MP strategies.

[DrSpike]

And when I say this is the reason weaker players prefer big games to duels they shout at me. Anyone know why this is?

[Rasputin]

i guess i play civ to build an empire not fight wars..

wars are secondary to the buidling

[Snotty]

And its very possible to out buiild an opponent now the balace seems to have been shifted in favour of the builder/defender. You just have to have a reasonable turn limit and declare the winner by score at the end of that time.

If you dont set a turn limit then the builder and tech leader just pulls away from the pack never to be caught again until he wins the space race (very boring for the losing civ!)

Ive had MP games Ive won by purely bulding and defending, and Ive had MP games Ive tried to win by building but HAD to go to war because someone was outbuilding me

[Fried-Psitalon]

Originally posted by Rasputin
i guess i play civ to build an empire not fight wars..

wars are secondary to the buidling

Opinion.

[DrSpike]

Well given your stated opinions on maps it's clearly one you agree with.

[OzzyKP]

Diplogames

[Fried-Psitalon]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Well given your stated opinions on maps it's clearly one you agree with.

Not at all; my opinion about warfare and proper play just doesn't happen to agree with yours. :P

[MasterDave]

I have played lots of non-ladder games and a couple ladder games, and I definitely prefer playing without the turn limits and rules of ladder play. Granted, the ladder games are over in 90 minutes or so, which is nice, but the turn limit and using scoring as a victory condition leads to strange gameplay.

For example, the one ladder game I have played to completion had six players. One player killed another early, then my Mongol Hordes killed two more players. The last guy left was turtling/teching while I was fighting, and had built up quite a lead in techs and scoring. I had about forty turns left when I found his cities, and tried some attacks, but my keshiks and elephants were outclassed by his feudal-level units and I could not make headway after 20 turns or so. However, there was a lot of empty land between himself and I with all of the razed cities, and my opponent refused to counterattack since he was far ahead on points, so I initiated a program of good old-fashioned ICS. I set all four of my cities to settler production and spammed undefended cities all over the place to inflate my score. It almost worked, when the game ended he won by less than 100 points, I had closed a gap of nearly 500 points just by making cities.

The point is, there is no way that this strategy would have worked in a longer-term "regular" game, but the ladder's rules create weird situations, and seems to reward turtling as opposed to duelling. I understand why ladder games have these rules, to make it possible for people to finish more of them faster, but I think I prefer the longer games where there is diplomacy and you are not necessarily out to kill thy neighbors, or play in a non-strategic fashion to inflate one's score.

[MotownDennis]

All of that is quite true, Dave, and is the reason I don't generally play regular Ladder games anymore. You can, however, set up games by whatever rules you want, just as long as everyone understands them in advance. I've also played many great epic games on the Ladder, where you meet once a week (or however often everyone wants to get together) and play until the end.

The real purpose of Ladder games is to get games without quitters.

[Rasputin]

does it work , or do you stil lget quitters..
i remeber a lot of old civ2 ladder games where as soon as someone got a lead the others quit...

[DrSpike]

Well people still quit, but they lose when they do so and the admins force non-reports quite efficiently.

[Fried-Psitalon]

It does still happen, yes, but the rate of quitters IN-league as opposed to out-of-league is much, much lower. Quitters typically find themselves struggling to get games very quickly.