Turn Chat Improvements!

[Turambar]

Well the last turn chat has just finished and we managed to only get 6 turns done. This is far too slow in my (and the others there) opinion.

After the chat Locutus and myself came up with a couple of ideas that would help speed them up:

1) One reason it was so slow was that Pedrunn was posting screenshots alot to give us an idea of what was happening. His time should be used to just play the game and get orders IMO.

So I think it would be a far better idea if someone else who's playing along posted the shots instead of Pedrunn.

2) When moving units we were moving one unit and then Pedrunn was coming back to us for orders for the next.

If orders were given in bulk for units e.g. Warrior 1 go north, Warrior 2 go South etc. Pedrunn can then just play out all the orders and end the turn reasonably quickly.

3) All ministers should appoint delegates! Luckily Maq had appointed me as his delagate and left orders for the units which was a big help. All ministers should follow his example.

I'm going to take a look at how the other demo games running have handled chats and see what we can learn from them.

If anyone has any other ideas please post them!

[Frozzy]

a) Go faster, screen shots every 2/3 turns
b) Please Pedrunn, take the orders and run with them.
c) If you don't turn up, your problem. I suggest minimum 10 turns per chat REGARDLESS.

[Tamerlin]

Re: Turn Chat Improvements!

Originally posted by Turambar
So I think it would be a far better idea if someone else who's playing along posted the shots instead of Pedrunn.

Tell me if I am wrong but is there not a random element that will produce a different gift out of a goody hut if the game is played on another computer?

Will the result of a combat be exactly the same?

[Locutus]

A) As it is, Pedrunn is asking everyone what our orders are and when the answer isn't 100% clear or discussion ensues and everyone gets distracted, he has to ask a second time. This is too slow. We should supply him with orders. Whenever he's off executing orders, we should start discussing what to do next and come up with orders if possible. Then the Ministers or their delegates can simply post 'ORDER: blah' when a decision has been made. Then Pedrunn can just scan the chat for ORDERs when he's done with the current batch and briefly evaluate them and, unless he disagrees with them or has useful feedback, he can go off again to execute the new orders.

B) Orders are executed in batches as much as possible, without Pedrunn returning with results after each and every individual order. If we have 10 units, there's no use in reporting results after having moved each unit. Moving all 10 units first and then posting a screenshot or whatever with the result is much faster. A little initiative from the President's side shouldn't be discouraged either. We voted him as President because we trust him with the game, so he can make small decisions on his own from time to time (if a unit is moving along a river, continue to move along the river unless there might be a reason to do something else).

C) At the start of the chat delegates are appointed for missing Ministers (if the Ministers failed to do so themselves), who will be the only ones allowed to make ORDERs (and only for their own office of course). This way it's always clear who makes the call.

D) Some other player (preferably (but not necessarily) a Judge) can play the game alongside Pedrunn and provide the people in the chat with info (how much gold do we have, how many turns until growth, what's the opponents regard/ranking, etc?) and post screenshots if needed (normally no more than once a turn, once every 2/3 turns if possible). We may have to find a middle road here: this other player has to execute the same orders as Pedrunn but at the same time communicate with everyone in the chat. That's bound to cause him to lag behind Pedrunn, which makes it more difficult for him to supply up-to-date info to the chatroom.

E) The orders we prepare in the forum beforehand should be more specific and detailed. The more specific they are, the less room there is for discussion during the chat and the faster the chat can move forward. In today's chat, we barely spent any time discussing diplomacy, but we spent an eternity discussing where to move the units. This is in part because the results of unit moves are harder to predict, but also in part because very specific diplomatic orders were available. Do A, if B happens, do C, if D happens instead, do E. This should be done for unit moves as well, as much as possible.
For example for the southern Warrior, the instructions Maq left us today were okay (move south, then along the border, look for city sites) but we had no orders for the northern Warrior so we spent a good deal of time discussing what to do with it once we ran out of river. And we were lucky we got the Hoplite, or decision making would have been even harder.
This probably also required more specific and detailed polls (exampes: Should Warrior 1 move north or west? Should Warrior 2 move south or east? If the terrain is very poor, do we change direction to look for future city locations or do we continue to search for huts/other civs? If we encounter a river going in the 'wrong' direction, do we follow or ignore it? etc...).

[Tamerlin]

Re:Turn Chat Improvements!

Stupid double post...

[Locutus]

Re: Re: Turn Chat Improvements!

Originally posted by Tamerlin


Tell me if I am wrong but is there not a random element that will produce a different gift out of a goody hut if the game is played on another computer?

Will the result of a combat be exactly the same?

I'm not sure about this, but to some extend this doesn't matter. The chats only last 10-20 turns at most, so if minor discrepancies occur that won't affect the game so much that we take different decisions over it. If the differences become too large or critical, it's a small effort to let the President email the latest savegame to the other player or to post it on the forum. That's still a lot faster than when the President has to post screenshots and stuff all the time.

[Tamerlin]

Re: Re: Re: Turn Chat Improvements!

Originally posted by Locutus
I'm not sure about this, but to some extend this doesn't matter. The chats only last 10-20 turns at most, so if minor discrepancies occur that won't affect the game so much that we take different decisions over it. If the differences become too large or critical, it's a small effort to let the President email the latest savegame to the other player or to post it on the forum. That's still a lot faster than when the President has to post screenshots and stuff all the time.

If the results can vary, the second player can still use the cheat menue to emulate the results of the real game played by Pedrunn.

[Frozzy]

Locutus, propal D violates Article I Section 5 of our constitution:

5. The government may not knowingly hide information or give false information to the people. Therefore all citizens shall have access to the saved games. However, no Citizen shall ever 'play ahead'.

No playing ahead


Oh, Pedrunn, if you press Alt + TAB you can minimize CtP2 if you didn't already know.

[Locutus]

Tamerlin,
Good point. Agreed.

Frozzy,
Who says anything about playing ahead? One player would play concurrently with the Prez, like mapfi did today, nothing unconstitutional about that...

[Turambar]

But he wouldn't be playing ahead but alongside using the same orders as the pres gets.

Good ideas Locutus. Orders should definatley be more detailed before the chat.

Another question: How oftern should chats be? How many a week? Should we have a regular date(s) for them each week?

[Locutus]

I think we should have at least 1 chat a week if possible. Two would be even better but that would leave little time for polling and discussing in the forums, which is crucial to make the chat move forward at a decent pace. Unless we can find a time when everyone is available, we shouldn't have regular dates, as that would exclude those people who can't attend on those dates from ever participating in a chat. However, I do think chats should be announced well in advance whenever possible (at least 3 days, to give enough time to organize polls between the announcement and the chat).

[HuangShang]

is it possible to "play along side" in games

[Tamerlin]

Why not use a very different system based on overall orders decided earlier in the forum.

Example :

Explore the southern part of the map with the first warrior without trespassing the Austrian territory.

Move the first warrior to the east and report any goody hut result, neighbor (in order to apply the overall diplomatic policy voted in a thread), or barbarian (act as decided if we meet barbarians).

Build one settler that will be moved to found a city in the plains west of Good Land then a warrior that will explore the northern part of the map, report blah, blah, blah...

Pedrunn could then play successive turns and would only have to come back to the chat room to report events that would bring a significant change and would thus need a collective decision. I think this could really speed up the game and give it the feeling of an executive government applying the overall policy voted by the people of Lemuria.

[mapfi]

From what I could tell today I got the exact same results as Pedrunn - proposal and goody hut wise. However, I think there are a few random functions scattered in the slics, so we shouldn't do the playing along too long. As long as we get only 5 turns done it's ok anyway...

[HuangShang]

what ever works