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I've said about all I really have to say about the proposed game, and I think Dominae's points mirror my own thinking on this issue. I would only add that I fail to see how Nathan's option 2 is significantly different than a straight-forward builder-style game. If, however, people think there's some meaningful lesson to be learned from such an exercise, I guess I can live with it, but I really don't see the point.
I also think we should stick with one civ. Mongols anyone?
They don't get no stranger.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
"We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail." George W. Bush
Excellent idea, and I'd probably participate for once. (With the variants of no ICSing and no offensive wars. Any AI can win a 100k victory by packing in cities every other tile and beating down the other civs before someone can launch. )
As for the civ... I also like India, though that's mostly because I don't think I've ever played as them.
Great idea on the cultural victory but that should be the only victory that is on.
I think babylon should be one of the Civ choices. Why? Because I think one of our goals is to get more people interested. If we make it too hard or too challenging it will turn some ppeople off especially any nOObs that may be lurking about.
*"Winning is still the goal, and we cannot win if we lose (gawd, that was brilliant - you can quote me on that if you want. And con - I don't want to see that in your sig."- Beta
100'000 culture? whew...
that sound's like OCP, then ICS. never tried that, but it could be interesting. no cities over size 6
imho it's easier to get 120'000 on a large or 150'000 on a huge map, but i definatly wouldn't be able to invest the time for a huge game.
standard or large for me.
as for the civs.
babylon (sci/rel) first choice, closely followed by sumeria (sci/agr: dirt cheat spearmen and dirt cheap libraries plus quick workers)
celts (rel/agr) would come in 3rd, then persia (sci/ind).
or why not give several choices? after all, it would be "fastest 100k".... so it shouldn't matter with what civ.
my only request: don't make it as hard as some other au-courses. 100k isn't easy to get and on higher levels you'll also need to "trim" the top civ. so no "build cities on that hill and irrigate a whole desert to get the fresh water to your cities" imho
but anyway a nice idea
start it on 2nd oct, then i've got time
- Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity
- Atheism is a nonprophet organization.
Originally posted by sabrewolf
my only request: don't make it as hard as some other au-courses. 100k isn't easy to get and on higher levels you'll also need to "trim" the top civ. so no "build cities on that hill and irrigate a whole desert to get the fresh water to your cities" imho
I could not agree more... we have been playing hard and slightly esoteric games, and this is a game objective/strategy with which most players are unfamiliar.
Played at Monarch or below, this one should be a bit of a lay-up, I think.
The greatest delight for man is to inflict defeat on his enemies, to drive them before him, to see those dear to them with their faces bathed in tears, to bestride their horses, to crush in his arms their daughters and wives.
I've only just come across this thread and found it has over 50 posts already!
100K Culture victory sounds very interesting and challenging, and I can say with reasonable certainty that I have never achieved this victory condition in any version of Civ3....nor even consciously attempted it! So yes, I'll definitely play this one, though it may take a lot longer than past AU games due to RL commitments.
Anyway, I've ploughed through the discussion and I'm definitely in the Dominatrix camp on this one All victory conditions on, and only 100K Cultural victories to be awarded a "pass" grade
As for civs, like Alexman I'm also not a big fan of giving choices and I also would like to see only one played. There will be enough interesting strategy decisions in choosing the path to "100K" without trying to analyse why someone with different traits/UU did or didn't manage to do it. I find when playing AU games, one puts one's entire mind to optimising strategy for the civ of choice, and personally I have little interest in reading DAR's of someone who picked a different civ because I really won't learn as much about the effectiveness of my own strategy and the longer term effect of my inevitable mistakes.
Now I'll try again and throw Korea into the ring I still want to see how people play the Hwach'a. Failing that (as is expected), I love the idea of War Elephants wandering the globe......now THAT's Culture! My "also rans" in no particular order would be Arabia, Ottomans, Russia and Spain (and then only because Conquistadors REALLY rock!).
Map size - I have a hard time bothering with anything over standard. And I hope the resource situation is reasonably fair.
Whatever is decided, the idea of going for 100K at Emperor level sounds quite daunting to me
So, roll on AU602.....or is it AU504?
So if you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste Re-Organisation of remaining C3C PBEMS
The reason I'm putting my foot down about this (as much as I can, as I have no authority here whatsoever!) is that AU needs to maintain some level of structure. Else we have a free-for-all of DARs, random posted games, and commentary that looks more like the Strategy forum. In the interest of everyone learning something about a particular topic, I feel we should keep it simple and stick to the original plan.
In the OCC course, we did not "allow" players to turn it into a 5CC if they so wished. In the Peacekeeping course, we did not "allow" players to declare war when they felt like it. Thus there was a minimum basis for comparison between games. Again, the purpose of this course is to learn what strategies are best for a fastest 100k Culture win. Changing the victory conditions, etc. will result in different strategies, and thus little basis for comparison in DARs.
In case I haven't made myself clear, I am not in favor of anarchy in which players play however they want to. I very much like the idea of a game focused on pursuing a cultural victory, and of doing so as quickly as possible "within reason," however indiidual players define "within reason" in their minds.
But take a look at the definition of a 100K cultural victory. That victory condition requires only that a player get 100K culture with twice the culture of the closest rival. That's it. Period. And that is what I think a cultural game should focus on.
The problem is, when the space race victory condition is left on for the AIs but is denied to the human player, the end result is to add an additional victory condition that is not a natural part of the game. Players are required not only to meet the requirements of a cultural victory, but also to make sure no AI can win the space race first. That requirement is not part of the fundamental definition of cultural victory. It is not a natural product of game mechanics, because the game is designed with victory conditions either available for everyone or available for no one. And it is not merely a pro forma requirement that is unlikely to have any significant impact on people's play.
If I felt like the only thing the extra requirement did was to add some time pressure for additional challenge, I would not consider it particularly objectionable. But that is not all it does. It does other things as well, things that I consider perverse from a cultural perspective.
The goal that I would like to see players set for themselves as their ideal is to win a 100K cultural victory without deliberately choosing in favor of a slower tech pace and without needing to attack AIs to thwart threatened space launches. If they make it, great. If they don't make it, but the only reason they missed is that the technological pace was relatively fast, the fact that the bar was eight feet high instead of six feet high does not make a seven-foot jump any less of an achievement.
But leaving the space race victory condition available to the AIs while denying it to the human player even if an AI is about to launch undercuts that ideal in three ways.
1) It encourages players to opt for a slower tech pace. If players go that route, they are not even trying to meet the ideal of aiming for a 100K cultural victory without any deliberate effort to slow down the tech pace.
2) It presents a somewhat perverse standard of success in which a civilization that is clearly more successful by objective measures can lose where a civilization that is clearly less successful by objective measures would have won. Imagine if Russia could have put a man in space a century earlier than it did, but in order to do so, it would have had to improve the rest of the world's technology an equal amount. Clearly, such progress would be a sign of greater success. But under the proposed rules of this game, assuming equal cultural achievements at any given time, the more successful civilization could find itself at a disadvantage because its rivals would be in a better position to win the space race before the player's civ can reach 100K culture.
3) It encourages less focus on one's own cultural achievements and more focus on damaging one's rivals. There is always a back door available to cultural victory: if you pound every oponent back into the stone age and keep them there, cultural victory sooner or later is essentially guaranteed. But the really impressive route to cultural victory is to achieve it entirely by building up one's own culture and not by going out of one's way to damage the culture of rivals. (Fighting wars to gain territory to build up one's own culture is one thing, but fighting wars mostly for the purpose of tearing down rivals is something else.) If players are encouraged to weaken any AIs that might be in a position for a space launch before the player can get 100K culture, that actually shifts focus away from a pure cultural race and toward improving one's relative cultural standing by weakening opponents.
Thus, I do not view the space race situation as merely something that adds challenge without causing any harm. Rather, I view it as something that has side effects on gameplay, side effects that may be fun for some players but that can actually be perverse if players prefer to focus entirely on cultural matters. If some players feel like having to preempt AI space race victories would make the game more challenging or interesting for them, I have no problem with that. But I don't like the idea of forcing that condition onto everyone as an integral part of the course requirements. (Imagine trying to sign up for a history class and finding some reqirements from a chemistry class mixed in and you get some idea of how I feel about the situation.)
As for the qualification "within reason," it is one thing to define a course in terms of trying to do something quickly, but something else to define it in terms of focusing on that one goal so exclusively that nothing else matters. Even "Total Eternal Forever War" did not mandate focusing on the earliest possible domination victory without regard to other considerations.
The words "fastest possible," if taken literally, leave no room for players to decide that a particular approach feels too cheesy and unrealistic for their taste, or that it would make the game less fun for them without making much difference in the outcome, or things along those lines. Thus, the focus becomes less on building a great civilization and having fun along the way and more on manipulating the game's mechanics. Worse, such a focus can actually make what players learn less relevant to their future games because what they are doing is too different from anything they would do in a more normal game to be applicable. The concept of "within reason" leaves players some room to decide that focusing on manipulating the game mechanics for the fastest cultural victory theoretically possible without regard to other considerations is not worth it.
(Actually, I'm starting to think I probably will try something pretty wild in this game in an effort to explore the limits of what is possible. But I'd prefer not to make doing such a course requirement.)
Dominae and Tall Stranger make it sound as if what I am proposing would lead to total anarchy in which players would do whatever they want to. But the reality is that if players follow the intent of the game, they would all focus very heavily on culture. Everyone would be playing toward a goal of winning a cultural victory. And while space race victories might sometimes preempt cultural victory as the official victory condition if players are not inclined to go far enough out of their way to prevent such a thing from happening, such would occur only by accident, not as a result of players' deliberate intent to choose a non-cultural victory condition. Personally, purely from my own perspective, I'd rather turn the space race victory condition off so we don't have to worry at all about space race issues contaminating the focus on culture. But if other players like the idea of having to preempt AI space launches, I have no problem with leaving the space race victory condition on for their sake.
Finally, I do not consider what I am proposing analogous to a student asking a university to rewrite a course syllabus to suit his preferences. Rather, we are a group of students discussing the parameters of a course that has yet to have its description finalized. All I'm really proposing is that the course description be defined broadly enough that players can decide for ourselves whether or not we want to face the extra, artificial obstacle of AIs being allowed to win space race victories when we humans are not allowed to do so.
To the extent that I go beyond that and bring up the possibility of players' deliberately not pursuing a cultural focus, I certainly do not view the choice to do so as being within the spirit or intent of the course. Nonetheless, having such people not play at all, or play but not post any information about their games, would tell us nothing. In contrast, if they play some other way and post DARs, we could at least get a little information that might have some interest or value in regard to how different types of cultural focus affect course of the game. So if people are dead set against playing for a cultural victory but want to play the game anyhow, I don't see how it hurts anything to let them do so and to encourage them to post DARs if they do. They aren't really taking the course, but the fact that they are playing the same scenario a different way still provides a basis for comparison - especially since the special rules for this game are defined entirely in terms of what kind of victory to pursue rather than in terms of explicit special rules regarding how to play during the course of the game.
Nathan
Last edited by nbarclay; September 16, 2004, 01:50.
I'm excite for a reason not to finish 601SP. I enjoyed it but Greece just won't let me finish without a fight (yeah the AI Greece is being a pain). I look forward to failing, or quiting, yet another AU course
Originally posted by Aqualung71
I love the idea of War Elephants wandering the globe......
6hp elites!!! I literally did not realize this till recently.... odd choice for a culture game though.
The greatest delight for man is to inflict defeat on his enemies, to drive them before him, to see those dear to them with their faces bathed in tears, to bestride their horses, to crush in his arms their daughters and wives.
Again I'm caught posting fluff between my time to read and time to reply
So I'll throw up something serious for a change. I would have quit playing a long time ago, but the AU has brought a lot of extra life to this game for me. The variety of goals can make a new game out of every start. I won't play for 100K because I'm forced too, I'll play for 100K because I want to contribute.
I have great respect for what so may hours have been spent to make the AU what it is.
I have to say, I am still pretty much with Nathan here... perhaps not in the specifics of logic and argument, but in the general intent.
AU is about learning, sharing, and having fun. Not competition, except in a friendly way. And not about iron-clad rules, unless a specific lesson/strategy/technique is being explored... and even then, I've always been hesitant in that regard.
Simple to me, at least: We play a game all about culture. We have a stated goal. If players choose to explore beyond the goal, WHATEVER THEIR REASON, then FINE, but SHARE!!
- Theseus, who in any given course, and for whatever reason, always finds a way to generate a KAI (or KHI, Nathan) and face pitched battle to overcome same (or not).
The greatest delight for man is to inflict defeat on his enemies, to drive them before him, to see those dear to them with their faces bathed in tears, to bestride their horses, to crush in his arms their daughters and wives.
on another point:
i am/was really enjoying reading the au601 DAR threads when separated by person. now that these threads hardly are updated anymore (be it because it was completed, abandoned or just no time to write), i think we could now use another chunk of DAR threads by author, not by timeline.
what do you guys think about this?
or would it be an idea to have general DAR/AAR threads for posters who don't write more than 2 updates per era and personal threads for people who share all interesting stuff?
- Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity
- Atheism is a nonprophet organization.
(With the variants of no ICSing and no offensive wars. Any AI can win a 100k victory by packing in cities every other tile and beating down the other civs before someone can launch. 
)
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