September Civ2 Tournament: Rules/Ideas Discussions

[MarkG]

let us hope Mark is ready to organize another tournament where we could have a gentlemen's agreement about exactly which rules we agree to have in use.

let the discussion begin on both rules as well as any theme ideas (civ, opponents, map, etc)

[DaveV]

I suggest a "no wonders" game, where all the wonders except Apollo are marked as destroyed at the start. Since the human can usually build (or capture) any wonder he really wants, this makes an interesting handicap.

[rjmatsleepers]

[Edit: I must learn to read before I post!]

My suggestion is maintaining a spotless reputation.

RJM at Sleeper's

[MarkG]

Originally posted by DaveV
I suggest a "no wonders" game, where all the wonders except Apollo are marked as destroyed at the start.

how do i set that?

[Peaster]

I enjoyed the August 2004 tournament, and would be happy to play another "vanilla game". But here are some other ideas -

1) Before I heard about apolyton, my favorite challenge was to maintain a total monopoly on wonders for as long as possible. The game is over when the first AI builds one, or if the human gets to 12. I played at emperor level, but diety would probably work too. Admittedly, there is some luck involved in winning.

2) Are scenarios an option? There are some differences in scoring "objective cities" between MGE and other civ2 versions that we'd have to avoid. But BeBro's "Rome" scenario, for example, would be interesting as an earliest-conquest tourney.

3) J. Balsinde's Spanish scenarios are good. In one, (called "Silver Country" I think) it is quite a challenge just to survive as one of the minor tribes, but eventually you can attack. Victory could be based (for example) on the total number of Carthaginian cities (they are the largest nearby enemy) remaining after 100 turns or so.

Apologies in advance if these ideas are stupid or have already been done, but I'm still kind of new here.

[duke o' york]

So far rjm's is the only suggestion that would work with all versions of Civ. Having the challenge as a scenario would rule out those with vanilla Civ 2, and we need to get as many people to take part as possible.
The restrictions will have to be something like those in the succession games - self-imposed restrictions that can apply to any game, rather than those that take advantage of setting the game up as a scenario. Unfortunately, if we want no starting techs then Mark would just have to reload until he didn't get any, rather than deleting those he was given and saving as a scenario.

How about:
A conquest where the winner has the fewest techs researched? Restarts off, land mass would be easiest with a large continent but this is not essential, 7, Deity, RH, no restrictions on reputation or wonders but huts definitely on. Basically you have to take over the world having researched/"acquired" the fewest techs, and if more than one person has won with the same number of techs then their finish dates dictate the final result.

[DaveV]

Originally posted by MarkG

Originally posted by DaveV
I suggest a "no wonders" game, where all the wonders except Apollo are marked as destroyed at the start.

how do i set that?

Start a game as the Romans. Go into cheat mode, create an extra settler, build Rome and another city. Cheat all the wonders into the second city. Create a barbarian unit next to the (empty) wonder city, change human civ to the green civ, end turn. At the end of the first turn, the barbs should wipe out the city and all wonders will be marked as destroyed. The attached save used this method to create a 2.42 scenario which has an interesting start position for the Zulus (also, all huts are wiped off the map). The disadvantage of playing a scenario is that all techs are available for research at all times.

A cleaner way would be to create a regular save game and edit the save game to destroy all the wonders. From Mercator's thread "Civilization II SAV/SCN file format" in the Scenario League/Creation forum:

Wonders (56 [should be xFC])

 Data Type (#Bytes) Description           Value 
 Short     (56)     Wonder location       Not yet built: 0xFFFF (-1), Destroyed: 0xFFFE (-2),
                                          City ID otherwise (0 for first city, 1 for second etc.)

[DaveV]

Oops, forgot to attach the save (2.42, first method: wonders eliminated via scenario - the Romans are actually eliminated in this game):

[DaveV]

Here's a sample file where I used the second method, hacking the save file (version 2.42). Another "interesting" start...

[Ben Kenobi]

Make it MGE!

[Peaster]

These ideas are all interesting and I don't see why they wouldn't work for people with MGE or 2.42 or whatever. I'm not sure, but I think scenarios written/played in 2.42 or MGE are fairly interchangeable, except for scoring and minor AI differences. They wouldn't work with FW or ToT [but that's not an issue, is it?] Also, scenarios have tech trees just like regular Civ2, so not all techs are available at the start. About the ideas posted above:

@davev: Were you planning to conquer at Deity level? Are you sure that's even feasible without HG, MPE etc?

@rjm: I often keep a spotless rep anyway, so this rule would have little effect on me. It might even give me a slim chance to do well. I think davev kept his rep basicly spotless in his August tourney game, so he might not notice either.

@duke of york: I like your radical "fewest techs" idea. But you'd have to accept a tech almost every time you captured a city, wouldn't you? So, victory would probably depend a lot on the AI behavior, which would be mostly luck, right?

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Peaster
Also, scenarios have tech trees just like regular Civ2, so not all techs are available at the start.

Yes, but scenarios don't hide one third of the tech tree each turn.

@rjm: I often keep a spotless rep anyway, so this rule would have little effect on me. It might even give me a slim chance to do well. I think davev kept his rep basicly spotless in his August tourney game, so he might not notice either.

Yup, it's no big deal, and it's easy enough to trick the AI into declaring war, but the AI is so poor I feel a spotless reputation is a sort of noblesse oblige.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Peaster]

It seems like the grandmasters of civ2 want more of a challenge and some other players just don't want to be embarrassed too much. How about some kind of handicap system? If you like the idea, we can work on the details, but here are a few of my ideas -

1) Players can self-select their level of play from 5 (beginner) to 1 (zen master). [Or this could be based on their apolyton class (eg settler).] If this takes off, players could eventually get some kind of rating, as in chess, golf, etc.

2) Suppose we adapt davev's "no wonders" idea. Then the masters get to build 1 wonder, and beginners get to build 5. Everybody starts from the same *.sav, so they can use the same threads to discuss their games.

3) If there are to be real prizes, they should go mainly to the masters, but the others could get some award/recognition too. Maybe we could even vote on the "best game log", "most creative strategy", or whatever, at the end.

[Scouse Gits]

I like the idea of a 'handicap system' - not at all sure how it would work, but the concept is sound...

Stu

[rjmatsleepers]

Handicaping is an interesting idea, and must be worth a try. Like SG I'm not sure how we could make it work, but we could spend a lot of time discussing the details.

RJM at Sleeper's