ListlessSalmon wrote:I think the "wouldn't play 12/14 mirrors" is not really the right way to look at it either. Obviously I don't know because a lack of sufficient data from the stream but it seems like Wicked rather wanted to play Russia, India or Dutch on the map, given its no TP, these are going to be (amongst the) strongest civs, so that seems not unreasonable. He was also willing to play 2/3 of those mirrors.
A very strange point considering the map is irrelevant in a mirror? He didn't want to play mirrors period, which would have been fine if he'd at all tried to suggest fair non-mirror match ups.
It seems a bit unfortunate that matchups with one of those civs weren't more explored.
One thing you should note is that there are actually very few civs that can reasonably stand up to those 3 on a no TP map. I suggested 2 match ups that I considered even against the 3 (out of
14, mind you) civs that he insisted on playing, both were refused. From my perspective, and I'm sure many would disagree, I was not offered any fair match ups in return. And do note that there is no reason to insist on playing those 3 civs. Why not both play a TP civ? I was stuck trying to find MUs against civs that were heavily favored on the map.
As a viewer it seemed like this was essentially Goodspeed's fault for being in/near "only mirrors!" mode at that point. But if wicked was willing to play lots of matchups with those civs (seemed the case at least with India- only thing he explicitly didn't want there was vs Jap)
Enlighten me about the wide variety of civs that can stand up to India on a no TP herdable map. He certainly didn't, even though he had every opportunity to suggest fair match ups himself. I fell back on mirrors because his suggestions seemed, to me, to be quite obvious attempts to trap me into playing a bad match up. Again, I'm not a fan of mirrors either. And don't forget that I eventually agreed to play a match up that I was almost certainly going to lose for the sake of compromise. This perspective that I was somehow the one being difficult is surprising to say the least.
Why not play India vs Jap? Too fair? My feeling was that his goal going into civ selection was getting me to play a match up that was bad for me, and he succeeded in the end. While understandable, it's just not very sportsmanlike. But hey, everything to get the W, right? I guess I just don't see it that way and I think that sort of attitude so often ruins the fun. I suppose that's why I never really participated in tournaments, even 10 years ago, and always preferred unrated games. I thought this event would be relatively uncompetitive and that's one of the reasons I signed up.
But it was fun anyway so it's all good. It's just that in my opinion it showed that there's a problem with the rules.