Should the next AU course come before or after a patch?

[ducki]

Catt -
I think you've won me over, but I don't think I can change my vote.

So how about someone setting up Not-AU 101 - The Power of Whatever as a comparison game? The AU regulars that want to participate will notice it and be able to find it, those that don't will skip, and we haven't confused maintaining AU momentum by playing a comparison game with playing an actual AU course using a non-buggy ruleset?

Either way, I can't wait till my copy arrives.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Catt
Experiments in physics or chemistry entail exploring against an immutable series of laws / rules -- whatever learnings arise, so long as properly understood, are applicable to additional experiements and inform against past learnings that might then be seen in a new light. The rules of Civ 3 change in ways from version to version by design of the developer, but this particular version was not by design.

Gosh it would be cool to do science experiments if the laws of physics we're constantly being revised!

Despite my repeated postings on this subject, I really don't feel worked up about this -- AU is voluntary and those who don't want to play simply won't -- I am just still struggling to understand, because I haven't a reason why yet, we should be launching an AU game now, in these circumstances -- all I've heard, in one form or another, is that it would be fun to compare games.

1. Conquests just came out, and many people are excited about Civ3.
2. By extension (and through good publicity), many people are excited about AU.
3. The game is still fun it if you let it be.

Like you, I do not feel worked up about this. It's just that I have this scenario taking up space on my hard drive, and I want to upload it ASAP.




Dominae

[Arrian]

I have no preference. If people want to put together an AU game, go for it, even if the game is buggy. I may play, I may not. Depends on my mood, and the concept of the course. If we have to do it over again once the game is patched, OH DARN.

I mean, really, how "official" is AU anyway?

-Arrian

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dominae


Gosh it would be cool to do science experiments if the laws of physics we're constantly being revised!

Are they? When did the laws last change? I just thought our understanding of them was changing as the results of new and interesting experiements were shared, and contradicted prior interpretations of the laws.

(or is my tone-deafness missing a sarcastic or ironic intent in your comment?)

2. By extension (and through good publicity), many people are excited about AU.

That's a good example of a potential benefit.

Catt

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Catt
Are they? When did the laws last change? I just thought our understanding of them was changing as the results of new and interesting experiements were shared, and contradicted prior interpretations of the laws.

(or is my tone-deafness missing a sarcastic or ironic intent in your comment?)

Yes, but it's my fault. I was trying (and failing) to be funny. "Would it not be fun to do science experiments if a Supreme Being were always changing the laws of nature?" Substitue 'Supreme Being' with Firaxis and 'laws of nature' with 'Civ3 rules' (and 'do science experiments' with 'play Civ3'), and you've got joke by analogy. Hahaha.

Sigh.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Sounds to me like we could do an AU game with the agricultural trait with a non-river, non-lake start.
You know, to test the trait out in less than optimal conditions (note: Dom, "less than optimal" doesn't mean "freaking sadistic" ).

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Dominae, the reason I don't want to do the "Poiwer of Seafaring" game now is that I think it would be a nice game to play after the bugs are straightened out. If we play "Power of Seafaring" now and the patch comes out reasonably quickly, either we end up with two very similar games back to back or we delay the "Power of Seafaring" game played in the fixed version. So my thought was to do something else now and save "Power of Seafaring" for after the patch.

My idea behind playing the Netherlands is that we can develop some initial ideas for using both new traits, and then people can use those ideas in the "Power of Seafaring" game (and perhaps later a "Power of Agriculture" game) after the patch comes out. Since the idea behind the game would be more to help get acquainted with C3C than to explore one specific facet of the game in depth, I think that would be a good fit.

The other possibility would be to go ahead with a Seafaring game and, if there's time, a separate Agricultural game before the patch and then do more or less the same types of games again after the patch. But that might be a bit redundant.

Nathan

[Dominae]

Some good discussion here. I guess it will be the results of the poll and (ultimately) Nuclear Master to decide whether this is a go.

The map I chose for "The Power of Seafaring" is not sadistic. Here, see for yourself:

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Dominae

Gosh it would be cool to do science experiments if the laws of physics we're constantly being revised!

As a physics PhD student I can tell you this would be my worst nightmare.



And I just voted for before without looking at the results to date - wow! Forced a tie!

[Catt]

Okay - last comment, and then I will stop being a wet blanket (except to respond to responses, of course).

Doesn't instituting a house rule against GPT deals potentially affect the seafaring trait more than others (save, perhaps, commercial)? Doesn't it further push the proposed AU game into a one-off result rather than a lesson to be applied elsewhere, not even taking into account thethings we don't know about how te bugs are affecting gameplay, particularly the AI?

Seafaring gets a variety of bonuses, among them +1 gold in city center on coast, +1 ship movement, reduced sinking chances, etc. The +1 gold in the city center adds to the incentive to both: (i) settle on the coast; and (ii) build commerce-strengthening improvements in the coastal cities (time-consuming due to lack of shields). Playing with the Byzantines, who pair seafaring to scientific, offers the opportunity to build early scientific leadership through powerful scientific coastal cities (cheap science improvements). One important way of exploiting a scientific leadership position might be to sell techs for GPT. With a house rule in place to deal with this known bug, one potentially powerful approach to exploiting the civ's inherent advantages (due to traits), whether you like the approach or not, is . It might or might not be an interesting approach to the specific game at hand, but should it be off the table from the getgo?

Catt

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Catt
Doesn't instituting a house rule against GPT deals potentially affect the seafaring trait more than others (save, perhaps, commercial)? Doesn't it further push the proposed AU game into a one-off result rather than a lesson to be applied elsewhere, not even taking into account thethings we don't know about how te bugs are affecting gameplay, particularly the AI?

Yes (but not a great deal), yes, and yes.

But comparison games are always fun........its just this will not be as useful as other courses.

[jkelly]

My vote

Hi,

I've never played an AU game, but I am hoping to start doing so.

I voted for "after" because the 'gpt bug' has had such a profound effect on my enjoyment of the C3C games that I've been playing. I find myself wondering, whenever I get to a point in the game where the seems to be unearthly amounts of cash floating around (and therefore super-fast research and even more aburd alliances), whether it's the bug or not, and whether I should be adjusting my playing strategy. If we're going to be 'studying' some aspect of C3C, I'd prefer to do it when the conditions allow for, um, isolating variables.

If it goes up, though, there's a good chance I'll play regardless of the above.

Do we have any idea at all when a patch might come out? Has there been an official announcement that we should expect one?

[DrSpike]

I wouldn't expect it within the next couple of weeks, and it could be much longer. Hopefully they will release a quickish patch addressing the game-killing bugs, then address more complex balance issues later on.

[nbarclay]

How about this for the gpt situation: in any given deal, never take more than half (rounded up) of the gpt an AI would be willing/able to pay. When multiple gpt deals overlap, getting half in one deal and then half of what's left in the next should tend to offset the AIs' advantage in getting to keep gold that would otherwise be drained away from them, so the net result would be more gold for both the players and the AIs compared with if the bug didn't exist.

[Dominae]

That's the solution that was proposed in the other thread, Nathan. It runs into the problem that, as long as you can offer stuff to the AI, you'll still get double gpt, because after you complete a trade for X/2 gpt, the AI still has X/2 gpt left over for you to play with.

Apart from throwing away Gold, there's no good way of avoiding this bug and still trade for gpt with the AI. And there's the fact that the AIs are benefitting from it behind the scenes.


Dominae