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This is re the "New Millennium Diplomacy Game" discussed via ICQ. Here are some of my ideas on settings...
1) Play on a Europe map. Most diplomacy games have been on the world map, a couple recent ones have used Europe, and it looks like fun. We can even use the civilizations from the real Diplomacy board game: Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, & Turkey.
2) Use traditional diplomacy rules: declare war a turn before attacking (maybe make an exception for non-bribing espionage); spies & diplomats more expensive (I think also adding a rule of only 1 city bribe per turn might be good); no expiry of Oracle; expiry of Pyramids at Refrigeration; new Trade Vessel unit with no attack capability to eliminate unhappiness factor in Dem & Rep; reduce cost of caravans slightly; eliminate nukes.
3) Add enhancements for gameplay, some suggested by Markus recently in this forum: add alpine capability to catapults, cannons, and artillery (which are otherwise nearly useless till railroad); no goody huts; map revealed from start; each civ with two start cities fairly placed; reduce dramatically costs of nearly useless wonders like Lighthouse and Magellan (nearly useless only on the Europe map, that is!), reduce somewhat costs of much less useful wonders like UN, eliminate altogether totally useless wonders like Eiffel.
4) Add enhancements for historical realism: increase turns/tech rate (14/10 factor has turned out to be most realistic in my testing); triple or quadruple movement rates for ships & air units (it's absurd to think that a battleship takes 2 years to go from Norway to Britain, or a stealth bomber can't fly from France to Yugoslavia in a year); giving caravans & freight alpine ability (I think this is plausible only if we're using a "micro" map like Europe); cosmetic changes to wonders, civilization names, etc. to match the map we're playing on.
I've tried these settings on the Europe map (I can post the rules.txt for those who are interested). In eight games with the AIs only, half on King level, half on Emperor, Russia and Italy each won twice; France, Turkey, Germany, and Austria each won once; and Britain never won and was usually near last place. However, I played two games with myself as the British, on Emperor and Deity level, and not only won, but utterly destroyed the AIs. Apparently the AI, when given Britain, is very stupid about using ships to settle overseas (Norway, northern Europe, Spain). It really appears that the civilizations would be equally matched when played by humans.
I can also post images of the starting positions and so on, but first I wanted to see your suggestions about these settings on a conceptual level.
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Curumbor Elendil
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jps35/
ICQ 56126989
1) Play on a Europe map. Most diplomacy games have been on the world map, a couple recent ones have used Europe, and it looks like fun. We can even use the civilizations from the real Diplomacy board game: Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, & Turkey.
2) Use traditional diplomacy rules: declare war a turn before attacking (maybe make an exception for non-bribing espionage); spies & diplomats more expensive (I think also adding a rule of only 1 city bribe per turn might be good); no expiry of Oracle; expiry of Pyramids at Refrigeration; new Trade Vessel unit with no attack capability to eliminate unhappiness factor in Dem & Rep; reduce cost of caravans slightly; eliminate nukes.
3) Add enhancements for gameplay, some suggested by Markus recently in this forum: add alpine capability to catapults, cannons, and artillery (which are otherwise nearly useless till railroad); no goody huts; map revealed from start; each civ with two start cities fairly placed; reduce dramatically costs of nearly useless wonders like Lighthouse and Magellan (nearly useless only on the Europe map, that is!), reduce somewhat costs of much less useful wonders like UN, eliminate altogether totally useless wonders like Eiffel.
4) Add enhancements for historical realism: increase turns/tech rate (14/10 factor has turned out to be most realistic in my testing); triple or quadruple movement rates for ships & air units (it's absurd to think that a battleship takes 2 years to go from Norway to Britain, or a stealth bomber can't fly from France to Yugoslavia in a year); giving caravans & freight alpine ability (I think this is plausible only if we're using a "micro" map like Europe); cosmetic changes to wonders, civilization names, etc. to match the map we're playing on.
I've tried these settings on the Europe map (I can post the rules.txt for those who are interested). In eight games with the AIs only, half on King level, half on Emperor, Russia and Italy each won twice; France, Turkey, Germany, and Austria each won once; and Britain never won and was usually near last place. However, I played two games with myself as the British, on Emperor and Deity level, and not only won, but utterly destroyed the AIs. Apparently the AI, when given Britain, is very stupid about using ships to settle overseas (Norway, northern Europe, Spain). It really appears that the civilizations would be equally matched when played by humans.
I can also post images of the starting positions and so on, but first I wanted to see your suggestions about these settings on a conceptual level.
------------------
Curumbor Elendil
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jps35/
ICQ 56126989
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