Anyone Interested In A VS AI Game?

[Zapaan]

Wondering if I can interest anyone in a VS AI game. Say, 5 or 6 of us on a Large/Huge map VS the world (thinking locked alliances) on Deity or Sid difficulty.

I'm also thinking of a custom edited map to setup start locations and possibly initial isolation settings.

Anyway, so anybody interested?

- Z

[Dr. A. Cula]

Count me in. I find demigod and Sid much too difficult. Maybe a cooperative match would be easier.

May I suggest some kind of accelerated startup? Maybe each player (human & AI) would start with, say, 3 or 4 towns (below size 6), some roads between them, a couple of workers and a few defensive units. That way we can skip the first turns of the game were you just wait for that first warrior to come out while your worker is building your first road.

If there are others interested in this I think we should have a vote on this matter.

[sabrewolf]

it sounds very interesting! count me in too!
but please not huge... every PBEM is destined to die sooner or later. with huge maps i presume it's sooner

[Zapaan]

That sounds good Drac, if no one else minds, I'm game for that startup.

As for size, how about Large then SW? Anything smaller and it's just going to be too crowded for this kind of game I think. But if everyone wants Standard, I'm alright with that.

Btw, here's a pic of a generated map I spliced together:

- Z

[sabrewolf]

large sounds great! and a faster start is good too!

however, better not 4 pre-placed cities, but 4 settlers... so everyone can decide for himself where to put the cities
maybe additionally, take accellerated production. i'm quite fond of it in PBEM (makes everything less tedious)

this map looks fine too, but the continent is a bit far away from the archipelagio. you could tweak in an island in the middle so suicide curraghs have a chance

[Zapaan]

What effect does accelerated production produce? The only reason I ask is because with the huge advantages that Deity and Sid difficulty gives to the AI, I'm thinking it might give too much of an advantage (especially considering it's essentially 2:1).

As for the distance from the continent to the archipelago, that was intentional, to give us some breathing room until Magnetism so we could build a decent chance at survival.

- Z

[Dr. A. Cula]

So, who gets the islands and who gets the continent?

[Zapaan]

We get the continent

- Z

[sabrewolf]

zapaan: without a connection, the AI civs will be at magnetism before we even start the medieval ages

best exploit for having a chance at sid-level: have islands with distances of 4 ocean tiles. the AI won't establish contact with others but the human player will through out suicide galleys to contact them all

[Dr. A. Cula]

How many AIs are you planning to have there? The islands look a bit small for a large number of AIs. They might get bogged down in endless wars with each other, thus making our task too easy.

[Aqualung71]

And after we kill the Sid-AI's, we all turn on each other? Sounds like fun!!!!

[Zapaan]

Sabrewolf: I'm pretty sure we're going to get nailed on the tech levels though I'm also fairly sure that we'll be able to do better than that if we co-ordinate research into simultaneous branches and sharing tech as soon as we achieve it (amongst ourselves). 6 branches of simultaneous tech research is about as equivalent as an AI civ's tech advancement on the high end difficulty I think. I'm fairly sure we can keep reasonably close to the AI's level of advancement if we work together properly.

Remember that we're not playing solo, we're working as a unified whole. I really don't think we need to worry about having to use AI behaviour exploits to come out on top.

Drac: Default was going to be 10, but we can reduce it if the general concencus is that it's too much. As for being too easy, I thought the same thing, which is why they'd be set to locked alliances. Unless everyone wants them to be unaligned.

Aqualung: Well, since we'd be set to a locked alliance as well, we can't very well turn on each other (I don't think anyway).

So it looks like we need just 2 more to start. Anyone else interested?

Oh and what civs did you guys have in mind? We'll need to think about how to complement each others' abilities. Thoughts?

- Z

[sabrewolf]

(bump)

so?

[Zapaan]

Well, it looks like we're it then. Guess we should go with a Standard sized map.

What races do you all want to go with?

- Z

[sabrewolf]

/me choses the netherlands (agricultural and seafaring) ... i'll do the philosophy/literature/great library beeline

someone who likes religious can do the monarchy beeline and another can take scientific, for the later research. (can be the same person)

we may need a second seafarer which could be a commercial one who can steal techs from the AI when the GL wears off.