Tarzan PBEM

[Harovan]

A rather stupid name, I know, but that doesn't matter as long as it's unique. And somehow it is about the heroes of the jungle (read: harsh terrain), so that name is not too misleading.

This game has two main modifiers, which separate it from the standard game:
a) We create a bigger tactical choice by adding the wheeled flag to fastmovers
b) We aim to play on an undercrowded map with large unsettled areas

Players are (in play order, " replaces AT, ' replaces DOT)
Sir Ralph { sirralph " gmx ' com }
Krill
jshelr
alexman
Gamecube64
Rommel2D

EDIT: Will edit in the other email addresses, as soon as I get them

All of them are dedicated veteran players, so (I hope) we won't get problems with breaks.

We aimed for six players and got them, so the game is full. By PM I received the application of a seventh player, Gamecube64. I declined so far (as we know, games over 6 players tend to get very slow), would however listen to complaints and suggestions. May be we can muster enough players to launch a second game.

I don't want to hurry to start this game. In my opinion, PBEM games are quite an investment in everybody's time and I just can't stand it, if we'd create a game with some annoying flaw and are then bound to it for a year or more. And we have quite a couple of questions to discuss, so let's do it even if it takes a couple of days.

There are some main topics to discuss:

1) How do we want to achieve the undercrowdedness?

In my SP games I do it by restricting settlements to grassland, plains and floodplains. I would suggest this for the PBEM game too. However, it won't be sufficient, because on any map smaller than huge the areas of the different terrain types just aren't big enough to give a significant restriction. I would, however, like to restrict the map size to standard or at most large.

Another option would be to have somebody to create a map. But it's a lot of work and we probably won't find anyone soon who's a) dedicated enough to do all the work and b) subtle enough not to overdo it. My choice would be either alexman or Dominae, but both of them are of course out.

A very valid option would be to restrict the number of cities every player can have at the same time to, say, 8 or 10. We could even achieve this by giving everybody that many settlers, remove the abilitiy to build new ones and let the game start 1000BC to adjust the time a bit. This has both advantages and disadvantages. Advantages are, that it levels somewhat the penalty of a mediocre or bad start. Everyone starts at equal terms. Also, it speeds the early game up enormously. Disadvantages are, that our super economists (hello Dominae, hello alexman) probably will complain, because the fun of early MM is taken away.

My choice would be (besides the terrain restriction) to restrict the number of cities, so that they cover ~50% of the settleable land, but start with only one (4000BC) or at most two settlers (3000BC).

2) What units do we want to add the wheeled flag (if it doesn't already exists)?

Obviously bombardement units and fastmovers. Options are:

a) All active bombardement units (they have it already)
b) Horsemen level units
c) Ancient cavalry
d) Knight level units. Problem here: What will we do with Samurai and Keshiks? The former don't require horses, the latter have advantages in some rough terrain.
e) Cavalry level units
f) Tank level units and above (includes Mech Infantry, Modern Armor, Mobile SAM etc, but not the ordinary flak)

3) What other game settings should we use?

a) Map size? It depends of course on our choice in the first topic.
b) World age is obviously 3 billion years
c) Land shape. Albeit overplayed, I'd recommend a pangea.
d) Barbarians. Should they be raging, since they perhaps are a potential nuisance throughout the game? Should we make them stronger (archers/horsemen, swordsmen/ancient cav)? In my Ultima scenario, I made them trolls and giant spiders (both given attack 3, defense 2) with graphics from CFC. Great fun!
e) Difficulty level. Important for research speed, corruption and skirmishes with barbarians.
f) Other settings, although there shouldn't be many left. Accelerated production anyone?
g) Resources. I'd say, restore PTW level for all. That still doesn't make them abundant, but the game will be pretty much about them, so why take options away? Since this is multiplayer, the creation of killer AIs is out as counterargument.
h) Basing the scenario on a mod or not?

[Beta]

Sir Ralph ... .

My input.

Stick with 6 players. I am not keen on 4 and 5 player games to be honest (other than AOD) - and 7 and 8 player games do bog down. I have one or two 8 player games which are moving OK. All depends on the players and the proper play order.

I agree on lets take our time and get the start right.

1. Undercrowdedness

Not keen on the 1000bc, 10 settler start.

I still like the one settler, 4000bc start. That is civ to me.

And I'm not sure why we need the restriction on the number of cities. The jungle/wetland and forest restrictions would seem to me to be sufficient, if along with that we used a standard size map.

Or - use the 10 city restriction with a large map - but I think this will result in a game with well-separated civs. Then again - I guess the 3 tile city spacing goes out the window - so your 10 cities will be well spread out. So - to be honest - I am not really sure how this game would develop. Which is a good thing.

So - I am OK with either.

2. The wheeled stuff.

Sounds good. Regarding Samurai and Keshiks - the simple solution would be to exclude their two civs from the game. (Also - Samurai should be mounted anyway - historically that is how they got to be fast-movers. I can't see how someone with all that armour, and on foot, could outrun an archer. )

3. Other game settings.

a) Map size? ...see above.
b) World age is obviously 3 billion years ...yup
c) Land shape. Albeit overplayed, I'd recommend a pangea. ...agreed
d) Barbarians. Should they be raging, since they perhaps are a potential nuisance throughout the game? ....yup.
Should we make them stronger (archers/horsemen, swordsmen/ancient cav)? ... no
e) Difficulty level. ....Emperor
f) Other settings, although there shouldn't be many left. Accelerated production anyone? ....no
g) Resources. I'd say, restore PTW level for all. That still doesn't make them abundant, but the game will be pretty much about them, so why take options away? ....I am easy either way. The PTW level certainly does create challenges and forces you into other options - ie the archer/spear army.
h) Basing the scenario on a mod or not? ...no - what we have above is good.

What about temp and climate. I presume warm and wet ( ) gives the most jungle.

Again - thanks for getting this going SR.

Also - how do we want to handle civ choices?

[Harovan]

Well, thing is, that on a standard map even with 3 billion years the map generator doesn't make large enough mountain/forest/jungle/whatever areas to prevent them from being swallowed entirely by city radiuses or cultural borders. Just run the map generator in the editor and have a look. I assume everything inside cultural borders will be roaded, so the "wheeled" setting will be poinless in the industrial age at the latest (I think even earlier). I think we should go with maximum ~50% of the land area settled, this is not too dense (so all will be roaded and barbarians don't spawn) and not too loose (so distances get too large).

Either we should have somebody create a map that guarantees ~50% of the map area can't be settled, or we restrict the number of cities.

I think, we take a standard, 70% water map. It has ~1500 land tiles. This makes 250 per civ. If we assume ~13 tiles per city (12+the central tile), it makes 104...130 tiles settled per civ, if we restrict to 8..10 cities. This guarantees only ~40..50% of the land is settled, which sounds about right. However, if you don't restrict the number of cities, you achieve easily a settlement ratio of over 80%, just look at the maps the generator makes.

[Beta]

Understood.

So it looks like either we go the map-maker route - or restrict each civ to 10 cities.

[ducki]

Here are my thoughts...
1) 4000BC, 1 Settler. I'm against denying the ability to build settlers, because that means you can never "move" a city, which I think should still be a valid late-game maneouver(sp? ).
1a) Why not a large map? I'm not as savvy as everyone else about the actual mechanics and math or the gameplay implications, especially with only 6 civs, but as long as everyone's PC can handle a large map, it may provide us with more "fun" generated terrain.

2) a,b,c,e,f. Let Knights have their heyday. Maybe even let Cavs skip the wheeled restriction as well, but ensure when in hostile terrain, they can only move 1 per turn, no matter what. (Edit: By hostile, I mean Jungle, Mountain, Marsh, etc.)

3)
a) Large or Standard.
c) Land Shape - with Large, maybe we could do Continents at 60% water, but with Standard, Pangea is probably more likely to give us the terrain "fun" we're looking for.
d) Barbs - wouldn't Raging slow things down even further? I'd imagine the theme of the game could slow things down a good bit on top of PBEMness, but maybe it's just me being a weenie.
e) Difficulty - Monarch, Emperor, maybe Demi. Not really a dealbreaker for me here, so whatever.
f) Never played AP, so I dunno.
g) Resources - vs. AI I'd say C3C + AU. vs. Humans, PtW, please.
h) Mod usage? Hmmm... I have more experience with AU than stock, but this is a pretty healthy set of rule changes in and of itself, and much of the AU Mod is about improving the AI, which is not a factor in this game. I abstain.
i) Climate - I'd vote for Warm and temperate. Wet will heavily favor both Industrious and Agricultural. Unless we're playing PtW, in which case it still favors Industrious.

I think I need a clarification too, in regards to the Industrious advantage and Clearing terrain. In the thread in the AU Forum, you stated your house rule was to not clear anything that wasn't in a City Radius - I just want to verify that you meant City Radius, such that a jungle might fall into your Cultural Border, but still be against the Clearing House Rule. Is that accurate? If so, Industrious' advantage is not as big, IMO. Ag is still unbalanced in both wet and dry, IMO. Or, the unbalance is more pronounced, I should say.

Also, on the limitation of cities, I'm not sure I "get it", but I trust you guys on that(so let's not bog the thread just because I'm being slow).

Can I ramble or what?

[Harovan]

Originally posted by ducki
I think I need a clarification too, in regards to the Industrious advantage and Clearing terrain. In the thread in the AU Forum, you stated your house rule was to not clear anything that wasn't in a City Radius - I just want to verify that you meant City Radius, such that a jungle might fall into your Cultural Border, but still be against the Clearing House Rule. Is that accurate? If so, Industrious' advantage is not as big, IMO. Ag is still unbalanced in both wet and dry, IMO. Or, the unbalance is more pronounced, I should say.

I meant city radius, not cultural borders. But that's only a house rule against the AI. It's exploitable, but why would I break my own rules? But we're among human players here and have other possibilities. For instance, you can't stop the AI from building cities. You can, however, do the same with human players.

[Harovan]

Bump!

To jump into alexman's face.

Opinions anyone?

[alexman]

I was actually looking for this thread since yesterday.
TARZAN?
No wonder I couldn't find it!
I'm reading it now...

[ducki]

Ok, so are we limiting clearing for the PBEM or no?
Just making sure I've got a clear(hehe) picture of the rules.

Thanks!

[alexman]

An idea for undercrowding:

Reduce distance corruption by half, but double the rank corruption by cutting the OCN in half as well.

That would encourage greater distances between cities and more careful city placement.

[alexman]

Some other comments:

• I would prefer to use the AU mod, mostly because the governments are more balanced, but it's no big deal if we don't.
• Please, please, please no extra settlers or AP.
• PTW strategic resource levels sound good, since the map is undercrowded. Let's leave the luxuries as in C3C though.
• If we can't find a map maker, the C3C Iron Trounament method of asking for a restart after 2 turns works well.
• If we expect this game to go into the industrial age, it might be more exciting as continents. It's focused on military tactics, after all, and an IC invasion takes more sophisticated planning.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by alexman
I would prefer to use the AU mod, mostly because the governments are more balanced, but it's no big deal if we don't.

Fine with me. However, it has to be changed by adding "wheeled" to certain units and to PTW resource ratios, which have already 4 votes out of 6 with 2 votes not yet cast, so it should be decided.

Please, please, please no extra settlers or AP.

Don't worry, that's why we're brainstorming here. I don't like AP either and the settler pack was just one of many options.

If we expect this game to go into the industrial age, it might be more exciting as continents. It's focused on military tactics, after all, and an IC invasion takes more sophisticated planning.

Ummm, YMMV, but I think IC invasions will be a rather lame option. Just dump a heap of units on an unsettled (and may be even unguarded) coastal spot and let it march.

Reduce distance corruption by half, but double the rank corruption by cutting the OCN in half as well. That would encourage greater distances between cities and more careful city placement.

A very good idea, and I'm all for it . However, one could think, 1 shield, 1 gold is better than 0 shield, 0 gold, and found cities anyway, may be even based on specialists. I'm afraid, that alone won't guarantee undercrowdedness.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
However, one could think, 1 shield, 1 gold is better than 0 shield, 0 gold, and found cities anyway, may be even based on specialists. I'm afraid, that alone won't guarantee undercrowdedness.

OK, radical idea time:
Modify each specialist (including laborers) to give minus 1 tax. Your 1-pop totally corrupt city would then contribute nothing to your treasury. A 2-pop totally corrupt city would actually subtract 1 gold per turn from your treasury, unless one of the citizens is a taxman, in which case you will be back at zero gain.

This will probably slow down the tech rate, but it is easily adjustable, not to mention that MP games have a tech rate which is too high IMHO, because of research cooperation.

Edit: On the other hand, it's true that cities have other important uses (for military purposes), so no amount of economic penalties will prevent a player from building a city in a free spot, if no other better spot is available. I usually hate artificial limits, but in this case maybe the limit on number of cities is the best way to go. Who knows, maybe somebody will actually build an outpost!

[Dominae]

I missed this thread because of the funky title too.

I like Sir Ralph's original idea of restricting cities to Grasslands, Plains and Flood Plains only. In addition, I would like to restrict the Chop Forest and Cleat Wetlands abilities to Engineering (or further).

I'm not big on artificially restricting the number of cities based on OCN tweaks or a hard limit. With a 3 Billion year and Wet or Dry planet, the game should be quite a challenge.

Speaking of which, we would need someone to look over the map to ensure it's fair (here more than in other games).

Unit movement: I think only Infantry (edit: I mean, non-fastmovers) should enter bumpy terrain (without a Road). I would also like to see the Plant Forest ability removed, as it would be a dirty trick to surround yourself with Forest to avoid a Cavalry charge.

[alexman]

My proposed corruption tweak was not to make the game more challenging - quite the opposite. With the restrictions on settling, the game will be quite frustrating for the corruption-haters here (are there any? ) if we don't reduce distance corruption. The OCN reduction serves the dual purpose of bringing corruption levels back down to a 'standard' level, as well as encouraging undercrowding.

The hard limit on cities should make the game more interesting, by bringing in rarely-used elements of the game like colonies and outposts, not to mention removing the dirty trick of combat settlers.