PBEM#4: The Terra Epos

[Claus]

Hi everyone,

is anyone interested in a long, epic PBEM? I think it can be done if we start soon.

--> 4 or 5 human players
--> 10 to 12 computer factions
--> "Terra" or "continental" landscape
--> "Giant" world
--> all other parameters set to custom

Important:
Such a long enterprise requires us to do our turns very regularly. I intend to get one complete turn done every day, in the beginning maybe more. Of course, that doesn't mean you're obliged to say good-bye to out world life. Everybody goes to the cinema now and then or goes on holiday. But the general idea should be to get things moving. So if you don't have internet at home, are regularly out of town for the weekend or if you are planning an expedition to the North Pole, then this should probably not be your game.

If we have different players from all over the world (I hope so!), then we should set the turn order in accordance to the time zones. That's pretty cool, because you can then do your turn in the evening, send it around the world and the next morning you have the following turn on your desktop.

Finally, I understand there is a built-in "handicap feature" which we should use. I.e., experienced players should choose a higher difficulty level to give newbees a chance. I personally will start as "nobleman", maybe "prince" (forth-/fifth-easiest level).

Ah, and of course cheating of any kind is strictly forbidden, even if the other players have no way of finding it out. Everyone should be mature enough to be trusted and to trust others. Cheating means hacking other people's passwords, replaying a turn multiple times before sending it on etc. Sorry, this sounds stupid, but I've had some very bad experience - cheating and mistrust can really crack a game.

Poo, that was long. Sorry for that, I hope, you're still interested in playing. :-)

I personally will take Germany under Frederick the Great. It doesn't really matter because I will lose any way. :-)

1. Claus, that's me :-) [Germany, Friedrich - Nobleman]
2. Redstar1 [Russia, Catherine - Nobleman]
3. MFCamillus [Random - Nobleman]
4. Sabrewolf [Hatche ... Heptchs ... the Egyptian Lady , Nobleman]
5. Emperor_V [USA, G. Washington, ?]


[Edit:]
You could already send me your player account preferences. As you will probably know, I need the following data:

1. Leader name
2. Civ name [eg. "Swedish Empire"]
3. Civ short name [eg. "Sweden"]
4. Civ adjective [eg. "Swedish"]
5. Your secret Civ password (If you prefer I will choose one for you).
6. Your Email adress
7. The name of your SMTP server, if you know it.

(It's not a problem if you don't know your SMTP server or don't have one. That just means that you can't send on your played turn from within the game but have to do it "by hand").

As it is probably not a very intelligent idea to put the secret password into a public forum , you should send me your data via email:

Claus.Fritzenkoetter ät t-online dot de
Then, I'm thinking about taking Mahatma Gandhi instead of Frederick the Great. I haven't decided yet.

[redstar1]

Ah go on, will give me something to do in work

I'll take Russia, Catherine and Nobleman for me as well thanks.

[Claus]

Cool, thanks.

[MFCamillus]

Why not. Need to break it in for PBEM sooner or later.

Random - Nobleman for me.

Thanks.

[Claus]

Very nice. Welcome on board. :-)

[sabrewolf]

i'd like to join too

sabrewolf {AT} blackhole {DOT} ch
the egyptian chick hatshupset (or whatever her name is) please

currently i am nowhere near the noble level but hope to be there soon enough.
question: how many AI will you be adding? 4?

[Claus]

Grüezi sabrewolf,

great to have to have you in the match.

1. I'm looking forward to many video conferences with Hatshepsut-cutie. Prepare for being contacted very, very often.

2. It doesn't matter if you're not on noble level yet. If you're not sure, feel free to choose one step easier, of course. Like I said, it will be a very, very long game, and beginners should feel equally at ease with the settings like the experts, instead of being overrun in the first hundred years. On the other hand side, this is very unlikely to happen, for the level differences won't be so much felt in the first turns. The main issue is about how aggressive an AI nations turns out to be towards your civilization, but this normally doesn't take effect before you've grown really strong.

3. I thought about taking in quite a bunch of AI factions, at least 7 or 8. To my understanding it makes the game more colorful.
The problem is, if the map is too crowded, then we have the AI tribes knocking on our door when we're still in our piyamas. If we are too few, then it will take an eternity to get into contact with another civilization, which would be quite boring.
I played a single mode civ campain last weekend with eleven factions in total including my own, and found the number quite reasonable. You are distant enough to get your civ rooted with calm, but near enough to trade techs and not to neglect your defence.
Most important however, my theory is that AI opponents help keeping the balance of power. Normally an unexperienced player will hesitate to attack a strong, experienced one, which means the experienced player will get stronger and stronger. AI factions think differently: as much as I know from previous Civ versions, the stronger you are, the more hostile the AI gets. So I think a strong, experienced player will have more wars to fight than a novice (of course, if the strong one wins those wars he will turn out even stronger, but then he would have earned it).

Of course the number of AI factions depends on if we choose a "Terra" or "Continental" map. I'm not quite sure yet, but I think Terra has a higher land square percentage.

---------------------------

Btw, if anyone discovers that the difficulty level he chose is obviously to high, then the others could always help him out once in a while by some extra tech or so. Of course, it would be an exception.

More so, there should be an option that during the very first turns (say, the first three) every player has once the chance to call the game off and start over, if he's hit by a stroke of bad luck.
That wouldn't include bad location on the map, because that's part of the game (and normally the starting positions are well balanced), but a couple of truely unlucky events could really cripple you for the rest of the game - something like a barbarian tribe killing your first settlers or so. But as I said, this also should only be an emergency case.

[Emperor_V]

I would like to join the pbem pls

Leader: George Washington
tbvger@msn.com
smtp is shawmail

I'll set up my pw when you send it to me

tks for the opportunity

[Claus]

Very well, thanks for joining us!

So we're complete now and ready to embark on the great adventure ... I'm really looking forward to the game.

I could start it right now, but I need two more infos:

1. Emperor_V, what difficulty level do you choose?

2. Redstar1, what is your email adress?

3. Everyone, do you prefer "Terra" or "Continental"?
As far as I understand, "Terra" means that all factions start on the same "old" continent and there will be a new world do be discovered once we have large ships.
"Continental" would also devide the world into several continents, but starting positions would be equally divided among all parts of the world

I personally prefer "Terra" (hence the name of the game, "Terra Epos"), because it is an interesting chance to change the course of history for a nation who maybe finds itself confined to coastlines and small islands at the start of the game. But "continental" is fine with me also.

4. How many AI factions do we add? My suggestion is:
-- 6 random factions if we choose "Terra"
-- 8 random factions if we choose "Continental"
I would say, everyone has one wish free if he want a specific AI civ into the game. If there's no such wish I will set all AI civs to random.


For topic 3 and 4, please send me your comments (if any) until, say, 3 p.m. GMT.


[For all those who don't know it, you can edit your account data yourselves during the game, by pressing Alt-D on the keyboard.]

[sabrewolf]

go for terra... it's the topic
but if someone starts on islands he's doomed anyhow. astronomy takes a very long time to reach by which time he'll be 2 eras behind...

maybe better not take "epic" game speed. these large games already go long enough, we don't need another 50% more

AI: random for me is fine

[sabrewolf]

1. Leader name
hatsheptsustsppses (big eye chick)

2. Civ name [eg. "Swedish Empire"]
Apolyton Empire

3. Civ short name [eg. "Sweden"]
Apolyton

4. Civ adjective [eg. "Swedish"]
Apolytonian

5. Your secret Civ password (If you prefer I will choose one for you).
PMed

6. Your Email adress
sabrewolf{at}blackhole{dot}ch

7. The name of your SMTP server, if you know it.
why would you need this? anti-spam?

[Claus]

SMTP can be used (but doesn't have to) to let the Civ program send your savegame automatically to the next player. It's very practical.
If you don't use that option, then you will have to exit Civ, start your Email program and attach the savegame to a new mail.

Don't worry if you would rather not communicate your SMTP adress, passwords etc to others. I wouldn't like to myself, because I also tend to use one or two passwords for different accounts. You can always edit your account yourself when the game turn is on you by pressing Alt-D on the keyboard.

So the only things I definitely need from you is your prefered faction (if any), your prefered difficulty level and your Email adress. Most of you have already sent all that to me.

I certainly do agree about the game speed. If we chose "epic" then I guess we wouldn't have it finished when Civ V is published .

Regarding the players' starting locations, I'm confident we won't have one player starting in the middle of the ocean (would be funny, though - what a quiet life!) so that he wouldn't be able to move until rennaiscance.
Nor does the program seem to locate our first settlers on coastal islands, I think. However, if this does happen, one could live with that - at least it would provide you with a considerable "natural" defence bonus.
The greatest danger is that someone finds himself in the neighborhood of two or three fast expanding AI civs which give him little space to breathe. But of course, this is a threat each one has to deal with.

[redstar1]

I've pm'd my email address, apologies for the delay, having some puter problems at home

[Claus]

"pm'd" - funny word.

So the last detail I need is the Emperor_V's difficulty level. Apart from that I have all info I need to get the game going.

From your various messages I have deduced the following turn rotation:

1. Claus (Germany)
2. Redstar (N. Ireland)
3. Sabrewolf (Switzerland)
4. Emperor V (Canada)
5. MFCamillus (USA)

I have finally decided to play Mahatma Gandhi. So everybody can see how peaceful I am. No need to attack me.

[redstar1]

Happy days... just installing Civ on my laptop now so I can play at home while I wait for my replacement BIOS chip

[sabrewolf]

thanks for the info email. looking forward to this game


can you tell us all settings you put in?

cheers

[redstar1]

Is there a general problem with PBEM? I thought the problem might be my laptop at home but I'm getting the same at work... basically the saved game loads verrrryyy slowly, eventually it prompts for a password but will go no further, just appears to be trying to load.

Any suggestions?

[redstar1]

Additional:

After leaving it running for 20 minutes it has progressed slightly... hopefully will be able to play my turn this morning sometime!

[redstar1]

Turn sent.

[sabrewolf]

4000bc sent


btw guys... from the looks of my starting location i have either a really sad one or it's a highland map. i just hope those 60% hills i've got turn out to have iron, silver, and so on, otherwise i won't even survive the barbarian onslaught, not to speak of the AI civs around :tremble:

[redstar1]

I did notice a kind of 'Hilly' theme in the surrounding area

[Claus]

Hi guys,

sorry for not respondig yesterday. I wasn't at home all day until midnight.

The settings are:

-- "Giant" world, "Terra" landscape
-- 5 human players, 6 computer civs
-- All the rest custom, in particular:
--- game speed "normal"
--- all victory conditions
--- no special options activated (like "no barbarians", "eternal war" etc.)


I thought about activating the "permanent alliance" option, but in the end I didn't. Could have been interesting, though.

+++++++++++

Funny to read about your first map impressions. Sabrewolf from Switzerland located in the highlands, Emperor V from Canada located near the polar region.
There you can see how intelligent the program is.

I had hoped to start on the coast line with many islands around, but the Eye in the Sky has put me just in the middle of a very average-like somewhere. At least there's some water on the horizon.

+++++++++++

Redstar, the sluggish login speed you reported sounds not so good. I hope it was an exception, something like converting the file from the German version to the English one or so. If you have the same problem on the next turn, maybe we should do some testing with a dummy file.

Generally, I've experienced some speed problems when starting the game. In rare cases it takes three or four minutes for the program to start after I've double-clicked the icon. And naturally, the game speed slows down when the map is loaded with units and cities. But until we reach that point of the campaign, we will all have Pentium VIII with 10000 MHz an 4 GB RAM.

[MFCamillus]

Emperor V could you please resend?

I got the message but nothing actually attached.

Thanks

[Emperor_V]

Resent, I changed my settings, there were a bit askew

Looking forward to a warm blanket and a long game, the polar region looks more like an ICE age

Emperor_V

[redstar1]

One question, we realise that there is a bug where the first player can't trade correct? Hopefully that will be fixed before it becomes an issue

[Claus]

Errr, what? ... The first player, that's me!

What kind of bug is it? Do you know any details?

[redstar1]

You not read any other threads in this forum mate? First player can't trade...

[MFCamillus]

3960BC to Claus.


Link to Arnelos thread on the trading issue:

http://www.apolyton.com/forums/forum...s=&forumid=258

Arne is the only one that I have seen this from though but he is pretty good. I will check with a couple of others who have some games going.

[Claus]

First turn completed by everyone, next turn sent to redstar1.

Sorry, I really didn't check the rest of the forum regarding the trade bug. I was all busy with my plans for a new world order.

I will try to do some testing today to find out if that bug appears on my machine and if some of the suggested work-arounds do actually help.
If the trade bug should appear, and if the work-around should help, then I would be in favor to restart the game.
If the trade bug appears but no work-arround helps, then we will simply have to go on and hope that a patch will help before it becomes an issue in our game.

[Claus]

Important note to all "Terra Epos" players:

Please check your email. I sent you a message about a possible restart made nescessary by a bug.