thread a while back.

I surrender when I no longer believe I can win the game. I assume others do likewise. If on the other hand a player wants to hang on till their last city is taken that's their choice.

It has nothing to do with being a 'good sport' or providing a challenge.

KGB

[piranha]

It also depend on which type of game it is. If its a 1v1, or team vs team its often easier to know that its over. In a FFA others might battle while you can grow an army even if you don't have much.

I have a fun story in this topic. One of my best friends (called multimarine) was a very hard core starcraft player. At one point he went to South korea on a big tournament (Starcraft is a national sport on TV there with sponsoring, huge prizes, super star status if you are good, compare it to the most popular sport where you live and you know.).
This was when it was getting big in Korea so they had a big tournament and they would fly the best starcraft players from outside Korea to go there and join the tournament. My friend was at his prime and went there to play.
I don't know how many players he had beat when he got to play a guy from Canada called Grrrr.. Grrr was considered the best starcraft player outside Korea by most hardcore players at the time.

In this game my friend plays grrr and beat him, or actually he manages to kill off all his units and income and have a bunch of marines in his base so grrr says Good game (mean he considered it a loss). But he doesn't press surrender and my friend removes his marines from grrrs base and sit back in his chair relieved after a intense game. It doesn't take long before Grrr manages to have the weapon he was working on finished that is nearly impossible to kill with marines. I don't know how long it takes before multimarine realizes that he haven't won yet. But suddenly grr attacks with some last desperate try and manages to kill the marines with his new weapon and then win the game.

Grrr then went on and won the tournament got a sponsor contract and becomes the number one pro player in Korea for about a year making lots of money, girls and fame (its not everywhere you can get girls by being good at a computer game ).

I don't know how many times we have said to multimarine ARGHHH how could you remove your marines and not continue until it was 100% over (and I wonder how many times he thought about it). Since that day when I'm losing or winning that story echo in my head telling me to not stop before its over .

[Jeremy]

I've won my last five games, so I don't really remember what to do when losing...

But I do (vaguely) recall fighting it out to the end. Partially so as not to mess of the balance of the game in a FFA, partially because seeing what you can accomplish versus impossible odds has a charm of it's own.

[magian]

I play until I feel I have no chance at victory. One thing I don't do is "go out with a bang". I've seen folks do this, they just make some random, ill-fated attack to kill as many units as they can before they quit. Or they try to swing the game in some player's favor or other. This just seems unsportsmanlike to me (in FFA).

[KGB]

Or they try to swing the game in some player's favor or other. This just seems unsportsmanlike to me (in FFA).

'Kingmaking' is common in FFA games. And I don't just mean Warbarons but any kind of FFA games including 'friendly' games of Risk with friends over beers

That's one reason I'm not much of an FFA fan. I much prefer team games and think those work out better for all involved. So I don't worry about sportsmanship in FFA games as I just assume there won't be any.

KGB

[gggol]

Quit when it isn't fun and there's nothing more to be learned.

Right now, I'm losing a ladder game, but not by much. I'm at 47% of cities, and my opponent must be at 53%. (Don't believe there can be any neutral cities left, but can't be absolutely sure.) Should I quit? Not yet! I've had horrible luck, and am wondering if the percentages could be wrong. I've calculated them myself, and my calculations agree with the percentages that the game reports. Maybe battles are actually decided differently than the docs and the percentages say? I have lost 9 out of 10 important fights, over cities and valuable units. The odds on the lost battles ranged from even to 80% in my favor, and only the win had odds against me, at 35%. Seems I have to arrange 90% or better odds to be sure of winning.

I'm learning what the special units do. Devils do not cancel hero bonuses. They only cancel the bonuses of regular units such as red dragons and krakens. Must play some more to check a few other things, never mind whether I'm winning or losing.

I also ran out of money, and wanted to see what that would do. Running out of money never happened in Warlords. I recall seeing something about that in the docs, but didn't find it with a quick skim. Answer: You go into debt, and produce no more units. Production does not advance on units that take multiple turns. I am not sure, but looks like production resumes not when you have positive income, but when you are out of debt. You can't build the better ships, but that part is buggy. The game seemingly lets you build the ship, putting you further in debt. But when you try to move it, it moves like the free ship.

FFA is Diplomacy, not strategy and tactics. Most players are good enough that you will not be able to beat two others who are each about equal to you in size and production, no matter how awesome you are on the battlefield.

[Yahtzee]

Going into debt is usually caused by trying to overdefend all your cities - you'll never be able to have all your cities well-defended.

Devils negate normal bonuses, archons negate hero bonuses, and unicorns negate terrain bonuses.

I quit whenever I gauge that I cannot win - totally depends on the game when that is.

[strach]

of course everyone can surrender whenever they want, but I think it is not a bad idea to create some kind of a "code" (which should not be mandatory) for FFA. quite the opposite to KGB views I play almost only FFA which I find more "romantic" and more in spirit of traditional Warlords than playing team games. the other thing is that I dont want to share my win with other teammates ("there's no "I" in team but theres "I" in WIN"). there's nothing as pleasent in Warlords as winning in an 8 player game, throughout which you struggled on every stage of it).

I, personally, surrender when (1) I dont have any chance to win the game, and (2) I have no possibilities to make my opponents (the one who outplayed me) life a bit more tough. I don't like when people surrender when they lost few battles and leave 12 cities ready to grab for their opponent.

as for kingmaking I think it's just a waste of time - it's like playing chess via internet with your chess-program. where's fun in that? but of course trolls gonna troll, so we have to live with that