Surrender in 3-4 player games

[Roilys]

Hello! Sorry to bother with this but wanting to learn, I'm going to check with the community about my recent experience to find out if it's unsportsmanlike or invalidated what I've done and, if so, under what circumstances then it would be possible to apply it. Here I explain:

I have recently been harassed by several experienced players who have decided to accuse me of Kingmaking after the decision to surrender in a 4 player game of "Through the Ages" during the beginning of my turn in the political phase.

This decision was made after losing military supremacy and dropping it to 13 points, thus allowing a civilization with 64 attack points to launch a "War on Culture" against my nation which by then held the highest culture score and production.

In doing so, this nation received only 5 culture points for its war and not the 56 that it should have taken from me... Which was taken from being the worst scored... and for this I was accused of having conspired with the rest of players to harm him or make him lose. However, from my perspective, only use a feature that the game allows when you know you're going to lose...

One of those experienced players says that I should have endured the war and that a normal player usually defends himself, however, I had a resource production of +4 and this would never allow me to defend myself against such a difference in scores. In addition, he specified that he had to play the turns that followed, but I have always given up in two-player games in which I am not going to win and I do not understand why in a 4-player game it must be different when the same game in its regulation and under its operation in BGA allows you to withdraw.

Was I right to quit the game when I saw my defeat? Should I really have stayed to play the last era even though when "Iconoclasm" appeared I already knew there was no chance of success? In what circumstances is it valid to use retreat in this game if this scenario is not valid?

[father nurgle]

From my experience with board games IRL, you don't get up and leave the table unless everyone agrees, because doing to wrecks the game for the other players. Two player is a little different because you are admitting the other player has WON, not that you have LOST. But it often still denies them the pleasure of winning properly.

In this particular circumstance it is even worse, because you made the other player waste an action that they could have used against someone staying in the game.

So... definitely unsportsmanlike. One way to look at it: if you were winning and everyone else quit, how would you feel?

[Shivaware]

The log states very clearly:
Roilys chooses to leave the game honorably

You have done nothing wrong. The rules of the game very explicitly give you the option of leaving the game and how much compensation your attacker is entitled to in that case.

Depending how abusive your opponent's complaining was, you may consider reporting them.

[father nurgle]

True, my answer was more general but it is built into the game rules in this case (possibly for this exact situation). There is a good discussion about it here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/206179 ... uette-poll

[Ranior]

Resigning is a part of Through the Ages rules, and it's there for pretty important game reasons. It helps ensure that in multiplayer games you cannot just hope to bash on the weakest to win, because at some point they can just leave. This gives incentive for the stronger players to hit and target their actual competitions, and in this way it sometimes is possible for someone in a poor position to build back in.

You absolutely can consider reporting the player who was berating you depending on how rude they were actually being.

A few players have misconceived notions about how acceptable it is or is not to resign, and so unfortunately some of them thing it is not right to resign ever. They are wrong, but from their point of view it will seem like they potentially lost a win when they don't get all the easy culture they were expecting from a war. This is partially poor planning on their part, as if you really want to execute this you try to time it so you can launch the war right at the end of Age 3, since resignations are no longer allowed once Age 4 starts, and so you can then ensure a big war pulls off against a weak player at that time. Otherwise....well if you launch a war against someone who is clearly losing, the likely result is that that player will resign.