SGOTM7 will be an Always War Deity game. I just wanted to gauge opinion as to whether Leaders should be allowed to rush wonders for this game. The poll is "public" so that I can see what the regular players of SGOTM voted for. Their opinion deserves more weight. :)

Maybe I should wait for the results of sgotm6, but I feel C3C is easier than Vanilla/PTW as of now.
Wonder-rushing would help abate that, but may be going too far. I'll keep an open mind, just kicking off the discussion :)

I would suggest that this poll gets stickied for a while. It keeps dropping below all the team threads which people are not supposed to read (eexcept for their own team's thread)

I've stuck the thread.

M-B knows that I think leaders are of very limited value in the classic versions with the changes we have currently. Their 250 shield disband value won't rush small wonders, large wonders or palaces. So it is only worth 80-100 shields until very late in the game, and once you have a couple of armies to provide (exploitative to some eyes?) defensive cover for your attacker SoDs there's very little point in tying up fast moving attackers in more classic armies. I hope this is not a spoiler for the teams still battling in SGOTM 5, but we finished that game with an empty army languishing in a corner of our empire. That leader should probably have rushed a cavalry or a tank.

Your intention is clear - to remove the random SGL element, and to give a classic leader benefits comparable to a C3C MGL. That would mean increasing the power of classic armies. Not being a modder, I can't offer any suggestions as to how this could be done. Being able to rush a single unit isn't comparable in my view.

In C3C I believe an army gives extra ADM points to the units loaded into it? If I look at the editor options for an army they are apparently similar to those for any other unit, but I imagine the software limits what attributes can actually be set. If you could add items like lethal bombardment, increased mobility, all terrain as roads (they bring along their own engineer team), these would make classic armies more interesting. But it seems they inherit all their ADM capabilities from their contained units, so I doubt if you can do much to alter them.

Unless we can improve armies, I think I'd rather have the SGL behaviour back. Since I can't offer constructive suggestions for the former, I have to vote for the latter.

How about giving armies something like a 20/3/4 bombard value.. meaning in addition to give a defensive cover, they also act like a super artillery unit?

I'm playing my first SGOTM this month, but another possible compromise is the removal of leaders all together. You can't get much more balanced than that. Granted, with an AW deity game coming up that might be a little heavy handed. Just a suggestion. :p

You'd also have to remove the ability to hand-build armies if you want to balance C3C and Classic in this respect.

I voted to allow Great Leaders to have the ability to rush wonders.

I did so for a variety of reason. The main reason is that in SGOTM05, leaders were essentially useless except as Armies to cover other units. It used to be exciting to get a leader (and at time controversial), but not anymore. While I know there is no real comparison between the software versions, C3C has some advantages over vanilla/PTW from a gameplay point of view. The wonders that can be built provide free units (Statue of Zeus and Knights Templar) and free expansion and culture (Temple of Artemis, although the Temples disappear at Education). The Armies are stronger and have greater advantages as well. As with PTW, the free techs vary at change of age, unlike vanilla.

I guess that I think we should not cripple the gameplay elements of the vanilla and PTW games in order to make them more like C3C because we can't make them more like C3C. The only real answer is Xevious', don't have them at all. ALthough, I will admit that I don't really like that answer either.

I play on a vanilla team because I enjoy the company and challenge of my teamates, so as someone who chooses to play with vanilla, I suppose I shouldn't complain. But I think we need to recognize that C3C is a different game and that we can't compare them, so perhaps we shouldn't change vanilla/PTW to be more like it. My $0.02. :)

The changes to leaders is not to make "Classic" Civ more like C3C, but to try to remove an element of luck from the game. A team who gets a leader from their first elite win and rushes the FP or Pyramids gets a disproportionate advantage to a team who have 45 elite wins for the first leader and end up rushing Sistines.

I think that not having leader tushing is fairer but it detracts from the game. Perhaps we just have to accept the "unfairness" for the sake of gameplay and enjoyment. In particular a full on AWD the inability to rush wonders would make the game more difficult.

AW Diety is brutal enough. i'd just let 1.29/PTW players have full use of Great Leaders, no need to make it any harder.

How many AWD games have been won at this site? Not many successful ones the SG board as far as I know.

I am sitting this SGOTM out but having just completed 05 I will voice my opinion anyhow. Taking out the abilities of leaders stinks. It really shanged gameplay to the point of making a regent game almost diety for us. I do understand that there will be compaints about luck or lack of luck but in any competition there is an aspect of luck to contend with. Not everyone can or wants to play C3C but if I were to play SGOTM05 again I'd definitely pick C3C to play because it is much easier with the republic jump and better armies. I'd say hamstringing the CivIII players is not the answer.

There is another way. We can make a permanent part of the rule set a statement that teams cannot use GLs (or SGLs) to rush Great Wonders. We can allow them to rush Small Wonders. This will of course require that the players remember. Perhaps if we introduced a penalty of some sort - something that would work out to 1000 jason points perhaps.

@MOTH: Would you allow a leader to rush a Palace?

yes, rushing palace would be fine. this is the only effective way to get a second core running without exploiting the palace jump.

I like Moth's idea, but would relax it a bit to:
No GW rushing in the ancient age (or a given date ?).
This should make it easier to remember for the teams :rolleyes: and still serve the purpose of avoiding the early leader luck.

This is getting somewhere. Klarius offers a simple extension that I feel fixes the issues of unbalanced early luck.

AW Diety is brutal enough. i'd just let 1.29/PTW players have full use of Great Leaders, no need to make it any harder.

How many AWD games have been won at this site? Not many successful ones the SG board as far as I know.

Yes, but it would not be a random map. I hope I can provide a winnable game.

i like the idea Klarius suggested.
It should sound something like "No GW rushing with leader until Med. Ages or 500BC (or some other date) whichever comes first".

klarius' idea is appealing, but relies on trust.... or does it (Alan)? :mischief:
Is this OK?

klarius' idea is appealing, but relies on trust.... or does it (Alan)? :mischief:
Is this OK?

Oh, come on M-B!!! Everyone knows you are lurking around and wouldn't even try to attempt to cheat :rolleyes:

Yeah... and you don't know half of it. :evil:

klarius' idea is appealing, but relies on trust.... or does it (Alan)? :mischief:
Is this OK?

With saves uploaded every ten turns it shouldn't be too hard to check for leader rushing in the ancient ages.

Another possibility is to require that a save be taken the turn before a wonder is finished by hand during the prohibited rush period.

I suspect that there will be few, if any, hand built wonders in the next game anyway.

Obviously we could police it from turn logs, unless players deliberately suppress such information. Technically, we can determine when leaders are created and when wonders are built. I don't know whether we can tie the two together more than circumstantially. But with saves every 10 turns or so there's an awful lot of information available to us. Two submitted saves at turns 50 and 60 with the following evidence would need a lot of explanation:

Turn 50: Pyramids not being built, or more than 10 turns from completion.
Turn 55: Leader born
Turn 57: Pyramids built in a player city.
Turn 60: No leader available, Palace still where it was at turn 50, no new army since turn 50.

"So you're saying you were hand building the Pyramids, you found a way to make the 200 shields needed to complete them, and finished in turn 57, and around the same time you won a leader and he was killed? Yeah, right!" :rolleyes:

I'd have to add some save analysis to extract this information, but it's not rocket science. We only have to analyse those games where Ancient Age wonders are produced by the human player.

I wasn't entirely happy with GL's being diminished, and now with C3C being supported, even less so considering how much powerful a C3C army is. So I'd support some Wonder rushing ability being restored.

I'm not experienced in civ editing so maybe this isn't an option. But how about starting off with Wonder rushing disabled, then editing the saved game file when the target time/date is reached to enable Wonder rushing. This would require the team to pause until notified that the save file had been modified, and put an extra task on the staff, but it would prevent the random luck element of an early Leader rushing a Wonder without any questions.

Would converting the early leader to an army still be allowed?

@Alan - the viewer in MapStat shows when leaders are created and when GW are completed. It also shows when your golden age starts and ends.

Another possibility is to require that a save be taken the turn before a wonder is finished by hand during the prohibited rush period.

A screenshot from when GW is started and another from about 5 turns prior to completeion would be simple enough to check, instead of having to require a save file.

Would converting the early leader to an army still be allowed?I would have thought armies would always be allowed, as in C3C.

@Alan - the viewer in MapStat shows when leaders are created and when GW are completed. It also shows when your golden age starts and ends. I realise that, and I'm using CRp-based code for analysing saves on the fly, which is why I said those events can be pinpointed in the next normal save with a little coding and no manual effort.

A screenshot from when GW is started and another from about 5 turns prior to completeion would be simple enough to check, instead of having to require a save file.No need for any specific screenshots or saves. It can all be done from the normally uploaded saves before and after the event. The logic goes something like:

- if an Ancient Age Wonder has been created by the player then count leaders created up to the build date.
- if the leaders cannot be accounted for by the number of armies in existence and/or the Palace having moved and/or an available leader then examine the previous save.
- if the previous save shows that it was not possible to complete a hand built wonder in the wonder city in the turns available at its spt rate at that time then flag the save for staff investigation. Manual checks and discussion with the team concerned would then ensure that justice was done.

I think the above process would create very few false positives and no false negatives, but please correct me if you can spot a problem.

Without leaders the human player will have almost no chance at a early wonder.

With regard to the unfairness potential remember that the SGOTM team that got the pyramids and the great library did not get the laurel! Agressive play can make up for luck.

If we analyze the game file when uploading will this give the player a warning so that they can go back and re-play from when they made the mistake? Or would we institute some type of score and time penalty instead? The penalty would need to fit the crime of course, the pyramids early would need a bigger penalty than say the Great Wall near the end of the AA.

I think if "No wonders" law implemented it should be a zero tolerance law...
Team that made a mistake can continue but won't be awarded any laurels...

I don't really see how one can make a "mistake" if the rule is publicised before game starts.

I think if "No wonders" law implemented it should be a zero tolerance law...
Team that made a mistake can continue but won't be awarded any laurels...

I don't really see how one can make a "mistake" if the rule is publicised before game starts.

I agree that there should be littleo tolerance for those who break this rule.

I do want to point out that this game has a long history of honest mistakes that broke the rules.

I know from lurking that there have been times where someone got caught up and accidently broke the variant. In those cases, the player often went back and replicated the turns without the rule breakage. While this technichally breaks the "no reload" rule, I would hate to have 5 people lose their game because the 6th member accidently broke the variant or even this rule.

Zero-tolerence sounds great in theory, but in "reality" it is very messy. I think each situation must be analyzed. Because of this, I like the proposal of a "suspicious" behavior detector that notifies SGOTM staff to take a look.

Hopefully this will be an extremly rarely used feature.


For what it is worth, I am for enabling GL's in PTW/vanilla for all use. I understand the "luck" factor, but it doesn't really bother me.

I don't have enough experience with leaders, armies, and variations on rules to have a well-informed opinion, but I think the suggestion to have no great wonder rushing in the AA makes a lot of sense. If a team gets an AA leader, they will have to make the strategic decision if they should keep it until the MA and rush a GW, or if they use it immediately to form an army, rush a palace, rush a small wonder, or rush an improvement. Leaders can be farmed - even though one can get dozens of elite wins before getting a single leader (my GOTM 38, e.g.), there are strategic ways of increasing one's chances - it's not all luck.

I voted no. Leaders rushing wonders are a randomizing factor.

I don't think changes like this will make it much easier to compare PTW with C3C, but I appreciate your efforts to try.

"So you're saying you were hand building the Pyramids, you found a way to make the 200 shields needed to complete them, and finished in turn 57, and around the same time you won a leader and he was killed? Yeah, right!" :rolleyes:

Quite right! - I were working only 10 irrigated grassland and switched to 10 mined hills in Golden Age for a couple of turns!(now, it needs much luck to get a city with 10 grass and 10 hills out of 21 tiles, not counting the settling tile, but some people are lucky :goodjob: )
Oh, and I did won a Leader in Defence(city on a hill with walls, a river to get crossed to be attacked, 2 Elite spearmen fortified, defeating around 59 regular warriors :eek: ), but all good things have an end, the town were captured in the end and, of course, the Leader were killed :( :joke:

[on topic]
I think that the fairest option is to not allow leaders to rush Great Wonders - then again, a Leader that creates a strong Army like the C3C Army is also not fair, because one Team can have 45 Elite wins and never create a Leader, while the Team with the Army went on and conquered half the world, easily.

Well, Teams aren't of equal skills either(in terms of members' experience, IMHO), so there'll always be an 'unfair' factor to be considered.

I liked klarius' idea about not to allow Leaders to rush GW's at the AA's, and I'd even go a step further: Leaders also wouldn't be allowed to create Armies in the AA's - the Team would simply fortify their Leader somewhere until the Middle Ages, and then, it's up to them how they're gonna using it - that would press Teams to definetly push for a Leader(war in the AA's) to simply create one --- OR, make the C3C Armies weaker like in 1.29f, if possible(so that Armies don't play a huge role in the game, but a small one).

btw: from lurking into AW SG's, I think that Leaders play a big role- especially in these kind of games - to the outcome, by rushing GW's or make (C3C)Armies.

I voted NO(unless there was a way to 'standarsized' the creation of a Leader after the same unit were victorious after 6-10 attacks/defence, but that would also had to make 'standard' the wins for a unit to be promoted to Elite).

Just wondering: Is result of this poll mandatory or advisory to follow by staff?

The discussion of how to avoid randomization of the results and balance PTW versus C3C is rather peculiar. But we are talking about AWD game and even with cheesy map it is an extreme game. Specifically, as in any AW games, there is little possibility for manipulation of the AIs and other tactics permitted by GOTM rules which are considered exploitative per the RBC rules. Basically, this means that the game is automatically turned onto the leader farming mode whether it is intended or not. I'm just afraid that with certain limitations of an already essentially insane variant, it will be impossible to win for anyone. Be it C3C or PTW or vanilla.

Just to make sure, we can certainly ask Arathorn (the only winner of a non-tiny AWS game so far) or the team of AWS winners (tiny map) or team of defiant Sid players (which is essentially played at least at AWS difficulty if not worse) as to what would be that game of C3C without armies and in the early period especially.

So far, seems that the majority goes with "common sense" which is a great sign of the healthy community. :lol:

It is not to balance C3C and "Classic" Civ akots. I would not even attempt to do that. It is more a discussion on how to make random game events have a proportionate impact on the final outcome of the competition.

In the current game for example, if your first elite victory produces a leader on turn 70 and you rush the pyramids and another team have 45 elite wins for their first leader and rush say Bachs or something, then it is a disproportionate outcome.

C3C will not be affected. Classic Civ may be, and I am not bound by the consensus. This is not a democracy. ;)

My preference actually - if anyone is interested - is to allow leader rushing as in the normal game, but for me to set the "number of armies required =1" flag for the pyramids in games where I think it necessary. It would then require two leaders for this wonder (unless handbuilt - which is fine), and the luck factor is considerably reduced IMO. I then do not have to make up some rule and have Alan toil away on detection software to discourage inappropriate play.

Edit for proposing a technical impossibility. :blush:

I think m-b's last suggestion is the best (I didn't even know that was possible).

Flag the most obious gamechanging wonders so that they cannot be built by leaders (I think by setting the flag higher than 1, it will make rushing impossible, since you can't have 2 MGLs at the same time). That would avoid cheating or mistakes that could occur from the "no AA wonder rushing" rule.

Would M-B's suggestion also make it difficult for the AI to build the Pryamids? I really don't know how modding affects play and I am not adept enough to try it in my own test mod...

Dumb n00b question here:

Would you still be able to rush a palace or minor wonder and *switch* to a major wonder?

You can't switch to a major wonder if you have any non-standard shields in the bin. So if you've ever rushed shields or chopped a forest or disbanded a unit into a city production bin you can't start a great wonder until you've emptied that city's bin. I'm *almost* sure that would also apply to leader-rushed shields.

Dumb n00b question here:

Would you still be able to rush a palace or minor wonder and *switch* to a major wonder?Definitely no. It does not work e.g. to Leader-hurry a Palace and at the beginning of the next turn switch it via "Big Picture" F1 to UN. At least this is true in vanilla Civ 1.29

You can't switch to a major wonder if you have any non-standard shields in the bin. So if you've ever rushed shields or chopped a forest or disbanded a unit into a city production bin you can't start a great wonder until you've emptied that city's bin. I'm *almost* sure that would also apply to leader-rushed shields.
Yeah, I guess I was just wondering if leader shields were *non-standard*. After all, you can definitely use them to *build* a wonder.

You could enforce no GW rushing in AA by making another type of leader unit that require eg. engineering. Allow normal leaders to upgrade to this unit for free, and remove the ability to rush improvements from the normal leader unit

Unfortunately this is technically impossible. You can assign only one battle created unit, and even if you set engineering as a required tech for the unit it will still appear before engineering. I have tested this.

Also it is impossible to have 2 leader units. One of these will always be possible to handbuild - the non-battlecreatedunit. This has also been tested.

I built a scenario with a "war-hero" able to only build armies, that could upgrade to a leader at nationalism. The war hero was the battle created unit and the leader was a standard leader out-of-the-box. Given nationalism you could build leaders for free and have as many of them as you pleased. Even if I set the cost of leaders to 1000g (the cost of the most expensive wonder) then teams could still build them and stockpile them in order to complete wonders at a time and in the location of their choice by using shields from another city and by standard gold rushing from the treasury.

The more I think about it, the more I am coming to the conclusion that messing around with leaders is a bad idea. We've done the experiment and it doesn't work satisfactorily. Piling Mod upon Mod for the sake of removing a single element of luck from the game is not worth it in my opinion. ATM I intend to set leaders and Wonders to their OOB values and allow the use of leaders without restriction.

This will make some happy and some angry I suspect. :)

OTOH it is very easy to make a rule like

"Thou must not rush any Wonder before 1000BC!"

Yes tao, this is the alternative. I will post another poll that incorporates this suggestion. If the poll is decisively in favour of this suggestion then I will make the rule. Otherwise leaders will be used in any way the teams feel fit.

Look at the issues with the Roman NOW SGOTM. I think there must be a limitation on leaders. However a crippled army as we saw in the Roman game doesn't serve much purpose either.

I have decided that in leaders may not be used to rush GREAT Wonders before turn 100. (550BC). Leaders can build small wonders and armies at any time.

If anyone has any comments on this then please post them. :)

Sounds like a reasonable compromise to me. It reduces the early-stage "luck" factor, plus it's simple, straightforward, and unambiguous. Let's try it out. However, given my track record on successful warfare and leader generation, it's probably a moot point anyway. :crazyeye: