Some thoughts about Sid games

[Mountain Sage]

Hi everybody,

I believe it is time to write down some comments about Sid games. As you well know, I spent several months playing on this particular level. I won ‘regular’ Sid games, 5CC games and even an OCC. I could even say I won everything there was to win (except maybe an Eternal War On Sid Forever…).

I perfectly know I was not the first one to win those games. All players on the ‘better-than-average’ category and above have certainly tried (and won) these games. So, no real glory for MS. However, if I am correct, I was the first one to report those wins on this forum. I often wondered on the reasons for this silence. After all, a forum like ‘poly is also a ‘challenge club’, where the most dedicated players compete between themselves to achieve the ‘best’ (and possibly) most spectacular win. The AU is the living proof of this.

So, why this silence on Sid games? I can’t answer for the others players (who are most welcome to come forward and give us their opinion), but for me the Sid level is a big disappointment and this for several reasons:

Basically, the Sid level gives the AI extra settlers and military units at the very beginning of the game. The consequence is that if the AI has room enough to expand, it will out-rex you. By the time you build your 1st settler, the AI has probably about 8-12 cities. Multiply it by the number of civs in the game and you understand very easily the English expression of ‘underdog’. Of course, if your capital happens to be situated near another AI’s capital, you’ll probably never manage to build your 1st settler. You’ll be crushed by half a dozen warriors before your 2nd one is built…

The above means that you can hope to win only on certain maps. From my trials, you can forget to win, or even compete, on a standard pangea map. You can do much better (for a while at least) on a continent map, provided you have no more than 3 civs (your included) and a way to block the settlers of your nearest civ. This means that you have to ‘twist’ the map accordingly. The consequence is a game focused for a long time on ‘bop-settlers’ and ‘kill-warriors’, until you complete your rexxing. Tactically challenging, maybe, but you’ll enter the Middle Ages with a barrack as the only city improvement…
But even if you manage to finish your expansion and stay alive, you soon realize that while you built settler, workers and military units like crazy, the AI completed libraries, marketplaces, aqueducts etc. and is ways ahead in terms of culture and research. Put it in 4 words: end of the game (for you).

That leaves you with an archipelago map, or a continent map with you on an island. The game is winnable, provided your island is not too big (beware of galleys full of settlers after 30 turns!). Of course, if it’s too small, you will not be able to compete in terms of gold and research output. Don’t forget that the fewer cities you have, the bigger are the costs of your military (I remember watching with fascination fleets of 6 caravels sailing towards your shores when my total military was about 20 units, spread between my cities), and a big military means less gold to spend on research…

After several tries, out of sheer frustration, you start to ‘twist’ your maps, just in order to give you a fair chance to compete. Then, after a while, you really start to create crazy maps (did I ever mention my 16-civs 1-city-per-civ Challenge?).

Finally, you got your ‘perfect’ map for a ‘perfect’ win. And you realize that it’s no fun at all. The map is so ‘twisted’ that you know you’re going to win if you just pay it correctly and the rest of the game is just pure mechanics: research this, build that, trade A for B at this point etc.

The main reason I’m still playing Civ after all these years is the thrill you get when you fire a game without knowing the world you’re in and what opponents you are facing and the satisfaction (no, the pride) when you win against (all) odds. But this is really possible only up to demi-god. Sid takes all the fun out of the game…

Now, should we forget about the Sid level? Not necessary. Playing on Sid is a’ harsh mistress’. Even with a ‘twisted’ map, you cannot afford too many mistakes. Every shield and gold coin counts…

Then there is the message we should pass along to the real Sid: find ways to improve those levels! And the game in general… Just increasing the number of settlers and military units on higher levels is not enough, by far. Find something a bit more subtle, please. And especially, have the AI react to some specific settings. Just one example: on an archipelago map, every AI should automatically start researching the Alphabet, then Map Making. In my Sid games, I just love to choose Egypt. When I’m researching Currency, three times out of four they still have not researched the Alphabet. I understand that it’s hard for them to switch away from their hieroglyphs, but it doesn’t make any sense…

A well, I’d better stop now. Let’s fire (another) game. BTW, any enjoyable (and winnable) Sid games around? If yes, please post some 4000BC saves…

[Mr Justice]

some excellent points there ms

im no expert at Civ. i have played sid, about 3/4 times. ifirst few times i was whooped. but taking on board all the advise in the sid attempts thread i doctured my start. picked a reasonable island on a archipelago map. picked my oponents and followed a definate strategy, maximise gold production to allow as much tech stealing as posisible. i didnt finish the game tho (left around industrial).

it all fell apart after i made some incorrect decisions aboout 30 turns prior to the current turn which affected my wonder building program, result was thatr the AI (which was almost at KAI proportions) beat me to a couple of wonders that i considered absolutely vital.

at the time i wanted to go back to an old save and retry, but the effort involved in a SID game is huge. everything had to be micromanaged, to build a unit or not was a big decision for me becuase i was working on maximising my gold. (was pulling in 1000 per turn, still not enuf).

the loss of that game definately deflated me, so much time (my game took weeks to get to middle ages) for nothing, yes i can be beat by an AI multiplier. so i definately tip my hat to anyone who has beaten SID, i know what it takes, but as u say, fun it definately aint. its perverse torture really where survival is only posible in certain situatins.

mabey the real SID should look at limiting the PLayer in sid games rather than giving the AI a bonus multiplier on everything.

[Drakan]

Well MS I think that way below 1% of Civers actually play on Sid. In fact, I can't recall more than 10 players actually winning on this level, nevermind consistently, I just mean one-time wins.

I play at Deity level. I haven't even bothered attempting a Sid game until I beat consistently my current level and I'm finding it hard as it is. Besides, many people who claim to have won on Sid games have arguably stacked their deck heavily.

I sincerely cannot remember many players claiming they consistently win on Sid, in fact I've never read it in any civ forum. OCC on Sid, that's pretty impressive. Always War has been played -and won- by Arathorn on his epic game: I came, I saw, I...but I cannot recall Arathorn saying he consistently wins on Sid.

I find it hard to believe that someone given any random start (without this "resetting a gazillion times until finding a (very) decent starting location" business) can consistently beat the game on Sid. I doubt even Sir Pleb, Arathorn, Bamspeedy, Aeson, Sirian or whomever can actually make such a dauntless claim. Then again, I may be mistaken.

Besides the Sid level games I've seen take well above 200 hours to complete, in some cases even 400 hours, Who has that crazy time available anyway ?

[Lul Thyme]

I think you answered your own question MS.
The easiest way to increase the challenge in your favor, is to untwist the map slowly in the ennemy's favor...
youre talking like there is no middle ground.
Either you dont twist the map enough and you are sure to lose, or you twist the game enough that its too easy...
Thats just not true, there are tons of little things you can put on your side or not (choosing map settings, opponents, what kind of restarts you allow yourself) to make the challenge just like you want.

One example : your OCC win was HEAViLY twisted.
As in you actually edited the map...

And then you say there is not enough challenge.
Well just remove a few twist and try again to find exactly the right challenge..


Now I totally agree with your main gripe which is : the kind of advantages they have to give the AI to make it competitive are just dumb, and that is because the AI is dumb.
Now it is totally impossible to build an AI that would be able to beat the best players on ground level, since the players have years and years of a whole community analysing every aspect of the game, so that is not realistic.
But I also agree that they could have made the AI MUCH better against veterans players with minimal effort, especially after PTW or C3C, since they knew what most of the easy to fix problems were at that point, but clearly they did not have the will...

[Mountain Sage]

You are all correct in your comments:

From my experience, Sid is a very extreme game. You can play it Bamspeedy's way (Sid x 10!) or mine, or anybody's else map and either you are utterly crushed within the first 50-100 turns or you win because you twisted too much the map in your favour.

A Sid wargame takes forever (1'000+ units to move). A Sid OCC game takes about 20 hours (mine, at least), and you spend half your time clicking the 'next turn' button. Not much challenge there.

I'm not interested in becoming a 'Sid specialist'. I won enough at this level to find it a 'dumb' level. I don't necessarly want to find the 'right' map to play and win.

I much prefer playing at Emperor-Deity level, where even on a random map you have fair chances to win.

This is not to say that people should not try to play - and win. It helps deflating a certain myth...

My motto for Sid is: I came, I won, I left...

[vmxa1]

Much of what you say, I could agree with. I do not play OCC at any level, as I do not want to have to deal with the trading and staying nice. Just not my style.

I agree that pangea is going to be very hard. I tried a few and gave up. I think you need to go into a all troops all the time and I like to get at least some infrastructure.

I just am not to sure what incompasses "twisted". It is not impossibel to win with the HoF guidlines. Use a tool to get a map that mets some specs. No editing required.

Play on a huge map and use the min civs allowed by HoF rules for that size (I think it is 9) and up to 12.

Pick the civs that are the best fit. You cannot eliminate all the threats with 10 or more civs.

Pick one of the few good civs for this game, can you say Iroq.

Max water, no huts and the rest I don't care. If you want a bit of an aid in a contients map pick settings with jungle (wet?).

This is some what twisted, but no loading of the land mass lux/resources.

I have won twice on contients, but my first near win ended with a culture loss as I finally was getting on top. A KAI took too much land. That game was an early one for me and was some what lucky.

As I recall the Koreans forced me to attack them to prevent the settler from getting a spot I wanted. They had many troops near me and did not use them to finish me off.

I got an MGL and made and army and took them down. I should have been eliminated, but you know the AI. I felt good about that game, even though I lost.

Several players where doing Sid runs at that time and that is what got me to try it. It was fun, but a lot of work. I don't think I ever had much more than 400 units in my games. I use armies to do the heavy lifting, but you do need to go for moving lots of units and having to kill massive numbers.

Attacking a city with 50 or more units is not unusally in the industrial age. Counter attacks in the hundreds are painful to sit through. Especially while you sweat out them kiling some of your armies. The AI likes to keep putting up your near dead army to defend, while you scream to use those nearly worthless calvs.

You have to suffer lots of degredation as the AI gets evey wonder or nearly so and is maybe a whole age ahead of you.

But it does put you in a position to get beat, even after you got that decent start.

Anyway I have enjoyed your threads, so thanks for the effort.

[Lul Thyme]

vmxa you are of course right and I think MS agrees, it is entirely possible to win with Hof rules and many have.
The point is you have to play very (or at least somewhat specific) settings, are require specific events, which somehows denatures the game in a certain sense.
When playing emperor, I can play and win a game I still feel Im playing civ.
But it seems all the Sid games Ive seen, were all using(exploiting) things (mostly AI stupidity) that totally made the game seem sorta stupid, which I think is MS's point.

[vmxa1]

I have no response that that last line. If you play the type of game I mentioned, you will still have your hands full. You should feel good about winning it. Tired, maybe.

If you "twist" it a great deal, then I suspect you wil not feel rewarded at the end. How much is too much is all we are really talking about. That is up to the community to decide, not me.

[Dominae]

This is the way I see it:

1. Playing a totally random game on a certain difficulty level and winning (through any of the games built-in victory conditions) constitutes "beating" that diffculty level.

2. As you "beat" a difficulty level over and over, you are increasingly justified in calling yourself a "[difficulty]-level player" (i.e. I am a Demigod-level player).

3. Anything you do in-game is allowable with respect to "beating" that game. This means that a player can justifiably use any "exploit" he or she wishes in order to "beat" a certain difficulty level.

4. However, purposefully not using known exploits when "beating" a game at a certain difficulty level increases the impressiveness of that particular game. Put another way, not using certain "exploits" (like no unit blocking) is just the same as applying restrictions (like nothing closer than 4-tile placement), and the impressiveness of a game increases with the absence of exploits or the presence of restrictions.

5. Playing with mods, reloading, selecting the map features and opposing civs, and all other such "metagame" tweaking reduces the impressiveness of a game, and so, much more than using in-game "exploits". For this reason, employing any of these tricks to create an easier game does not count toward "beating" a difficulty level.

---

Now, one could argue with this (as many have) that setting up the map settings is just as much part of the game as using ICS city placement (which some consider an exploit). But, in my experience, the relative advantage gained from setting up just the right map far outweighs anything you can do in-game. Consider Bamspeedy's "Beyond Sid" game: had any of the AIs been on his home continent, I daresay he could not have won that game no matter what he pulled out of his sleeve.

If you accept my five points above, I think it's clear that no one is (currently) a Sid-level player; while many are too good for Deity (i.e. they beat it more than, say, 80% of the time), they surely do not win at Sid consistently without stacking the deck. In fact, I'm doubtful such a thing is possible; a Sid game with totally random settings is much more often than not an invitation to suicide. I would love to be proved wrong about this, however!

Then again, does anyone really care what "level" players play at? Everyone should be playing this game for fun, at whichever difficulty level is appropriate to each. If we are really interested in competition and prestige, as the discussion in this thread seems to be heading, then I think that the only format that is amenable to this is direct comparison of play on the same map (as is done in AU or GOTM). Only then can you tell truly how "good" a certain player is with respect to another (and then, only when averaged over a set of games to try and mitigate the randomness factor - think SGLs). For this reason, it is my personal opinion that CFC's Hall of Fame is not particularly aptly named. If a player consistently beats the GOTM maps or AU courses at Sid level, then I'll be impressed.

[Krill]

This is the way I see it:

1. Playing a totally random game on a certain difficulty level and winning (through any of the games built-in victory conditions) constitutes "beating" that diffculty level.

2. As you "beat" a difficulty level over and over, you are increasingly justified in calling yourself a "-level player" (i.e. I am a Demigod-level player).

3. Anything you do in-game is allowable with respect to "beating" that game. This means that a player can justifiably use any "exploit" he or she wishes in order to "beat" a certain difficulty level.

4. However, purposefully not using known exploits when "beating" a game at a certain difficulty level increases the impressiveness of that particular game. Put another way, not using certain "exploits" (like no unit blocking) is just the same as applying restrictions (like nothing closer than 4-tile placement), and the impressiveness of a game increases with the absence of exploits or the presence of restrictions.

5. Playing with mods, reloading, selecting the map features and opposing civs, and all other such "metagame" tweaking reduces the impressiveness of a game, and so, much more than using in-game "exploits". For this reason, employing any of these tricks to create an easier game does not count toward "beating" a difficulty level.

Only one exception to this: IMHO, I believe that any games played with the AU mod should be deemed to be more difficult than stock, due to the augmentation of the AI, and the elimination of republic as the single best government, in particular.

Now, one could argue with this (as many have) that setting up the map settings is just as much part of the game as using ICS city placement (which some consider an exploit). But, in my experience, the relative advantage gained from setting up just the right map far outweighs anything you can do in-game. Consider Bamspeedy's "Beyond Sid" game: had any of the AIs been on his home continent, I daresay he could not have won that game no matter what he pulled out of his sleeve.

If you accept my five points above, I think it's clear that no one is (currently) a Sid-level player; while many are too good for Deity (i.e. they beat it more than, say, 80% of the time), they surely do not win at Sid consistently without stacking the deck. In fact, I'm doubtful such a thing is possible; a Sid game with totally random settings is much more often than not an invitation to suicide. I would love to be proved wrong about this, however!

Then again, does anyone really care what "level" players play at? Everyone should be playing this game for fun, at whichever difficulty level is appropriate to each. If we are really interested in competition and prestige, as the discussion in this thread seems to be heading, then I think that the only format that is amenable to this is direct comparison of play on the same map (as is done in AU or GOTM). Only then can you tell truly how "good" a certain player is with respect to another (and then, only when averaged over a set of games to try and mitigate the randomness factor - think SGLs). For this reason, it is my personal opinion that CFC's Hall of Fame is not particularly aptly named. If a player consistently beats the GOTM maps or AU courses at Sid level, then I'll be impressed.

What about PBEMs? One might not get, for example, a 4 turn settler pump, but, on the whole, shouldn't (and, at least IMO) these also contributed to somebodies reputation?

[Dominae]

Well, I was talking about SP, but yes, winning a lot of PBEM games is definitely impressive. The problem is "winning a lot of games": while a player can luck out and be the last-man standing in one game, it's not necessarily indicative of how good he or she is in general. If he or she is consistently the last man standing, then that's impressive (both in terms of skill and the time devoted to the game!).

[vmxa1]

I would tend to agree with your points and certainly never would claim I can beat Sid without at least some map help from settings.

I am not sure a "totally" random sid game can be beaten consistenly. Many cannot be beaten at all, as near as I can tell.

I would join those that claim map size and age/water are valid. Going to civs and reducing them way down and picking them is iffy. If you want to claim status of sid level.

I am not certain you need the civ tweaks to win. What I thought was being discussed is what is beyond reasonable for conversation. IOW I mentioned I felt you could use the HoF rules and still hold your head up.

If you are making maps with extra resources and luxs, that is going to far to claim anything, except fun maybe. I did not mention reloading as I don't see it as a realistic option. Since you won't have huts or won't pop them, if you do, it is not much use. You can't reload battles as they are too massive for any normal person to reload.

Having said all of that I still have enjoyed all the games posted in the threads on sid here.

[Mountain Sage]

Dominae,

I with all your comments. Sid is, well, a Sid level (clever comment, isn't it?).

Now, let's go back to our demigod/deity plays. After all, Civ should be played for fun, or not?

[punkbass2000]

Who wants to do a Deity 4 human 4 AI PBEM ?

[Mountain Sage]

Originally posted by punkbass2000
Who wants to do a Deity 4 human 4 AI PBEM ?

Sorry, I have too conflicting, random, anarchic, short and contradictory playing hours.