What makes a game go to the end?

[SmartFart]

Rah : congrats on adopting a newbie

I have no nerve for that.
Spank his a$$ hard just as my mentor Makeo spanked mine.
In my expirience,thats the best way to earn some skill.

By the way...is that a ferret in the basket on OT picture contest?

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by SmartFart (edited July 12, 2000).]</font>

[rah]

It appears to be. But I promise I had nothing to do with it. My picture is in there, but alas, that one isn't Vito.

RAH

[markusf]

MDL games i have played on average lasted 12 hours to get to rocketry... But that was with players like crustation jedi and wonderdog and me. When you don't build many army units and don't start a war early on the game can move very very quickly.

[arii]

From my personal experience:
few (3-4) dedicated fast players
at least 2 4-5h sessions a week
a lot of free time or similar time zone/availability
a game that is balanced so that all the players have an interest in pursuing the game

AC is extremely hard to reach in MP. It takes 25-50h so 7-12 playing sessions. Hard to keep everybody that long.

I wish there was a way to shorten the game to about 20h. Things that can be done:
play king (less turns to discover each techs)
play until a specific wonder is built: darwin, women sufrage, ....
give every player cash or some techs at the start to speed up the early game

Regarding the current game (markus, smart, berz, arii): smart is the most dangerous player on the board until metallurgy. He has already destroyed 1 and took 1 of my good cities. Great wall/sun tzu is I believe more dangerous than mike/HG. He can take out anybody and take his wonders.

[Matthew]

It's hard to keep people interrested long when the start is unbalanced. Time and time again I've seen games inwhich one or two civs are destined to dominate from the start, barring a bad barb situation real early. Sometimes I'm one of the lucky ones, sometimes not. I think the map needs to be at least large enough to assure everyone a decent start. Prolonging the life of the Oracle will help, but not necessarilly. When someone gets a start much better than anyone else on a very small map in DP (the usual case), even amongst equal players, I don't think it would be all that rare for one person to snag the oracle along with MC and JSB. I think the key is at least a 40x 50 map, preferably larger, for better terrain. On a medium size map with small land masses and archipelagos 4 players should be able to have decent terrain to work with, enough separation for good early developement, yet perhaps not quite enough land mass for an ICS approach to be completely dominant. It would probably even elevate the worth of the lighthouse and Magellans with respect to the big happies, at least for people who are good at making the most of caravans. Also allowing people to develope for a while relatively unmolested should allow for faster tech rates.