"Strategic Balance" Resource Setting

[pdxsean]

There has been some discussion about the potential disparity in starting locations in MP Civ games. This comes into play heavily if you're in a situation where first contact and war occur very early on.

Has anyone tried the Strategic Balance resource setting for MP games, esp duels? Does it work like it sounds? I'd much rather have a standard amt of resources if they were balanced among all the players.

[jobe]

I think that might only refer to "strategic" resources like horse, iron etc.

Still I think we should investigate this option and see what it exactly does.

[pdxsean]

Seems like it should be easy to have a sort of "Each city has 10 food, 5 shields, 5 gold in it's radius" setting.

I thought there was actually a mirror map type, but I looked and don't see one.

[Choles]

tried 6 games with legendary and 4 with strategic.

think strategic is better balanced than legendary, if we only look at iron/horses.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...thkey=CPLDzPID

in legendary settings there is a high chance that one player has 6 iron in range of his starting city and the other one has 0.

this of course works out great for one player if he decides to build warriors and upgrade 6 to swordsmen and charge the other civ.

where as in strategic it's more likely that there is 2 iron differance, making it more balanced imo.

as for the luxery and deer/wheat/cattle/sheep, it seems very random, in both legendary and strategic.

but well I know 10 games isn't much, and haven't had time to do more, perhaps do some more tests tomorrow.

[pdxsean]

Funny I missed the whole strategic side of your analysis there and only focused on the legendary aspect.

The longer a game lasts, the less significant the start. I liked the one Robert and I played on continents, as we both had five or six cities over a larger area so things balanced out before we made contact. A number of the map types seem oriented toward this, although I know some people aren't so keen on the 2-3 hour time commitment.

[Choles]

I'm just thinking about the fast duels, but yes I would like to try the continents.

how are sea battles in multiplayer ? can imagine it's quite a click fest, to move the embarked units.

[jobe]

Thanks Choles, that is very interesting. Would be awesome if you continued that research.

Which map did you test with? Who knows what impact that has...

[pdxsean]

I'm just thinking about the fast duels, but yes I would like to try the continents.

how are sea battles in multiplayer ? can imagine it's quite a click fest, to move the embarked units.

The game Robert and I played lasted about 180 turns, I believe, and took around 2 hours. We were at Standard speed, not quick, standard resources, 0 CS and 0 Barbarians.

I invaded him before he had any sort of fleet, I had two caravels and I think he only had one trireme. I basically hurried my troops across the ocean once I discovered Navigation and took him completely by surprise. If he had had any sort of navy I agree it'd be a real mess of who is clicking on who.

[Choles]

Thanks Choles, that is very interesting. Would be awesome if you continued that research.

Which map did you test with? Who knows what impact that has...

I did it on duel size, north vs south, warlord diff (if that makes a difference), disable start bias, no ancient ruins and no barbs.

will most likely do up to 19 tests of each. perhaps on sunday between games :P