Tales from the Monday Night Diplo Front - The Climax

[Guest]

Look you guys, Drake won this game.

I get scrwed by bugs all the time and just analagise them to things beyond my control. I recognise this is quite a big one for Epik but, oh well, you guys played a brilliant game to the end. You are all winners!

I agree with Capo - don't replay anything. It's plain silly.

Well done Drake, I dub thee Sir Francis Drake

ROTFLMAO!

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*deity of THE DEITIANS*
aka: half-assed dieticians
icq# 8388924

[drake]

Alright, here's my take.

Me and Epik got together last night to do a little playtesting to see if in fact, the bug would happen in MP again. It did. Twice. So really the only way we could backtrack past the bug was for me to try going through the cap in single player mode. We saved right before I was to take his cap. I reloaded in single player, took the cap, and his capital sucessfully moved. I saved immediately after and now we have an uptodate save, in which things were set the way they should be. I've replayed turns for much less petty things, and I don't think it hurts this game in any way.

Anyway........................I think my challenge to Epik should be the way to go. Its the only logical thing to do.

In any case, it was great. A great story that developed into a superb game.

I would personally just hate to stop now. We've built (and destroyed somewhat ) a world that has great potential to be reformed. Forget winning or losing, we can make the world a wonderfully thriving place. Maybe it's just my playing style, but winning or losing never really crossed my mind. I'm a builder. That's my style. Seeing the world conform into something beautiful and productive is always my goal. Getting irrigation into the heart of Asia was a great accomplishment for me. Seeing every city in Asia linked by Rail was also a great moment. I'd love to try turning this damaged world around...........

It's just that we've come so far.............I hate giving up on games. Especially ones that deserve a proper ending.......

At this point, I think Epik should take up the challenge I propose, or we should call it right here. As I was telling him last night, he has the best defended country in the world and he has no excuse to lose another city. None. He has as many troops as Mongolia, and more than Egypt. He has like 180 units in 28 cities. I have 180 units in 105 cities. My nation is spread so far it's ridiculous. He gets a good plan together, a good counter-attack against me and tightens up his d, I don't think even with the other Nations help, we'll be able to crack Carthage.

We're only talking 4 years here Epik! C'mon! Take off the skirt! Gather enough sack and confidence in your nation and lets go forward with this. We don't even need to contemplate the future of this game if you can hold out and land the ship. As I said last night, I'm gonna give it all I got, but I think the odds are stacked in your favor............

What does anyone else think?

[cavebear]

It has always been my understanding that if a human capital goes down for any reason, the SS dies with it. I don't think you can consider it a "bug". I've played a few MP games to that point, and no one has ever thought they could just move their capitol around to evade loss of the SS.

Sorry.

[GNGSpam]

I always hated a spacerace. Its not a good way to determine who won.

[Guest]

Yeah, I totally agree with cavebear.

MP is different to SP with different programming in many regards.

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*deity of THE DEITIANS*
aka: half-assed dieticians
icq# 8388924

[drake]

Well if you guys think that this is the case, we need to get it straight and in a hurry...........

[The Capo]

I think Epik is wrong to think he could save his ship.

The capital was destroyed or taken, so the ship is gone. Then you have the option of creating a new capital. The damage has already been done to the ship though.

You know what I'm saying?

[suas333]

Thanks this is what i was trying to say in the last few posts. When the capital is taken, first it says Spaceship is sent back to earth or destoyed, then next it asks if you have the cash to move the capital. I don't think they have much to do with each other. Otherwise destoying a spaceship would be way too hard.

If this is the case we can either end it here with the Mongols controlling most of the earth. Or we can go on since Mongols want to try to rebuild the earth.

[GNGSpam]

The only reason I believe Drake wants to continue is to pacify Epik.

Drake deserves to call himself the "winner"

Stop being a spoiled sport Epik and admit it

[Epik]

Sigh.

I do not think I deserve to be accused of being a spoiled sport because I feel that Civ 2 MP has end game bugs which have screwed up the completion of this game. I worked hard to get my tribe to the point where I thought I had a chance to win, and game bugs have appeared that made that work wasted.

The facts are that we have encountered at least 2 and what I consider to be 3 major bugs in the game.

1. The game shut down when Suas built the Apollo wonder. We managed to continue by letting Suas build the wonder with all of the other tribes under AI control. While this got us around the game shut down, the AI did move many of Drake's units and he had to clean that up. It delayed his war effort, and the capture of Suas' capital was almost not in time to stop his spaceship.

2. When the big war started, to stop Suas' spaceship, we found that the Egyptians were given gold each time they lost a city. Suas was good enough to give what he thought was due to the conqueror of the city, but I am not sure he could get the amounts right. I actually feel that he gave us too much gold.

3. The game does not move the capital after the capture. What happens is that you get a popup asking if you want to move it. I selected yes. Next another popup is displayed and it says the spaceship is returned. The capital is NOT moved when human players are involved. However it is moved when and AI is involved. Drake and I set it up so the AI would be in control of my tribe when he captured my capital, and the AI did move it. I also tested it by allowing the AI to perform the capture. Again, I got the popup asking whether I wanted it moved. I selected yes, and this time it moved the capital. It did not give me a choice of locations, but it did move the capital and deducted 1000 gold from my treasury.

What makes you guys think that the game should be different in this area for human players? I know that the AI gets some advantages, such as better production rates, but I came to the conclusion that humans could move their capital and save the ship, since the AI could.

When I developed my strategy for this game, I reviewed the manual and many of the threads in the Strategy Forum. The book seems to indicate that the ship can only be destroyed before launch, but it is not very clear on this point. The threads I found talked of how you can use 1000 gold to move the capital and save your ship. They did not say that this could only be done in SP mode. Perhaps I missed something. Where do you derive your information when you say that the ship is always destroyed in human MP games?

In my opinion it is a bug. The game offers to move it and then does not move it. When the AI is involved, the capital is moved. The inconsistancy here does not make any sense to me.

It seems to me that I have to expect better quality from a game that has been around this long. It stinks when you put over 5 months of effort into a game and then find out it has major bugs that dramatically effect the outcome.

When this game started back in November, reaching AC was the victory condition. I suppose world domination was always an option, but the fact that it is a Diplo Game makes that unlikely. Perhaps you want to play this game forever, but I do not. It is the nature of gaming to have a victor.

For me, this game was fun up to the point of the Apollo bug. Since then it has been a pain. This was not the fault of the players, it was the fault of the game developers.

As for the future of this particular game...

Modern warfare sucks, it slows the game to a crawl. As Suas says, each round is now taking over an hour. It is likely that this could increase to 2 hours or more, once I began a full counter-offensive. Drake and I both have close to 200 units each, and will probably move over 100 of those each turn.

I guess I really do not see a way to bring this game to a conclusion that will return us to the time when it was fun and not so frustrating.

[GNGSpam]

Lets be logical

Ok your spaceship lands but Drake, basically, takes over the world.

Drake then builds a spaceship capable of carrying 200,000 people, something easily accomplished with world domination and promptly outsettles you on AC.

What im trying to say, how does going to AC cause you to win?

Take for example in HOTW. America was empty. Drake was the first to arrive. He does NOT control all of America. Though people arrived later, Drake has only about 25% of America, with the other majority shares going to China, Australia, and Mali.

If you land on AC with 10,000 people, but that is literally the last of your Empire, while Drake can settle, admittly later, but still has the full support of the world....

I mean come on.

But your right, this game needs an end, and to end it, shouldnt you admit defeat?

I think Drakes miraculous capture of both Capitals makes a good ending.

[Epik]

AC was the victory condition set at the beginning of the game.

It does not make sense the change once the game is in progress.

[sekong]

There is no doubt that drake did a great job to capture both capitals. But I have to be one that support Epic about the bug of CIV2 MP.

If you have been playing CIV long enough, I suppose most of us do, you should know the CIV2 MP was kinda of a add-on patch to the original CIV2. And it was not a good patch. It tried to make a old SP game into a MP version, but it was a patch with a lot of bugs. Fortunately, many early game bugs was easy to catch and be fixed, that's the version 1.3 we are playing. But some later game bugs was not be noticed, till this Monday night Diplo game. As Epic list above, they are obviously bugs: The Apollo one, the Egypt money bug and the MP capital Moving bug. Espacially the last one. In a recent game, I noticed as long as the AI can move their capital, their un-launched SS is still there. Until it does not have money to capital. Plus, if as Epic said, if his SS can survive when AI is controlling his civ, then it should the way it suppose to be. Period.

I also agree with Epic that arriving AC as the closure condition of the game. Control the whole world be single CIV is just too un-realistic in a dipo game. Although to declare who is the winner is another story. For a GAME last almost half year, each player have its right to define the winner in his own way. At long as you enjoyed it...

Finally, I want to thanks your group to discover these later game bugs, so other players who want to play that long could know it before hand, and decide how to deal with them. And I hope the CIV3 will be better one, since it should have considerred the MP problem from beginning.

O-LA

[Guest]

I'm still confused here.

Aren't you all still skirting around what suas is saying?
IE the ORDER of the dialogs.
1) Capital captured
2) SS destroyed
3) choice of new capital in SP mode

If so, then suas is correct and the discussion is irrelevant!
Drake has destroyed both SS, now play on!!!
OR, declare Drake the winner.

I think there is a BIG difference between SP and MP wins. If humans could just keep moving their capital around it would be way too hard but in SP where the AI is SO EASY to beat it's NOT a problem!!

BTW You can as humans still move your capital by BUILDING a palace in a city of choice This would have been a better strategy for Epik.
Makeo did that to me once and called his capital NONE and called two other cities NONE! One of them had the NEW PALACE in it!! LOL
But I nailed them all

That money bug occurs in SP mode too, BTW.

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*deity of THE DEITIANS*
aka: half-assed dieticians
icq# 8388924
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by deity (edited May 04, 2001).]</font>

[Epik]

Sekong, I was not aware that MP was a "patch". Does anyone think that this is worth a report to MicroProse? Do you know where to report bugs?

Diety...

The order of events are:

1. Capital is captured by Drake

2. The game informs me that my capital has been overrun and asks if I want to move the capital at the cost of 1000 gold. I choose to move it.

3. A message is displayed saying my ship has returned to earth (it is destroyed).

4. The capital is not moved (so on top of everything else you have to build a palace).

There is a signifcant difference when I let the AI perform the capture. The game states the city that the capital will be moved to (no choice of city is given). When the AI controls either the defender or the attacker, then the capital is moved. No city was named when Drake and I were in control, and no move took place.