The (Second) MGE Sailing Succession game

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by La Fayette


1) Thank you!

2) I give full power to my successor for renaming Veii and Antium!

3) Oh yes, we are going to find LH very useful within a few turns (and Magellan on top of it, if we manage to grab it ).

IF we can get Magellan. That's a big IF. I see the Mongols already have 2 size 8 cities. I swear, they just started with Settlers!

I think we may have a tough decision later... whether to take Magellan or Statue... I think the Statue will be desperately needed, down the road.

@Stu: I favoured Monarchy all along... but what could I do? I'm just a helpless bystander

I favoured Monarchy for the AIs too, by making sure they all started with Alp/CerBur/CoL. I wonder if they took the hint?

Play list:

1. Oldnslow
2. Ben Kenobi
3. SG[1]
4. Jrabbit
5. La Fayette
6. Straybow
7. duke o' york (only on Sunday mornings)
8.
9...

[Elephant]

A more chronological tech list:

Alphabet & CodeLaws - Old n Slow
Bronze & Currency - Ben Kenobi (shooting for Trade, then Rep)
MapMaking - SG (redirect to LightHouse and boats)
Writing - -Jrabbit (wanted Diplomats for exploring)
Ceremonial Burial - La fayette (back on track to Monarchy)

Even if the tech list was not open, you would still get Monarchy on the next round. Lit and Trade are also there, so don't let Ben take over...

[Old n Slow]

Hey -- woh happin? I push us halfway to good governent and...?

[Bloody Monk]

@Stu

I bet discoveries will be blue, on balance, for a very long time. This is a catch-up game.

Monk

[Scouse Gits]

Monk - Yes, I agree, unfortunately it is one we are destined to win -- the AI has yet to capitalise on early advantages and in some ways our isolation is our strength - if we met the Mongols now they would eat us - but the chances of losing even a single city to the AI given our three island configuration is IMO nil.

Just what do we have to do to make a Sxn game that we might actually lose?

Stu

[Elephant]

Blindfolds?

[Straybow]

OCC with no military units permitted?

Got file, will do something with it. Are we still at 20 turns?

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Yes, still 20 turns. But bear in mind that 20 turns is a maximum, not a requirement. 20 seemed like a good number to start with, and I'm not about to change it until everyone's had a turn. If you prefer fewer, that's your call.

@ Stu - depends on how you define winning. You aren't in the 'Silly Rules' game - it may be hard to 'win' that game before the time deadline. But we probably won't lose it, unless by AI spaceship. And ultimately we will conquer them all... sooner or later.

IIRC we technically lost the 'Invasion Earth' game, by running out of time. Post-final score tabulation, we conquered the world... but I still felt the victory to be a bit hollow.

That's the only way I can see us losing this game... the AIs get so big, and we take so long catching up, that we aren't in position to halt the space race. Or we run out of time - hard to say whether that will be an issue, yet (?)

@ Monk - I doubt the AIs are that far ahead of us. We'd probably be close to them if we had decided on a course of action and stuck to it (i.e. I think any of us would be further along in this game if we were playing individually, rather than as a succession. The republicans would be in republic by now, and the monarchists in monarchy. But that's the fun of succession games ).

[Bloody Monk]

Quote: "Just what do we have to do to make a Sxn game that we might actually lose?"

Stu


Oh, I feel such a game COULD be designed; but, I doubt it would be any fun to play, and having fun is more important.

Playing like the AI, for example, would make for a hard game, but it would make your hair hurt. You know what I mean--make the kind of choices that lead to a civ with two villages in 1700ad and less than twenty techs. Always plant cities one-off the four special site. Work all grass tiles before a silk. Never use vans, especially for WOW building. No SSC. Chose military tech over science or happiness. ETC.

But, if we wanted to play a boring, pointless game we could drop in the Civ3 disk

The Silly Rules game seemed, in the beginning, that it would drive me crazy; but the lads playing it seem not to mind, though it is not yet clear that game is winable.

In the final analysis the near certainty of the final outcome is not an important factor to me; at least not compared to the discovery, surprises, and problem solving along the way. I just wish I could still play. Even with it's faults it's still the best game, a thought I know you share. Like sex, knowing the ending is not a deterrent.

Monk reduced to philosophizing

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Bloody Monk

The Silly Rules game seemed, in the beginning, that it would drive me crazy; but the lads playing it seem not to mind, though it is not yet clear that game is winable.

Monk reduced to philosophizing

Yes - some of the rules do drive you crazy - and that may be one of the reasons that it is going so slowly.

But actually understanding (and solving) the problems created by the silly rules may help develop alternative approaches to the regular game. (I didn't say they were good approaches, only alternative.)

RJM at Sleeper's

[Sore Loser]

I'm afraid I'm still in the dark, so you can leave me out. Is there any chance that a future game will be hosted with the vanilla version? What advantages does MGE have over vanilla? Is there any chance the original save can be reformatted so I can play it out on my own and see how well I hold up?

As for the game, I don't think getting Monarchy is a crucial issue. The advantages of Monarchy over Despotism are these:

1) 3 free units in small cities
2) Less unrest problems with large numbers of cities
3) Less corruption/waste in distant cities
4) Extra production from certain squares

Hardly any of these advantages could have been utilized in the early game. You had one grassland square and one whale, that's +1 food and +1 trade.

Also, LH would have been equal to 4 triremes. With early Seafaring, a 1/6 risk every turn of sinking is negligible.

As for the discussion on how to make SXN games more challenging, I still think my points from the earlier thread hold water. But I've made myself unpopular enough already, so I'll keep them out of here and attempt to host a game with them instead, as soon as I'm done sorting out the rules.txt file.

[duke o' york]

If you want to make things difficult, I can sell all of the improvements you built, use the cash to rushbuy units and then disband all of the units we have into a single warrior. That would **** things up pretty badly - until we meet the AI civs.

I'd be impressed if anyone could win an OCC while maintaining a state of war with as many AI civs as decided beforehand.

If Stray (he's next? ) can post the next save by Friday then I'll get you the save and a log on Monday morning (GMT).

[-Jrabbit]

Originally posted by Sore Loser
I'm afraid I'm still in the dark, so you can leave me out. Is there any chance that a future game will be hosted with the vanilla version? What advantages does MGE have over vanilla?
(snip)
Also, LH would have been equal to 4 triremes. With early Seafaring, a 1/6 risk every turn of sinking is negligible.

Sore Loser -- Sorry to hear you can't join us.

From my (Mac user) perspective, MGE is the ONLY version of Civ2. Early versions were not ported to my platform. In addition, there are numerous bug fixes, and an improved (nastier, tho no really smarter) AI.

If you take your 4 triremes out on the open water, on average you'll lose one within 2 turns, 2 within 3 turns, and ALL within 6 turns. That's a lot of production thrown away...

BTW, I don't think you made any enemies. You just met with some fairly standard resistance to a new idea. You are doing the right thing by moving forward with your game. Playtesting with this group should be most instructive...

Emperor Straybow -- These turns go pretty fast. Hope you can get yours in soon so that the Duke can join in...

[duke o' york]

Well I can just keep skipping turns until one comes up in time for a weekend.

Sore, don't take the "constructive criticism" on offer here personally. Best of luck with your SXN, though I don't get to play Civ often enough to even allow me the chance to fiddle with the rules.txt. I have to play with the CD because the first time I installed it on my girlfriend's already-packed hard drive she found that it was difficult to save her work.

If you want the unauthorised patch to convert vanilla to MGE then you could try visiting Civfanatics and looking in the Civ 2 downloads selection. This patch is not recognised by Apolyton so you can't get hold of it here, but you won't be chucked out of succession games if you are using a patched version.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Bloody Monk Like sex, knowing the ending is not a deterrent.

You must be married!


@duke - what I had in mind was for you to play after Stray, and if Stray couldn't post before Friday, then you would presumably play a week from Sunday (possibly with OnS and Ben playing in the interim). Then you wouldn't be up again until the turnset got back to you. Fair?

@Sore - sorry you can't join us.

Re: Lighthouse. Moving over a lot of open water, it's a necessity. Particularly because we wouldn't just be losing a Trireme 1/6 of the time, we'd be losing the units on board, too, which would have been crippling were it to happen more than once.

Had we but known that there were islands in a turn's sailing distance to the north, we might have built some other wonder. Anyway, too late now

Now that we have tiny cities to the north, Monarchy is a huge boost over Despo, IMO. 3 units support, less corruption, and we'd get the full benefit of the local whale. Plus, we may want to found a lot more tiny cities and happiness will be an issue.