New Horizons - New Diplogame Set-Up Thread

[Robert]

blank screen and beeps? Perhaps it's the RAM or the video card.

[Heraclitus]

Swapping civs and character - fair enough. Seemed more logical to me to make the player swap become the character swap but doesn't matter either way to me.

Picking civs. Yes. How stupid am I? Of course it doesn't matter because of the succession!

Stories and voting. Sounds like quite a tricky one to allocate votes etc. to teh right people when people are changing at different moments in the game. Can't quite see how that works.

What if we come to some sort of compromise? Players can change characters but they need to keep them from the same dynasty. Lets say one player has the House of Tudor and the other the house of Saxon or something


PS My computer seems to be broken! I've turned the thing on and all it gives out is a blank screen and a loud beeper beep. I'm already diagnosing it and I'll get it fixed soon, but I'll be reduced to library acces and my gf's computer till at least next week. I'll see if I can install civ on her computer and run MP.

[Heraclitus]

What about using real world civs for templates? Lets say playing the Germans as the Polish or playing the Romans as the Italians or playing the Spanish as Moors?

[OzzyKP]

I think because of the nature of this game that we should stick to historical role playing. I think it is important to have each new player bring a new style and personality to the civ, but wild swings in and out of fantasy would be too much for the game to bear I believe.

[Heraclitus]

I have very little time untill saturday so I hope you will excuse my tldr for now. If I understand correctly we will be changing civs every so often right? I'd really like to start off with England or Austria!


(Will we be able to interpret the civs somewhat our own way (Funglish/Metalheads/Carpathians/Piercians/Hastogians) or do we need to stick to historical roles?)

[OzzyKP]

First come first serve. See above discussion.

[Heraclitus]

We are starting this saturday already? This is unexpected... and fun. How do we determine who gets which civ?

[OzzyKP]

Actually, I forgot to mention my thoughts on the swapping civs & characters. I do think that IC leaders should change when OOC leaders change.

Even more so, I think it'll make things easier with voting. When we are working on the votes we could say "ok, all the stories about Nero were from Toni, and the stories with Marcus Aurellius were St Jon." That'll make things much easier.

[The Priest]

Swapping civs and character - fair enough. Seemed more logical to me to make the player swap become the character swap but doesn't matter either way to me.

Picking civs. Yes. How stupid am I? Of course it doesn't matter because of the succession!

Stories and voting. Sounds like quite a tricky one to allocate votes etc. to teh right people when people are changing at different moments in the game. Can't quite see how that works.

[OzzyKP]

1. Tech - no trading. I think the DoC system worked ok though no trading may still be preferable. But in succession, some of us are going to be annoyed when the previous ruler spent all the vouchers etc, or committed to future trades in vouchers we may not want to honour etc. So go for no trading.

OK

2. Succession. Yes - in-character ruler swaps when ooc ruler changes. In fact I would go one further and say in-character ruler only swaps when ooc ruler changes. Players shouldn't be storying ruler changes when we have them built into the game. Players can't use a ruler change to swap direction mid 'reign'.

When/how. We really need someone who isn't one of the players to help us with this. Otherwise everyone is going to have to swap at the same time, which seems a shame.

No extra player: A - B, B - C, C - D etc. all at same time to avoid a nation have no ruler, or one player playing two.

With extra player: X - A, couple of turns later A-B; couple of turn later B-C etc. eventually H - A with X dropping out again.

When? Well the easiest would be for Mr X to produce a schedule. Produced in advance (so not changed because of in game actions) but only partially published.

So we all know: first change zone between turns 30 and 50, second change zone between turns 70 and 90 etc., but we don't know when Mr x wil pm us saying - this is your last turn - and we don't know the pattern of what nation will take over from which. This gives some dependability for us as we play a nation - we know we have a certain amount of time - but means that the changes of rulers will be a surprise when they come. Yes they may interupt long laid plans, but hey thats what happened in history, someone died unexpectedly and it all changed.

Without a Mr X I think it becomes less elegant - all we could do is fix a schedule of turns at which everyone changes. I'm not sure if Ozzy is intended to play as well as host/design map etc. if not, he is mr x. If yes, we need another. I could be happy to, though maybe that cuases a problem of needing another player.

I nominate CS to be Mr. X. I was planning on playing, though with the format of the game I could just as easily step aside for part of the game and take on the Mr. X role if more people are interested in the game. I'd much rather you play in the game than take on that duty. I think your mechanism for doing the civ changes is a good one. Perhaps not ideal, but probably the most workable.

4. Passwords - yes password the game to stop unconnected people logging into mess it. But don't password civs to allow the succession - we can all see in civstats if someone has logged into our civ when they shouldn't have.

Yea, that works.

5. Picking civs - Seems a bit unfair to just let it happen by logging in - the person who happens not to be at work/asleep when we start has the pic of all, some other sod comes home from work and finds she is left with Iceland. I'd go for allocating randomly, or everyone gives Ozzy/me three ordered preferences and we try to sort them as best we can.

Well they'll only be having that civ for 30-50 turns and then will be assigned to other civs they didn't pick either. So I don't think it matters all that much which civ they start out with, would just save us the time and hassle of going through some kind of process.

6. Map - I haven't followed what map is being used for Europe though know the disucssions about cropping etc. Since some are probably familiar with the map and others not, best for fairness for it to be published so all have the same info?

I've been attaching pictures, I will post an updated pic with everyone's starting locations tonight or tomorrow.

7. No OOC discussion/alliances. The succession system will tempt some of us to try to form more permanent alliances/understandings which connect to use as players rather than the civs. This should be clearly banned. The only discussion should be at the level of the nations which yes swap. Treaties etc. which are never made public - well they are unlikely to survive the death of the ruler - treaties which are, well, a new ruler may or may not tear them up. Welcome to the real world.

Agreed.

8. PM accounts - do we have them? In the name of the nation? Have to think about passwords etc. for them.

Yea, I think that's a good idea. Robert can make those for us. And, in case anyone is worried about someone logging into their old account to get intel for their current civ, Robert could, as Mr. X, change the pass each time he hands it off to the next player.

9. Are we storying and voting in this? Can't remember what we said. Stories yes surely. Votes? If so would have to connect to the person playing the civ, not the civ.

Stories yes, voting yes. It'll be tricky, but I figure we vote per civ, per month (as with DoC) and then CS keeps track of who was running each civ for which days/turns. Then we can assign victory based on that at the end.

[Dubhghlas]

Why swap characters when ooc players change?
It's much more interesting to see if a new player can, at least temporarily, continue the character of an old player.

It will force you to try to play another character, one that may not fit you.
Playing another role is cool!

I would agree. Carrying on with the character, and then finding some natural, story-line way to change characters, if you want, would be mre fun.

[Robert]

Why swap characters when ooc players change?
It's much more interesting to see if a new player can, at least temporarily, continue the character of an old player.

It will force you to try to play another character, one that may not fit you.
Playing another role is cool!

[The Priest]

Great we are nearly there.

My thoughts:

1. Tech - no trading. I think the DoC system worked ok though no trading may still be preferable. But in succession, some of us are going to be annoyed when the previous ruler spent all the vouchers etc, or committed to future trades in vouchers we may not want to honour etc. So go for no trading.

2. Succession. Yes - in-character ruler swaps when ooc ruler changes. In fact I would go one further and say in-character ruler only swaps when ooc ruler changes. Players shouldn't be storying ruler changes when we have them built into the game. Players can't use a ruler change to swap direction mid 'reign'.

When/how. We really need someone who isn't one of the players to help us with this. Otherwise everyone is going to have to swap at the same time, which seems a shame.

No extra player: A - B, B - C, C - D etc. all at same time to avoid a nation have no ruler, or one player playing two.

With extra player: X - A, couple of turns later A-B; couple of turn later B-C etc. eventually H - A with X dropping out again.

When? Well the easiest would be for Mr X to produce a schedule. Produced in advance (so not changed because of in game actions) but only partially published.

So we all know: first change zone between turns 30 and 50, second change zone between turns 70 and 90 etc., but we don't know when Mr x wil pm us saying - this is your last turn - and we don't know the pattern of what nation will take over from which. This gives some dependability for us as we play a nation - we know we have a certain amount of time - but means that the changes of rulers will be a surprise when they come. Yes they may interupt long laid plans, but hey thats what happened in history, someone died unexpectedly and it all changed.

Without a Mr X I think it becomes less elegant - all we could do is fix a schedule of turns at which everyone changes. I'm not sure if Ozzy is intended to play as well as host/design map etc. if not, he is mr x. If yes, we need another. I could be happy to, though maybe that cuases a problem of needing another player.

3. Turn timer. Yes long first one, then some short ones seems to have worked well before.

4. Passwords - yes password the game to stop unconnected people logging into mess it. But don't password civs to allow the succession - we can all see in civstats if someone has logged into our civ when they shouldn't have.

5. Picking civs - Seems a bit unfair to just let it happen by logging in - the person who happens not to be at work/asleep when we start has the pic of all, some other sod comes home from work and finds she is left with Iceland. I'd go for allocating randomly, or everyone gives Ozzy/me three ordered preferences and we try to sort them as best we can.

6. Map - I haven't followed what map is being used for Europe though know the disucssions about cropping etc. Since some are probably familiar with the map and others not, best for fairness for it to be published so all have the same info?

7. No OOC discussion/alliances. The succession system will tempt some of us to try to form more permanent alliances/understandings which connect to use as players rather than the civs. This should be clearly banned. The only discussion should be at the level of the nations which yes swap. Treaties etc. which are never made public - well they are unlikely to survive the death of the ruler - treaties which are, well, a new ruler may or may not tear them up. Welcome to the real world.

8. PM accounts - do we have them? In the name of the nation? Have to think about passwords etc. for them.

9. Are we storying and voting in this? Can't remember what we said. Stories yes surely. Votes? If so would have to connect to the person playing the civ, not the civ.

Sounding good - Saturday come quickly!

[OzzyKP]

I think Spain & France will do just fine. Italy may be cause for worry, but they'll be fine. The biggest thing that determined whether a civ succeeded or failed in past games has been the player, not the geography. So if we are switching it up, each civ will have good and bad players at the helm and things will balance out. I'm excited to try!

But, ok folks!

DoC is over, so now it is our time to begin! I've got the map cropped perfectly, and the civs placed. I just have some tweaking to do and we'll be good to go!

We are going to use the sale rule set from DoC, and same system for diplo voting. There are some issues we need to decide by Saturday however:

1. Tech trading - No tech trading or DoC rules for trading?

2. Succession - How will we decide when to switch players? I suggest we add a rule that when players switch that the in-character ruler changes for that civ to avoid confusion.

3. Turn timer - I suggest we go with a longer timer to start and allow everyone to pick their civs.

4. Passwords? - I think it'll be easier to go with no passwords, but worth discussing and deciding.

5. Anything else I'm forgetting?

[St Jon]

What size is this map?

If it is too small then cropping North Africa will hurt Spain desperately and Italy is going to have a rough enough time anyway. I reckon you are right on the Eastern crop as Turkey just explodes with uncontested land along with Russia without it.

We're all going to have to give France some fine care when our time to rule in Paris arrives. Creating and maintaining a valid France is going to be tough. London should be like a summer holiday in comparison!

Still we've all got to take them all at some point so all's fair in love and war.