Polycon '06

[DanS]

Just got back. A really good time. Met and talked with Sid, wife and son. Met Brian. Met Soren, Alex, Trip and others. Soren, Alex, and Trip played Civ 4 and the cardgame Bang! with us. BHG gave us a great tour and allowed us to set up some board games, poker, and pool in their offices. Everybody was incredibly gracious, especially in giving up large portions of their weekend for a hard core group of players of their games.

It was great meeting all the other Polytubbies.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=154562

Playing Civ 4 with the designers of Civ 4? Does it get any better than this?

[Grandpa Troll]

I felt Sid channeling through you and well, thats as close as I have gotten to being at one with myself since..since..I was 14



Thanks for the report and looking to hear any more that you folks have

[OzzyKP]

Good times.

[Wiglaf]

[DanS]

.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll
I felt Sid channeling through you and well, thats as close as I have gotten to being at one with myself since..since..I was 14



Thanks for the report and looking to hear any more that you folks have

No early teenager angst?

[Jon Miller]

We didn't actually play with the designers.. they played eachoer. I think Trip won? (Trip, Soren, and Alexman)

JM

[Jon Miller]

Err, I will report here I guess (for all who didn't arrive):

So I showed up at arround 5:30 Friday. I saw the Apolycon 2006 (or '06?) sign on the hotel which told me this was the right place.

As I went to the front door, I saw DanQ and Markos get out of a taxi (from their visit to Firaxis), wondered if they were with the Con and went inside. Inside there were a big group of people, but I was a little unsure, and looked arround a bit before going to meet them (I thought I would recognise 3 people there (OzzyKP, DanS, and KH (who didn't go)).

I got to the group, and met condor223, Donegeal, CapTVK, Metaliturtle, snoopy369, Snotty, and Zopperoni (I might have missed a name). DanQ and Markos returned shortly. Then we went to the Hotel Restaurant (not Veggie freindly) to eat and DanS, ZargonX, and Chieftess joined us.

After eating, we went over to BigHugeGames, where Dwight showed us arround. Joe Phisgar also talked to us for a bit. There was interest in Axis and Allies, but it was decided to play some Frank's Zoo (spelling?) first. 7 of us played, CapTVK had brought the game, and he won easily (I came in last place).

Then some people started playing Poker (and Rise of Legends and Pool) and 4 of us played Settlers of Catan (Dwight, CapTVK, ZargonX, and myself). Dwight did extremely well in this game and won handedly (although ZargonX and myself were getting close to getting back in the game at the end).

Then four of us played more Frank's Zoo which somehow I managed to win. After that we played a Rise of Legends team game. It was Dwight and ZargonX (I think) and CapTVK against myself, Markos (I think, possibly ZargonX) and a computer player. It being the first time CapTVK played I took him out earlier.. and then fought it out with Dwight over one of my cities. After a bit ZargonX (? or whoever the other player was) took out the computer player and started fighting the my ally (who I am still confused about). I had managed to retake the city, and Dwight decided to strike at one of my other cities. Arround this time ZargonX took out my ally (who had lots of cities which were fine..). Now watching the Computer player go out, it was obvious that taking the capital destroyed that nation, so I decided to move my army to Dwight's capital. He marched on mine, but because I had built defenses (he had attacked it before, the city we fought over was close to my capital) it took him much longer to take then for me to take his capital. Then I rushed for ZargonX's and he rushed for mine. Once more, because of the defenses I had built up, I succeeded (I was the Cuotl, and used the Heroes and the Towers on defense).

I roomed with snotty that night (hopefully didn't wake him up when I came in). The next morning people collected in the room arround 8:30 am. OzzyKP and a CGW reporter had joined us (later in the day Theseus and the Firaxis apolytoners joined us (I think that Arnelos (?spelling?) also joined us for a bit). First Snoopy369 and Zopperoni presented the opening and showed us an Age of Nations video.

As that got over, we went to eat cookies and coffee that were provided to us. While we were doing that, a guy came in unnannounced and took some coffee, he was standing arround so some of us started talking to him. It turns out that he was Brian Reynolds (others might have recognized him, I hadn't) and we stood arround and talked (he answered our questions) near the coffee and cookies. He talked some about what he does on the projects, about BHGs, about how he did Civ2 and about nonHistoric games (RoL and SMAC). As well as other stuff, towards the end Paul Stephanouk arrived and Brian said he need to get ready to go to his wife in the car because he was about to leave on vacation. We asked for autographs, and pictures, and that all took a bit long (he got a call on his cellphone). We talked to Paul Stephanouk a bit before the break (he turns out to be a big boardgamer and BHG is his first involvement in computer game production/design), and then he gave us a presentation about what they did for RoN and just general BHG stuff.

We then headed off for lunch, I think some had lunch with Paul Stephanouk, I and Donegeal went off to discuss Vox stuff (first meeting of Voxes).

Well, that is enough for now, and I might have some stuff wrong. I will post about after lunch later in the day.

Jon Miller

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
. We asked for autographs, and pictures, and that all took a bit long (he got a call on his cellphone).

You forgot to mention the reason it took so long was waiting for your laptop to boot up....

[Donegeal]

[alexman]

It was great to hang out with everyone on Saturday night! Thanks!

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by OzzyKP


You forgot to mention the reason it took so long was waiting for your laptop to boot up....

This is me telling the story of the Con. Of course it is going to be seen through a certain shade of glasses.

Jon Miller

[Sir Og]

I can only hope that next time it won't cost me a third of my annual income to attend.

[Jon Miller]

Donegeal and I got back a little late from lunch, as in Sid had been talking for 5-10 minutes. He was talking about how he came up with the idea of Civ. Then he told a bit about what Brian had done with Civ2 and SMAC. He and Soren sort of glossed over Civ3, saying that because of circumstances it wasn't so hot, but that it had been a learning experience (Soren). Then Soren talked some about Civ4. Afterwards people got in line for autographs, and I talked to Sid's wife (Sue) for a bit. They were apparently going after this to do some singing (Sid plays the keyboard). In the Firaxis crew were Soren, Sid's son (Ralph??), Trip, Alexman, the first graphics person for Civ4 (don't remember the name right now), another person (from Microprose) who I didn't recognise (I arrived late) and maybe one more person. After Sid and his wife left, Soren and the graphics person sat down and presented the different alphas/betas of Civ4 and how the developement went. Which was pretty cool. Additionally, it was after lunch that Theseus and DaviddesJ (CFC) arrived.

Then there was another break, and Alexman and Trip presented Moding information. Alexman took us through the xml files and told us some about Python and the SDK. It seems really really powerful, the most powerful for a strategy game that I have ever heard about. Trip then talked about the scenario creation for Warlords and showed us two fo them, the Genghis Khan one seems great, and I never imagined what could be done (before today). We found out quite a bit about warlords that I hadn't known before (I think they told us a few things that hadn't been told before).

Next OzzyKP and CapTVK talked about Diplogames and FreeCiv. I have always thought Diplogames seemed interesting, and Ozzy's talk seemed pretty good. It was also interesting to hear about the state of FreeCiv (if you want to play Vanilla Civ2, it is probably the best way to do so). It would probably have been good to have a Demogames group (and there were a number of us there, I and Donegeal from Vox (and GoW for Donegeal), Arenos (spelling?) from RP, Alexman from Sarrantium (SP?) and GS, Trip from Lux and GS, Metaturtle for GS and Theseus for GS, ZargonX from Sarrantium), but it was a long time of meetings (~10 hours?) and while they were excellent, I think everyone was tired.

For dinner we went to a restaurant and Pub, and I liked it quite a bit (had a lot more Veggie stuff). The Firaxians who had stayed with us were there, and Paul Stephanouk and Joe Phisgar joined us. I sat next to DanQ, DanS, snotty, Zopperoni, and OzzyKP. I think that the Firaxians and Paul Stephanouk sat together??? I don't remember all the seating arrangements. It was pretty good, we left for it arround 7:30, and headed back to the hotel at 9:30.

At the hotel, we tried to get everything going for the Civ. There were a lot of problems with getting it going actually, and it seemed to be issues with netoworking. Like for the longest time my computer wouldn't work with sid's son's computer (I think it got somewhat better when I turned off wireless with mine). The first game (to get going) was between Alexman, Trip, and Soren. It was long and hardfought, but I think Trip ended up winning (I was trying to get things working). ZargonX and Snotty and DanS got into a game (I was suppose to be in it, and Theseus, but I couldn't connect at the same time that ZargonX could connect and Theseus' computer quit working). DanS went out early, but Snotty and ZargonX fought it out long and hard (I think that Snotty ended up winning on points).

Finally I got it going with Donegeal, and Theseus joined us on DanS's computer (the game was Renasaince, Lakes, death at lost of city). Now this was mine and Donegeal's first game, and we thought Theseus was better than us (I still think he is) and so we had a sort of truce to begin with. Which was good, because I fought long and hard against Theseus for a pretty much the whole game. Initially I and Donegeal did nothing versus eachother, after a while he sent a couple of troops into my territory. I attacked them (didn't want them to be pillaging me or attacking a weakened city (from an attack by Theseus)). I still had to focus on Theseus though (I don't know what Donegeal was doing), finally it seemed as if Theseus had backed off a little, and I sent a stack towards Donegeal (I didn't have horses) (Additionally, I had been ahead in points until a bit before this time, when Donegeal went ahead in points). In that direction Donegeal was over 10 turns away (I had just gotten Musketeers (the first?) and sent at most one with the stack) so thety were long in getting their. After the stack was well away, I noticed that Donegeal had built a city up on my other border (not the one facing Theseus), this would be important for any future attacks (as it wouldn't be so many turns to get there). Also, Theseus renewed his asasult, and I almost wasn't prepared enough (came the cloest to losing a city that I ever would). Finally my troops got to Donegeal, and I discovered that he had just gotten to the Cossacks, which slaughtered my stack (I had one Musketeer, all the rest Longbowmen and Crossbowmen and Catapults), soon after this he sent one Cossack to my north. I got at this time an almost invincible Longbowmen unit (4 First Strike advances and 1 +10% one) which enabled me to survive against Theseus (it was still a bit iffy). I did an attack on Donegeals northern city, which I was close to taking (and lost my super longbowman). Then Theseus did a last suicide attack on me while Donegeal took one of his cities (this was with 15 turns to go or something) losing a lot of Cossacks. I then rushed the few Cannons I had (7 or so) up to Donegeal's city with Grenaders and attacked. I managed to take with with only a couple of functioning units with 5 or so turns to go.

At this time, everone else was playing Bang (or something) with the Firaxians. There had been another game (a team game), which had ended with snoopy369 versus OzzyKP (I think that snoopy369 ended up winning). I then had to leave, so returned the CD to Theseus (who had lent it to me) and drove down to a Wedding in VA Beach.

It was a good time, and I enjoyed meeting everyone. I got really good vibes from Soren (he really loved Civ) and BHG (they really loved games) and it was great meeting Sid.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

It was mine and Donegeal's first MP game, sorry.

JM