Apolyton University Poll 4 - The future

[Rhothaerill]

This will be the fourth in a series of polls regarding Apolyton University and the four Civ3 democracy games played here on Apolyton. Per the initiative of Theseus in this thread http://www.apolyton.com/forums/showt...threadid=90953 we are attempting to increase the attractiveness of each with introduction pages, new ways of approaching players, and generally more fun. This fourth poll will provide a compilation of ideas from this thread for improving Apolyton University in addition to the ideas from polls 1 through 3. Please vote on whether you believe we have enough support for this to take the initiative further and ask the owners (MarkG and DanQ) for their support in this endeavor. Thanks.

1) Visibility: We need to get better coverage on the front CivIII page of 'poly. I suggest that at the top right, the links be changed as follows:

News | Archive
Downloads | FAQ | Help
Reviews | Links | Suggestions
Price Comparison
Strategy Articles | Stories
Forum-General
Forum-Strategy
Forum-Creation
Democracy Games
Apolyton University

2) Intro Pages: I think we depend a little to heavily on the forum format. I suggest that we design an Introduction page for each of Strategy, AU, and each of the DGs. That will probably mean one - two people per in terms of content (or more... we can set up a thread for the design / content of each), whereas we will probably want just one HTML person in order to maintain a consistent design.

3) Chancellor: We need someone to sorta take a step back, look at the curriculum thus far, and suggest what courses are needed / would be fun to round things out. This also might include re-visiting some of the early concepts. This is what I refer to as the Chancellor position. If up for it, I again nominate badams. If not, then I nominate Nuclear Master.

4) Intro Courses: I loved alva's thought about having something special for newer players / posters. I think an ongoing series of succession games works, but I would also consider a series of designed courses, one for each difficulty level, which would be the AU standards. This would make it easy for us to measure / advise newer players on their skills.

5) Course Descriptions: I think we need to go a bit further than badams did... I am sure many jaws dropped upon reading posts like "AU 208 and 402 were my first AU games"!! We need to make sure newer players know which courses to play!! Speaking of making some extra steps to formalize AU more, one little thing I think that could increase the appeal of AU games right now would be to include an image of the start position with all future games

6) The key to GOTMs success has been:
a) prominent links on the front page of the site
b) a well organised and dedicated team of staff
c) organised strategy threads
d) a community where the top players show how they won and why they made the choices they did.
e) efficient weeding out of cheaters.

7) AU Mod - Shouldn't we make a big deal of this? I'm not totally into the modding community, but as far as I know this is the best mod around. Alexman has even been trying to get cracker to consider for the GOTM!!! This is a potentially great branding product for CivIII on 'poly, and we've done nothing with it, really. I would also like to point out that playing with the AU mod is in no way compulsory for AU games. It is entirely optional. We don't even specify the difficulty setting any more, which is a good thing IMHO.

8) Have some sort of summary table by phase of who accomplished what? For example: difficulty level, contacts, tech, gold, gpt, military, GWs/SWs, etc. Then, also, in the oh-so-'poly anarchic but helpful way, the more advanced players could chime in to help the newer players. This would also help facilitate the awards concept we are toying with.

9) If we could get every new AU course listed as a CIV III news item, I think we could increase our visibility. Nuclear Master is an ACS news editor and has received the go-ahead to post AU and democracy game news.

[Dominae]

Some random thoughts, since this seems to be a catch-all thread:

1. Apolyton University should not include the following: graphic mods, new units, gifts to the player or AI, other pleasantries, and pretty much everything else that makes the game feel like a scenario instead of stock Civ3. I can see that all these things make sense at GOTM (except for the graphics package, what a pain) because there's competition involved. But AU has always been about learning to play Civ3, not some hybrid (no matter how small the changes).

2. The exception to the above is, of course, the AU mod, of which I must say a few things.

First, the AU mod has always been a purely optional and "work in progress" feature of AU, and I believe it should remain this way. We should make it clear to everyone new (and old) that this is the case. If there are some choices in the mod that bug you, simply do not use it.

Second, the AU mod has always generated a lot of debate because different people have different views as to what it is supposed to do and how to go about doing it (everyone thinks they're a game designer), and therefore needs a lot more caretaking than it has been given recently if we are to keep it alive. alexman more or less quit as caretaker of the AU mod, and no one has stepped in to replace him. Some time ago I proposed the idea that we should have a 3-person committe that would rule on the contents of the mod, and I believe this is a good time to revisit this idea.

Third, mod games and stock games should have seperate DAR/AAR threads. Since we plan on expanding AU out of the Strategy forum (we are, right?) this should not cause a problem. People playing the AU mod version would therefore form a distinct test group for new additions or removals to the mod.

3. I agree that badams52 makes a fine chancellor, and I hope he accepts the position. However, I've been an AU regular for some time now and must say that Nuclear Master is somewhat new to me with respect to AU. I've nothing against him/her, it's just that it would be better if we had someone wtih a better sense of "AU history" calling the shots. That said, I'm sure Nuclear Master would do a fine job if he/she is dedicated enough (sorry for the gender confusion, this time for some reason I did not want to simply assume everyone on these boards is male!).

4. I'm sure I've got more to say about this, but I'm tired now.


Dominae

[sabrewolf]

is this poll a question? ofcourse we can ask them. they can still say no, if they don't like the idea.
but anything to make poly even more attactive can't harm!

[Theseus]

Let's run this one through Monday (certain people... *coughstartwithanAcoughcough* mostly post from work).

Dom, I don't know if AU Mod and stock games need to be separated... we've never done that before, have we?

[Rhothaerill]

I set all the polls up for ten days to give people plenty of time to vote in them (such as those who mostly post from work...hmm...umm...cough, cough ).

[rush]

I (...hmm...umm...cough, cough ) mostly post from work.
But I am coming in on Sunday too. Sigh ! So I have just voted.

Btw, Great Job. Rhotheraerill in creating these polls.

[badams52]

Since in a certain way I've become an outsider, there's one thing I would like to mention about the 402s way of doing DARs. I'll probably mention this again when the next course is getting closer to being underway, but for those who aren't going to play a scenario for one reason or another, it might be easier to read the DARs if they are all contained in one thread.

It does makes sense to separate them. And also is a good way to keep people from seeing too far in the future i.e. the map.

At the same time, those who aren't playing now have multiple threads to look at in order to watch a complete story line. So it makes it harder for newcomers to watch the stories. I don't know if those who don't play often ignore them, but with multpile threads, this is more likely the case.

I don't know which way will be better for AUs purposes at this time, but just wanted to give you something to keep in mind.

I'm sorry if this was mentioned in one of the AU strategy threads already, I haven't actually read much of the 402 DARs.

[vmxa1]

Yes that problem with the spilt DAR's is as you say. I am not sure which is the way to go.
The idea of having it come in pieces is good for the players as they can post more or less as it suits them.
In such a long game, you are going to have problems with players getting it all out so it can be read at once anyway. I can live with either way.

[Konquest02]

Is there a way to merge all topics once a game is closed? That way, we would have the best of both worlds: separate DAR threads for spoiler prevention and a nice huge thread to read the stories once the game is over...

[MrWhereItsAt]

Threads can be merged or split - I've done it myself. It would be a little messy as I'm not 100% certain of the order of things, whether it would slap them all together as one thread, then the next underneath etc or whether it would rearrange all posts from all threads into chronological order... I will go and test it and report back here.

OK... I am very lucky I found these polls and discussion - since it's in Civ3 General I had no idea about any of it until a chance mention by Rhothaerill somewhere else. Now if this discussion had gone on in Civ3-Strat, which I check almost religiously....

[MrWhereItsAt]

I have actually found something to contribute - since we are attempting to make the AU part more visible, I would suggest what we in the DGs have - the newZupdate.

This is a paragraph sent off every now and again to DanQ that is posted on the news page for Civ3 and mentions elections or important in-game events for the DGs. Basically a "this week/month" part of a newspaper.

These ARE seen and some new members filter in almost whenever a good update is posted. Perhaps we could get the same thing done with new AU courses as they are started, by asking DanQ to post a little paragraph about the new course on the Civ3 News Page. It takes so little time to write down what is needed - basically exactly the same as what you see at CivFanatics with their GOTMs.

[Rhothaerill]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
I have actually found something to contribute - since we are attempting to make the AU part more visible, I would suggest what we in the DGs have - the newZupdate.

This is a paragraph sent off every now and again to DanQ that is posted on the news page for Civ3 and mentions elections or important in-game events for the DGs. Basically a "this week/month" part of a newspaper.

These ARE seen and some new members filter in almost whenever a good update is posted. Perhaps we could get the same thing done with new AU courses as they are started, by asking DanQ to post a little paragraph about the new course on the Civ3 News Page. It takes so little time to write down what is needed - basically exactly the same as what you see at CivFanatics with their GOTMs.

Yes that's definitely something we're planning on doing. Nuclear Master who is one of the new ACS news editors has already received the go-ahead to post news info when we have it.

[Rhothaerill]

This looks like another winner so far...and another bump to make sure everyone has a chance to vote one last time if they want to.

A few more days and we'll take this to Mark and Dan for their input.

[badams52]

Just so you know, Mark's on vacation from poly, joined the army I believe.

[Panag]

Originally posted by badams52
Just so you know, Mark's on vacation from poly, joined the army I believe.

hi ,

only for one year , he still comes from time to time to pay us a visit , ....

have a nice day