ACDG5: Demogame, anyone (especially newbies)?

[vyeh]

Originally posted by vyeh
I'd also like to know who is interested in
(1) being a turnplayer
(2) being faction leader

I'm especially interested in giving newbies a chance for both of these roles early on. It is easier to learn these roles (and to tutor someone) when there are fewer units, bases, build choices, SE choices, contacts with other factions, etc.

This manual of turnplaying served me well when I became the Data Angel's turnplayer in ACDG3.

The faction leader would take the decisions by players running functional positions (e.g. military, tech, diplomatic) and harmonize these decisions into a directive to the turnplayer.

While the turnplayer has the option of creating a mid-turn save if something unanticipated happens (like running into a new faction), there will be plenty of times when the turnplayer will have to interpret the directive as best as possible.

The functional positions will depend on the interest of players and stage of the game. Everyone who wants to be involved will be involved.

Timetable:
(1) Let's get SMAX v. SMAC, map size and map parameters determined by Monday night. Then Mart can begin working on the map.
(2) Let's get faction and game rules settled (hopefully by Wednesday). Then Mart can start designing the game
(3) I'd like to get the initial turnplayer and initial faction leader settled by Friday. I'd like to rotate those positions every turn until everybody who wants to play them has played them.
(4) While Mart is designing the game and playtesting it, we can determine the subsidiary positions and start discussing our faction's initial strategy

From my previous experience, it is important to get the game going as fast as possible. I expect that we can shake out the organization as we play the first few turns.

[Mart]

Manual of turnplaying!

I wrote it after we did something wrong with units movement. With no possiblity to reload, we had to suffer. That's a compilation of ways to avoid such stuff.

It might be written differently now.

------
A proposal for a special rule:
- Copters cannot attack bases.

[vyeh]

Originally posted by Maniac
How about each person getting their own base to govern, or group of people getting their own province? Sounds more fun than being forcefully put into hibernation.

I remember there was a mention that in ACDG1 the territory was divided into regions and governed by different people. Some regions had boreholes and others did not.

Personally, I'd be happy to assign bases to individuals to govern, regardless of their other roles. Being governor would not be subject to rotation. Later as the number of bases grow, an ambitious governor could have more bases. Obviously, the demo government might set up some policies requiring bases to build units or SP; otherwise, the base governor would control the base and the terraforming around the base. We've covered this ground before. I support the idea in principle and let's work out the details after the game starts!

Originally posted by timsup2nothin
I would like to exclude the Believers out of personal distaste and the University out of a personal theory that they are too familiar/easy to play.

ACDGV Third Pass


SMAC or SMAX game


Faction
Player


Gaians
AI
 


Hive
 
 


University
AI
 



Morgan
 
 

Spartans
 
 


Believers
AI
 


Peacekeepers, generated, or flat
 
 


---


CMN
Mart
marcin777TAgmailTODcom


---


Preference
Settings


Map Size
Custom, 30x60


Ocean Coverage
50-70


Erosion Forces
Average


Native Life
Average


Cloud Cover
Average


Difficulty
Transcend


---


Transcend
Yes


Conquest
Yes


Diplomatic
Yes


Economic
Yes


Cooperative
Yes


---


Do or Die
No


Flexible start
Yes


Tech stagnation
No


Spoils of war
No


Blind research
No


Intense riv
No


No survey
Yes


No scatter
No


No rnd events
No


Time Warp
No


Iron man
No


Rand person
No


Rand social
No

---


Beginning Units
3 CP, 3 Scouts, 3 Unity Supply Droids


Special Rule
Copters cannot attack bases.

Notes:
(1) Votes for SMAC: Heraclitus, timsup2nothin. Vote for SMAX: Maniac. Either: JoeStalin. Waiting on: Bodissey, Nims, vyeh.
(2) One faction will be played by us. The other six are AI. Interested players: please indicate which factions you DON'T want to play.
(3) Standard, 40x80 is also an option.
(4) Ocean Coverage, Erosion Forces, Native Life and Cloud Cover are all average, which gives the greatest diversity.
(5) Difficulty is transcend because the AI is very beatable at any lower level with all the strategies available on the forum.
(6) Rules are SMAC default except for Flexible Start (can move initial colony pods) and No Blind Research (allows more tech strategy).
(7) Note random events are turned off for multiplayer games. I'm suggesting we keep it because it will make the game more fun.
(8) I am suggesting 3 CP, 3 Scouts and 3 Unity Supply Droids because it will give the game a faster start. The ability to have an extra nutrient, mineral or energy per base at the beginning of the game will lead to faster development.
(9) The use of copters by humans against the AI bases can be a game breaker.

Edit: Removed response to whether timsup2nothin had to reinstall - Mart answered question in post below

[Mart]

Originally posted by timsup2nothin
Okay....

I have to do some sort of install to bypass my mod...

Do you have modified alpha.txt?
If yes, then you would need to find a way to play vanila version. Scenario will not work, as smac kinda hardcodes scenario folder path.

Installing a game to a new folder would work (leaving the mod intact). Actually what I have is 3 folders within Firaxis games folder:
- standard mod
- aldebaran
- smaniac
you can copy whole folder, rename it and thus have different mod.

[Bodissey]

I vote for SMAC, as I wouldn’t dream of upsetting a fellow Mac player. Even though I own SMAX (purchased in the glorious days of its release).

[timsup2nothin]

Originally posted by Mart

Do you have modified alpha.txt?
If yes, then you would need to find a way to play vanila version. Scenario will not work, as smac kinda hardcodes scenario folder path.

Installing a game to a new folder would work (leaving the mod intact). Actually what I have is 3 folders within Firaxis games folder:
- standard mod
- aldebaran
- smaniac
you can copy whole folder, rename it and thus have different mod.

That's pretty much what I had in mind. I'll get that done today in fact. I want to play SP a little before we get too far along here since I haven't played vanilla SMAC in quite a while.

[Nims]

Smac or Smax, either is fine with me.

[vyeh]

I do have SMAX

Originally posted by Bodissey
I vote for SMAC, as I wouldn’t dream of upsetting a fellow Mac player. Even though I own SMAX (purchased in the glorious days of its release).

I do have SMAX; you're not upsetting me if you vote for SMAX.

Do you want to change your vote?

[Mart]

Is there a person now in this thread that doesn't have smax at this moment?
If no, we can very well play smax.

[vyeh]

Originally posted by Mart
Is there a person now in this thread that doesn't have smax at this moment?
If no, we can very well play smax.

Heraclitus is the only one I have doubts about. Obviously, if he has a Windows machine, Maniac has already made a suggestion .... I suspect he has Windows because of his participation in the GalCiv thread.

Do you have an opinion or a vote on SMAC v. SMAX?

[vyeh]

Besides Maniac, who is interested in governing his own base?

Base governance (as opposed to the faction-wide positions) inherently involves micromanagement (moving workers around, terraforming, crawling, converting workers to specialists, managing build queues).

Since Maniac (and other governors) will probably be going into the game to optimize their bases, I think it would make a lot of sense (and avoid communication problems with the turnplayer) if governors are responsible for the turnplay for their bases.

Basically a governor would take a mid-turn save, open it in the game, make all their base moves (build queue, allocating citizens, moving base units, e.g. formers, crawlers, defenders), and save his moves as a mid-turn save. It doesn't matter what order governors do these mid-turn saves as long as it is sequential!

Maniac, how does this sound operationally?

[timsup2nothin]

I like the base governors concept, but don't like that implementation. Getting everyone in line to make all the mid-turn saves sounds like an ordeal waiting to happen. I would be more than willing to entrust the turnplayer with following any directives for 'my' base.

[vyeh]

Originally posted by timsup2nothin
I like the base governors concept, but don't like that implementation. Getting everyone in line to make all the mid-turn saves sounds like an ordeal waiting to happen. I would be more than willing to entrust the turnplayer with following any directives for 'my' base.

Does this mean you'd like to run a base?

In practice, I would expect that a governor would post on the turn tracking thread (TTT) that he is working on his bases and will have another mid-turn save posted in half an hour.

I have no problem with you passing on your instructions for your base to the turn player.

I'm just offering an alternative because I suspect that Maniac will end up with multiple bases (since the bases have to be administered by someone -- the auto-governor is NOT a good way to go -- we can save the time it would take for Maniac to write out his instructions and for the turn player to read and implement the instructions).

I'm sure your instructions would be brief; Maniac was part of the Spartan ACDG3 team that built their own simulator (a replica of the game based on what they knew) and then would try out different battle strategies repeatedly.

In light of this discussion, I'll modify the proposal: governors may (but don't have to) do the turn play for their bases by taking the beginning turn save or mid turn save, adjusting their bases and units dedicated to developing their bases, and posting a new mid-turn save. Or they may issue instructions to the turn player.

[timsup2nothin]

Originally posted by vyeh


Does this mean you'd like to run a base?

In practice, I would expect that a governor would post on the turn tracking thread (TTT) that he is working on his bases and will have another mid-turn save posted in half an hour.

I have no problem with you passing on your instructions for your base to the turn player.

I'm just offering an alternative because I suspect that Maniac will end up with multiple bases (since the bases have to be administered by someone -- the auto-governor is NOT a good way to go -- we can save the time it would take for Maniac to write out his instructions and for the turn player to read and implement the instructions).

I'm sure your instructions would be brief; Maniac was part of the Spartan ACDG3 team that built their own simulator (a replica of the game based on what they knew) and then would try out different battle strategies repeatedly.

In light of this discussion, I'll modify the proposal: governors may (but don't have to) do the turn play for their bases by taking the beginning turn save or mid turn save, adjusting their bases and units dedicated to developing their bases, and posting a new mid-turn save. Or they may issue instructions to the turn player.

Yes, I think running a base or region of bases is a good thing.

I like the modified proposal.

Just to give background on 'where I'm coming from': I play games on a machine that is not connected to the internet and the machine that is hooked to the net is not primarily mine. So when I do anything with a save game it will be bracketed by downloading it and transferring it via flash drive, then transferring it back and uploading it, and both transfers may get delayed by another user. Being the turnplayer at times I would schedule and manage, but I don't plan on inserting an active mouse click into every move.

[vyeh]

Votes for SMAC: Bodissey, Heraclitus, timsup2nothin. Vote for SMAX: Maniac. Either: JoeStalin, Nims, vyeh.

No objections to 30x60 map size and average map parameters

Mart, it is up to you whether you want to take these results and start working on the map or if you want to give a little more time for discussion of SMAC v. SMAX.

I'd like to focus our attention on choice of faction. I strongly support a flat faction because it opens up more possibilities (certainly more SE choices).