Do you think that the number of opponents required for a map should be changed? Please vote and respond to this thread with your reasons.

If I'm going to say something about the number of opponents, I'm going to say that there should be a rule against selecting two opponents of the same country in orgin. For example, two India, two America, two France, two Englands, two Russia, etc. Let there be only one America, one France, one India, etc in every game. Other than that, I think the current system is fine as is.

... I'm going to say that there should be a rule against selecting two opponents of the same country in orgin.
Any reason?

Any reason?
For example, a tiny map against two sheeps of the same orgin. Don't know about you, but it does feel like stealing candies from the babies. If I'm going to get some candy, I would rather get one from the sheep and another one from the goat.

Ok I'll add my opinion now. I think the default number of civs should be a requirement, or at the very least narrow the gap that exists right now (make it min 5 for standard map for example). I also think a maximum is needed. Having any number of civs besides the default setting causes the game to be much easier. I can completely decimate emperor standard map with 4 opponents but if I try it with 6 it can be a struggle. It really makes a huge difference to the game. If someone told me they beat deity with a 4 opponent standard map, I would say they didn't beat deity. Playing deity on a standard map with only 4 opponents is about as difficult as playing immortal with the standard number. Likewise, adding more civs makes it easier as well. The AI will be limited in how many cities it can settle while the human isn't because the human will know to capture cities and expand via military. The AI might declare war on someone but you won't see them capturing 4-5 cities in order to give themselves a large workable empire. So there's a huge advantage to the human player if you have too many civs since the AI isn't coded to deal with that situation correctly. Just my 2 cents.

I voted for the default number.

What is the argument anyway for *not* using the default number as a minimum?

I voted for default number also. With fewer opponents its to easy to play peace-at-all-time-games.

I suppose I should state for the record the reasoning behind the Beta minimums of one through six. It's really quite simple: we were constructing Beta before the game was even released, and we had no idea what good limits were, so I defaulted to one for duel and just added one AI for each increase in mapsize...

I suppose I should state for the record the reasoning behind the Beta minimums of one through six. It's really quite simple: we were constructing Beta before the game was even released, and we had no idea what good limits were, so I defaulted to one for duel and just added one AI for each increase in mapsize...

=)

Anyone else that would comment on why they voted for 'the current system is fine?' Currently all opinions expressed are pretty much against keeping it, yet the votes are pretty close.

Note: I dislike polls with answers like "the current system is fine". It's natural to want to choose that answer (especially if you're not informed to the pro's and the con's). For instance if you want to show your appreciation for the work the HOF managers are doing.

I think the votes would be completely different if it had read for instance 'default - 1', instead of 'the current system is fine'.

I'm unconvinced about any argument based on difficulty balancing, we all play the same game with the same rules, therefore my settings are not any easier than yours. If you want to play the same game, play it, and use the same number of civs.

Also, HOF is a competition between humans, lets not give the Civ4 AI a vote, okay? I don't really care about their grivances, if they are too dumb to realize the number of civs in a game matters then so what, its computer code. And as such I don't care about its enjoyment, I care about the human.


In support of the current system I find it easy to remember the minimums without having to load up a webpage. And the "default" is useful for simplicity only, I don't pray to Firaxis as god thus their choices have to be examined as much as anyone elses. So where is support for your stance?

I'm unconvinced about any argument based on difficulty balancing, we all play the same game with the same rules, therefore my settings are not any easier than yours. If you want to play the same game, play it, and use the same number of civs.

Also, HOF is a competition between humans, lets not give the Civ4 AI a vote, okay? I don't really care about their grivances, if they are too dumb to realize the number of civs in a game matters then so what, its computer code. And as such I don't care about its enjoyment, I care about the human.


In support of the current system I find it easy to remember the minimums without having to load up a webpage. And the "default" is useful for simplicity only, I don't pray to Firaxis as god thus their choices have to be examined as much as anyone elses. So where is support for your stance?

The game is balanced for the default number of civs. Making it too easy by reducing or increasing the number of opponents takes the fun out of the game. But I'm forced to play standard maps with only 4 opponents or way too many opponents if I want to compete. So I'm forced to throw the game balance out of whack if I want to compete in the Hall of Fame instead of playing a fun, balanced game.

Easier to remember the minimums with the current system? You have got to be joking. A number is a number and it's easier to remember the default because...you don't have to remember the default! You just choose the map size and the game automatically puts the default in there for you. I find it decidedly much more difficult to remember the minimums with the current system than if the default was used.

Also, the support for the default number is because Firaxis is the one who designed and balanced their game. This goes right along with the barbarian issue. Let's play all our games with too few opponents and no barbarians and make every single game a complete steamroll of the AI. It's like using a cheat code and getting infinite gold. It's not fun to play that way.

In support of the current system I find it easy to remember the minimums without having to load up a webpage.

Now thats funny, with default opponents you dont have to remember anything.

Also, the support for the default number is because Firaxis is the one who designed and balanced their game.


Hah! I see you know little about game development. We've seen two patches in as many weeks right after initial release. Now, would you like to rephrase who you think balances their game?


I'll state that my opinion is that the "public beta" stage (or first release to most PC game developers) is where the vast number of bugs and design flaws will drop out. There is no way an inhouse team of 20-100 testers, nor a speciality tester house can compete with the numbers seen at release. Thats even a shoddy game, which could see 20,000 just for being in a box.

The game is balanced for the default number of civs. Making it too easy by reducing or increasing the number of opponents takes the fun out of the game. But I'm forced to play standard maps with only 4 opponents or way too many opponents if I want to compete. So I'm forced to throw the game balance out of whack if I want to compete in the Hall of Fame instead of playing a fun, balanced game.

Easier to remember the minimums with the current system? You have got to be joking. A number is a number and it's easier to remember the default because...you don't have to remember the default! You just choose the map size and the game automatically puts the default in there for you. I find it decidedly much more difficult to remember the minimums with the current system than if the default was used.

Also, the support for the default number is because Firaxis is the one who designed and balanced their game. This goes right along with the barbarian issue. Let's play all our games with too few opponents and no barbarians and make every single game a complete steamroll of the AI. It's like using a cheat code and getting infinite gold. It's not fun to play that way.

I don't fully disagree.
But here is my counter-argument.
Leaving a range open makes for a strategy decision.
You can tailor the number of opponents to you strategy and that can make for interesting games.

Actually it doesnt, in 99% of the games minimum number of opponents will be best.

It depends Orca. If you had a huge map with a conquest or domination victory you could put the max number and start sacking their cities. It would limit how much each other civ could grow and make it easier on you. But yes, about 80% of the time it will be the minimum.

Every once in a while, overloading a map leads to some unique strategies. Overloading both hinders the AI and helps in very early rushes on high difficulty levels (where distance really matters for maintenance). I certainly would want to leave in the option of putting as many civs onto the map as the player chooses. At least until someone comes up with a completely abusive overloaded map strategy.

The underloaded maps, however, seem to be the norm. It is much easier to win peacefully playing with an underloaded map. I might argue this is also ok for "variety", but given the fact that you can already somewhat control crowding through the ocean levels setting (check out the difference between "low seas" and "high seas" sometime), I fully support setting the minimum number of civs equal to the "play now" defaults.

It depends Orca. If you had a huge map with a conquest or domination victory you could put the max number and start sacking their cities

Gauntlet two tells a different story.

Gauntlet two tells a different story.

I assume he meant domination, as clearly conquest thrives on the least opponents. Overloading the map with no city razing set could work nicely for a domination game.

I agree that domination is the only setting where you might think of taking more opponents. I dont think its viable though. The reason is that building settlers instead of capturing cities looks more costeffectiv at the first glance.

To be effectiv the resources you loose by capturing a city have to be less than the cost of a settler on average. This is not an easy task to find out in theory because you have to take in account that you get some money by capturing cities and eventually get an additional worker, if you are lucky you might even get some useful building in that town and some properly developed city squares. On the other hand people in 'foreign' towns will be more unhappy and it will take some turns of unrest until you can use that city.

Now another consideration comes up, on higher difficulty levels, the AIs develop much faster and cities are much better defended. On those levels i dont see any other units beside Pretorians to do this costeffectiv. However i dont think civs without the creativ trait are the way to go for a domination approch - well maybe you have to on deity or immortal because otherwise you wont win. If you have to use standard units your losses will be quite significant and my feeling here is that the losses will be higher than the gain - i could be wrong though !

Considering all this i think for most settings even with domination victory its not viable to use more opponents as you have to.

I think the minimum number of civs should be raised to the default. The reason for this is because having fewer than the default makes the AI much more pacifist and renders it effectively a no-war game. The AI aims for however many cities it can cope with while keeping its economy ticking over, and if there are too few opponents then every AI has easily enough space to expand peacefully (as long as they're not boxed up) so war is taken out. This would make a much bigger (and a better) difference than forcing barbarians on.

For my two cents, I will say I have no opinion about the minimum, but there shouldn’t be a maximum if you also decide to require barbarians to be on. On a large or huge maps, the overwhelming amount of grey space when there aren’t enough AIs makes it impossible to use any strategy but military conquest on higher levels since you will be dealing with a lot of barbarians every single turn.

AIs settle very fast on higher levels so with standard amount of AI players it doesnt take too long until all good places are taken.

Why do people continually restate what reducing the number does in game? Don't you realize that the people reducing the number know exactly what its doing? Of course they do, thats why they are doing it.

So now that we all know what opponents does in a game, post some good reasons why that is a bad thing. Why is it that a war monger can choose to quickly end a game and ignore almost the entire builder aspects of the game, but if a builder choose to ignore the war aspects of the game it needs to be fixed?

Why do people continually restate what reducing the number does in game?
Smirk, have you been paying any attention to the join dates of posters lately? There's a lot of welcome newcomers to our family, who don't yet have the experience of those of us who have been around a while. ;)

Sorry, but if you require more civs on a map then warmongers won't be able to ignore technology on the higher difficulties. They won't be able to conquer the world as quickly. Playing with fewer civs makes the game more predictable and trivial. It makes both war and technology victories into a short sequence of steps that you know will work before you've even done them, because the game isn't going to throw any surprise at you ever. It makes the game not fun. I don't know about you, but I play for fun.

The number of AI opponents sets the domination limit regardless of the map size. If you have 1 opponent the domination limit is 74%. If you have 17 opponents the domination limit is 51%. If you have the default number of opponents on a huge map the domination limit is 56% but if you have the current HOF minium number of opponents the domination limit is 64%. So naturally you can get higher scores with a higher domination limit. BTW I used the 51% domination limit on duel maps to submit wins all the way up to Prince that were before 1000 BC.

Allowing players the choice to pick the number of opponents they play against gives them the option to set the domination limit from 74% to 51% of duel maps. If you require the default number of opponents you will restrict the domination limit on a huge map from 56% to 51%. Currently the domination limit range on a huge map is 64% to 51%.