OFT (One Free Tech) Game

[Mathemagician]

update:
player list and stats

Player Order:

(Seat) - (Color) - (Player w/ Email) - (Leader name and Civilization)

1 - blue - Mathemagician - Rainerman of the Turks
2 - orange - Protoss72000 - Aragorn of the Germans
3 - green - FlameFlash - FlameFlash of the Native Americians
4 - pink - Grandpa Troll - Czar Troll IV of the Russians
5 - purple - Cuaich - John of the English - (substituting for J.Bytheway)
6 - light blue - Dimytes - King Dimytes of the Vikings

Moderator:

Hatschy

Game Settings

Map:
- Size: Gigantic Map
- Shape: Doughnut

Slider settings:
- Wet/Dry 50%
- Warm/Cold 50%
- Ocean/Land 30% (more ocean than land)
- Island/Continent 50%
- Uniform/Diverse 100%
- Few/Many Goods 100%

Difficulty:
- Skill Level: Deity
- Barbarian Threat: Raging Hordes

Rules:
- Bloodlust off
- Pollution on

No AIs

All Wonders Allowed

OFT scenario settings:

Free Tech:

To be chosen within the first five turns, last chance is in the year 3800 BC. A message box at the beginning of that turn will appear to warn you.

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original post

hi people,

i just had the idea of setting up a game where each player can choose one free technology at the start of the game.
any ideas if it is possible to manipulate a PBEM game in such a way ? and even more to make it secret, so that i (probably being the moderator) could play too ?

on the details.
the principle is clear: each player gets one tech of choice for free.

A few questions:

1.) If technically possible, would it be better to choose the tech

a) before the game starts ?
b) on the very first turn, after you have seen your starting position ?
c) during the first X turns of the game ?
d) at any time during the game, so that you can use it as a kind of joker ?

I'd prefer option b).

2.) Should it be public information who has chosen which technology (and when) or should it be secret ?

I'd say make it secret.

Also, i suggest playing on a gigantic world, so that the tech choices get time to influence the development of the game.

Any other ideas/questions/issues ?
Anyone interested ?

[Protoss72000]

Would there be a limit of any kind? Could you choose, chemistry or something from the later ages? Or choose a certain government advance like corporate republic? It might be an interesting idea, I have no idea how to get it into a game though.

[Mathemagician]

Originally posted by Protoss72000
Would there be a limit of any kind? Could you choose, chemistry or something from the later ages? Or choose a certain government advance like corporate republic? It might be an interesting idea, I have no idea how to get it into a game though.

yep, you could choose ANY tech you like, governments might be a little too good, granted, but that could be discussed. still, if you take the government advance you miss some other interesting tech

to get it into the game... well i think someone somewhere mentioned directly editing the .csg file but i have no idea how it works.

another idea might be editing some game files in such a way that, if all players play fair, each player would get his tech either totally for free or could research it for 0 in the beginning or something.
for example a scenario where someone edits the basic conditions (would require an independent moderator to do). can you edit the initial advances in a scenario ?
or, if those text files only count for the active player, each player would edit them in the beginning to set requirements for their favored tech to "no other tech and 0 research points" and then go for it first.

right now, the scenario idea seems to be the most plausible to me. i'll have a look if this might be possible as i described.

so would you be in, Protoss ?

[Mathemagician]

update

i played a little bit around with the cheat mode and it seems there should be a way to incorporate this if i we could find an independent moderator who knows how to create a scenario (i dont).

alright, we're taking a couple of players and one moderator

edit

the basic problem i still have is to transform a cheat-moded 1-player save game into a multiplayer scenario. if that is solved, while keeping the same starting positions, we should be able to go.

[hatschy]

Here is a somewhat simplistic "solution":
This is a scenario, where every human player is granted a predefined advance at the beginning of the first turn. If you want to change the advances that are granted, you can simply edit the file with the SLIC code and replace the tech numbers. Only the player, who does the setup, needs the scenario. You will need a moderator for editing the SLIC file and starting the game, if you want to keep the granted advances secret.

[J Bytheway]

You can start a PBEM game in cheat mode and attribute the techs then. Just set up the game in the normal fashion but rather than pressing "Launch", press the "Launch editor" button. That brings up the cheat mode box at the start of the game, but as soon as you close it you can never get it open again.

That should provide a means to distribute the techs (although it would be before seeing starting positions). If you want someone independant to do it then I'll be happy to.

[J Bytheway]

Crosspost - hatschy's solution will work fine too.

[Mathemagician]

thank you both.

j.bytheway, i'll come back to your idea (and offer) once i tried/understood hatschy's variant.

hatschy, where do i have to put the folder to get it working ?

[Grandpa Troll]

.just adding my $0.02 worth..and I tried a lot of scenario making...

I once tried a similiar process where I wanted Corporate Republic available at begginning..

I got it but then once I actually got hwere it was on tech tree, i was unable to research anything else...

strange, but true..

Not sure why

Ok, just adding that in and if the fine folks here ghet this working fine then whoa it sounds like a simply awesome game setup!!


Peace

Grandpa Troll

[Mathemagician]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll
.just adding my $0.02 worth..and I tried a lot of scenario making...

I once tried a similiar process where I wanted Corporate Republic available at begginning..

I got it but then once I actually got hwere it was on tech tree, i was unable to research anything else...

strange, but true..

Not sure why

Ok, just adding that in and if the fine folks here ghet this working fine then whoa it sounds like a simply awesome game setup!!


Peace

Grandpa Troll

thank you for the warning, Troll. but if Hatschy gives me a complete scenario out of nowhere i kind of trust him that it will work.

btw, why do Americans always say something like "just my 2 cent". what is that the cost of ? probably not posting in the Apolyton forums

oh.. and ... shall i sign you up ?

[Grandpa Troll]

.wellllll....when speaking with the apparent over=priced advice of non-Americans here, I figure that my input aint worth what others THINK theirs is..so I limit it to $0.02 worth so I may even get me some change back!!


Well, I too trust Hatchy and simply wanted to input so that we make sure before playing scenarios and get caught down the road is all....

Thanks Hatchy for the Hardwork and well, tell me more about the settings my dear man?


Peace

Grandpa Troll

[hatschy]

Originally posted by Mathemagician

thank you for the warning, Troll. but if Hatschy gives me a complete scenario out of nowhere i kind of trust him that it will work.

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll
Well, I too trust Hatchy and simply wanted to input so that we make sure before playing scenarios and get caught down the road is all....

Thanks Hatchy for the Hardwork and well, tell me more about the settings my dear man?

Aehem, thank you for having so much confidence in my programming skills , but I have to admit that the scenario has not been thoroughly tested. But it is so simple and uses only a small subset of what Keygen's quick start mod (or the tutorial) does, so that I am pretty sure it works.

There is a "readme" included in the zip file, which explains what to do. If you want to do a quick test, install the scenario (i.e. extract the files to the scenario folder) and start a hot seat game with (up to) 8 human players (with the scenario enabled). Then edit the SLIC file to contain the advances of your choice and retry.

[Mathemagician]

i have the scenario in the correct folder but i cant find it under scenarios when i open either a PBEM or a single player game.

[FlameFlash]

Has there been any progress with the picking a tech at the start one yet? I have a lot of interest in both playing and just having that scenario in my scenarios folder.

Is it possible to use multiple scenarios at once? It'd be interesting to see that combined with Keygen's fast start.

[Mathemagician]

well, j.bytheway's suggestion works, but only before you see your starting positions.
i havent been able to test hatschy's suggestion successfully so far.

im not sure if this should be used with a fast start mod as this way obviously the higher techologies are the better picks whereas with a regular start earlier technologies might make more sense so as to benefit from the earlier, although it'd always feel a little wasted to not pick the higher ones.
also, without a fast start mod, government techs could be too valuable compared to others.