ACDG5: Demogame, anyone (especially newbies)?

[vyeh]

Originally posted by Mart
I will have some more notes about the game, it will be a challenging one. You will have to revise known strategies.

Originally posted by Mart in Turn Posting Thread

• AI are challenging, so playing each turn as a multiplayer game with decent human players is recommended.
• During testing I got various results when interacting via diplomacy with AI, consider your options, small map makes momentum strategies preferable, but I wanted to even the chances for builder or hybrid. Combination of build, momentum and diplomacy was intended to give optimal results.

Mart's hints seem to suggest that strictly beelining to IA is not a good idea ...

You need to contact other factions for momentum and diplomacy ...

[Mart]

I would count at this moment already 4 active players, and there was like almost 10 people posting in the threads.
Some of them may be wishing to contribute only little, but I think the game will hopefully grow, when advancing forward and more interesting events happen.

[vyeh]

The news item found dacole.

Maybe the notice I placed in the MP forum will attract another player, even if its main purpose was to get veteran players to drop by (at least to the Cantina).

I've PM'd all the people who showed interest. If we're lucky, maybe one of them might return.

Got any other ideas?

[Mart]

Let's see how the game develops. 4 players is already creating good team. I'm thinking about few things, but meanwhile we are ok.

Demo games do not need rigid participation. With time, more people should join.

[vyeh]

I'm trying to make it so newcomers don't have to read everything. I've already warned people away from this thread unless they've asked a question or made a comment. I hope the narrative makes it easier for new players to get into the game. Maybe I'll add a section summarizing the votes taken so far and the current player positions. I remember my experience of reading a year's worth of the Data Angel forum in a week.

I think the key is that players have fun. I'm glad to see Bodissey name his base. I think all of the ACDG3 factions named landmarks. The Spartans even named their units!

The Cantina is a good idea. I'm enjoying it.

About more interesting things happening. 30x60 map means there are 1800 map squares. We know 57 of them. 1800 divided by 7 is 257. On average, we can expect to uncover 257 squares before we run into a square uncovered by another faction. So we've already uncovered about a fourth of the squares we would uncover on average before we ran into another faction.

Square root of one fourth is one half. So the average distance between two factions is twice the distance from the westernmost square we know about to the easternmost. So average distance between center of faction territory is 16 squares.

From faction dominance, we know Morgan has bigger territory than us. So we certainly don't have the largest territory.

So a fair assumption is that the average distance from the edge if the squares we've uncovered to the edge of the squares the nearest faction has uncovered is around 8 squares. That is only two turns by foil.

So once we or the nearest AI builds foils, it will only be a few turns before contact is made.

Both Doctrine: Mobility and Doctrine: Flexibility have both Explore and Conquer ratings. So Believers (Explore, Conquer), Gaians (Explore), Hive (Conquer, Build) and Spartans (Discover, Conquer) would steer toward researching Doctrine: Mobility and Doctrine: Flexibiiity.

Believers and Hive are aggressive, so some more interesting events should happen soon. Believers don't get any research points for 10 years; Hive loses one energy at each base.

Spartans start with Doctrine: Mobility, so I would expect to see Spartans pretty soon and they're erratic

[vyeh]

Got a response form my CFC posting:

Best of luck; I, unfortunately, can't join as I'm tied down with work.


I'll look into ACDG in late summer. I've only ever played one PBEM game, so multiplayer is really uncharted territory for me.

I'll have to remember to check back in late summer.

[Mart]

I was thinking about establishing a weekly based schedule for the turn advancement. It may be easier for players to plan their involvement, if they know when certain actions are needed.

To begin, I thought about 2 turns a week. Turns would be advanced on Tuesdays and Fridays, approximately evening in the time zone of current turnplayer. If we consider 2101 this Tuesday, 2102 would be Friday, 2103 next Tuesday and so on. If players find that early turns need less time to decide on things, we could do 3 turns/week.
This would be subject to change as the game progresses.

I think such schedule would make playing easier, e.g after Friday advance, players would have weekend/Monday to view the game, make decisions, Monday-Tuesday would be discussion, review of the issues, Tuesday turnplayer would play the turn, etc.

[vyeh]

I'm asking for opinions.

Do you remember the ACDG3 schedule?

[timsup2nothin]

My access on weekends is spotty (from noon Friday PST on), so a discussion that started after a Friday night move would have to get established without me, for the most part. I would be much better able to participate if we went with Monday/Thursday

[Mart]

Originally posted by vyeh
Do you remember the ACDG3 schedule?

It was not weekly based. Each faction held the turn for up to 48 hours, but there were 4 human controlled factions. Roughly one turn-year was played a week. That would be twice more time than here when decided 2 turns/week for discussion of a turn. On the other hand, you had to keep diplomacy with human factions - took time too.
However, when playing singleplayer, it is possible to advance faster with comparable time for discussion. While in ACDG3 we had to wait for up to 6 days when other human-factions were playing, here you have the turn and events right away.

I think initially 2 or 3 turns per week is ok. Let's start with 2 first. Later probably 2/week will be optimal. In later game, when more AI interaction will happen, more operations throughout the planet will be necessary, it may be changed to 1.5 or 1 turn/week. Or just without limits, only rough guidelines.

[Mart]

I additionally posted an info on a polish forum. There is few quite active players still. Someone could join.

So we have:
-civfanatics
-CGN
-civ.org.pl

any other sites having SMAC active?

[vyeh]

There is a tiny help forum at GameSpot.

[Mart]

I can submit a post over there later today.

Hey, it's quite active forum...

[vyeh]

Use index as gateway. It doubles as welcome thread.

[Petek]

Originally posted by Mart
I additionally posted an info on a polish forum. There is few quite active players still. Someone could join.

So we have:
-civfanatics
-CGN
-civ.org.pl

any other sites having SMAC active?

This site is a SMAC forum, totally in German though. It seems to have at least one active Democracy game in progress.

Petek