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  • Back To The Future

    A few days ago, I was on 'Poly (the horror, the horror… ), and I was bored, because not many people were on at that time. Therefore, I decided to check out some old threads in the 'My Threads' section. I came upon Theseus' thread, "Civ III at ‘poly." I was reading as I would ever old thread, thinking things about the posts as I read them, until I read Theseus' post that essentially made me AU Dean/Chancellor, and listed the main ideas at the time. I then started to think what AU has accomplished, and what we have not as well. I blamed the former on outstanding luck, and all of the people who participate in the AU, and I blamed the latter mostly on me.

    This thread will not be announcing my resignation, or how I want to apologize because of me not being the best AU Dean as I could have been, but how to improve the AU as a whole. To do this, I will be discussing in this post, the ideas that Theseus talked about, and some new ones. Comments about the ideas, and my comments about these ideas, are not welcome, but encouraged.

    Visibility and Tenor- News should be posted when any major event happens, for example, any updates in the AU Mod, and any new courses. This will gain us a few more members, and start getting some advertising up so even the “regulars” will know what’s happening. In addition, when a new AU Course is being created, a thread should be posted in the DG threads, the Strategy forum etc. As well as, other Civ III sites, for example, CGN, and CFC.

    Another idea that we have not discussed is possibly getting a site (www.apolyton.net/civ3/au/). What if it could host all the information about the AU, links, information, maybe even some AU DAR’s that were excellent for whatever reason?

    Structure- The more structure, the better it is for the AU. Currently, there is an AU Dean, seven panelists, and an AU Dean Assistant. Ducki is currently not able to access Apolyton, due to a computer problem. Depending on how long he will be away, I may need a temporary assistant. I think at this point, the AU Panel is too large. From what I understand from Alexman, is that the AU Mod is in its final stages, so we do not need approval for a change from five people, just three. I also think, that an AU Course Creator, should be elected/appointed. The person would not make all of the courses, but if someone had an idea, and they did not have time to make the scenario, they could contact the Course Creator about it.

    AU Stories- This is a project currently in the works. In the Civilization III Stories forum, a group story will be made featuring an AU DAR. The “Story people” have been wanting to do a group story for a long time, might as well have something to do with the AU. In order to make this story, we need to make sure it sticks to what you can do in Civilization III. What we need as soon as possible though is a DAR to base the story on. Preferably, it will be a great war story, possibly a comeback, but anything that is truly an amazing story.

    Awards-Should we have awards or not? Tons of different awards we could hand out if that is what we decided. I’m not sure if I think it’s a good idea or not yet. The plus side of awards would be that you would get something for participating, or for making a great a DAR. However, the downside would be, it may intimidate already intimidated beginners. A neutral comment would be that it would make the AU a bit more competitive than it is, not a lot, but something. Awards would be a rather big change, so maybe a poll is necessary, but we will seen the general response it would get.

    Introduction Courses-I’m not exactly sure what the “Introduction Courses” would be. Are they courses that are based on basic ideas, like the REX or the "Rush?" If so, I like the idea, and I hope it will take bring some of the newer players to posting. I have an interesting idea that could be implemented in various forms of competitiveness. It just depends on what we decide to do. The basis of the idea is this: Two beginner Civilization III players are selected. They would each play the same course. They would each have their own thread to post their DAR’s. Instead of posting it like regular DAR’s, there would be a certain amount of time for discussion on how to improve the person’s game. I think it would be neat, to see how much better a person could get, in one game. They could even play a game afterwards, to prove, that we were not just instructing them to do what every turn, and they actually learnt something. The next competitive step up would be, at the end, a poll to decide what player improved the most. The next step up in competitiveness would be we divided the AU into two teams; one team would help one player improve and the other team the other player. Either we would poll who improved the most, or I would decide. To make it even more competitive, we could make it a PBEM game, with a few AI’s in it as well.

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  • #2
    Reserved for Updates

    Comment


    • #3
      Re-Vamped and updated Courses

      Personally, I would like to see some (all?) of the AU courses, updated for C3C. I have gone looking at them from time to time, but have decided not to download/try them out because of the effort involved in installing a downgraded/old-patched version of one of the Civ Varients.

      With the constant upgrade/patch cycle we have been in over the last few years, it would be nice to have things up-to-date to a certain plataeu, be that C3C 1.22, Civ 3 Complete (when it arrives), or some other arbitrary level. Minimally, I would like to see each game updated to the highest patch level of the release it was intended for, either Civ, PTW, or C3C.

      Thanks for Listening.


      Kevin
      ---- "What gunpowder did for war, Blake has done for the AI" - Diadem ----

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      • #4
        AFAIK, that would mean re-creating every scenario, which is a lot of work, for not necessarily a really good reason.

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        • #5
          NM, thanks for you compilation !

          here some points and comments from me:

          Structure
          i agree that more is better. one big disadvantage of message boards is the defaul sorting by lats post date. so threads that actually belong together (like AU courses DAR threads) are separated.

          to create more structure, we've got 2 options:
          a) a homepage, as you proposed
          b) topped index threads.

          a) needs a lot of work to maintain, but is a lot more flexible and scaleable. not worth it without enough volunteers

          b) already exist, but are sometimes quite chaotic. in my opinion, they should only be index/summary threads and posts.
          - a bit like alexman's first 4 posts in "Apolyton University Mod: C3C version". such topped threads should be locked for any posts except the manageing author and should only be posted to for notification purposes (eg. new AU mod version).
          - "AU History 101" is eg. the wrong name. it's not just history, but also present. just renaming it "AU Games Index" and sorting links by priority (currently 1st game link started 2 years ago). GotM of CFC would be a good role model from presentation point of you

          Awards
          imho a good idea. which categories still have to be defined.

          Introduction Courses
          check out the Publicity Stunt thread for some proposals. unfortunatly, there were hardly any reactions. after all, 2 people showed interest being active pupils.
          - Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity
          - Atheism is a nonprophet organization.

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          • #6
            Maybe a new thread called "Apolyton University Directory" should be made?

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            • #7
              with the first lines like "this is the information thread of apolyton university. please do not post in this thread, post in the "AU general discussion thread" (with a link to that other thread )
              - Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity
              - Atheism is a nonprophet organization.

              Comment


              • #8
                Exactly No matter if we choose to get a site or not, we need to have the forum organized.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Re-Vamped and updated Courses

                  Originally posted by kwpulliam1973
                  Personally, I would like to see some (all?) of the AU courses, updated for C3C. I have gone looking at them from time to time, but have decided not to download/try them out because of the effort involved in installing a downgraded/old-patched version of one of the Civ Varients.

                  With the constant upgrade/patch cycle we have been in over the last few years, it would be nice to have things up-to-date to a certain plataeu, be that C3C 1.22, Civ 3 Complete (when it arrives), or some other arbitrary level. Minimally, I would like to see each game updated to the highest patch level of the release it was intended for, either Civ, PTW, or C3C.

                  Thanks for Listening.


                  Kevin
                  I too played the old ones long time back and lamented some were not compatible (prior to C3C).

                  Most can be played with either the CivIII or PTW thought, if not all (I can't remember now).

                  The problem with redoing them is that the DAR/AAR's would not be relevant and that would spoil things.

                  The ones that are C3C, but prior to 1.22 are the real problems as those would require a proper patch level, if not 1.22.

                  Those games are really screwed, because if they were recreated, the impact of the patches could be significant.

                  One way to semi address this issue in the future is to post the map after the next course comes out. That way players could allows get it to work.

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                  • #10
                    OK, time to justify my extortionate expenses claims as a member of the AU Mod panel. We've never had to wait long before reaching our quorum of five so there's no real reason to lower that on it's own. I know that we rarely have all seven of us debating an issue. But that would be true even in a panel of three. Since Dominae resigned, only alexman has debated everything as far as I can tell. We've not yet had a situation where those of us who haven't debated have swung the vote in a direction that wasn't fiercely debated in the thread.

                    If the AU mod is close to completion ( ), then there is little need to change unless this system becomes unworkable. I suspect that a smaller panel would just result in a higher turnover of panelists as there aren't five of us who'd debate every issue all the time. The time w'd need to debate this might be a fair fraction of the work needed to complete the mod.


                    vmmxa1, I'd definitely prefer new games to be posted as saves and a scenario instead of the recent trend to just saves. At the least, the Warlord-playing lurker would be able to join in without asking.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Nor Me

                      vmmxa1, I'd definitely prefer new games to be posted as saves and a scenario instead of the recent trend to just saves. At the least, the Warlord-playing lurker would be able to join in without asking.
                      I suspect you are correct and it would save some of the work that now requires a bunch of saves for each game.

                      Maybe just releasing the scenario map after a week or two would accomplish both goals. I know many are concerned with the idea that players will be tempted to grab the map, but it is not important. I mean after two weeks DAR/AAR's are showing up with exposures of the map anyway.

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                      • #12
                        Would it be possible for you guys to touch ALL of the ideas of my post?

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                        • #13
                          I don't have opinions on most of them or at least nothing worth posting. Other than to say I think you did a good job presenting some cogent ideas and soliciting feedback.

                          Hopefully you will soon get the kind of input you need, in the mean time I figure it is better to get something, than get nothing.

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                          • #14
                            oh, and AU games coming out on a more regular basis would be nice. all GotM participants know exactly when each game starts... every 1st of a month. if AU masters could agree on 1/-2 or 1- or 2-monthly games, it would make things more attractive imho
                            - Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity
                            - Atheism is a nonprophet organization.

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                            • #15
                              I think that monthly games would be nice. That way, people would have more time to play them

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