AOM3 Is Out

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
Also, on the individual issue of one warrior stopping many; we have the example of Thermopolyae, which admittedly was a choke point, but from what I understand a fairly wide one, for the bold Spartans trying to block the Persian horde.

Quick reply...

It was a choke point, but the Spartans were overwhelmed once the locals sold out the location of the passes to the Persians, and the Greeks were engulfed.

Point being that the Greeks did not exert a invisible ZOC that prevented the Persians from walking around the Greeks and then using those passes to engulf the Greeks.

[Ekmek]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor


Okay, E; what I get out of the thread link you posted above is that people are using the finally available CTP source code to do some sort of a "CTP3" and you are considering including parts of AOM into it, but it would not be AOM; which last, from what I can see, downloading the AOM III "update" last weekend is of itself sort of a "finished product," albeit of a different form than what you're working on.

I'd be interested, but as I have no programing skills at all, (look how I struggled from prior posts in this thread with Stan's simple "cut and paste" instructions,) I would personally only be interested in a finished product.

Thats the hard part about the source code, like anthing with moddability nothing ever seems "finished" (probably why we are on AoM 3 improvement is always possible).

The AE edition can be "finished" nearly at this point its just a matter of me stop adding improvements. So far the AE edition has improved performance than the original and we are still trying to improve some things. AoM uses SLIC to get around these problems in the original game which actually keeps AoM slow because of so much SLIC. So if we can improve the things that AoM uses a work arounds and let AoM's SLIC be reserved for features like dynasties you'll get a faster a game which should add to the enjoyment.

Martin G did post here:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=143176

Actally all you hae to do now is:

Install the base game
Install AOM
Install the Apolyton Edition

in this particular order.

At least in this way I am able to start an AOM game, there might still be some problems, but to report them we have this thread for instance.

-Martin

So hopefully some of the veteran AoM players can take time to note any problems here. AE and AoM shold work together and with stan saying there won't be an AoM4 if AoM is compatible with the AE just some of the features I added (in my Civ3mod) alone could make something of an AoM 4.


bytheway, I know Stan has his own AoM forums set up but why isn't there an AoM forum here. We should keep the CtP2ers under one roof as small as we are.

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by E
if AoM is compatible with the AE just some of the features I added (in my Civ3mod) alone could make something of an AoM 4...

bytheway, I know Stan has his own AoM forums set up but why isn't there an AoM forum here. We should keep the CtP2ers under one roof as small as we are.

Regarding the forums, that's what me and Hexagonian were scrapping about over the weekend here. Evidently, Poly management is footdragging on creating space for AOM forums, as their current position, because of lack of discussion in recent months from AOM enthusiasts. I suppose what we could do is continue filling in AOM strategy threads into the CTP area. Hex is right that there hasn't been a lot of discussion since last year, other than a little for technical issues. I'm rather new to this whole thing and haven't played enough AOM II yet to comment too much and AOM III only really became available a week or two ago. But that's evidently what needs to be done, for now.

That reference to "features in my Civ3 mod" confuses me. Is "AE" using the Civ3 engine or CTP? Civ3 was okay, but other than Thamis Ancient Med perhaps, which I think works better in Civ3 than it is in Civ4, I'm kind of done with Civ3, personally. I do have a limited interest in further modding of CTP simply because of an intense love for the original game. However, as I stated above in this thread, it is getting a little long in the tooth and I question how much more could or should be done with it after AOM, which I am enjoying.

[stankarp]

Firstly I would like to apologise if people think I am avoiding Apolyton threads on CTP2 and AOM. For some reason I am only getting very intermittant notification of replies to threads I have posted in at Apolyton (I have had some tech problems with Apolyton this year, but can't explain why I am getting so few notifications).

The only reason there is a separate AOM forum is because something like 6 approaches to the appropriate person at Poly in Jan Feb this year, to move that forum to Poly, have not ben answered. Dan Q organised the move of the home page to Poly last December, but does not know how to move the forum. I have reserved space (there is an empty/unlisted forum) at Apoly for the forum, but I cannot do the move myself.

As far as time goes to play AOM and micro management.

I started a new game yesterday after lunch of AOM III. Stopped to talk to the wife, have after noon tea, dinner, supper, watched news, etc, discussed holiday, checked emails several times and shut down AOM III at 10 pm to watch a movie, on turn 198. That is a bit over 6.5 hrs playing time.

As far as micro management goes, there are a couple of periods where you do have to spend time managing empire happiness (Dark Ages and Middle Ages) but I will debate with any person at any time that there is more micro management overall in AOM than in Civ 3, or civ 4 taking into account the scale of AOM. In AOM (like civ 3) you can play safe and sacrifice production by running more entertainers, or simply don't exceed your city cap. Comparing AOM to Civ 4 re playing time is not fair unless you are comparing it to playing AOM on medium size map with 6 opponents.

I know smithldoo was caught out by some AOM III changes that made it important to manage happiness very carefully if over your city cap after turn 300. He was sailing along arrogantly expecting to carry something like +8 on his city cap through the post Dark Ages and found that his empire could break up if he was caught out with a some of the happiness fluctuations that can occur (rebellions, wonder units dying, plague etc).

History shows that capturing ground was not necessarily the hardest thing, holding it was the biggest issue. Ask Alexander, the Romans, Mongols, even Hitler and the Japanese in WW2.

[BureauBert]

It's good to see some new participants in the small but friendly (at least: most of the time ) CTP2 community.

I don't know much about the internals of AoM, but I know they actually managed to move their forum to Apolyton but for some site-internal reasons I don't know either (edit: Stankarp cross-posted the reasons above) it's not located in the CTP2 section but in the "hosted sites" section:

Anyway, here is The Ages Of Man Forum

The other thing I know is that

• Install the base game
• Install AOM
• Install the Apolyton Edition

is the correct procedure to get AoM running with the AE (Apolyton Edition) playtest version(s), but I would like to draw your attention to the fact that some of the SLIC will probably / most likely / as good as certainly not work as it used to do with the Activision version -- see this thread and this little discussion -- and there's a LOT of SLIC in AoM (the details of these scripts are the third thing I don't know much about ).

Edit: corrected a typo (I hope, being a bit tired)

[BureauBert]

Sorry, I forgot one point:

Originally posted by E:
AoM uses SLIC to get around these problems in the original game which actually keeps AoM slow because of so much SLIC. So if we can improve the things that AoM uses a work arounds and let AoM's SLIC be reserved for features like dynasties you'll get a faster a game which should add to the enjoyment.

I would just like to point out that not all SLIC scripts are equal -- there are things that need to be done each turn and involve a lot of items and things that need to be done less frequently/occasionally and involve less items/calculations.

What IMHO really contributes to slowing down the game is a lot of SLIC that needs to execute each turn and involves many items of the "game material": E.g. a script like "BetterAI" cycles through all armies of each player, checks where the army is located, how it is composed etc. and needs to move a lot of armies/units to regroup/reorganize the player's armies -- therfore if executed each turn for each player it needs significantly more processing time than e.g. "Frenzy" script, which basically only selects an attack target, selects the player's three or four biggest armies and moves them toward the target (the latter being the only action that needs to be performed each turn). "BetterAI" is a great script that really does what it says, but since some improvements concerning army stacking and targeting have been incorporated into the source code I decided that the AI's armies don't need to be improved each turn and not in every aspect, so I am using a "light" version of "BetterAI" that does only execute every fifth turn for 1/5 of the players (that's Locutus' old idea used in his "ClearOrders" script). The outcome is satisfying for my taste . Organizing massive offensive campaigns on the other hand doesn't really seem to be within the scope of the source code, therefore Frenzy and possibly some additional scripting will always be needed to that effect -- which IMHO doesn't hurt much because if the code is clean it shouldn't need that much processing time.

Also, SLIC-procedures that need to calculate a lot of map information very frequently always seemed to bog down the game significantly (specially on ultrigig maps, of course ). That's something I need to be careful about with my BetterSettling script, and the result is always a compromise .

Occasional events like conquering a city (KillCityOption script), defeating another civ (MergeCivs script), building a wonder (VisibleWonders script) may cause some lagging when executing the corresponding SLIC procedure, but they don't significantly affect playability.

And finally there are the inevitable, inexplicable effects of SLICing: Sometimes adding a "ClearOrders" at some point where I had no better orders to give to an army caused significant lags during the AI turns (I imagine because the "ClearOrders" caused a massive, complicated internal scheduling process or something like that ). In some other cases I have "ClearOrders" in, it seems to help the AI and it doesn't cause any lags.

However -- my point is: Even if calculating a merger of two civs would take 10 or 12 minutes in this single turn I could live with it (go make coffee etc.), if a couple of KillCityOption calculations on the occasion of taking these cities would need some more seconds I won't get nervous.

On the other hand if each AI turn execution takes several minutes in the late game, be it due to SLIC processing or other reasons, the game becomes boring. I think that's how most players will look at it.

As far as I can tell from my testing during the last months some of the playtest versions have greatly improved general performance and therefore I am hoping that with the "relatively final" AE version it will be possible to play a fairly modified game until the end without losing interest.

Just as a personal footnote: I had stopped work on my mod some time ago because with the original/Activision version of the game it became a matter of scientific research under laboratory conditions rather than playtesting: when I was about entering the modern era each turn took several (6 - 10) minutes. So I used to let the AI play with itself overnight and watched the outcome in the morning, then adjusted something in the SLIC and repeated the procedure.
With the Apolyton Edition (some/most of the builds) I am at least running through the first 150 turns on autoplay without worrying lags, and I hope with a "relatively final" Apolyton Edition this will hold true for the rest of the game (since it's a "Modern Times" mod I guess it's my only hope )

[smithldoo]

I know smithldoo was caught out by some AOM III changes

To clarify, yes I was caught out and found at a time when I was invincible and cruising in Civ 4(having killed an AI), I suddenly had to rework a lot of my empire management. I was 14 over my city cap on Monarchy and got rebellions on successive turns. The cumulative happiness hits suddenly pushed me over the edge very quickly and as pointed out in the AOM III readme, when cities suffer a happiness drop, their food production may drop as well, resulting in a further happiness hit.

To quote the AOM III readme, I was arrogant and incompetant, and paid the penalty. I went back to a previous save and boosted my happiness levels enough to survive and was thereafter, more cautious. I had about 6 turns where I reviewed everything and that takes a while when you have 60 cities. But it took no longer than when I did an empire review in Civ 3 with the same number of cities, in fact less. Otherwise I average less than 10 minutes a turn, most turns, after turn 300 with 50+ cities and defending on 2 + fronts and attacking on one.

IIRC I spent up to nearly an hour sometimes in Civ 3 to do a turn when on full attack, because of the 1 v 1 combat system.

Before I get into another prolonged verbal joust with Hexegonian, I have one question for him. How many games of AOM (any type) have you finished?

My comments re Civ 4 compared to AOM are based on completing to victory messages, several games of both.

[angrybowen]

I have played both Civ 4 and each version of AOM (grand campaign) to victory.

IMHO, for the number of cities and units, AOM has far less micro management than Civ 4. IMHO Civ 4 is a micro managers dream. 40+ unit promotions to do what, click and drag one unit to attack. Civ 4 does have less empire management than civ 3, simply because it finally has a useable empire city manager list. Took only 6 years for Firaxis to come up with it.

There are many reasons why I like and think AOM is superior to Civ 4. But one that really makes it a different game to play are the various events built into the game. The effect is it divides AOM up into mini games, 100 turns at a time to do things. It does have a little bit of RTS almost racing game about it as you seek to achieve certain things before the next event. I am into the post Dark Ages for the first time, and that feel has continued.

I am not as quick as stancarp at playing AOM but I do not mind just going and getting a coffee and browsing round my empire every 25 or so turns just to get the overall view and make those big strategic plans.

No 2 games are the same, unlike my experience with Civ4 (someone else said the map generator sux, I can only agree). I like riding as close "to the edge" as I can in AOM as I strive for that victory. At a time when in Civ 4 the world is occupied and settled and my SOD is well into it's boring splatethon, I am still exploring, building out to new defensive lines, looking for resources to finish cartels, managing diplomacy and racing to do certain things before the next barbarian surge or wanting to use that Wonder Unit or Imperial Envoy before they die. I come unstuck occassional, then must re group and regain the lost ground/time. But that is what it's about AFAIAC.

And yes, I have posted strategy suggestions a few times.

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by BureauBert
... Stankarp cross-posted the reasons above[/i]) it's not located in the CTP2 section but in the "hosted sites" section:

Anyway, here is [url=http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=281]The Ages Of Man Forum[/url[/i]

Well, I personally always knew where it was, it's just that some thought it might be given different billing within the same structure as the other Poly-sponsored game sites. Either way, it's not that big a deal. The problem is the strategy threads, when last I looked, hadn't been contributed to since last year and the variant is evidently not going to get much more attention from Poly unless that picks up.

Don't understand all these problems with SLIC, all I know is the thing (AOM) runs faster than Civ4. Once it is announced more distinctly that AE is pretty much completed, I might drop it in to see how great it is, though I'm not a perfectionist for performance. . I am also not a beta tester, particularly when I know I have right now what looks like a perfectly running copy of AOM III.

[hexagonian]

Looks like the loyalists finally have the time to come here. Looks like they got the point.

Let us all try to be civil and respect other viewpoints and preferences.

Originally posted by smithldoo
Before I get into another prolonged verbal joust with Hexegonian, I have one question for him. How many games of AOM (any type) have you finished?

That is a fair question...

The answer is none.

To put that answer in perspective, I also have never completed a Cradle (played past 700 turns once), EU2 Grand campaign, and have only completed a complete (take 50 provinces) RTW game once. I generally play until boredom sets in, or victory is assured.

Sneer all you want, but I have my own focus when playing. My reasons???? It all has to do with the scale of the game - when micromanagement ends up killing it.

My time is valuable, and what I do with it matters to me.

Originally posted by hexagonian
Taking city #67 is little different than taking city #43. Only the units have changed.

Pillaging has become the new worker tedium. I spend more time selecting units to move 'n pillage in AOM than I would spend moving workers in civ4.

Same with army management. An endless cycle of grouping and ungrouping AOM stacks simply to move them around the map becasue the cap does not allow armies to pass through one another.

All the above thus fall into this category: By the time you get to 40-50 cities and the armies those cities allow me to build, the tedium (for me at least) outweighs the enjoyment of the game. Tedium is multiplied and strategic considerations have not multiplied.

In short the focus becomes more on quantity rather than quality for me. I am not saying that AOM lacks quality - I am saying that the quantity factor ends up overshadowing the quality factor for me.

Yin provided a solid analysis of the weakness of many TBS games when he critiqued AOM. He made the point that if you increase the scale of the game, you do run the danger of increasing the busywork without necessarily increasing actual strategy.

Instead of managing 5 armies, you are managing 25. Instead of pillaging 5 tiles per turn, you are pillaging 25. Instead of pathing 5 units to a front, you are pathing 25, and then you have to join them into armies.

I look at that and I see busywork - and that is not what I am looking for in a game now. All you are doing strategywise, is making the player do more of what he has been doing already. That's quantity...

Stan reported that he ran 200 turns in 6 1/2 hours. I guarantee that the time spent in his current game will increase greatly when he gets to t300 and beyond. Smithldoo said he spent 1/2 hour per turn in the Dark Ages. Even if he cuts that in half, it is time I'd rather be doing something else. Even at 10 minutes per turn (a reasonable estimate for t350 and beyond - at least that is what I was averaging), you are looking at 16 hours of play time to do 100 turns.

I can play an entire game of civ4 on a large map in half that time. I am at 1700 AD in my game now and only using 4 hours of playtime.... I have managed to improve most of my tiles, so worker micromanagement has eased up and thus reduces worker management bloat. The only thing left to do is rail creation when I get the tech, and specific trade goods improvements like oil pumps. I have been using the single-combat option instead of the group attack option, yet I do not feel that combat is tedious, and if it becomes so, I can group-command them to cut down on playing time. And I am confident that Dale will provide a viable stacked combat model. It is already being worked on...

Let me repeat that guys...4 hours as opposed to 30+ just to get to the 1700s AD in AOM.

If you want to spend that much time in front of the computer, be my guest. I sit behind a computer for 8 hours a day at work, so putting a vast amount of time into a game at home merely to get to the end of it is not something I care to do.

The question will come up...Why don't you play small maps. In the past, I played CTP1 heavily, and I also heavily playtested the first 200-300 turns when I created Cradle, so I have little desire at this time to rehash a time period I have already played to death through a gamesystem that I am currently burned out on.

Plus (and this is for players who may like to play AOM and are in the same mindset as me), there needs to be adjustments to files to make AOM small-map compatible. Because AOM is based primarily on empire size as the primary focus to win, (and size DOES drives research rate in AOM) using a small map with the current setup means that you greatly extend the playtime, in terms of turns, of the Ancient Ages, and one of the attractions for me in civ4 is that I can go through the entire history of mankind. And remember, I have already played through long-drawn out Ancient eras enough times already.

Tech costs need to be reduced.

The caps are still slanted toward large empires, and it is large empires that create micromanagement bloat. (It has been suggested so many times that in AOM, getting to the city cap level ASAP is necessary for success.) So the cap needs to be reduced to take map size in account, and AI strats need to make sure that they can handle the reduced managed growth. High caps give the AI a lot more grace.

The two points above need to work in tandem too, not only to keep the game moving, but also to prevent your scripted events from burying the player - as the barbarian SLICs are geared toward large maps. Try fighting the number of Barbarians spawned in an epic game when you only have 10 cities...and if the tech rate is slowed down because of your reduced empire size, then the barbarians heavily outgun you too...

Just some food for thought.

[stankarp]

Try fighting the number of Barbarians spawned in an epic game when you only have 10 cities...and if the tech rate is slowed down because of your reduced empire size,

The number of Barbarians spawned is tied to the map size. On a small map there may not even be a Barbarian Leader. Only The spawn events on the human border are guaranteed to occur. And since the number of barbarians are tied to the number of BL, there won't be that many.

Pillaging has become the new worker tedium.

Since AOM II, pillaging may generate a frenzy increase as well now. If you pillage a lot, you will never have a diplomacy victory. I rarely pillage as I push frenzy too high anyway with normal conquest. Pillaging is also not worth any victory points.

Instead of managing 5 armies, you are managing 25.

Well in actual fact, I find the bigger the empire gets, the smaller the army gets, proportionately. That is if you have an overall strategy to push up to defensive lines then set up the perimeter. In fact it goes for the whole relationship, the argument does not hold water AFAI See. While there is more management in a 50 city empire than a 15, I reckon it is about double rather than 3.3 times. The way the game is structured, I never wage a war of conquest on more than one front, even rarely target more than one city. It is virtually impossible. Whereas, in Civ 4 my SOD had already completed the job by 1700AD. In my last game, I had 3 SOD wandering around at the end, once I realised the other AI were not attacking me. The smaller map and no wrap round made it dead easy.

The comments re scale are valid, Hex, but it was the same with the original game, cradle, etc. I produced a small map version of AOM II (the largest map being equal to the current huge, which is about equal to the civ 4 largest map) with reduced turns. timeline tech costs, reduced barbs etc. Never got feedback once about the shorter version, not once. In fact I get regular information from guys who want to make AOM III much bigger in scale. One guy wanted to maki it 10 TIMES bigger. AOM gigantic map BTW is 40% of the ultra gig map Cradle shipped with and with more restrictive mid game governments.

The victory condition now of 3000 points require some real building and manouvering to achieve, unless you simply wait till you get to Technocracy and have 120 cities.

[stankarp]

I forgot to add, I know about the AOM forum that is set up here, I set it up. I was hoping to transfer the existing AOM forum here as there are over 2500 posts there bith bug reports, advice etc.

That is where the stumbling block is.

[angrybowen]

Well Hexegonian, I have several up on you.

I have finished to victory movie 10+ games of AOM (all varieties), 3 RTW full campaign, 1 game of cradle (rest crashed). Also 4 games if Civ 4 on gigantic map.

I simply like expansive games like AOM, EU, civ 3 (pangea) over the smaller scale of civ 4 any day. Some of the above might be a little too big, but I prefer them to the down scaled civ 4. I don't watch much TV, so when I am not at work or fulfilling social or sport commitments, I happily build myself an empire.

Having had the advantage of actually finishing AOM, I can say that the end game is much more challenging than the inevitable SOD end of Civ 3/4. I have found you have to keep working at it and keep constructing right to the end, as well as fighting etc. Each era is a bit like the chaptes in a book series, like LOTR, similar but uniqie.

In Civ 4 I actually ran out of things to build in some cities so I just churned out units and sent them off to attack. There was no real restriction on attacking so that is what I did. There are 3 different victory options in AOM and about 10 ways of getting victory points and I use them all if possible, although I have not come near a science victory in AOM III in 2 games as I always get distracted by silly things like conquests etc.

The things you complain about in AOM or big games to me are a bit silly. If you want to play a short game, by all means. But as far as AOM goes, your comments re army management and the option to pillage are a bit way ward IMHO. In civ 4 I had to individually asses and choose individual units for single attack, every frickin time. AOM stacked combat is a dream in comparison, even if does mean organising the army. As far as pillaging goes, pillaging does not get you victory points and can easily lead to a blood feud situation with an AI. If I am going to have a full war with an AI, I want to capture those tile improvements, not pillage them.

As far as system performance goes, my 3 yr old P4 processes AOM turns quicker than it processed civ 3 turns in games of similar scale, actually quicker as I have more opponents in AOM. 5 seconds per ai per turn if the ai is out of sight at turn 400. The only slowdown is around big barbarian events.

One other thing, I played 4 games of Civ 4 on the same map setting and each game was so similar (as the maps and location of the AI were virtually identical), they might as well have been the same game. I am on my second game of AOM III, identical settings and the games are completely different. The terrain is different, the ai are different (both location and personality), what I got from the ruins is different, barbarians are coming differently, resources are different. In the first game I had a big cold wasteland to my south and the barbs kept coming at me all the time. In the second game, a neck of water actually separated me from the main cold areas and I built a fort on the only acces very early in the game. Now the barbs are giving it to the Celts instead.

The game mechanics are the same but every game is different in how it evolves. AOM is at least 10 times more interesting than Cradle IMHO. I have actually found I can spend as little as 3 minutes on my turn on turn 300+, IF and I repeat IF I have prepared properly and am not attacking. Mainly, not being over my city cap and having all the happiness options covered and the cities building ques worked out. But I average about twice that and I don't mind at all. One thing I am sure off, I do not have ADHD.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by stankarp
The number of Barbarians spawned is tied to the map size. On a small map there may not even be a Barbarian Leader. Only The spawn events on the human border are guaranteed to occur. And since the number of barbarians are tied to the number of BL, there won't be that many.

I realize that the immobile leader spawns are tied into map size (less map means less leaders) but I'm talking about the Dark Ages Attila and Genghis spawns. Are they also tied into map size?

Originally posted by stankarp
The comments re scale are valid, Hex, but it was the same with the original game, cradle, etc. I produced a small map version of AOM II (the largest map being equal to the current huge, which is about equal to the civ 4 largest map) with reduced turns. timeline tech costs, reduced barbs etc. Never got feedback once about the shorter version, not once.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the readme that indicates what the small map quick game setup entails, so I have nothing to go on...and I had greatly cut down on playing games in general for the past 8 months, so I did not really keep up on the developments.

Originally posted by stankarp
In fact I get regular information from guys who want to make AOM III much bigger in scale. One guy wanted to maki it 10 TIMES bigger. AOM gigantic map BTW is 40% of the ultra gig map Cradle shipped with and with more restrictive mid game governments.

More power to them. I wish them the best and hope they will enjoy the time invested in the game.

Originally posted by stankarp
Since AOM II, pillaging may generate a frenzy increase as well now. If you pillage a lot, you will never have a diplomacy victory. I rarely pillage as I push frenzy too high anyway with normal conquest. Pillaging is also not worth any victory points.

Again, my experience with pillaging is based on game mechanics in AOM I.
It was worth the PW generated, and if you are at war with a civ, it makes perfect sense to pillage outlying cities while you work on other cities. Realizing that the AI will regenerate the tile improvements for me anyhow...

Originally posted by stankarp Well in actual fact, I find the bigger the empire gets, the smaller the army gets, proportionately. That is if you have an overall strategy to push up to defensive lines then set up the perimeter. In fact it goes for the whole relationship, the argument does not hold water AFAI See. While there is more management in a 50 city empire than a 15, I reckon it is about double rather than 3.3 times.

The point isn't so much the proportion for me - it is that I end up spending a lot more time on the game as I get bigger - and most importantly, victory conditions dictate that I have to continually get bigger in order to win, so I am locked into an increasing investment of time spent playing the game as I progress.

And let's be honest here -- when smithldoo reports spending 20-30 minutes a turn, post t300, what am I supposed to make with that comment, as it also parallels my own experiences with the game (and I did post in the past my own impressions about the time issue.)

I've always enjoyed the setup process in TBS games - probably too much. But games that stress empire size as the PRIMARY means to win them no longer hold my interest to a great degree (even if the victory options are more peaceful...like scientific and diplo...if the PRIMARY means to get that victory requires that you always grow bigger than everyone else) because it always ends up requiring a great deal of investment in personal time. I have better things to do with my time now.

When I play civ4, my impressions are that size is not the primary driving force to win the game. It's good to be large, but it is NOT neccessary.

That is why I am interested in what Generaldoktor has to say about the games.

Originally posted by stankarp The way the game is structured, I never wage a war of conquest on more than one front, even rarely target more than one city.

Well if you have refined the game to that degree from AOM I, where frenzy usually sent all AIs against you in a robotic fashion, then the game has evolved. Because I found that I was spending a lot of time on multiple fronts even with very low frenzy levels in AOM I. Basically the game became an unrelenting grind of pointless battles and repetitive city taking. And I will say this...Cradle had the same exact issue which is why I only played past t700 once.

Boredom set in. It is the reason why I only played the RTW 50 province grand campaign once. By province 35, I was gritting my teeth because the repetiveness set in. After that, I stuck to the regional victory options.

And I look at AOM now, and I am wondering if that is the still the same PRIMARY focus - a PRIMARY focus on military expansionism through city conquest once you get your core up.

From the AOM III readme file
The object in AOM is to get to the required 1800- 3000 points. This is realistically achievable only on the gigantic map with at least 8-11 opponents. Points are scored for...

And because scale drives everything, a victory condition like science means that you need the required infrastructure to pull that off (again, bigger is better...) which drives you back to the same game mechanic of military expansionism through city conquest as the PRIMARY and MOST EFFICIENT means to pull that off.

Originally posted by angrybowen Well Hexegonian, I have several up on you. I have finished to victory movie 10+ games of AOM (all varieties), 3 RTW full campaign, 1 game of cradle (rest crashed). Also 4 games if Civ 4 on gigantic map.

I really enjoyed the first 350 turns of AOM when I was playing/playtesting it - it had diverse challenges, but I really felt that the game offered little for me after that because all of the concepts had already been covered in the first 350 turns.

If the game becomes repetive and boring to me, I see no need to invest the time in finishing it merely to get a score or see a movie. Same with most other epic-scale TBS games...repetitive tedium almost always weighs them down.

If you like that, great.

Originally posted by angrybowen It is virtually impossible. Whereas, in Civ 4 my SOD had already completed the job by 1700AD. In my last game, I had 3 SOD wandering around at the end, once I realised the other AI were not attacking me. The smaller map and no wrap round made it dead easy.

...Still waiting for your report on playing civ4 on the highest level, largest map, and highest barbarian setting and highest aggression level...and post a saved game file. The only fair way to compare the two games is to play civ4 it on the same level you play AOM...

Originally posted by angrybowen The things you complain about in AOM or big games to me are a bit silly. If you want to play a short game, by all means...

Which makes it a preference. I've maintained that if that is what floats your boat, then keep doing it.

I hear gripes about civ4 micro from you, but that is based on YOUR experiences, and what you consider tedium, not what I consider tedium. So I guess I can say with confidence that your gripes are silly too...

Again, preference!

All I know (for myself) is that when comparing the time spent between civ4 and AOM, I spend much more time doing the mundane in AOM mid-later game than I do in civ4. And it is very much tied into the scale of the game (the number of cities required to survive and succeed) You cannot deny that AOM is very much a game where 'bigger is better', and the focus is ALWAYS on empire growth which is based on number of cities owned. And after a certain point in the game, the most efficient means to do that is to take AI cities. Do it any other way and you merely drag out the number of turns played, so you do not cut down on the time.

In civ4, bigger is good, but it is not neccesarily the end-all. On my current civ4 game, I have 18 cities, and I find the micromanagement bearable - more so than 18 cities in civ3. And I am enjoying it...

Originally posted by angrybowen But as far as AOM goes, your comments re army management and the option to pillage are a bit way ward IMHO. In civ 4 I had to individually asses and choose individual units for single attack, every frickin time...

The tools are there...you can group-command your combat (create sub-groups and send them in enmasse into combat).

But I do find it a little funny that you laugh at me for griping about micromanagement issues in AOM and then gripe about those types of issues in civ4 yourself, without taking advantage of the available tools that actually can reduce that issue...

And I am eagerly waiting for the finalized stacked-combat model from Dale, making this a moot point altogether for me.

Originally posted by angrybowen As far as system performance goes, my 3 yr old P4 processes AOM turns quicker than it processed civ 3 turns in games of similar scale, actually quicker as I have more opponents in AOM. 5 seconds per ai per turn if the ai is out of sight at turn 400. The only slowdown is around big barbarian events.

If your system cannot handle it, you have every right to gripe about that and play something else. Don't begrudge players who can get it to work though.

From my own experience, I now get as good performance playing civ4 than I do with AOM. And all I need to do is compare the overall time invested between a game of civ4 and a game of AOM to see which one works for me.

At this point, it is clearly civ4...perhaps it'll change in the future, but I'm not going to lose sleep over which game to play.

I'm not playing to impress anyone. I play what I enjoy - not what some other gamer thinks I should play.

For everyone else, I will say this as MY opinion.

If you do want a good creative game that will REQUIRE a much larger investment of time due to scale, play AOM. For those of you who may have system performance issues with civ4, AOM is a good option too. It's not perfect, its not for everyone either.

I find a great deal of variety in civ4 because I can take a different variety of MAIN strategy focuses from game to game (straight warmongor, peaceful builder, a focus on cultural building, wonder and religious collection, as well as a set of diverse victory options). Each one can succeed. Success in civ4 does not hinge on getting larger than everyone else, and this is especially true with the victory options.

I find that in AOM, your MAIN focus will almost always be slanted toward warfare once you get to the mid-game and the need to ALWAYS create a big empire (based on number of cities) to succeed. You also have a series of sub-strats that may be more benign in nature, but war will dominate.

In short, a more complex version of RTW, where the focus is also the same - the PRIMARY need to get bigger than everyone else in order to win.

No matter what...play what you enjoy. After all, these are merely diversions.

Originally posted by angrybowen AOM is at least 10 times more interesting than Cradle IMHO.

Ha, trying to get under my skin that that little dig....ain't gonna work though.

As I have pointed out in the past, I consider Cradle a dead issue. I pulled all support of Cradle 8 months ago, and you cannot download Cradle from my site anymore.

Realize too that without Cradle, there is a pretty good chance that there wouldn't be an AOM either...

[Ekmek]

Hex,

If you want to take another look at CtP2 check out my Civ3mod. THe more cities you have the more expensive your palace becomes. Likewise with Armies. And these costs are also tied to the govt type you have. So its better to have a few good armies than a mass army. The AI however does have mass armies and tends to be aggressive.

Trade becomes important as well because with the AE you can ship food nd production around with some goods and build some tileimps that give your city a good (wheat farms give wheat etc) so there is more of a trade angle.

I've opted for larger games with it, but its certainly doable on a smaller map to be faster.