I usually play PTW with the same 2 friends on a set night each week. It is great, until one of the 3 gets eliminated. Rather than make the eliminated player do his own thing, we usually start a new game. The other two don't really like having to do this, but they've been eliminated enough to know how the other guy feels. So, we are trying to come up with a way to determine a winner in this case. The best we could come up with was some sort of stat based system similar to fantasy sports. We'd base it on stuff like this:
*Number of computer/human civs destroyed.
*Number of cities/wonders built.
*Number of computer/human cities/wonders captured.
*Number of cities/wonders lost to computer/human.
?Score
?Techs
?Culture

We'd like to avoid any manual labor in determining this info, and we all have computer backgrounds. So, I was wondering if there is some sort of interface that we can use to programatically get this info from the SAV file.

I think that we could get all of the items marked with an '*' from the replay at the end of the game. Anything marked with a '?' are displayed on one of the screens displayed at the end of the game.

Has anyone tried this? I was hoping that Matrix knew how to do this because of the GOTM.

If it's not possible, does anyone else think it'd be a good feature to have the game stats dumped to a text file so people could use it?

Has anyone else found a way to make the "1 friend dies in a 3 friend game" situation fun for all?

I also play 3 person games. If one person is eliminated, you can have them take over one of the AIs. If it's early enough in the game and you're at Monarch or higher, then the AI isn't in too bad of a position. It's not really as fun for the eliminated player, because it's not "their" empire, but at least the game goes on.

Uh, why dont you just use the scores from the game, in the upper right corner next to your names ?

Here is my suggestion.

When 1 of your friends are about to be Overrun and put out of game, help him. :goodjob:

Give 1 or 2 cities from your empire and that of your other friend along with some Military units inside the cities, Far from the battles.

This way your friend can continue the fight in exile from your lands and with your help can some day retake his ancesteral city.

In the meantime just keep him as your personal civ3 manservant.
With less to do he can go on Food runs and bring cold refreshments for the other 2 players with much larger empires.
Blame him for all the trouble your kindom may develope. Remind him of your compassion even as u send him out to your errands or clean the house.
Of course he may not take kindly to this abuse, and may forment plans to overthrow you. But hey who said being King did not come with a price.
:king:

Seriously tho, Try to Help your friend any way u can to keep him in the game and continue the game as long as its possible to do so and still have fun. :lol:

bump

Copernicus,

I didn't know that was possible until I tried clicking on the number next to my name in the Multiplayer Setup screen. We were going to try that, but we've now recruited a 4th player. He lost one game, and we were going to have him become one of the AI civs. But, each of the 3 available AI civs were getting wiped out by one of the human civs. The chat to determine which AI civ to take was pretty funny...
"No, they're screwed."
"Not them either. They won't see 1am."
"I wouldn't take them, unless you really, really like ice fishing."

Zamphyr,
That's definitely a possibility. But, we were thinking that for a multiplayer game, it'd be nice if there were bonuses for some of the military aspects of the game. I guess with the terrain part of the civ score, this is indirectly true.

RicKhan5,

We've done this too, and it is pretty fun. But really, who wants to help their friend in a civ game? All 4 of us want to see our friend's civ suffer. That's part of the beauty of PTW. We just don't want to make them wait while the other three finish out the game.

We did have one game where each civ gave the guy a city while we fought his battles. Of course, the city was either in the middle of the dessert or jungle. Were we generous? Sortof. Did he keep those free cities long? No. :-)

Beth, are you looking for any new players in your game? What time one and what night? I am EST. I would love to play. Thx

Best way to let me know if you are interested is email me at

thefather@shadowlegion.net

Thanks

It's Danny sir.