Proposal: Summer Epic Challenge

[vmxa1]

Well we have 24 civs, how many do you want to lock down? If you go with 16 set and 8 open, then you can add two more to the list. One should be Mil + Ind, oh did I mean Mao?
Yeah, it is hard to know how useful Expansion will turn out to be, I just am not a big fan of it even in the best setting it could be used on.
I have not play America since the first game of CivIII.

[nbarclay]

I'm thinking in terms of the following settings:

Width: 250
Height: 250
# Civs: 24
Distance Between Civs: 36
OCN: 60
Tech Rate: 800

This contrasts with normal huge map settings of:

Width: 160
Height: 160
# Civs: 16
Distance: 24
OCN: 32
Tech Rate: 400

On a Huge map, there are 800 tiles per city in the OCN. On this map, there would be 1042 tiles per city in the OCN (with fewer civs per tile, so the OCN would be even smaller compared with available space to expand into). The tech rate will actually be higher compared with the OCN than on a Huge map, and not a lot lower compared with the number of tiles. That's going to make for painfully slow research in the early going, but should keep research from getting too easy even for big, powerful empires. And since the AI isn't smart enough to figure out when researching anything faster than 40 turns is hopeless, I'm thinking of upping the maximum research time to 60 or even 80 turns. That would avoid penalizing AIs so much for actually doing research and keep a 40-turn pace on the first few techs from being a complete no-brainer for human players.

Any thoughts on these proposed settings (especially from those who have played on oversized maps before)?

[MrWhereItsAt]

60-80 turns max research time! This is sounding like it's almost about to get out of hand. Otherwise I like everything so far.

I will certainly be killing civs wherever I can just to simplify International relations! Think about it - 23 civs allying and fighting to try to remember the details of... has anyone managed this before?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Mountain Sage


Don't forget the French (I might not even play them, for once ), but France had a big navy before a certain Nelson came along.

France also has the same traits as Carthage, which makes me skeptical of how much value including both of them would add compared with having an additional locked-in opponent.

[alexman]

How about changing the cost of each individual tech so that the early game isn't so slow, while the late game isn't a breeze?

For example, you could have a tech rate of 400, but with the cost of each technology raised to the power of 1.1. Pottery would still cost 2 research points, Monarchy would cost 33 instead of 24, Nationalism would cost 194 instead of 120, Computers would cost 453 instead of 260, et cetera...

Just an idea.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by nbarclay
On a Huge map, there are 800 tiles per city in the OCN. On this map, there would be 1042 tiles per city in the OCN (with fewer civs per tile, so the OCN would be even smaller compared with available space to expand into). The tech rate will actually be higher compared with the OCN than on a Huge map, and not a lot lower compared with the number of tiles. That's going to make for painfully slow research in the early going, but should keep research from getting too easy even for big, powerful empires. And since the AI isn't smart enough to figure out when researching anything faster than 40 turns is hopeless, I'm thinking of upping the maximum research time to 60 or even 80 turns. That would avoid penalizing AIs so much for actually doing research and keep a 40-turn pace on the first few techs from being a complete no-brainer for human players.

Any thoughts on these proposed settings (especially from those who have played on oversized maps before)?

I have played with 24 civs on a 200x200 map (3 continents about the same size) with a tech rate of 750, a minimal research time of 6 and a maximal research time of 60. It was a great game, I played it right after PtW came out and remember it with pleasure. I played the Ottomans and won by space race in the 1900's. The only bad was, that I often had nothing else to build than wealth (I didn't intent to warmonger much in that game), because the tech pace was slower, but the building and unit prices remained the same.

Overall, this sounds like a fun game, especially for a hobby island hopper like me. Maybe I return to PtW SP for a while.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
60-80 turns max research time! This is sounding like it's almost about to get out of hand. Otherwise I like everything so far.

Agreed that it's a bit out of hand, but from what I understand of AI behavior, the AIs are going to be pretty much maxing out research spending under Despotism no matter what. (They practically never run a GPT surplus under Despotism, and they don't know how to use the luxury slider under most circumstances, so their gold must go to science.) If human players can keep research at 10% and get their first three techs or so just as quickly as the AIs can at 90%-100%, that will give us a huge advantage in the early game. I know increasing the maximum research time will get a bit painful, but it seems like the only way to reward research instead of letting us pile up mountains of gold while the AIs waste theirs. (Even cost 2 techs would tend to take about 40 turns at max research with such a high tech rate. But if we don't run the tech rate sky high, the pace of technology seems likely to get too fast once the civs get up to speed.)

The ideal would be if the tech rate operated in such a way that most of the variation based on map size only kicks in after civs have been REXing for a while. That would keep the feel of the tech race more consistent across map sizes. But at least so far, Firaxis has settled for a simpler approach that tends to result in either painfully slow research early in the game or excessive ease of doing 4-turn research later on.

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay

The ideal would be if the tech rate operated in such a way that most of the variation based on map size only kicks in after civs have been REXing for a while. That would keep the feel of the tech race more consistent across map sizes. But at least so far, Firaxis has settled for a simpler approach that tends to result in either painfully slow research early in the game or excessive ease of doing 4-turn research later on.

But we have an advantage here. We don't need to make the tech pace work for all maps - just this one. Tech costs can be adjusted individually. See my suggestion above.

[nbarclay]

Alexman, a simpler approach might be something along the lines of multiplying the costs of the expensive terminal ancient techs (Currency, Construction, Monarchy, and Republic) by 1.5 from their huge-map settings and doubling everything after that. I'm guessing that would put the cost increase somewhere around the time civs REX to a point where they can afford higher prices than they could on a similar huge map, or at least not so far off from it as to yield absurd results.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman


But we have an advantage here. We don't need to make the tech pace work for all maps - just this one. Tech costs can be adjusted individually. See my suggestion above.

Which I cross-posted with.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Alexman, a simpler approach might be something along the lines of multiplying the costs of the expensive terminal ancient techs (Currency, Construction, Monarchy, and Republic) by 1.5 from their huge-map settings and doubling everything after that.

I like alexman's idea of a constant progression instead. Even if the end of the Ancient Age is approximately when one would stop REXing, I think it would feel too weird for tech costs to jump so drastically all of a sudden. Plus, it artificially forces the player into research-mode at that point in the game, discounting other strategies.

Insofar as civs, I think my original should be kept as is: even if some people think there are some civs "missing", everyone can nonethless find a civ that suits them.


Dominae

[Jawa Jocky]

I'm starting to come around on this idea.

AUSS - Apolyton University Summer Session (or School)

see I'm already working on acronyms

I have only one suggestion. With massive oceans come massive travel delays. I think we should tweak the ships and/or add small wonders to help with ocean travel (make it quickier later in the game). While this does conflict with a core AU principle (minimal tweaking and preservation of the orginal game), I believe the map that is being proposed is so abnormal that it makes my suggestion worthy of consideration.

[jshelr]

I'm not sure we need to worry too much about the AI being disadvantaged on tech in the early going given the max water map. If we can't use an early war to extort, it mightl be tough to keep up regardless of the AI uselessly setting research too high.

[vmxa1]

If one of the goals was to make contact harder to come by, then making ships travel faster/farther would defeat that aim.
I can see doing something for the very late ship travel, say battleships and transports.
I agree that Carth and France, pick one and only one, but we do not have Mil/Ind civ in the mix.
I have been playing Cleo and Hammy lately and and the promotions are so hard to come by, it is painful.
I guess the sci trait would start to loom large if the tech rate is bumped.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae


I like alexman's idea of a constant progression instead. Even if the end of the Ancient Age is approximately when one would stop REXing, I think it would feel too weird for tech costs to jump so drastically all of a sudden. Plus, it artificially forces the player into research-mode at that point in the game, discounting other strategies.

I think alexman's approach misses the target. Firaxis's approach to research ignores the fact that during the REXing phase, the only benefit players get from being on a bigger map is reduced corruption (and even that is irrelevant in the early stages while players just have a single, relatively small town). But alexman's approach keeps the relative cost of techs getting higher long after the amount of claimed, productive land flattens out.

What's really needed is an approach that keeps the costs in line with what they would be on a huge map until civs REX to a point where they can research faster than they could on a huge map, after which it ramps up fairly quickly to around double the cost (since once you settle half the land you're going to, settling the second half generally doesn't take too terribly long if you have room). If we want a more gradual scaling, we could go with something like:

1.25 for Literature, Philosophy, Code of Laws, Map Making, and Polytheism.

1.5 for Monarchy, Republic, Currency, and Construction.

1.7 for Monotheism, Feudalism, and Engineering

1.8 for Theology, Chivalry, and Invention

1.9 for Education and Gunpowder [Edit: and Printing Press]

2 for everything thereafter.

That would scale things a bit more gradually while still keeping relative costs the same as in the standard game once civs have essentially finished REXing and had some time to catch up on city improvements.

I also don't see how even my earlier, less gradual version would force players into a research mode more than conventional games do.