New PBEM - Brave New World

[Ollywood]

I would like to start at least one new Email game with 7 or 8 civs at difficulty level Noble and normal game speed. All victories enabled, no permanent alliances. I hope to get at least 3 other human players to make 4 humans and 3 AI should no more humans wish to participate. Should there be more interest, there will be less AI and more humans.

Should there be a larger interest, I will host 2 PBEMs.

See attached image for chosen settings.

Please email me at: 2unreal @ chello.at

I will need your name, civ/leader (1st and 2nd choice should one be taken), email and SMTP server. Please also let me know if you are interested in a second PBEM.

If we get more than one PBEM going, I will vary the map settings.

[Chirurgie]

Count me in then please Ollywood. Will be interested in both. One variant idea I have seen floating about is a Single City game....so Only 1 city allowed per civ/player!

Have sent you email.

[Datajack Franit]

count me in as well for both- sending you email

[Datajack Franit]

er, your mail doesnt work

[Ollywood]

the mail should be correct. just without the gaps. sending you a pm.

[Ollywood]

well folks, one or two more players would be ideal to get this started. please sign up soon...

[Ollywood]

if anyone else encounters problems with my email, pls just send me a PM and I will get back to you. Still looking for a couple of interested players.

[sabrewolf]

sure, count me in

and the more AI the more interesting. AI are not biased and won't form unfair alliances unlike humans

[sabrewolf]

i wrote you an email...

please just remove that annoying "random personalities" thingy

[el_newell]

hi, i'm interested, if you haven't started yet count me too

[Datajack Franit]

oh PLEASE no barbarians

[Ollywood]

It has begun

Copy of email transcript (without email adresses of course):

Hi everyone,

welcome to this new PBEM. I hope it works well and everyone will be enjoying themselves. Let me brief you on some changes I felt appropriate to make due to some experiences I made the last few days:

I changed the map from Islands to Archipelago which is also Islandic in its shape with the difference that the islands are bigger. I also put a low sea level down to increase size some more. The map size is still standard. I did this since I noticed that otherwise there won't be anything interesting happening for a good amount of rounds and that would be a nuisance. This should speed things up.

Additionally I increased the game speed to Quick for the same purpose. As an example, a Settler in the first round only takes about 15-20 turns to build instead of 30 or something like.

I turned off "city flipping after conquest" due to player request.

Today I also played a live MP for the first time and noticed that raging barbarians on noble rage a lot more than they did in SP. Or at least in that game. I felt that this was exciting. So note, as soon as animals appear to disappear and you meet your first barbarians, thats when you should get ready for those bastards since they will keep spawning for a while. Don't neglect your defences attempting to build many cities and see them lost to a bunch of pirate flagged warriors. I also want to note that since this is Archipelago, those raids won't be as extensive as on a Continents map since barbarians only live and respawn as long as there is shadow. Once shadow is gone, they won't be able to spawn, they only spawn out of a player's view. This is also important to know if you find yourself in a position that barbarians keep coming without end. You need to advance and make sure the shadow is well away from your cities. Some people didn't know this in my last MP and ended up getting crushed by barbarians... embarassing.

We'll see how it goes the first few days, and if all goes well and there aren't any major starting issues, then perhaps we'll be able to get to a point where we all can get together one or two evenings into a live chat and kickstart the game even more. Maybe the game won't get very far, since to my understanding, most people never tried PBEM and perhaps might not even like it, which is fair enough.

Another thing to note is that PBEM is reported to have several issues with emailing and trade bugs. Now I don't know anything for sure since this is my first PBEM with Civ 4 as well, but in order to avoid the trade bug for player 0, which would be me, I created a dummy nation which I killed off in the first round. I tested this before hand and its cool. A player that is defeated, receives no more mails and his turn is skipped. This means that after player "Dead" died, I got the first turn and just passed it on.

Now the most important information: WHO are you up against... (and which order)

well me.....
Ollywood (Peter of the Russians)
then
SabreWolf (Montezuma of the Aztecs
Newell (Isabella of Spain)
Chirugie (Random)
and last but not least
Franxes (Bismarck of the Germans)
oh yes and
Random AI
Random AI


I would strongly recommend to everyone to look through the past PBEM threads that adress problems with emails, workarounds, etc....

For instance, not everyone is able to use the ingame emailing function due to lacking smtp support from Firaxis. This means that many SMTP server will not be able to work with civ IV. As a result it may be wiser to save the game when you get the option, keep this email and simply email the save as an attachment to the next person in turn. Normally games should be saved in My Documents\My Games\........ bla bla bla - civ creates its own folders for that purpose in your documents folder.

Last request I would like to make for reasons of fairness, don't replay the received saves 10 billion times before sending it on just to make sure you get the most advantageous result. It's a game and thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Great, now if you have any more questions don't direct them at me since I may seem like I know what I am talking about, but in real I have no clue

Happy gaming everyone and see you in the brave new world.

[sabrewolf]

4000bc sent to el newell

olly, thanks for getting this started

[Ollywood]

first cycle

received save from franxes and sent on to sabrewolf.

3950 BC

cool.... Seems to work.... (so far)

[sabrewolf]

3950bc to el newell...

nice speed so far, let's keep this up