Hi I'm Lancer, you might remember me from such classics as 'The First Ever Civ 3...

[TechWins]

Thanks for your great insight LaRusso.

[Lancer]

Wittlich, standardized map it is then.

How about 15 minutes waiting instead of 30? Be there or be square. If someone arrives after their Civ has been turned over to the AI, then they can take over at that point, assuming they can contact the players to let them in, sound good?

We'll have to go through this thread when Civ 3 comes out and see what works, and condense it down to some rules.

Your "long haul" rule seems fair, we all have to manage under the same rules, so if TechWins agrees, so be it.

Wittlich, you want to handle the backup saved games? That way if there is a discrepancy discovered between a players saved game and the real one, the cheat can be proven. At least 2 people in each game would have to email you the save under these circumstances, and you would be the judge, jury, and executioner. In games where you take part, send the files to TechWins if he's OK w/ that. OK TechWins?

I'm purposely minimizing my part in this as I don't know beans about comps or how to play w/ files and such. I'm a hopeless antique.

I'm going to submit this and reply to TechWins and the other posts in a couple minutes.

[Lancer]

TechWins, paychecks will be issued on the second Tuesday of each week...

Everything sounds good to me about your map except that archapelico is the opposite of continents, what we had discussed earlier. If you don't like continents then we can meet in the middle w/ normal. What do you prefer Wittlich?

TechWins, assuming Wittlich likes the idea, are you in favor of his controlling the third save game, as you mentioned?

I like your contract idea. It should also bring up the fact that we make decisions regarding changes and additions.

Since you two are sharing the decision making process, I will play in the tourney. Each of us will be equal in decision making. As there are three of us, there should never be a problem not resolved by a vote.

There will be no way to discern why a person joins the tourney. If a person accuses another of joining for the specific purpose of knocking someone else out, that's hard to prove. I don't see how you can implement this, and it will just lead to unresolved confusion in my view. Someone comes gunning for you, that's life.

Or, wait a sec. You don't have to play under your own name if you don't choose to. However you must submit the name you are playing under to me, I'll be keeper of identities...I'm not gunng for anyone, and will play under my name. I might have a few gunning for me, but I have friends too. This sound good guys?

Hey, how about a second place finisher goes on to the next round? This would allow an allied victory and seriously shorten the game time for each game. No two way slogging matches.

Thoughts?

LaRusso, I'll give that some thought as you are still early in the planning.

:thinks:

umm, no.

[TechWins]

Yeah I agree with the "long haul".

In games where you take part, send the files to TechWins if he's OK w/ that. OK TechWins?

How would this be done?

I think 15 minutes would be better because if we did 30 minutes it could delay the tournament a lot.

[TechWins]

I'm glad to hear that you are going to join the tourney. But you are lying when you say that you aren't going to be gunning for anybody. You know you are going to want to take out AH.

Oh yeah continents is what I thought the archipealago meant. Continents is what I want too. Much much more fun.

I'm not sure about my opinion on 2nd place advancement. At this point I'm unbiased towards it and I can't make a decision. Whatever you and Wittlich is fine with me.

What do you guys think about victory conditions and civ specific abilities?

[Wittlich]

Concerning the saving of the game files - Sounds good to me. Yes, the players can email me a copy of the game(s) in question and TechWins can save the files if I am involved in the given game. Of course, in order for this to work, the actual players involved in the games will have to remember to send either TechWins or myself the saved file. But this shouldn't be a problem - as long as they remember to email it to us.

Concerning continents vs archipelago - Actually, I usually play archipelago . I just didn't think it was wise to have everyone basically strating out on the same land-mass/continent.

Concerning 2nd place advancement - Wouldn't it be rather difficult to decide who actually holds 2nd place at the completion of the game? I mean, the actual winner is easy, but to pick the 2nd place person might be a little difficult - what do you use? His/her military strength? His/her cultural ranking? His/her political influence? Do you see what I mean?

Concerning Victory conditions and civ specific abilities - The victory conditions are fine. To play or not to play with the civ specific abilities...I don't know, since none of us are actually familiar with it. Yes, we know "basically" what the civ specific abilities do, but we don't know how much of an effect it will have on the game as a whole. I suggest we take the position of "wait-and-see" concerning the civ specific abilities.

You are both right and I agree - a 15 minute waiting period is better than a 30 minute period. I basically just through a number out onto the floor to see what everyone thought.

[Wittlich]

NO INITIAL MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT?!?

Well, this is a DEFINATE problem with trying to have a Civ3 Championship!

I was reading the below listed thread and the posts indicated that Civ3 will most likely NOT ship with Multiplayer support, rather the multiplayer function will come in the form of a later-to-be-released upgrade/patch:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25964

Now I remember reading on the Firaxis FAQs that multiplayer would be supported. If I recall the wording, Firaxis' response was something like ..."You bet. Civ3 will have the ability to multiplayer using TCP/IP, Lan, ect"....

Well, I went back to the Civ3.com site and again looked up Firaxis' response to the question "Will there be multiplayer support for Civ III?" which is located under "The Civilization III FAQ: General."

This is NOW the response listed for that question:
We're working on some unique things with multiplayer, but we're not ready to start talking about it yet. It has always been challenging to make multiplayer really fun in turn-based games and we're looking at new ways of approaching that.

So, this is leading me to conclude that Firaxis has run out of time to place multiplayer support in the game and still make their October USA release date. It still looks like Firaxis has plans for Multiplayer support for the game, but it will be released later....

And of course there has been complete silence so far from Firaxis concerning my question of how many human players can be supported in Civ3.

So, unless there is a change, it looks like our hopes of having the First Ever Civ3 Championship is currently on hold and will remain so for the forseeable future.

[TechWins]

I think MP will be released with civ3. Especially since Jeff said that (on this forum) simultaneous play will be included.

[Lancer]

TechWins, as I said earlier, AH is experienced at multiplay. I'll be counting on you to schedule a very tough line up for him so he gets taken out early... Actually I don't even know if he'll join us. Heck, it might just be a half a dozen guys having a great time.

TechWins, how about you and Wittlich and I play a multiplayer Civ 2 game set on continents? That way we can point out the advantages to Wittlich... If we can't we should drop it to normal. Wittlich, you in for a friendly game of Civ 2?

TechWins, I'm for Civ specific abilities in this competition, but it doesn't really matter to me. The controversy surrounding this aspect of Civ 3 hasn't bothered me, it's just another tool in the game to make things interesting. Whatever though, I know some people have strong feelings regarding their use. To me, it was never something deserving of those strong feelings. I'd climb that mountain because it's there, but we should vote later when we know more.

Your victory conditions get my vote.

Wittlich, you up for a Civ 2 game? I don't think I've ever had all players on one continent, except in a small map multiplayer game using the maximum amount of land AND continents. What TechWins and I are proposing is normal land and continents. Big difference. Anyway, want to give it a try?

Thanks for taking up the saved game thing...

The second place advancement has implementation problems, true. However if we can resolve this I see potential for making things a bit more interesting.

Guys, how about this, the 1st place winner chooses who advances. This way who you are allied with can make a monster difference in whether you succeed. Did you join the right camp? Are you the most favored nation in that camp? Or, if you are the #1 player, who will remember the break in the future? Which player will show loyalty and gratitude in future games, maybe giving you the break in some future game that you give him now?

Politics, politics...

What do you guys think?

Regarding whether multiplayer is in or not... If it's in it's in, if not we have a delay in our tourney, that's life. We'll see...

[TechWins]

Yeah, who knows how many people will join. Hopefully we could get quite a few. It might just depend on how much support we get from Apolyton (i.e. news items regarding the tourney). No matter how many people join the first round players for each game will be randomly or stratified randomly picked. What I mean by stratified random is I might group people that have similar time zones together then pick randomly from each group, that way the game time will be more accomadable for everybody in the first round. All rounds after that will not be randomly chosen one bit.

A civ2 MP game is fine by me. It would have to be Saturday and I'm not sure what exact time, though. What times are good for you guys?

Civ specific abilities should not be included for a few reasons. People might complain about what civ they have (people might want Germany, US, or who knows maybe even the Zulus). No matter how balanced it is we will get people fighting over which Civ they want to be. The second reason is an assumption that it might not be fully balanced. [For my SP I think I will be playing with CSA's on and quite possibly have them on playing MP over a LAN]

Maybe we should wait on what victory conditions to include. But if a few are easy (i.e. Space Race) like they were in Civ2 then they shouldn't be included. In my opinion I think cultural and military victory will wind up being the only two we use. The other seem as if they will be too easy and everybody will go for those victory paths.

Your system for a second place advancement is not efficient. Many people who are friends might pick their compadre for the 2nd place finisher. If there isn't a clear cut choice determined by the game itself then we shouldn't have a 2nd place finisher advance. Unless somebody can come up with a flawless system, which I doubt will occurr.

[Wittlich]

Sure Lancer and TechWins - I'm game for a Civ2 game (if you'll pardon the pun!)

Saturday is fine with me. I am located on the west coast (San Francisco, CA). What ever time you all decide upon should be fine with me. My ICQ # is: 110689330. Email is: wittlich@earthlink.net

[Lancer]

Saturday sounds good to me. I'm open regarding the time...

TechWins, you're in europe aren't you?

Btw, I have no ICQ on the machine I use for Civ...

Regarding your post, I can live without Civ specific abilities, and am happy to cooperate. I don't expect to have a tourney where I pick a majority of options, but just a third if it averages...give and take works for me.

I would like second place advancement. I don't suggest that it will be fair, but will add the dimention of alliances to the end. If a person advances a friend that isn't a good player, that person will be taken out later anyway. It will be fun, and fun is more important than perfection in my view. Fun is why we play these games, yes?

So TechWins, that's the case for second place advancement. If you have suggestions for making it better, I'm happy to hear them. If you still want to nix it we can make it the occasion of the first vote among us. I'll abide by the result...

Might be Spring before we can do this tourney, hope the news isn't right.

[Lancer]

Ooopppsss, nix the europe, I see you're in Arizona TechWins. Saturday afternoon sound good?

[TechWins]

Might be Spring before we can do this tourney, hope the news isn't right.

If it is going to be Spring then I might not buy Civ3 ever. Go look around at some of my recent posts on the topic for more info, if you would like to.

Sorry Lancer but I'm going to have to vote against 2nd place advancement.

About the MP game of Civ2 I can't do it until about 4pm today. Is that ok? By the way, I have no idea how to do an Internet game. I did it once and I forgot how to setup it up. I know you have to get the IP address from the host or something like that. Could somebody refresh my memory?

[Lancer]

If it's Spring then I won't worry too much about your vote then TechWins. Don't be sorry about a vote btw...no point in that.

I'm going to buy Civ3 whatever, and all the add ons whenever. I'm a sucker for Civ and admit it freely.

It's been a while since I played Mplayer too. I used to go to 'The Zone', and could do that again, it's easy there. Lets set a time for next Saturday however, I have plans for this one, ok?

Guys, it's called 'The Internet Gaming Zone'. I suggest we all do a search for it, find it, and get our games updated. They will get you the latest patch which you'll need to play, and do it before next Saturday so we're all ready when we get there.

I'll search now and see if I can provide a link.