General Games Settings Discussion Thread

[RobWorham]

Please post your thoughts on which settings we should us look at when deciding the settings for this game.

Once we know what areas of the game we want to examine in more detail we could start a thread for each issue to discuss in more detail.

[RobWorham]

To get the ball rolling :

I'd like a shuffle map, or a custom made map designed by a non-playing member of the community willing to do it. If a custom made map, I'd like it to be designed without any form of team/player input other than :

Difficulty Level
Team Civilization
Map size
Game speed
Starting era
Game Options
Victory Conditions
Multiplayer Options

i.e. The process of making the actual geography of the map is left entirely to the map maker. Teams choose their civilization without knowing the map geography and must base their decision on their preferred style of play, not what fits the map type best......

[CanuckSoldier]

Just one question right now, how many civs are we planning on using, all 18? and therefore 18 teams? Just wondering as it is quit possible that the competitive MP community could probably organize more than one team/civ.

CS

[Dale]

I'm not fused the settings. I'll play whatever.

[Fleme]

As for difficulty level, I think Monarch would be suitable? I don't know the general concensus but I'd think either that or Prince.

Map Size depending on the number of teams; If there are 18 teams as suggested by CanuckSoldier, Huge would be a good size. If less, then Large.

I don't care about map type. I personally play RandomScriptMap with every setting except Archipelago so I'm happy to play anything. The start locations should differ from each other to some extent but not so that someone would get a clear advantage from the get-go based on their location alone.

I like Marathon as the game speed so my vote goes there. Either that or Epic.

Ancient start

No tech Brokering
Raging Barbarians
City Flipping After Conquest
Choose Religions
Random events are on
Goody huts are on

All victory conditions except time. It's unlikely for anyone to get a diplo win but atleast you could tinker around with the AP and later on the UN, which would be nice.

My initial thoughts.

[RobWorham]

Originally posted by CanuckSoldier
Just one question right now, how many civs are we planning on using, all 18? and therefore 18 teams? Just wondering as it is quit possible that the competitive MP community could probably organize more than one team/civ.

CS

There is no plan as of yet CS, we are making it as we post.......

The only concerns shown (via PM) have been that it would be better to have fewer stronger teams with a good stock of active posters and potential turn players, rather than more weaker teams who decay into one man teams after the first couple of millennia......

[Krill]

My suggeston is that we play pangaea, so that we we get diplo moving asap. Early warfare is a possibility, sure, but as teh entire game was balanced for that possibiity, early warfare is a good idea...

[Locutus]

My only concern is the number of teams -- as pointed out let's make sure we have fewer but stronger teams. The Warlords DG has 8 Poly teams (excluding teams from other sites and the staff team), which I think has clearly proven to be too much: almost all of those are one-person teams now.

For this DG so far 6 people signed up as team leaders and I'm pretty sure the Spanish guys plan on joining us as well, that's 7 teams already. Too much, we should restrict it to at most 5 teams IMO (plus teams from other communities, if enough people sign up for them I have no problem with having multiple teams from the Ladder/MP community).

[Keygen]

I'll agree with RobWorham and Locutus on this.

Keep the number of teams as low as possible.

I would suggest giving the opportunity to people, preferably (candidate) team leaders, to present their team concepts within a time frame, and then people vote for the ones they find better. Having agreed from the beginning on the total number of participating teams, the ones that will receive the less votes will be disregarded.

[Locutus]

Been thinking about this for a bit, I like Keygen's thought. I think we should strife to have at least 10 people on each team, but of course you can't really enforce this because if people are forced into teams they don't like they'll just drop out, so some teams will inevitably be larger than others. To compensate for that we should IMO allow 1 team for every roughly 15 people that sign up for this DG by a certain deadline (let's say March 1st?) So for example if 50 people sign up we should have 4 teams, if 100 people sign up we can have 7 teams.

I propose that in the time between now and the team deadline the team leaders should post their team concepts (should be in a new thread so that these threads can also serve as team sign-up threads). Around the time the deadline passes we'll start voting on these: any team concept that gets at least 15 votes is accepted and will get a private forum so the team can get themselves organised. If needed we'll hold further run-off polls for the other team concepts where the least popular ones are eliminated until the team limit is reached. If we end up with very lopsided teams this way we might have to see if we can move some people from the strongest teams to the weakest ones, but that's something we can worry about when the time comes (at least we'll have the team structure set up then).

Thoughts?

[AAHZ]

i disagree with having 15+ people on a team, only 4 teams, nothing would get decided or accomplished without tremendous hassle. Plus i like more teams.

The problem with the Warlords DG was that is was Warlords then BTS came out, think a patch or two, then the holidays hit, not the teams themselves.

regardless, i will abide by whatever rules that are decided, its your decision Wouter.

[Locutus]

No, it's not my decision, actually. It's up to the community to decide what the rules will be -- I'm posting here merely as an interested player, not as a Poly admin who intends to lay down the law.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by AAHZ
i disagree with having 15+ people on a team, only 4 teams, nothing would get decided or accomplished without tremendous hassle. Plus i like more teams.

The problem is that many people are always inactive and teams will inevitably whittle down over time. You might have 20 people at the start, but even the largest C4W DG teams had no more than 4 or 5 active players by the time BtS came out (and several teams were already down to a single player) -- BtS had little to do with that. Plus, that's the whole point of a team DG, the earliest DGs had dozens of players on each team.

I like many teams too, but we just don't have the community to support that. The only way I can see us really having a lot of teams is if we get CFC involved (which would be fine by me, but probably means a fair bit of hassle to set up -- would pretty much make this an Intersite DG).

[Krill]

The problem with Earlier DGs were tahat they were PBEM, so it was roughly 1 turn per week, and the lack of stuff to do lead to inactivity. If we have a turn time of 48 hours (which I think is about right) then there is no reason to be inactive because enw stuff is always happening.

[RobWorham]

Originally posted by Krill
The problem with Earlier DGs were tahat they were PBEM, so it was roughly 1 turn per week, and the lack of stuff to do lead to inactivity. If we have a turn time of 48 hours (which I think is about right) then there is no reason to be inactive because enw stuff is always happening.

And the biggest problem with the Warlords DG is that it is 11 teams on a huge map. Far too much real estate for each team, not enough pressure, not enough dynamics.

That being said, Southern Cross are enjoying that game hugely!!!

[Krill]

Yeah, which is why I suggest Pangaea, get the diplo moving soon so things are interesting early on (and if anything like C3CDG warfare happens. War's always fun )

[AdamTG02]

Originally posted by AAHZ The problem with the Warlords DG was that is was Warlords then BTS came out, think a patch or two, then the holidays hit, not the teams themselves.

I can back this theory up, in my case at least -- after BtS came out I lost all interest in the Warlords DG (sorry Keygen,)

In any case, back to the main topic of the thread -- game settings. My votes, with justifications, are the following:

Map: Custom-made with the specs as Rob sets out, for the reasons given by him.

Difficulty: Prince (I usually play Noble, but with the more advanced players here Prince shouldn't be too problematic.)

Civilizations: Chosen by the teams, no duplication, but either first-come-first serve or random draw determining any conflicts. (It seems more realistic not to allow duplicates, and also promotes different playstyles, but we ought to have some method of resolving it when two teams want the same Civ.)

Map size: Determined by the number of teams we end up with; if only, say, five teams, for example, a Small map might be best.

Game speed: Marathon (It's what I usually play on, plus it makes things more realistic; i.e. takes fewer decades/centuries for a Classical Age army to reach a faraway city.)

Starting era: Ancient (I don't think there'll be too much disagreement on this; we want to get the full Civ4 experience.)

Game options: Standard except:
Raging barbarians (make things interesting)
City flipping after conquest (ditto; forces you to keep a city close to your opponent's cultural power centers garrisonned)

I'm possibly open to the other two nonstandard options Fleime suggested but would like to hear justifications for them.

Victory conditions: Standard
(We're unlikely to run into a Time victory in the first place, but if we do, it seems fairer to run things with all victory conditions enabled.)

Multiplayer options: Withholding vote for now as I'm inexperienced with multiplayer.

So those are my thoughts, at least. Anyone else want to share theirs?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Krill
The problem with Earlier DGs were tahat they were PBEM, so it was roughly 1 turn per week, and the lack of stuff to do lead to inactivity. If we have a turn time of 48 hours (which I think is about right) then there is no reason to be inactive because enw stuff is always happening.

C4W DG was Pitboss game with a 48h turn time as well, yet it died faster than any previous DG. Clearly that alone doesn't remedy the problem.

[RobWorham]

Originally posted by Fleme

Ancient start Is there any other way??

No tech Brokering Adds a twist to tech swapping while still allowing it. Also will be new territory for a DG

Raging Barbarians Keeps teams on their toes from the word go.

City Flipping After Conquest Slows down blitzkrieg tactics

Choose Religions - Not bothered

Random events are on Adds a twist, with the patch the killer events should have been eradicated, so nothing too major to worry about

Goody huts are on Promotes early exploring, contact and diplomacy

All victory conditions except time. It's unlikely for anyone to get a diplo win but atleast you could tinker around with the AP and later on the UN, which would be nice. Might as well enable them all.....

[Keygen]

Originally posted by AAHZ

The problem with the Warlords DG was that is was Warlords then BTS came out, think a patch or two, then the holidays hit, not the teams themselves.

I don't think it has to do with just being [i]Warlords[i].

It attracted people for being something fresh and in some extend for introducing something completely new, like PitBoss. When the game was finalized and then started many lost their interest completely.

Prove me wrong but when the Demo concept made its debut a few years ago it attracted a large amount of people. With the years the interest decayed, so in my humble opinion if we want this to succeed we need something real fresh, strong, innovating. Being simply a Demo game is not enough anymore.

[AdamTG02]

Well, Keygen, as I said in my post, for me I lost interest because BtS had come out. Even before that, though, I had begun to lose interest since with the patch to Warlords I could not access the game to check its status.

In any case, now that I'm back on this site I may stop by the team there from time to time.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by AdamTG02
Well, Keygen, as I said in my post, for me I lost interest because BtS had come out. Even before that, though, I had begun to lose interest since with the patch to Warlords I could not access the game to check its status.

The Warlords game suffered from a number of problems, of which the release of BtS was only one. Yes, some people like you undoubtedly lost interested because of that, but as I pointed out by the time BtS was released at least 3 teams were already down to a single turn-player. As Keygen pointed out, that game was in trouble almost from the moment it started. I think map settings, small teams, server problems, lack of novelty, lack of public signs of activity, natural decay, etc all had a lot to do with it. IMO we should tackle each of these issues to make sure this DG has a better fate.

[RobWorham]

I also think that the setup times these democracy games drag on for also helps burst the bubble before things even get underway.

I'd like to streamline the process as much as possible and leave a large proportion of the decisions to a non playing admin......

:cough: Step forward Keygen....... :/cough:

[Nugog]

Pangea map would be best - speeds up contact and diplo etc etc

[FlameFlash]

More just subbing to thread.

Sounds like fun and all. Pangea does sound good, though needs to have enough water too to make sure that those techs aren't wasted/ignored.

[Keygen]

Originally posted by RobWorham

I also think that the setup times these democracy games drag on for also helps burst the bubble before things even get underway.

I'd like to streamline the process as much as possible and leave a large proportion of the decisions to a non playing admin......

:cough: Step forward Keygen....... :/cough:

I'll gladly help you out with this Rob

[RobWorham]

Not a +1, just a show of appreciation.......

Honest!!

[Fleme]

After some consideration, I think I'm inclined to suggest a Terra Map (Or even Earth) with all the civs starting in the old world. (And some resources found only on the new world) Would promote seafaring, colonization and still make it possible to have early diplomacy from the get-go. Also, this way there wouldn't be civilizations who are in a disadvantage due to their UU or UB (seafaring civilizations).

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Originally posted by AdamTG02
Difficulty: Prince (I usually play Noble, but with the more advanced players here Prince shouldn't be too problematic.)

The level should only affect number of extra happiness/health and boni on unit costs etc., and the level at which each player feels comfortable at is irrelevant if no AIs are in the game.

Game speed: Marathon

I vehemently disagree. To keep the momentum in a DG, there has to happen something or it isn't fun. Marathon plays way too slowly, especially the beginning, so I'd suggest Epic instead.

Raging barbarians (make things interesting)

I think the focus of the DG lies on human interaction and not on fighting the game/AI. We need barbs to prevent too reckless expansion/scouting though, so I'd prefer normal barbs instead.

City flipping after conquest (ditto; forces you to keep a city close to your opponent's cultural power centers garrisonned)

I absolutely hate that game mechanic, but maybe that's just me...too much luck involved for my taste.

The rest I agree with,

-Kylearan

[AdamTG02]

I could live with those settings; the ones I listed are just my personal preferences.