My Expectation Management Strategy

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    • My Expectation Management Strategy

      Today, I lost a game in which I had, up to that point, been far ahead in individual VPs. I didn't see it coming. It was like Day 26, and I'd been in the #1 spot by a sizable margin for a long time. My coalition was also in the top position, and the strongest couple of nations who were not in my coalition were communicating with me regularly and amicably. It wasn't them who took me out. I started the game day feeling comfortable and confident. I went into a situation that I expected to win easily, and I came out decimated. An immediate combination of factors following that made it clear that I would not be able to recover. Game over. To be honest, I was deeply disappointed.

      In the 60 days since I've started this game, two things have become glaringly apparent to me:

      1) I really enjoy playing this game and learning how to get better at it. The competitive nature of it gives me a rush, and I love the challenge of puzzling out how to construct a slightly different dynamic strategy for each situation.

      2) Almost as often as I'm thrilled with and entertained by the game, I'm going to face disappointment in each game at some point.

      It is an overall net gain, but that second truth is still very difficult for me to swallow. So, I'm constantly faced with a decision: Keep enjoying the game when I can, or quit the game and save myself the disappointment. In my less emotional moments, I remember the net gain, and I resolve to keep playing. I also recognize, though, that it would be better if I found some way to mitigate the disappointment for myself. So, today I began doing something that I hope works for me and that I also hope could help some others.

      With each active game I have going, I keep a running tally of the red flags I see popping up in that game that may later cause me a lot of disappointment. I then make myself realistic and achievable goals for that game (as opposed to always thinking "I'm going to win the whole thing!" despite clear indications that it will not happen) while taking those possibilities into consideration. That may seem fairly obvious, but actually going through the motions of typing out that information keeps me from allowing my optimism to become too unrealistic by default. Now, some disappointments (like the one this morning for instance) are not really foreseeable by looking at the map and other people's buildings/forces, so I'm bound to still get surprised sometimes, and those can be the most difficult ones to accept. However, if I can end up less disappointed by the ones that I COULD have seen coming, maybe that will make the game a little less disappointing as a whole.

      I post this in the hopes that it helps someone else who may be feeling disappointed or frustrated by the game consider how they can more enjoy the game by remaining aware of and realistic about the potential for disappointment in a given game.
    • I find that being in an Alliance of like minded players has helped me to mitigate those lows as well. Sometimes the frustrations start to wear on me, then I speak to my Alliance mates and start kicking ideas around for the next match.Ssoon, I find myself recharged ans ready to get at it again.
    • at the beginning is frustrating for lack of better term your getting your sea legs, number 2 which i still have a problem with never under estimate your opponent, what i like to do if given time and i know im going to lose i build my defences in way to cause maximum damage to my opponent.

      last year i was playing apocolypes 1 speed map 5 guys in europe were doing well the swept up and into the middle east and asia by time the got me it was day 65 or 67 i had researched all the way to maximum for icbms and leveled the one guy in thier coalition with out theater defence main cities turned him completeley rogue i had 20 strike fighters and twenty mobile artillery plus 20 tanks and twent sams and 10 theater defence not including my 40 nuclear warhead stock pile and ten icbm launchers it took two weeks for them to reach my home land territories on the last day i was congradulated by the other teams leader because he thought he would take me in 4 days tops. this doesnt happen all the time but if i can and know im going to lose i make the opponent work for it plus i do get points for the destrcution of his equipment
      • hello
    • Little bit of an update on my positive personal personal experience with this: I was going through my active games tonight, and coincidentally finding different sources of frustration in each one. Wrestling with a little disappointment, I decided to open up my realistic goals file and update it. As I went through the entries, though, I realized that not much had really changed in any of the games since I entered them into the file. The difference had only been that I'd forgotten the realistic goals I'd set for myself previously. So, what started out as initial disappointment tonight turned into satisfaction that I'm actually right on track for what I thought I might be able to do in each game.