Game Startup Options

[Richard Bruns]

We were already planning on having the ability to increase or decrease model complexity. So if you don't want to deal with a complex ecology model, you can use a simpler one.

[Twinge]

Thought this thread should probably also be bumped back up =) (Hopefully there hasn't been another recent post on the same topic... probably has, oh well

Don't have a whole lot to add to this one this time around, most of the stuff relevenant to this post was already posted in the endgame options thread.

Basically, I'd like to see Some 'preset difficulty levels', the 1-10 scale Richard talked about as optional to start. this would give the average, more computer illiterate user a simple scale to change difficulty. There would also be advanced options where you can tweak and set everything just how you want it. Following is a small list of some things you'd be able to tweak the difficulty with:

Starting advantages for player and for AI (FE, In CTP on Chieftan, you basically always get 2 settlers and the AIs only get 1. Higher up things change)
AI Cheats? (You could make the AI stupid, smart but not cheat, stupid but cheats, or the ultimate smart and cheats. You would also be able to customize the amount the AI cheats... wheter it's a small production advantage, seeing the whole map, etc.)
Disaster targets? (This could be a scale to determine how biased disasters and disease are. On a very high level of the scale, the distasters target the player also exclusively and ignore the AI, on a level level disease smacks down the AI and leaves the player unscathed. Defualt would porbably be in between; perhaps this would be a simple % scale, max being like 98-2 or something.)
Starting Tech? (Pretty obvious, AI or player can start with more tech)
Happiness/Stablity (Players could make the AI's people hate the AI more than the player's people hate the player and vice versa)
There are a couple more options that could be added as well.

[gonzo_for_civ]

Perhaps one of the options should be a "quick start" option that will start a new game with all random options and other standard options with standard rules so that people who don't feel it necessary to set everything can just play it.

[Zeldor]

Hi,
I have got few ideas taht coudl be used. In FreeCIV yo ucan modify many starting options, including number of settlers and explorers given at the beginning. You can set there almsot everything, we could go even further giving the ability to set that options for every player.
Also in the beginning you could choose which types of game finishign are available.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Zeldor, Welcome to Clash!

I think your suggestions are all good, and some were in the plan already. But variable numbers of starting population for the different players isn't IMO a high priority right at the moment. Then again, I think it would be Fairly easy to do, so if others second your request as something important we might be able to work it into Demo 8.

Cya,

Mark

[Gary Thomas]

There are two quite different types of Civilization style games. These are set scenarios and random scenarios. Personally I never play set scenarios - they do not interest me. However, Clash, at present has only set scenarios (and not too many of them).

Perhaps there are people who play the set scenarios in Civilization hiding somwhere in the hinterland. However I doubt it.

Random scenarios with random maps are my preference, and I have been trying to move toward them, with, effectively, zero support and encouragement.

All of the suggestions in this thread relate to random scenarios, with the possible exception of the "degree of difficulty" one. The degree of difficulty can be easily (and in my view wrongly) achieved just by multiplying the production and attack value of all non-player civilization by some arbitrary factor between 0.5 (easy) and 1000 (diety). Such an approach seriously offends just about all my game related sensibilities. In particular, why not make the upper value 10,000,000,000 to give a real challenge. In effect it appears that there needs to be a level at which the player cannot win. And that I do not like at all. Degree of difficulty should be set when the scenario is set, not by arbitrarily modifying parameters, effectively producing a different game.

Every other suggestion in this thread has two characteristics:

• They apply to a version of Clash that doesn't exist yet, and is on nobody's list of priorities except mine.
• They would be an automatic part of random scenarios anyway.

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

I play Civ2 (set) scenarios. Some of civ2 scenarios even have randomness in them. I know quite a lot of people who play set scenarios. Look at the answers to the question "preferred scenarios" threadS in the civ2 section for instance. There are probably more people playing civ2 scenarios than downloading Clash demos (unfortunately).

That being said, random scenarios are very important. And I want to point out that I did make comments about the random maps you generated.

As a reminder, we have three lanforms (mountainous/plains/islands) available if I remember well.

An important addition to add to what you already have done would be size of the map. It can give ideas whether the random map generator scales well or not, and be useful to every player. You could have customed or random size. Random map size is especially challenging.

Then we need hygrometry (desert/humid squares) and vegetation (forests/plains).

Then we have to determine starting civs.
- Is the world totally settled at start?
- By how many civs (or how many square does a starting civ has)?
- Do we start with a unit and settlers or squares with nothing on them, or a square and a unit?
- If so, do other civs also start with a unit, in which case, is there a unit-fest on the world map at start of the game?

These may or may not be options presented to the player. A difficulty option would probably be more on the lines of how much time does the AI spend planning its turns (a bit like chess AI levels I think) and how much aggressive are the various AIs. If you start the game as one square of a civ among 1000 equals, chances are that you will lose unless some of your neighbours can be easily conquered. Thus making some civs pacific (or inept to fight) is probably important.

[Mark_Everson]

Gary said:

Random scenarios with random maps are my preference, and I have been trying to move toward them, with, effectively, zero support and encouragement.

Until the demo 7 improvements a random-map-based scenario didn't seem to me to add much. Now with technological progression and colonization capable there's a lot more to argue for it.

Laurent, I think you've laid out a good basic approach on what we need to look into. A more detailed tech tree is another requirement.

All:
Lets put one (or more) random-map-based all-ancient-history scenarios in demo 8! My take is we should probably dedicate a thread to this topic just to keep the discussion all in one place.