ideas for the 2nd Tournament?

[Ahlyis]

I fail to understand how using a pangea map with conquest and domination victories disabled is going to prevent the winner from being the one who pop rushes the world. If we only allow diplomatic, space race, cultural, etc victories, the winner will still probably be the one who dominated the world early.

It's simple, if you exterminate your opponents, you can quickly achieve any of the other victories. You may be SLIGHTLY slowed by having to do all research yourself for space race or diplomatic victories, but you should EASILY be researching every four turns. Your score will be astronomical because your landmass will inflate it greatly.

So how does disabling conquest/domination discourage the use of those strategies?

That's why I suggested playing on an archipelago map and enacting a rule that disallows any cities to be owned on any island other than your starting island. It may be necessary to use a continents map instead, but the idea seems sound. Pop rush becomes virtually useless if you aren't allowed to use the land you take.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Ahlyis
I fail to understand how using a pangea map with conquest and domination victories disabled is going to prevent the winner from being the one who pop rushes the world. If we only allow diplomatic, space race, cultural, etc victories, the winner will still probably be the one who dominated the world early.

If we all agree that pop rush is pointless, why not try fix it in the editor? Reduce #shields/pop point.

Markos could create a scenario with this modification; we wouldn´t need to do anything. If we download the scenario, it would automatically run with the modified rule.

[jimb0v2]

Originally posted by Ahlyis
I fail to understand how using a pangea map with conquest and domination victories disabled is going to prevent the winner from being the one who pop rushes the world. If we only allow diplomatic, space race, cultural, etc victories, the winner will still probably be the one who dominated the world early.

It's simple, if you exterminate your opponents, you can quickly achieve any of the other victories. You may be SLIGHTLY slowed by having to do all research yourself for space race or diplomatic victories, but you should EASILY be researching every four turns. Your score will be astronomical because your landmass will inflate it greatly.

So how does disabling conquest/domination discourage the use of those strategies?

That's why I suggested playing on an archipelago map and enacting a rule that disallows any cities to be owned on any island other than your starting island. It may be necessary to use a continents map instead, but the idea seems sound. Pop rush becomes virtually useless if you aren't allowed to use the land you take.

Thats a great point. I think just moving up to monarch or emperor will fix it.
especially at emperor it's much much harder to conquer the world in 66 turns, because the opp civs are now making 2-3 units instead of 1-2

[Aeson]

Originally posted by jack_frost
Or we could just see who has the best score on a huge lowest land island map with 16 AI at diety.

Interesting since nobody could actually win this

I thought that these settings would be the hardest settings as well, till I played with them. As of 100BC, I'm more powerful than 4 AI civs (score), and one other has been eliminated (not by me). I also occupy the largest area of any Civ. I have fought successful wars against the Zulu's and the English, leaving them little more than enough to be valid vassels. Not giving the AI room to expand actually takes away its greatest ability on Deity. I played an 8 Civ, Huge, Pangea Deity game, as the Persians. With constant warfare against the Aztecs up till the early AD's, all I had accomplished is taking 20 or so of their cities. I had not even dented their empire, as it was constantly expanding faster than I could destroy it! Even with the captured cities, the Aztecs were more powerful than I was, and the whole game was looking impossible. The interesting thing is, that the AI doesn't seem expand indefinitely, as the other 6 Civ's were also no larger than the Aztecs, and still roughly 1/4th of the map was unsettled. I eventually got the Zulu's to help me with the Aztecs, but they ended up actually being taken out by them. So after the whole thing played out, the Aztecs were the largest Civ, by far, and I was the smallest of the remaining 6. My whole war to take out the Aztecs had only served to make them stronger.

[Aeson]

Re: A new thought

Originally posted by Klem
I suggest the winner will be the player with the highest combined score for ALL surviving civilizations, including the player’s civ.

I had thought about the same thing, but the point isn't to make conquest impossible to win with, its to make each victory condition a viable way to play. Having 8 civilizations populate a map (with 8 palaces, and 8 forbidden palaces) should always net more overall points than a map populated with 1 Civ, 1 palace, 1 forbidden palace. Also it wouldn't take much skill to just build a small empire that can be defended, and then let the AI do the scoring for you.

[Klem]

Re: Re: A new thought

Originally posted by Aeson


I had thought about the same thing, but the point isn't to make conquest impossible to win with, its to make each victory condition a viable way to play. Having 8 civilizations populate a map (with 8 palaces, and 8 forbidden palaces) should always net more overall points than a map populated with 1 Civ, 1 palace, 1 forbidden palace. Also it wouldn't take much skill to just build a small empire that can be defended, and then let the AI do the scoring for you.

Without play-testing, I don't know for sure that conquest isn't valid. Maybe it should remain. Although you could stay small and survive, I don't believe a small Civ could exert enough influence to improve the combined score. In the current tournament, I took out the scumbag Zulus and seriously weakened the Chinese. Practically, I couldn't influence others taking out the Romans and reducing the Persians to two island cities. The question now is, what will maximize the combined score of the remaining Civs, and should we cull out the two weaklings. Also, I assume the combined score will be improved if I go for some victory condition rather than the score in 2050.

Different players will have as many different approaches and we don't know what will win a combined score victory and almost surely, some players will really shine, but probably not the early conquest victory. I think the winner will play the game at least through all advances, helping to prove their overall Civ prowess, not just combat ability.
Klem

[UncleBeef]

Difficulty level of tournament II?

Why not post multiple versions of the map and have a winner in each skill category?

[Fidel]

monarch, continents, indians

[Jurassic Joe]

Archipeligo, Huge map, Monarch or Regent, 12-15 AI opponents, Starting Civ should be the English (They are only 2 Techs away from map making and they have the naval special unit). Leave the goody huts in, a little randomness is good for the game and the barbarians can be set at raging hordes. You won't be so likely to grab the huts without backup. Leave all of the victory conditions in but differentiate between the victories.

[Grundel]

A Civ 3 tournament is like a Golf or Bowling tournament.

Yes, you heard me correctly. a GOLF or BOWLING tournament.

Allow me to explain.

As a competitor, there is nothing you can do to prevent someone else from scoring. The only thing you can do is try and get the Highest score possible. The higher score wins.

In golf, you cannot tackle the other players. In bowling, you can't play goalie and prevent the other bowler from knocking down the pins.

With this understanding, I say that if you are going to hold a tournament, then have the conditions change from event to event. Instead of always making it a Pangea standard map or Huge continental map...make it random. No one will know what they are in store for before they play. They will have to explore the world, build their country, and then play as the circumstances dictate.

Like in golf, players play at different courses. Some courses favor the long ball, while others favor the short game. In bowling, there are some conditions that favor the crankers, while strokers dominate on others. The same could apply in a Civ 3 tournament. If its an easy map, then the scores should be higher. If its a harder map, then so be it. I would not be for playing a tournament game with the same conditions every month.

This is what I would suggest...

Random map. Even the map size could very from week to week.
Random Civ.
All Victory Conditions apply...HIghest score wins.
Vary difficulty...an easy game for those (like me ) who have not mastered th nuances of the game yet, and harder game for the more hardcore players.

Another possible variation would be to not allow civ specific abilities, putting everyone on an even playing field...but to counter my own point, if everyone played the same civ, this would be a moot .

This seems pretty fair.

This is my $.02

[MarkG]

ok, here are the details for the 2nd tournament

standard size
raging barbarians
archipelago map (with care to have a couple large islands)
climate: normal
temperature: temperate
age: 3billion
level: monarch (emperor for the 3rd tournament)
huts: removed
civ: english
opponents: 7(americans, germans, iroquois, japanese, french, russians, indians)
theme: the other 8 civs(which werent in the 1st tourn. )

i'll closed the thread to start geting you in the mood
the file will be posted tomorrow, as early as possible

please have discussions for future games and rules on this thread

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=36396