Apolyton Tournaments: General discussion, regulations and suggestions

[MarkG]

2-3 hours...

i couldnt do it from home due to a hard disk failure....

[Sirian]

What kind of validation? What kind of help?

[MarkG]

eeeer, you know, finishing each and every submitted game in order to get the exact date and result, checking if there is nything looking strange, that kind of things...

you see, i'm still supposed to produce results for the tournaments

[Sirian]

I'm not even clear on what the rules are. You only have a couple of rules listed. So either the rest need to be posted... or created.

For example, just what IS the victory condition? Score? Just that simple? Would it then be in a player's interest to milk the score until 2050, assuming they had control of the game that much? If you go by date, that too conveys some advantage onto certain victory conditions. Have you thought through all of these things?

Speaking for myself, I'd play just for the interest factor of being able to relate to discussion about game specifics, and seeing what others do differently from me in the same situation. I'm not likely to bend my gameplay to winning the tourney, but rather just to beating the game the strongest that I can, and let the tourney chips fall where they may. Some have suggested a winner for each victory type. Well, depending on how many players submit results, there may not even BE winners of each victory type, and certainly space race or diplomacy will tend to be weighted, since those are the only options unless you dominate the tech race.

The third tourney map IS a good map, just that it has SUCH a strong starting location. My first five cities were all built on rivers, and that's just such a huge deal. In all the games I've played, I've never gained supremacy so quickly (and without ancient war, just building and expanding). If there are any game-breaking factors in terms of starting locations, it would be fresh water. If you don't have any, you're going to grow slower. If you can't irrigate at all, anywhere in your local area, you are in for a real long haul. The other factor is the presence of food boosters in your capital: wheat and cattle. Those can bust a game wide open, too, as you expand so much more quickly. This game had both.

I haven't messed around any with the editor, at all. Sometimes you have to play a map to find out whether or not it's going to be challenging, or merely frustrating. I think it may be asking too much of anybody to glance at a map and judge it. Some maps are made or broken by what you do with them, too. Resources are just so vital, that not having certain ones really does make things interesting. On the other hand, aggressively reaching out to grab resources is possible, so depending on what you do, things on a resource-scarce scenerio (like tourney three) can really flop around within a wide range. And, too, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. I just HAPPENED to send my first military unit scouting in the perfect direction, but only because the cattle was over there and that's the direction I had a road going in. If the cattle had been on the other side, I might have played a much weaker game. Who knows.

The biggest problem with helping to set up a tourney game is then not being able to play in the tourney. For that reason, I'd be willing to offer up maps I've played, that I know are fun, but kind of doubt that I'd want to be involved in a way that would prevent me from playing a new map (because I know too much about it in advance).

As for judging the games... without more defined rules, I wonder if anyone CAN help you. Who would know what "looks strange" or not? I think the idea of the tourney needs a little more definition, more specifics.


- Sirian

[Gramphos]

If you include the rules in the SAV (start game as Scenario) nobody can play with modified rules.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Sirian
For example, just what IS the victory condition?

both score and date(more than one winners) according to victory type

The biggest problem with helping to set up a tourney game is then not being able to play in the tourney.

i'm not asking help on the actual creation of the tournament game, but rather ideas for it...

[Conqueror]

Originally posted by riven
c. Have a winner for each victory type.

I vote for this too.

Originally posted by Tilemacho
But I think that the winning categories should be reduced!!! I propose conquest and space to be the main ones and culture and domination to be EXCLUDED !!!

Uh why should culture be excluded Its very hard to achieve cultural victory and for us who dont like to wage war cultural/diplomatic/space are only options.

For me i havent ever played after conquest or domination as they both demand me to wipe out other civs and i dont want to do that Its much more fun in my opinion without waging huge wars.

[macaday]

I like the Open and Limited categories. Limited for the one-time, no-restart, no-reload go, then after that (or if you give up), move to Open. Then in Open describe the changes you made, or where you ended up reloading... There is a good example of this over in the 5CC thread, I think posted by Solo, who didn't quite win the first time, then went back and started from an earlier point and did get the win.

I think this is very interesting to develop discussion about the different strategies used and everyone can learn something. e.g., Our games were pretty similar right up until I swiched to Monarchy; how did you handle the Zulus controlling that strategic resource, I couldn't get any trade out them, etc.

Of course there's always the honesty issue, but nothing can be done about that. If someone's going to cheat, they're going to cheat... But seems to me that people like to try out a few different strategies when they come to a roadblock... "Iroquois keep dragging the Germans into a war against me" or something... The open category lets people experiment in this way while not depriving them of particpation in a tournament.

--mac

[Taxidopolis]

download query

OK, here's a dumb question: How come I can't load the download to play it ? I've tried moving the file to the saved games folder and the scenarios folder but it just doesn't appear as an option to load from within the game. I'm probably missing something simple here so please shout out what it is...thanks.

Erm, it might be a good idea to put some simple instructions re this on the tourney announcement page itself. Simple enough for simple folk such as myself to be able to follow and so join in the fun

Taxi

[Skanky Burns]

You just need to put the .sav file into the civ3/saves directory.
You did unzip the file, didnt you??

Suggestion for the Tournaments:

How about we do a few rounds of "Only one victory type enabled" type games. So people would have to win by spaceship, or by conquest, or whatever victory condition it was for that tourney.

This would allow people to try different styles of play.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Conqueror
For me i havent ever played after conquest or domination as they both demand me to wipe out other civs and i dont want to do that Its much more fun in my opinion without waging huge wars.

This from a person named Conqueror

Sorry, just laughing at the irony of it. No offence intended

[Taxidopolis]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
You just need to put the .sav file into the civ3/saves directory.
You did unzip the file, didnt you??

Thanks Skanky. I hadn't unzipped it into place. Damn war fatigue must be getting to me...

[Kalani]

Ideas

Okay, now that there seems there might be some consensus on parameters for victory types, rules, etc. (I agree with the two thread, open style that keeps everyone happy--personally I don't have time to master a map, and enjoy dealing with setbacks rather than crafting an ideal world where I always win, but to each his own).

I thought I might post what I think Markos was looking for: ideas for what kind of game setups to have.

One idea is to play on one of the maps of Earth.

Or, since we've just had military time (except for left-out Persia), we could have peace time, using just the non-military civs. There are ten, so it'd be a large map, or you could leave two or three out, say exclude the New Worlders America and Iroquois, or leave out those from the last game: England, China, and Greece. This last would give you India, Iroquois, Egypt, Babylon, Russia, America and France.

Or there could be a european powers game. Or we could experiment with tiny or small maps, or even higher difficulty. Or we could get into custom maps (more work).

I think it could be interesting to try a game on a map that is much harsher than earth, say, make it arid, young, and cool; Pangaea with only 60% ocean--that'd make it sort of like playing on ancient Mars--and the large landmass would be offset by the scarcity of good city terrain.

Just a few ideas of the sort I think Markos was looking for. Maybe this post will generate some more.

Looking forward to the next game (despite claiming I needed a break elsewhere).

What do you all think?