Allow "No Barbarians"? [Archive] - Civilization Fanatics' Forums

TheMeInTeam

Jan 02, 2011, 11:52 PM

In general I have nothing against randomness in a civ game. It is and always has been a part of the game. Civilization is not chess. If you take away all chance in the game, you take away part of its soul.

This is a sad excuse designers use to explain ALL chance. There are good and bad chance elements in games; good chance elements provide an element of risk vs reward as a strategic decision. Bad chance elements are those that are out of player control and/or do absolutely nothing to affect the eventual decision on optimal movement. Winning or losing on BAD chance elements is awful design; allowing or worse FORCING said bad chance elements in a HoF setting is ludicrous.

Your choice, not chance! In other words, barbarians are not a random factor, they are first and foremost a strategic factor. The game will be shallower without them.

Quantify the returns of early-build orders with and without barbs. Show me that having them present makes a difference beyond "nuisance" or "good start doesn't have to deal with them while other starts do". Tell me the rate at which they spawn near encampments isn't a chance factor. If you think they can even be potentially helpful, how does limiting player options make HoF LESS shallow?

And another thing: I think a HOF game should be as close to a 'regular' game of civ as possible. Otherwise there is little use for carrying over experience from one type of game to the other.

You probably want magical pony unicorns delivering you a cornocopia from candy mountain (CHARLIE!!!!!) too. I'd like it if HoF brushed my teeth for me each night and talked to people on the phone when I don't want to do that. Let's be realistic.

People play HoF to get faster finish dates/better performances than other HUMAN players. Yes, beating the AI is a prerequisite, but that is a minuscule hurdle compared to out-performing other HoF players. When you argue in favor of a chancy element, you are arguing in favor of skill losing to time spent playing. Why?

Because any time there's a chance element allowed, people will start-scum to beat it. This allows players with more time to have an increasingly consistent advantage over players with less time/able to play fewer games. HoF has historically taken pains to curb that "more time = more advantage" edge in the past; even going so far as to allow/endorse mapfinder in civ IV.

It would be rather sour to then allow or even FORCE players into situations where chance might give the other guy the 5-10 turn lead he needs to win, rather than who played in a superior fashion.

These arguments of "chance is part of the game" and "you need skill to adapt to chance" can be quite simply translated into one statement:

"I don't have enough skill to beat the best of the best straight up, so I'd rather allow large chance factors to help or impede players on the off chance that luck favors me and I can outperform somebody who plays better".

Every time someone argues in favor of forcing events, barbs, random leaders, etc to be on, that is exactly what they are saying. They might be trying to cover it up in a clever fashion. They might be pretending like they actually like to maximize the skill component of the outcome. They might even try to fool themselves into believing that a chance factor somehow makes a competitive game deeper, but the end reality is the same. They are making that statement, over and over and over again. Here in HoF, in XOTM, in SGOTM. People want random chance so they have a chance to beat Sun Tzu Wu, U_Sun, Rusten, Ironhead, Jesusin, Lexad, etc etc even if those guys outplay them.

Let's conclude this:

1. Does "no barbarians" give players who perform the best in-game a lesser chance to win if everyone chooses to use it?
2. Does forcing barbarians give players who perform the best a slightly lesser chance to win?

No, then yes. Why is this even a discussion? And for god's sake, how can we have a ridiculous MAJORITY opinion trying to limit HoF options and favor chance? This poll causes mental pain.

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 03, 2011, 12:03 AM

And another thing: I think a HOF game should be as close to a 'regular' game of civ as possible. Otherwise there is little use for carrying over experience from one type of game to the other.

As I would define it, a 'regular' game of Civ V is any game that can be started by the Civ V application, including the full range of all game options.

Assuming you agree with the above statement, you are saying that a HoF player can chose any options presented in a 'regular' game of Civ V, right? In other words, a player can choose to have or not have Barbarians as a 'regular' game option.

Unfortunately, you seem to be defining a 'regular' game to be very narrow in the permitted options. For example, you seem to say that no one should be permitted to play a game with the game option "No Barbarians".

I'd prefer to define a 'regular" game in the widest sense possible, allowing all options except those that are literally exploits of the game. "No Barbarians" to the contrary is definitely not an exploit, but may actually be the opposite as BLubmuz so eloquently put it in his post:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9832556&postcount=30

Sun Tzu Wu

Alphons Rodulfo

Jan 03, 2011, 04:17 AM

This idea has been suggested many times and rejected as impractical. That doesn't mean it isn't a good idea; there's simply no practical way of achieving; also, a majority of HoF players are opposed to the idea.

Sorry, I was not aware this had been discussed before. I am new to the HOF thing, desperately trying to make civ V interesting to play :).

So what about a fixed list of opponents then? Has that idea already been suggested and rejected? It would level the playing field even more than random opponents. And it could possibly make a game more challenging too..

TheMeInTeam

Jan 03, 2011, 07:26 AM

Sorry, I was not aware this had been discussed before. I am new to the HOF thing, desperately trying to make civ V interesting to play :).

So what about a fixed list of opponents then? Has that idea already been suggested and rejected? It would level the playing field even more than random opponents. And it could possibly make a game more challenging too..

It is not really viable in standard HoF, but is a frequent restraint in gauntlets.

Alphons Rodulfo

Jan 03, 2011, 02:13 PM

As I would define it, a 'regular' game of Civ V is any game that can be started by the Civ V application, including the full range of all game options.

Assuming you agree with the above statement, you are saying that a HoF player can chose any options presented in a 'regular' game of Civ V, right? In other words, a player can choose to have or not have Barbarians as a 'regular' game option.

Unfortunately, you seem to be defining a 'regular' game to be very narrow in the permitted options. For example, you seem to say that no one should be permitted to play a game with the game option "No Barbarians".

I'd prefer to define a 'regular" game in the widest sense possible, allowing all options except those that are literally exploits of the game. "No Barbarians" to the contrary is definitely not an exploit, but may actually be the opposite as BLubmuz so eloquently put it in his post:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9832556&postcount=30

Sun Tzu Wu

Well, I didn't have a strict definition of a 'regular game' in mind when I wrote that, but I think I meant something like a game that is started without going into the advanced setup. In other words, a game that more or less has all the options that the developers intended to be in a standard game.

One of the goals of playing HOF games is improving one's game style, isn't it? It seems to me that limiting the options in every HOF game is counterproductive in that sense. How can you improve your skills in handling barbarians by means of playing in the HOF if there never are barbarians in a HOF game?

I wasn't trying to say that no one should be permitted to play a game with the game option "No Barbarians". In fact, having a wide variety of different games will keep HOF games interesting, and help in improving play style in different circumstances. But maybe it would be better to have everyone playing with the same settings in a single HOF game? You do want to be able to compare scores for a single HOF game in a meaningful way. Of course by forcing a set of options for each HOF game you run the risk of turning the HOF into a GOTM. I can imagine that danger also having been discussed already in the HOF forum..

Alphons Rodulfo

Jan 03, 2011, 02:53 PM

This is a sad excuse designers use to explain ALL chance. There are good and bad chance elements in games; good chance elements provide an element of risk vs reward as a strategic decision. Bad chance elements are those that are out of player control and/or do absolutely nothing to affect the eventual decision on optimal movement. Winning or losing on BAD chance elements is awful design; allowing or worse FORCING said bad chance elements in a HoF setting is ludicrous.
Agreed. But you seem to be implying that barbarians are bad chance elements. I don't think they are. There are ways to control them. Besides that, I really think handling factors with a certain amount of randomness requires tactical skill. A really good general will know the right thing to do even if there is a change in the anticipated circumstances. Why, the map itself is also a chancy feature. Would you prefer to play the same map every time just to get rid of chanciness?

Tell me the rate at which they spawn near encampments isn't a chance factor.
Well.. to the best of my knowledge it isn't. Barb camps only spawn in undeveloped areas, in areas that our outside of your field of vision. If you were to surround your territory with scouts posted on hilltops you will have no barbarians spawning close to your cities.

If you think they can even be potentially helpful, how does limiting player options make HoF LESS shallow?
Barbarians can be helpful, especially for the skilled player ;). But they can also be a menace. So I think they are a feature that makes a game a little more exiting. Barbarians give you situations to handle in stead of just clicking 'next turn'. That is what I meant.

People play HoF to get faster finish dates/better performances than other HUMAN players. Yes, beating the AI is a prerequisite, but that is a minuscule hurdle compared to out-performing other HoF players. When you argue in favor of a chancy element, you are arguing in favor of skill losing to time spent playing. Why?

While I disagree on the point that handling barbarians doesn't require skill, I think something else is the matter here. Much of the yes/no to barbarians seems to have to do with the mind set of the HOF player. One type of player will go all way to be the pit boss, to be number one in the list. Another type of player plays a HOF game for improving his/her play style, to learn from other players and to make a game more interesting because he/she knows that others will be playing a similar game. For the latter type, the HOF score is interesting to get an idea of his/her competence level. Beating the rest of the players is not that important. At the moment, I consider myself to be of the second type. But I can imagine that one gets more fanatical as one approaches the top of the HOF. I can also imagine that at that point people will go into a lot of trouble to optimize the starting position by restarting the game over and over again during the first turns. For that type of player, a good case for disallowing barbarians can be made. But for players like me, it would reduce the fun factor of a HOF game. I kind of miss the ruins too..

Because any time there's a chance element allowed, people will start-scum to beat it. This allows players with more time to have an increasingly consistent advantage over players with less time/able to play fewer games. HoF has historically taken pains to curb that "more time = more advantage" edge in the past; even going so far as to allow/endorse mapfinder in civ IV.

It would be rather sour to then allow or even FORCE players into situations where chance might give the other guy the 5-10 turn lead he needs to win, rather than who played in a superior fashion.

These arguments of "chance is part of the game" and "you need skill to adapt to chance" can be quite simply translated into one statement:
"I don't have enough skill to beat the best of the best straight up, so I'd rather allow large chance factors to help or impede players on the off chance that luck favors me and I can outperform somebody who plays better".

I get your point. You are probably right in thinking that people with a lot of time on their hands will take advantage of the opportunity of starting over and over again. But don't you think those people will do it anyway?

Anyway, please accept the fact that there are people that would like to have barbarians for other reasons than your statement above.

Every time someone argues in favor of forcing events, barbs, random leaders, etc to be on, that is exactly what they are saying. They might be trying to cover it up in a clever fashion. They might be pretending like they actually like to maximize the skill component of the outcome. They might even try to fool themselves into believing that a chance factor somehow makes a competitive game deeper, but the end reality is the same. They are making that statement, over and over and over again. Here in HoF, in XOTM, in SGOTM. People want random chance so they have a chance to beat Sun Tzu Wu, U_Sun, Rusten, Ironhead, Jesusin, Lexad, etc etc even if those guys outplay them.
Some people might, but I don't think you can accuse everyone in favour of barbarians of thinking this way.

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 03, 2011, 03:26 PM

So what about a fixed list of opponents then? Has that idea already been suggested and rejected? It would level the playing field even more than random opponents. And it could possibly make a game more challenging too..

It is not really viable in standard HoF, but is a frequent restraint in gauntlets.

Tersely and quite accurately stated. Kudos to you sir!

Game of the Month (GOTM) does Provide a Fixed List of Opponents:

Neither random nor a fixed list of opponents will work for the HoF, outside of the exception TheMeInTeam stated above. However, the "Game of the Month" (GOTM), does have a fixed list of unknown opponents and it works, because everyone plays the same Start revealed each month and each player can make only one attempt at winning the game (no reloading is permitted in GOTM as well as HoF). The opponents are revealed only in the process of playing the game out.

Briefly, GOTM versus HoF:

So, really, GOTM is what you want to play, if you want to demonstrate more skill rather than skill obliterating randomness, contrary to any sound game design principles as TheMeInTeam so persuasively argued against in his post:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10075928&postcount=42

HoF Option Decisions:

We need to decide these HoF option decisions such as "Barbarians" or "No Barbarians" in the sense of fixing the game that the game designer didn't quite get right. The Barbarian option is severely broken; how can we seriously force players to use it? Although, I'd prefer to force "No Barbarians" (note that the poll attached to this thread doesn't even provide this alternative), I'm willing to compromise to allow either "No Barbarians" or "Barbarians".

A Civ V Designing Digression:

In the case of Civ V, the game designer, publisher and producer are probably equally to blame for such a poor game. The game designer (Jon Shafer) probably wanted to design a better game than what resulted:

Jon Shafer leaves Firaxis! (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=404189)

I have no doubt that Jon Shafer left, because his hands were tied behind his back in the sense that marketing wanted a game that was more fun than skill related. At least I hope he really wanted to design a game that was as skill related as possible.

Option Wish List Digression:

Too bad there isn't an Eliminate Gratuitous Randomness option that turns off options that contain gratuitous randomness such as guaranteed Ruins rewards and the highly randomized Barbarian settlements/spawning whose only redeeming qualities are the eye candy "fun" they provide in exchange for subverting player skill.

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 03, 2011, 04:19 PM

Civ V Barbarians and Barbarian Encampments:

There is absolutely no reason to design Barbarians differently than multiple "barbaric Civilizations" that function exactly like the canonical Civ V Civilizations that have the full range of Culture, Technologies, etc. They can start as "barbaric" and unwilling to talk diplomacy, but they should eventually become civilized if they survive that long or they can remain Barbarians right through to the Future Era, perhaps a more likely eventuality via the "Raging Barbarian" option.

There should not be a concept of barbarian spawning, Barbarian units should be built just like AI Civilization and City State units. Barbarians should spread via capturing cities and founding cities via Barbarian Settlers.

Barbarian Encampments should simply be Barbarian cities that are no different than Player cities, AI cities or City States cities.

There should be different groups of Barbarians such that they are just as hostile to each other as they are to other Civilizations and City States. However, each such Barbarian group can control multiple cities and since they are usually geographically separated they will not often interact with other Barbarian groups such that wars between Barbarian groups will be as rare as contact/wars between similarly geographically separated normal Civilizations.

Barbarian cities can still retain the special attributes of Barbarian encampments such as City State rewards for elimination of specific Barbarian cities, simple wealth rewards for their capture and a captured city too, if not automatically razed for game balance issues.

Barbarian units can still reasonably be easier to defeat, since they would naturally be less militarily disciplined and lack professional military leadership that AI Civilizations and City States would have. This of course would change if they become more civilized.

Therefore, I conclude that Civ V Barbarians are in serious need of a complete rewrite.

Civ IV Barbarian Digression:

BTW, Civ IV Barbarians are in need of a less major rewrite, replacing the Barbarian spawning rules with sensible AI Civilization rules, just with extremely hostile Diplomacy (essentially none, until they begin to become somewhat more civil over time, if ever). At least Civ IV Barbarians can own cities that function like AI or player cities and build units, buildings, research, etc. just like a player or AI Civ can (or are at least given the illusion of such more refined activities though they should be simulated to the same extent as in true AI civilizations).

Sun Tzu Wu

TheMeInTeam

Jan 04, 2011, 07:39 AM

Agreed. But you seem to be implying that barbarians are bad chance elements. I don't think they are. There are ways to control them. Besides that, I really think handling factors with a certain amount of randomness requires tactical skill. A really good general will know the right thing to do even if there is a change in the anticipated circumstances. Why, the map itself is also a chancy feature. Would you prefer to play the same map every time just to get rid of chanciness?

Anybody who is a competent-to-elite player can handle barb camps. It's quite possible that they might even prove favorable in the metagame, to the point where people will reload over and over again until they get more of them. I can especially see this with Germany potentially.

Even if that isn't the case, all good players will handle them precisely the same way, and yet their chance element will put someone ahead. It's not tactically difficult. The skill threshold is so low that anyone who could possibly be competitive for top spots can do it; but that doesn't cut the chance element of turn shaving does it?

Well.. to the best of my knowledge it isn't. Barb camps only spawn in undeveloped areas, in areas that our outside of your field of vision. If you were to surround your territory with scouts posted on hilltops you will have no barbarians spawning close to your cities.

I am referring to the rate at which they spawn from existing encampments.

Barbarians can be helpful, especially for the skilled player . But they can also be a menace. So I think they are a feature that makes a game a little more exiting. Barbarians give you situations to handle in stead of just clicking 'next turn'. That is what I meant.

a) You didn't answer or counter my point. At all. This isn't a political debate, so you're not getting away with that ;).
b) Features that require a similar or precisely same reaction each time are not, IMO, "exciting". They're more like "nuisance" or "busywork". If you like it, great, but don't force it on others.

I get your point. You are probably right in thinking that people with a lot of time on their hands will take advantage of the opportunity of starting over and over again. But don't you think those people will do it anyway?

Anyway, please accept the fact that there are people that would like to have barbarians for other reasons than your statement above.

The goal here is to reduce the "game spam" = win as much as possible. It's impossible to eliminate it, but HoF goal should still be to give the people who play a game with the most skill the best chance of finishing better than competition.

And while some people may enjoy playing with barbarians for fun, I am not arguing in favor of banning barbarians for everyone. I am countering arguments from players who think that nobody should be able to disable them. The players who are demanding chance elements be forcibly added to HoF gameplay are the ones I'm calling out for wanting "luck > skill". If you simply like them, there's no issue with leaving them on. People did that in previous versions of the game also.

Also note that there are gauntlet versions of HoF that will force barbs or even raging barbs, separate from general rules.

Some people might, but I don't think you can accuse everyone in favour of barbarians of thinking this way.

You are reading statements then answering a different statement from what you read.

I am not accusing people who favor barbarians of thinking that way.

I am accusing people who favor forcing all HoF submissions to have barbarians on of thinking that way. There is a difference.

Misotu

Jan 04, 2011, 07:57 AM

I voted to allow no barbs - and frankly I don't have a problem with raging barbs either if people want that too. I'm firmly of the opinion that more choices and more strategies are better and I can't see any pressing reason to force people to have them turned on in the HoF. That was my opinion before reading the thread and I agree with most of the pro-choice arguments already made. I think most people will keep them on for most games, but I can see situations and map types where turning them off could be the better choice.

Denniz

Jan 04, 2011, 03:53 PM

For the record, Barbarians being optional for HOF has been the traditional approach. (i.e. civ3 and civ4) Civ5 has a different approach to barbarians that seem more central to game play. We are leaning toward making barbs being require for HOF submissions. The poll is intended to spark discussion and validate our thinking.

_______________________

The thought that all oppenents should be random seems like an idea worth considering. The use of cherry-picked opponents haa not gone unnoticed as some of the gauntlets show. People are going to toss out games for many reasons in their quest for perfect games. The question is would the time required to find a good mix of opponents be low enough to provide a significant advantage to players with more time? On some map types it could be a fairly large investment of time.

BTW, the Civ5 HOF is going to have tables defined by the combination of Victory Condition, Difficulty, Map Size, Speed, Map Type and Leader. The tables lists will be sorted by participation to minimize the effect of empty/unpopular tables (i.e. Huge, Marathon, Deity, Time, etc. ;) ).

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 05, 2011, 01:09 AM

Comparison of Barbarians in Civ V and Civ IV:

For the record, Barbarians being optional for HOF has been the traditional approach. (i.e. civ3 and civ4) Civ5 has a different approach to barbarians that seem more central to game play. We are leaning toward making barbs being require for HOF submissions. The poll is intended to spark discussion and validate our thinking.

How are Barbarians more central to game play in Civ V than in Civ IV? The Civ V just adds some bells and whistles to Barbarians while making them much weaker in many ways ...

Civ V) You get 25 wealth for destroying a Barbarian Encampment.

Civ IV) You get a fully functional city for capturing a Barbarian City plus maybe some wealth too depending on options specified.

Civ V) You get influence with a City State when you destroy a Barbarian Encampment they specify.

Civ IV) Options permitting, you get a fully functional "City State" plus some wealth when capturing any Barbarian City.

Civ V) Otto von Bismarck: Furor Teutonicus: Upon defeating a Barbarian unit inside an encampment, there is a 50% chance you earn 25 Gold and they join your side.

Civ V) Suleiman Kanuni: Barbary Corsairs: 50% Chance of converting a Barbarian naval unit to your side and earning 25 Gold.

Civ V) Askia Muhammad I: River Warlord: Receive triple Gold from Barbarian encampments and pillaging Cities. Embarked units can defend themselves.

These three are the only Leaders that have a Unique Ability whose power increases with the number of Barbarian Encampments found. Since this affects a small minority of Leaders, it is hardly central to game play.

Civ IV) All Leaders in Civ IV are able to more easily kill Barbarian units and capture Barbarian Cities.

Civ V) Barbarian spawn rate seems far slower.

Civ IV) Barbarian spawn rate seems much faster.

In conclusion, Barbarians in Civ IV are far more central to game play in Civ IV than in Civ V.

Is this or is this not the type of discussion you want to see concerning whether or not to allow the "No Barbarian" option in the Civ V HoF?

Random Opponents:

The thought that all oppenents should be random seems like an idea worth considering. The use of cherry-picked opponents haa not gone unnoticed as some of the gauntlets show. People are going to toss out games for many reasons in their quest for perfect games. The question is would the time required to find a good mix of opponents be low enough to provide a significant advantage to players with more time? On some map types it could be a fairly large investment of time.

Before the Game Start is generated, all the Opponents can be specified as Random, but after the generation is done and before the first move in Turn 0, all teams have been resolved to specific opponents. People are simply going to toss out games whose "Random Opponents" they don't like, so the opponents are no longer statically random. A player can start a game a thousand times to get the opponents he wants. Do we want players who can win the Random Opponent lottery to win the #1 games as opposed to the best players?

As I stated in a recent post, there is no way to ensure that Opponents are Random without forcing every game started to be completed. Why? Simply because players will have a new huge category of abandoned games whose opponents they didn't like enough. Like you said "People are going to toss out games for many reasons in their quest for perfect games.", why add to it by forcing "Random Opponents" which become statistically skewed by player abandonment anyway?

The only way Random Opponents works is when everyone gets the same of "Random Opponents" as in a "Game of the Month". Random Opponents works in a GOTM, because you get exactly one chance to play a game and for that one chance the opponents are not known to you until you contact them. Suppose we want to give GOTM players a second chance to play in the same competition. To be fair, one must use the same set of initially random opponents, but in the second game, the player knows who all the opponents will be. The HoF provides multiple chances to submit and this compounds the Random Opponent problem further.

If we want the HoF to be a measure of randomness (as opposed to skill), then by means include Random Opponents. On the other hand, if we want the HoF to be a measure of player skill, then we must eliminate as much randomness as possible, except that which is required in excellent game design to meaningfully challenge the player's risk assessment skills.

Civ V HoF Presentation Structure:

BTW, the Civ5 HOF is going to have tables defined by the combination of Victory Condition, Difficulty, Map Size, Speed, Map Type and Leader. The tables lists will be sorted by participation to minimize the effect of empty/unpopular tables (i.e. Huge, Marathon, Deity, Time, etc. ;) ).

Doesn't the Ad Hoc search page provide almost exactly same sorting parameters and control over them as you stated above? Doesn't Civ V have a "Start Era"?

Won't the Civ V HoF Table be rather sparse when specifying some specific Leader and specific "Map Type" (not to be confused with "Map Size") to the traditional categories of Victory Condition, Difficulty, Map Size, and Speed?

Sun Tzu Wu

Denniz

Jan 05, 2011, 05:51 AM

How are Barbarians more central to game play in Civ V than in Civ IV?
<snip>
In conclusion, Barbarians in Civ IV are far more central to game play in Civ IV than in Civ V.I was talking about the dynamic between the City States and the Barbarians as well as the few civs that have traits related to them. They may not be better in Civ5 but they seem more required to complete the whole picture than just a speed bump they have been in the past.

Is this or is this not the type of discussion you want to see concerning whether or not to allow the "No Barbarian" option in the Civ V HoF?yep.

Before the Game Start is generated, all the Opponents can be specified as Random, but after the generation is done and before the first move in Turn 0, all teams have been resolved to specific opponents. People are simply going to toss out games whose "Random Opponents" they don't like, so the opponents are no longer statically random. A player can start a game a thousand times to get the opponents he wants. Do we want players who can win the Random Opponent lottery to win the #1 games as opposed to the best players?The question is whether amount of time (turns) it would takes to discover all your opponents would discourage the search for the best combination enough to be viable.

If we want the HoF to be a measure of randomness (as opposed to skill), then by means include Random Opponents. On the other hand, if we want the HoF to be a measure of player skill, then we must eliminate as much randomness as possible, except that which is required in excellent game design to meaningfully challenge the player's risk assessment skills.There are two ends of the spectrum: random chance vs. optimized set ups. Neither seems very attractive when it comes to demonstrating skill. It is very hard to level the playing field when it comes to time available. (i.e. available to try many starts or time to dig through the XML).

Doesn't the Ad Hoc search page provide almost exactly same sorting parameters and control over them as you stated above? Doesn't Civ V have a "Start Era"?The difference is the official definition of a HOF table. The is more to tie it all together that will be revealed in time. (We are going to require ancient starts only in Civ5 HOF.)

Won't the Civ V HoF Table be rather sparse when specifying some specific Leader and specific "Map Type" (not to be confused with "Map Size") to the traditional categories of Victory Condition, Difficulty, Map Size, and Speed? Yes, but ignoring the map and leader makes the games on a given table less comparable. People are going to play their favorate leader/map anyway. The unpopular combinations can be ignored. It is all in the presentation. It aligns the tables with the Civ5 version of the Quattromasters challenge.

Alphons Rodulfo

Jan 05, 2011, 09:40 AM

You are reading statements then answering a different statement from what you read.

I am not accusing people who favor barbarians of thinking that way.

I am accusing people who favor forcing all HoF submissions to have barbarians on of thinking that way. There is a difference.

You got me there :yup:! I must admit that in the course of discussion I was confusing the question "Do we want to make barbarians optional?" with the question "Do we want to disallow barbarians?". My apologies.

I think a agree with the main point that you are making, I can see no reason to force people to play with barbarians off if they really want to. I can't imagine why you would want that, though.

So you think that all the skilled players will turn barbarians off if they had the chance? In my modest experience barbarians are more a blessing than a curse, even for civs that do not have barbarian specific traits.

Alphons Rodulfo

Jan 05, 2011, 09:49 AM

The question is whether amount of time (turns) it would takes to discover all your opponents would discourage the search for the best combination enough to be viable.

In my most recent (and second) HOF game, which was a domination challenge, I had some luck with having two pacifist, non-expansionist neighbours. It doesn't take many turns to find out who your neighbours are. Aren't your neighbours the most important opponents? I can imagine people restarting because they don't like their neighbours.

Denniz

Jan 05, 2011, 02:40 PM

You got me there :yup:! I must admit that in the course of discussion I was confusing the question "Do we want to make barbarians optional?" with the question "Do we want to disallow barbarians?". My apologies.

I think a agree with the main point that you are making, I can see no reason to force people to play with barbarians off if they really want to. I can't imagine why you would want that, though.

So you think that all the skilled players will turn barbarians off if they had the chance? In my modest experience barbarians are more a blessing than a curse, even for civs that do not have barbarian specific traits.We are exploring whether playing without barbarians should be allowed for HOF submissions. I hope that clarifies things.

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 05, 2011, 08:48 PM

I was talking about the dynamic between the City States and the Barbarians as well as the few civs that have traits related to them. They may not be better in Civ5 but they seem more required to complete the whole picture than just a speed bump they have been in the past.

City States and Barbarians:

What dynamic between City States and Barbarians? The Barbarians seem to live in their own world and rarely interact with the player or City States. Unless one intrudes into their space or engages their units in combat, Barbarians seem content to not wander only very short distances from their encampment.

Get X Influence for waxing a Barbarian Encampment, if you're ever lucky to have a City State ask you to do it, even when using a military approach? Of course there may be ways to milk this in the early game for an advantage 10-100 greater than the +1 Population from Ruins when one's capital is only 1 Population.

Civ V Barbarians are simply a pot of gold (the opposite of a speed bump, since they seem help more than hinder).

Before you decide to prohibit the "No Barbarians" option, you may want to force its use in beta gauntlet to see whether it provides any unfair advantage. Almost everyone believes it would be the the player's disadvantage to select the "No Barbarians"; if a beta gauntlet "proves" this to be the case and "No Barbarians" is a significant disadvantage, why bother to make its use illegal; almost everyone will probably select the "Barbarians" option anyway.

There is a very definite dynamic between Civ IV Barbarians, Civilizations and the player. The dynamic is the Barbarian's hatred of anything civil.

Civ V Barbarians are very precise. When you capture their Encampment, you always get 25 Wealth it seems. As I said before, with Civ IV Barbarian Cities, capture usually provides one with a fully functional City, not quite the speed bump you mention.

Leaders with a Barbarian related unique ability:

There are at most three Leaders that have a unique ability that is at least partially related to Barbarians. Otto van Bismarck's unique ability of having 50% of Barbarians captured in an Encampment would seem to be game breaking with map conditions that would virtually guarantee large numbers of Barbarian Encampment. Other than perhaps two initial military units, Bismarck military might consist solely of Barbarian "conscripts".

Dealing with Barbarian Encampments:

It probably was TheMeInTeam that brought up the fact that dealing with Civ V Barbarians is very mechanical and boring. There's no risk assessment involved, because Barbarian Encampments seem to be a tacked on addition that doesn't really relate to the rest of the game. Just keep pounding the Barbarian Encampment with two units, preferably a Melee unit and an Archer unit that can move and attack.

Comparison of Civ V and Civ IV Barbarians:

In my previous post, I provided a fairly detailed analysis of Barbarians in Civ V and Civ IV. In almost all instances the Civ V Barbarians are very lame in comparison to Civ IV Barbarians. At least Civ IV Barbarians eventual form Cities, build Workers, other units and even some buildings (if I recall correctly). Civ V Barbarians have nothing but lame behavior and lame rewards for their destruction. Even the, over-powered leader, Otto von Bismarck gets only a 50% chance of getting the allegiance of any Barbarian unit in an Encampment when it is destroyed; compared to Civ VI always keeping the captured Barbarian City, Civ V's reward is very poor.

Conclusion:

Although Civ IV's Barbarian implementation isn't really very good, it fits with the game better, and is partially modeled on Civilizations in that they can built cities, workers and other units. Civ V Barbarian Encampments by contrast are extremely one-dimensionally, have no similarity to cities and frankly have no place in the game other than as a source of Wealth and occasionally city state influence for their destruction and training military units via attacking them virtually endlessly. To say there is a dynamic between Barbarians and City States in Civ V is a gross over-statement. This relation is extremely artificial, even for a game.

The developers of Civ V need to fix leaders whose special ability requires Barbarians when the "No Barbarians" option is selected. Frankly, they need to fix Barbarians to be a game element that meshes well with the rest. What I can't understand is why the HOF staff wants to force players to use the poorly implemented Barbarian game element with Civ V by making the "No Barbarian" option illegal.

Barbarians in Civ V is not its only or even its worst flaws, as the exodus from Firaxis of lead designer Jon Shafer amply hints at. Indeed, does Civ V even have a future without its lead designer only four months since its initial release. Seems they were only willing to hold unto him through the Christmas season; many other developers were apparently axed last summer.

Sun Tzu Wu

Alphons Rodulfo

Jan 06, 2011, 02:08 AM

Dealing with Barbarian Encampments:
It probably was TheMeInTeam that brought up the fact that dealing with Civ V Barbarians is very mechanical and boring. There's no risk assessment involved, because Barbarian Encampments seem to be a tacked on addition that doesn't really relate to the rest of the game. Just keep pounding the Barbarian Encampment with two units, preferably a Melee unit and an Archer unit that can move and attack.

I think there is more involved in handling barb camps:

1) There is the city state request to dismantle a certain camp. What you see happening then is a mad rush of all players towards that camp (it was especially visible on the recent GOTM lakes map). When you arrive there chances are that units from one or more other civs are already there. So you need both speed and careful planning to make sure it is you that takes out the camp.

2) I often see camps located in places with a one tile access route. That means you do need some thinking and risk assessment in order to tackle the camp. Or it means that you have to have a ranged unit, in which case the barbarians influence your early research and army composition.

3) There are situations where a coastal camp has spawned some triremes. If you don't have a navy (yet) you have a good risk of losing a unit, especially the one making the final attack. Combinations of narrow strips of land combined with barbarian ships are especially tricky.

4) In general, if you have enough time, taking out barb camps is not really difficult. But your challenge is do do it as quick as possible. There are other barb camps out there and any time wasted will be of benefit to your opponents. Also you want to minimize your total hit point loss, because time spend healing is also precious. To my mind this means some risk assesment is always involved.

By the way, I agree that barbarians should have been made more interesting in Civ 5.

TheMeInTeam

Jan 06, 2011, 05:11 AM

Denniz

Jan 06, 2011, 07:31 PM

sanabas

Jan 06, 2011, 08:58 PM

Randomness is part of the game. It is not possible to eliminate. I think the more skilled players are bothered by it more than the rest of us, though.

I think it's more that players whose main aim is to have #1 times seem most bothered by it. Plenty of skill but not caring so much about setting a particular #1 time don't seem to be as worried.

I will mostly play with random opponents.

To me, simply deciding that with enough time and enough rerolls everybody can get an optimal start with optimal opponents and optimal lucky bits in the first however many turns, so therefore we should allow people to optimise all of that before they even start the game, and remove random factors like huts, that doesn't make much sense.

To me, I play the game because it's fun. Removing flavour stuff, removing random things that might or might give you a boost, I don't see the point. It makes it less entertaining to me. Someone with more time to reroll but less skill than me might beat some of my times. Big deal. Back in Civ 3 there was a point where some civs had hundreds of HOF games accepted, and some civs had none at all. I went and played as the unpopular civs just because I could, I even filled some #1 slots with them. Plenty of those will have been beaten by other players who were luckier, who played with more optimal setups. Again, big deal. I'm not a worse player, I haven't somehow achieved less, just because others have beaten my times.

I especially don't see the point of removing minor random events, like an annoyingly timed barb costing you a turn or two, or a hut, when things that have a much bigger effect can't be changed. Such as the difference between having 3 maritime CS nearby rather than 3 militaristic ones. If you want to remove as much randomness as possible, test your skills as directly as possible against somebody else, then there's multiplayer or GOTM. HOF will automatically have random factors that can make a game 5-10 turns better or worse, simply due to neighbour location, types of CS, where coal or aluminium appears, etc. I don't see the point of wanting to remove the few turns difference that barbarians or huts may make, because it's still going to be the case that if a table is competitive enough, luck will be the difference between finishing #1 & #2. A very good player will be able to be consistently near the top of a wide variety of competitive tables. We'll still know who those very good players are.

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 06, 2011, 09:37 PM

Barbarians:
I did a query one time that showed that only between 10-15% of the games submitted to the Civ4 HOF had barbarians turned on. The benefits of a capturing a barb city seems to less important than the nuisance most people seem to see them as. They interfere with exploration and force players to build defenders where they might not. (speed bump)

This almost proves that Barbarians are considered an unwanted distraction in Civ IV. Barbarians are harder to deal with in the higher difficulty levels and honestly the only one I care about is Deity level where the Barbarians can be especially difficult to fight off in maps with large settled spaces.

Capturing a barb city is not all it is cracked up to be since they are not necessarily positioned where you would choose. Plus the AI is more likely to benefit on the higher difficulties that the player.

That is result of poor game design; the Barbarians should be modeled as several geographically separated groups that typically didn't cooperate with each other that much. They should be modeled after the Barbarians that ultimately ended the Roman Empire.

In Civ5, the above is still true but there are new game aspects that add to the mix. Players or AI gaining influence with city states seem like it is useful. The AI Civ's that have elements related to Barbs lose those advantages with Barbs off. It may not be much but it exists. Is Germany an easier early game neighbor without the extra units he can get from barb camps?

I disagree, Civ V Barbarians are very weak, stay near their encampments. They don't build cities, workers and certainly don't look for cities to capture. They are simply something inhuman to destroy for wealth and influence, if you're lucky to get there in time. Otto van Bismarck doesn't need his special ability to gain military units; he can build them like every other AI leader must do, since they have no such ability.

All in all, if there is a chance that the player gains an additional advantage against the AI with barbs turn off, then it seems like a good thing to require them to be on. (i.e. A player may need to be a little bit more skillful with them on than with them off.)

In Civ V, what conceivable way could a player gain an advantage against an AI specifically because the "No Barbarians" option is selected? There are no Barbarians to gain wealth and influence from and frankly who is better at doing that AI leaders or the player. The player can milk Civ V Barbarians for all there worth, but the rewards (influence) are extremely unpredictable and have no correlation to skill, because it is trivial to defeat Civ V Barbarians.

BTW, are people even playing CIv5 with the barbs turned off?

Why would anyone want to play "No Barbarians" when it seem likely that the HoF staff will ban the use of this option?

More importantly, why would any one care about the Barbarian "teddy bears" that mill around Encampments? A Barbarian Encampment is simply a fat juicy Influence reward for their destruction, but you must wait until a City State sentences them to death, before you execute the Encampment, otherwise all you get is 25 wealth for your effort (hardly worth the engagement of a single military unit, much less two units).

Like I said before, you may want to have a beta gauntlet with "No Barbarians" required, then you likely to find out whether such an option will be an advantage or disadvantage as I maintain.

Random Oppenents
I guess it is just wishful thinking on my part. Having to play into the game somewhat to know enough about your opponets to decide to continue or not would probably disadvantage those with less time more. Still, we may want to try it with a gauntlet to see what the effects on submissions are.

You will get fewer submissions, because more players want to reduce the randomness in the games they play than increase it, unless the randomness favors them, but that can't match hand picking opponents.

Randomness is part of the game. It is not possible to eliminate. I think the more skilled players are bothered by it more than the rest of us, though. :mischief:

True, but as MeInTheTeam pointed out, there are two very distinct types of randomness, one good and the other bad. The good randomness can be modeled as an integral part of good game design and managed by the player via risk assessment, resource allocation and the attainment of a tactical goal. The bad randomness is not an integral part of good game design, can not have its risk assessed, can't be affected by resource allocation and is not connected to a tactical goal. In other words, good randomness is something the player can exert some control over and mitigate the effects of less desirable outcomes. Whereas, bad randomness is just something (good or bad) that happens to the player for no sensible reason and for which he can do nothing reasonable to prepare himself for. Huts and Ruins are the perfect examples of bad randomness; other than the trivial skill needed to find them and activate them, they are simply a reward (Civ V and Civ IV with No Barbarians) or penalty (Civ IV with Barbarians) that required no real skill or control to achieve. Can you control what a particular Hut or Ruins provides?

There is nothing good about Random Opponents. It is simply something that happens to you that you can not prepare yourself for. Some players will get an easy set of Opponents to defeat while other players get a hard set of opponents and the remaining players get a set of opponents that are somewhere in-between. Imagine getting just one Start where every player gets a different random set of opponents to defeat. If you get the easiest set of opponents to defeat and you get the #1 game, have you convincingly demonstrated that you are the most skillful player?

I don't find the arguement for optimized setups being a good thing for competition particularly appealling. It can be just another form of advantage like having more time. In this case, it would be knowledge of the Civ's XML values and what they mean for picking the best opponents for a given setup. The strategy forum and posted articles fill the role that MapFinder does for time. Not that everyone is aware of them or use them.

What not appealing about the most skillful player winning the #1 game when the setup was made as fair as possible? What is appealing to see most skillful player not win the #1 game, because he had the most difficult random opponents to defeat?

To make competitions fair one must eliminate as much as possible all bad randomness (good or bad things that happen to the player just for the sake of pure randomness). This includes all randomness in the setup of the game. Can you imagine the complaints from GOTM players, if they all had to play different sets of opponents in the same competition?

The most skillful players use every legal source of information to improve their game play. This is what every player should aspire to do if they want to become as skillful as possible. If they just want to play for fun, they can select Random Opponents if they prefer, but please don't force everyone to do so.

Sun Tzu Wu

Alphons Rodulfo

Jan 07, 2011, 12:24 PM

They should be modeled after the Barbarians that ultimately ended the Roman Empire.
An alternative view is that the Roman Empire ended itself. The barbarians were the only ones willing to put it out of its misery.

As an aside, to anyone who is interested in barbarians and/or Romans, I can heartily recommend reading "Terry Jones' Barbarians". It's a book. Yes, it was written by a former Monty Python member, but it is serious enough. It tries to demonstrate that the peoples surrounding the expanding Roman empire were in fact more 'civilized' than the Romans themselves, who primarily were a very brutal lot. But they conquered the 'barbarians' and were therefore in a position to write history.

sanabas

Jan 07, 2011, 01:50 PM

The most skillful players use every legal source of information to improve their game play. This is what every player should aspire to do if they want to become as skillful as possible. If they just want to play for fun, they can select Random Opponents if they prefer, but please don't force everyone to do so.

How does always playing against the optimal set of opponents, developing strategies that won't work if you have a more difficult set of opponents, encourage an increase of skill?

What is appealing to see most skillful player not win the #1 game, because he had the most difficult random opponents to defeat?

What is appealing is you can see the 'most skillful' player producing good games against a wide variety of challenges, a wide variety of opponents, needing to change tactics when they have monty right next door, etc, instead of one type of game always being with the optimal civ choice, against the optimal opponents. What is appealing is that the most skillful players will be consistently good on all the tables, even if for the small sample size of a single table they missed out on the #1 slot because they happened to have a slightly tougher game than the person who did get #1.

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 07, 2011, 09:38 PM

An alternative view is that the Roman Empire ended itself. The barbarians were the only ones willing to put it out of its misery.

As an aside, to anyone who is interested in barbarians and/or Romans, I can heartily recommend reading "Terry Jones' Barbarians". It's a book. Yes, it was written by a former Monty Python member, but it is serious enough. It tries to demonstrate that the peoples surrounding the expanding Roman empire were in fact more 'civilized' than the Romans themselves, who primarily were a very brutal lot. But they conquered the 'barbarians' and were therefore in a position to write history.

I'm not aware of "Terry Jones' Barbarians".

However, I'm fully aware that the Roman Empire's history is full of both extremely brilliant leaders and power brokers as well extremely inept leaders and their cohorts. In deed, the fall of the Roman Empire was more due to internal conditions than external forces. The Roman Empire was near collapse when the Barbarians ended the Western Roman Empire, but the Eastern Roman Empire lived on, renamed by historians who should not have had the right to do so as the Byzantine Empire and it lasted another thousand years until it was finally picked apart and absorbed by the Ottoman Empire.

I must say that Civ V's Barbarians are pathetic and not civilized at all. The concept of Barbarian Encampments is very broken. Barbarians did not spent all their time in encampments, they built their own mini-civilizations around the edges of more powerful empires. They simply didn't want to be part of these larger empires and where often able to resist them. Also, there was probably a bit more diplomacy among true Barbarians than either Civ V or Civ IV model properly; they did live in peace, when their more powerful neighbors permitted or they were settled in remote enough locations. Barbarians were not always engaged in war.

For more information on the topic of Barbarian, please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 07, 2011, 09:47 PM

How does always playing against the optimal set of opponents, developing strategies that won't work if you have a more difficult set of opponents, encourage an increase of skill?

What is appealing is you can see the 'most skillful' player producing good games against a wide variety of challenges, a wide variety of opponents, needing to change tactics when they have monty right next door, etc, instead of one type of game always being with the optimal civ choice, against the optimal opponents. What is appealing is that the most skillful players will be consistently good on all the tables, even if for the small sample size of a single table they missed out on the #1 slot because they happened to have a slightly tougher game than the person who did get #1.

The best the HoF can do with its ideal of multiple starts and a virtually open-ended time frame is to level the playing field by making it easy to have "optimized" starts. This is the best they can do to allow the best players the best shot at the #1 Game in each HoF slot.

If you want more challenging opponents, see the GOTM and HoF Gauntlets were specific opponents are required.

Sun Tzu Wu

TheMeInTeam

Jan 09, 2011, 05:39 AM

All in all, if there is a chance that the player gains an additional advantage against the AI with barbs turn off, then it seems like a good thing to require them to be on. (i.e. A player may need to be a little bit more skillful with them on than with them off.)

Simply put, this fails as an argument to force barbs on.

If you are going to open this can of worms, there is only one logical end-conclusion: the end of HoF and another XOTM series. Nothing more, nothing less. Virtually every setting on the list can be manipulated, through playing multiple starts, to give the human an advantage over the AI.

Was the AI ever the REAL opponent in HoF? Anybody remotely competitive for a top spot would probably say otherwise.

Realize that this argument goes against the entire precedence of existence of HoF, and that it undermines it. The statement I quoted can not be rationally used as an argument for the forced inclusion of barbs at this time.

Edit: Let me put it this way: I can, and have, used valid HoF submissions to beat civ IV deity. With the right, LEGAL settings in BUFFY, I can easily win my choice of VCs on that difficulty with consistency. I hold 0 top spots for deity in HoF.

Think about that. Think about what is the TRUE test of skill. Anyone can win a game by spamming it enough times; not everyone can wrest a top spot from Sun Tzu Wu/Ironhead/Lexad/PaulisKhan/take your pick. Make no mistake, in the HoF mod, the AI is NOT the competition, the human players competing with your times are the real competition. Beating the AI is like beating level 1 of 8 in super mario world or breezing by an introductory boss in an rpg...the real challenge (and point) of HoF is what you can do compared against other players. I don't think you can rationalize a different reason, given the front-page display of finish times.

So when you start thinking about settings and whether they give an "additional advantage", why not ask yourself "does this feature give someone playing less skillfully an additional advantage against top composition"?

I don't find the arguement for optimized setups being a good thing for competition particularly appealling. It can be just another form of advantage like having more time. In this case, it would be knowledge of the Civ's XML values and what they mean for picking the best opponents for a given setup. The strategy forum and posted articles fill the role that MapFinder does for time. Not that everyone is aware of them or use them.

You might not find that argument appealing, but you can't escape from the reality: right now, HoF has no means to replicate comparable situations on a game-to-game basis using different maps such that even the same player going for the same VC with the same basic approach would have a consistent outcome. Now, we're throwing in wrenches like RNG map-spawn and MANY different humans. An optimized setup, barring any means of policing suboptimal setups on a consistent basis, is the only reasonable approach to maximizing the impact of skill on HoF results.

However, there's also a fundamental argument in favor of optimized approaches: HoF stretches the player toward showcasing what is possible in order to get a top slot. The very best times ever submitted can, in FACT, only be attained by an optimized setup. With the rules you're wanting to put in, there would never have been a BCs space win and the people holding lead positions in the HoF roster would likely be different; and I've yet so see any convincing argument that the different players would be better. In likelihood, but increasing the impact of chance they're statistically more likely to be worse, but still hold HoF spots. Please please PLEASE don't deliberately go that route.

Randomness is part of the game. It is not possible to eliminate. I think the more skilled players are bothered by it more than the rest of us, though.

Yes, randomness is part of the game by design (noticed its reduced impact in civ V though). However, in a contest to determine skill, the goal should be to take the impact of random-ness to its theoretical minimum; THAT is the level of RNG nonsense that requires the fewest #games to filter out the "noise" and tend to represent the outcomes of skillful play. Once again, that can only be done under optimized settings, otherwise it will simply become "optimized settings based on whatever ill-conceived or foolish constraints might be placed on competition". Some people like those kinds of shenanigans. They're probably the same people who enjoy watching metronome battles in pokemon or something. HoF is NOT the place for this nonsense, and never has been/will be so long as it purported/purportss to represent an actual competition between players.

Throwing in mindless non-strategic hassle for players is not going to make HoF a deeper experience. Limiting player options arbitrarily is not going to make HoF a better experience. Frankly, I'm still disappointed that this topic is even being considered, let alone that it has such support. It's amazingly terrible.

How does always playing against the optimal set of opponents, developing strategies that won't work if you have a more difficult set of opponents, encourage an increase of skill?

Think about the point of HoF and try something a bit more relevant. If you can't think of a good reason why players under the same conditions as top competition have incentive to improve, it's a major reach to believe you know what you're talking about in this thread at all. Surely, you can think of a reason or two ^_^.

To me, I play the game because it's fun. Removing flavour stuff, removing random things that might or might give you a boost, I don't see the point. It makes it less entertaining to me. Someone with more time to reroll but less skill than me might beat some of my times. Big deal.

It might not be a big deal to someone who is openly admitting no interest in actually competing within HoF, but to players who are trying to reach that #1 spot, it absolutely is a big deal. Where is the "fun" for the people who are really vying against each other for the best finishes possible? Where is the "fun" in forcing other people to play settings they don't wish to play?

I especially don't see the point of removing minor random events, like an annoyingly timed barb costing you a turn or two, or a hut, when things that have a much bigger effect can't be changed. Such as the difference between having 3 maritime CS nearby rather than 3 militaristic ones. If you want to remove as much randomness as possible, test your skills as directly as possible against somebody else, then there's multiplayer or GOTM. HOF will automatically have random factors that can make a game 5-10 turns better or worse, simply due to neighbour location, types of CS, where coal or aluminium appears, etc. I don't see the point of wanting to remove the few turns difference that barbarians or huts may make, because it's still going to be the case that if a table is competitive enough, luck will be the difference between finishing #1 & #2. A very good player will be able to be consistently near the top of a wide variety of competitive tables. We'll still know who those very good players are.

Some variation of this painfully ignorant argument crops up every time a competition has the option of leaving a "luck feature" in the game or not. It's like clockwork...and every single time it's based on the same flawed understanding.

Those two turns could snowball into the difference between a new record or quitting the game in frustration after playing for hours because you're falling just 1 turn short. Yes, every random factor can do that, and EACH AND EVERY ONE increases the "noise" in showing an actual best submission, requiring more games and more time by each player to normalize. Basically, people who want chance elements in the game want more noise, and can't really come up with valid reasons that people other than themselves should be compelled to deal with said noise.

Do you guys know what the fun part of this thread is? The REALLY FUN PART?

The premise of the thread itself somewhat of a joke.

This thread could have just as easily been titled "Allow Barbarians"? Comically, such a thread would be equally or MORE valid for HoF consideration. Why add random noise to a game that will blur good games and bad ones beyond what they need? Why add nuisance, hassle, and remove careful planning based on reasonably-accounted for factors (not getting units ninja-attacked from 3 tiles away the turn a barb spawns, and barbs CAN move after spawning).

So, in order to break a long-standing, competitive ruleset and FORCE barbarians on, what arguments are we really getting, hmmmmmmm? Where is the evidence

- That barbs on or off is materially beneficial? Who has #'s for this? ROI estimates based on units needed/difficulty to clear camps, average #camps? etc? I don't find in necessary to follow in terrible footsteps of firaxis and change something at random (yes, random) without proof of it being better one way or the other. Put it up, proponents of MUST HAZ BARBS. I'm sure ALL of us would like to see it.
- That barbs on or off ~actually~ helps or hinders the AI? This is a pretty bold claim for people who can't even think of why there's incentive to perform well within HoF, too. These assumptions are ridiculous.
- That one setting or the other reliably enhances the player's depth of decision-making, when compared against the necessary # of actions he/she must take?

I say that barbs spawn in water more than land and that water barbs are harder than land barbs because of movement and that 99% of games are decided by water barbs.

You know what the difference between that and most of the arguments on this thread in favor of forcing barbs on is? None. People are pulling things from places one shouldn't pull, a lot.

You can't go with majority opinion here, either. That won't suffice and never has in HoF or even standard civ. An OVERWHELMING majority of civ IV and even V players never see deity, let along know what it's like to play there. On top of that, most civ IV players didn't understand the ridiculous variance in ROI that a scientist that leads to a GS has against some of their favorite alternatives. Most players still don't realize that 100's and 100's of beakers/turn are possible by early ADs w/o mids, or that you can have tanks on deity by the 1400's AD with a crappy leader if you're willing to put the time in to precision micro. So when the majority of people come on here blowing hot air about this feature or that feature being important or overpowered or whatever it is they're saying...ask for an analysis.

Show it to me. Show me the BIG HELP against the AI that this setting is going to give humans game-in and game-out. You on this thread who wish to limit the options of the HoF metagame before it even takes off, show us that you actually know what you're talking about, and that you have a good reason to break HoF traditions and deliberately add extra luck-based outcomes; a "feature" normally reserved for games that embrace fake difficulty. Show it to all of us. U_Sun did it when comparing cottages to specs to hammers. DaveMCW did it when he broke down whether working a cottage or an alternative tile is better. One could easily look at the repercussions of "no tech trading" or turning city states off and quantify them.

Or, if everyone is being lazy (as I am here), there IS NO BASIS for limiting player options of any kind, excepting gauntlets which certainly can narrow rule-sets to whatever the mods/player base sees fit as changeups. Banning options that nobody has ever, EVER quantified is not good practice, however. Firaxis pulls this crap too, but that doesn't mean that the esteemed and long-time great mod community has to follow suit.

Sorry for being a bit lengthy here, but IMO this has a BIG impact on the long-term viability/mentality of HoF play, not just on this issue but on future ones as well.

sanabas

Jan 09, 2011, 01:25 PM

Think about the point of HoF and try something a bit more relevant. If you can't think of a good reason why players under the same conditions as top competition have incentive to improve, it's a major reach to believe you know what you're talking about in this thread at all. Surely, you can think of a reason or two ^_^.

Read what I was replying to again. Comparing yourself against the top competition is certainly an incentive to get better. The top competition (and most of those comparing) always playing against the optimal set of opponents, refining strategies that simply don't work if the opponents aren't optimal, how does that help make someone a better player?

It might not be a big deal to someone who is openly admitting no interest in actually competing within HoF, but to players who are trying to reach that #1 spot, it absolutely is a big deal. Where is the "fun" for the people who are really vying against each other for the best finishes possible? Where is the "fun" in forcing other people to play settings they don't wish to play?

Certainly I'm interested in actually competing. But it's not the sole reason to play. There's also more ways within the HOF to measure skill and compete than individual #1 slots. A game isn't suddenly not worth playing just because I don't/can't get a #1 slot for it.

Some variation of this painfully ignorant argument crops up every time a competition has the option of leaving a "luck feature" in the game or not. It's like clockwork...and every single time it's based on the same flawed understanding.

And your own painfully ignorant argument simply boils down to 'If everyone has to deal with these random events, it allows undeserving people to get #1 slots.' Then that gets coupled with the idea that if undeserving people have a #1 slot, a deserving player is going to quit in frustration because they're falling just short thanks to being unable to replicate the #1 game's luck.

Sure, my opinion is simply subjective opinion. I would much rather see a HOF that requires players to learn to play well against everyone, to develop strategies that can cope with things like having a warmonger start next door, even if that means the most skillfully played game doesn't always get the fastest finish. I'd prefer not to see a HOF that removes ruins, requires optimal opponents to be competitive, and still results in the most skillfully played game not always getting the fastest finish.

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 09, 2011, 06:16 PM

Civilization games have many elements that are perfectly deterministic, like a chess game. For many players, this is the part of the game that appeals to them the most and keeps enticing them to play. Most Civilization game elements have no RNG (Random Number Generation) involved at all, such as the growth of a city when it has a constant X Fpt and Y Food units to grow to the next Population level.

There are three major ways in which RNG must be incorporated into a Civilization game:

1) Map Generation

2) Combat

3) AI Decision Making Process

Map Generation:

Map generation is part of the game that must use RND. No one wants to play a map that is always the same and certainly the exploration part of the game would be ruined if there wasn't some RND involved in map generation. Both Civ V and Civ IV map generators produce somewhat wide range of poor through excellent starts. For Civ IV, MapFinder largely reduces the problem of being stuck with poor to fair starts by being able to look at what the MapFinder rules found to be good to excellent starts. Without MapFinder or regenerating the map (manually controlled "MapFinder") a player just plays the first map generated, what I consider the Roulette Method (I assume a mathematically precise wheel). When one uses MapFinder, one can think of the randomness in map generation as shufflling a sufficiently large number of cards with map attributes on them and arranging them in a hexagonal grid for Civ V (rectangular for Civ IV). Mapfinder can in a way be counting the good cards in the sense of Backjack card counting and will presumably save only maps with the highest favorable number of cards (plots = squares for Civ IV and hexes for Civ V). Unlike real Blackjack games, we can chose to play the Civ start we consider the best which may be close to an ideal card counting setup for the Blackjack player which virtually sets him up to win the series against the house far more often than not. To carry on with the Blackjack analogy MapFinder sets us up with all the bad face cards unplayed and potentially busting the house's hand. To win a HoF #1 slot, one nearly always must have a "Blackjack card counting" type start. Like with a good Blackjack card count, the win is not assured; using MapFinder, one at least starts with a good to excellent start and nearly always needs such a start to win the #1 HoF slot.

So in Map generation, MapFinder can stack the deck in the player's favour, mitigating pure RND by keeping the grain type (good to excellent) starts and letting the MapFinder wind blow the chaff type (poor to fair) starts into the dirt, discarded.

Combat:

To model combat actually, there must be some RNG in the process, because there is no way to perfecting model combat units and predict the outcomes of battles deterministically where the side with the greatest adjusted strength always win. Also, in real life, inferior military forces have often prevailed against stronger military forces. This sometimes happens due to better commanders, unit mobility, complimentary unit types, military intelligence, surprise, and many other factors that may not be directly modeled in the game. The most important part of the Combat subsystem is that it must be statically fair. This means that combat outcomes conform to a statically predictable curve that the player can depend on being used. No additional (hidden) randomness is added into the combat system to skew the combat outcomes in a way that can't be predicted or observed. In other words the combat system after determining that your unit won doesn't repeat the combat or electronically roll two dies and if it comes up snake eyes it loses after all, etc.

Players can easily deal with combat RNG, by stacking the deck in their favour by either using terrain, better promoted units, countering units, a better mix of units, stronger units, etc. and when they have no such advantages, call on allies, avoid combat, and try to make peace or get a cease fire, etc.

In Civ V combat has far less RNG (almost none it would seem) involved in outcomes and the game is better for that than is the case with Civ IV. Furthermore, in Civ V, because healthy units can usually sustain at least one successful against them, what little RNG involvement is averaged out by necessitating at least two hits to kill a healthy unit of similar promotion/terrain adjusted strength. There really is too much RNG effect in Civ IV in the sense that a Swordsman (Strength 6) can kill an attacking Tank (Strength 28), though statically rare it can actually happen. However, such impossible combat outcomes are extremely rare in Civ IV and a other has many options for eliminating RNG as a factor in losing or winning a battle. The RNG essentially determines how many units were lost in winning the battle.

The effect of RNG is so weak in Civ V combat, that it is almost as deterministic as taking a piece in chess when one has enough units attacking the enemy unit to kill it. So whereas I think Civ IV has a little too much RNG involvement, I suspect that Civ V may not have enough RNG involvement. The Civ IV combat system's greatest weakness is the defending unit is always eliminated when it loses.

So, Civ IV combat is like Blackjack deck stacking and Civ V comabta is almost chess-like.

AI Decision Making Process:

The AI control system absolutely must have some RNG involvement so that the AI is not predictable in the sense of always choosing the best alternative when a choice must be made and there are almost as many choices that the AI needs to make as the player himself does. This is a natural consequence of the goal of making an AI that is as good as a real Human Player. The game designers have come close to that goal in many ways in Civ IV with combat probably the weakest. With Civ V it is hard to tell, but from my brief experience with the game, the designers have a long way to go before Civ V AI is able to do anything reasonable it its own defense when a player attacks it.

The good RNG involvement in AI decision making process should result in a competent AI opponent that can adequately defend itself and even engage in successful military attacks versus the player. Mostly, RNG involvement must make the AI unpredictable without choosing tactically inferior choices too often, but perhaps often enough to make the AI less predictable.

Game Breaking RNG:

Civ V Ruins and Civ IV Huts.

Civ IV Events.

Barbarian Spawning:

In Civ IV, Barbarians are a definitely an unneeded nuisance and at higher levels a resource consuming obstacle, so long as there is unsettled and unwatched land from which they can spawn.

Barbarians:

As I've mentioned several times before, Barbarians can be modeled as one or more Civilizations that shuns Diplomatic contact or is simply hostile.

In history, Barbarians were almost always a neighboring Civilization that was derogatorily referred to as Barbarians (sub-human or animal-like) whereas often the truth was they simply had a different culture, poorer technology or less infrastructure, etc. Rarely were Barbarians nomads that lived in Encampments. True encampments like those used by the Crusaders where more often confiscated permanent dwellings used as encampments whiled they worked their way slowly to the Holy Land they promised the Holy See in Rome that they would liberate from the Muslims. The crusaders were Barbarians to the Muslims and often they truly were barbaric in their behavior and their pope given right to do whatever they needed to do to free the Holy Land, such as looting nations they traveled through.

The depictions of Barbarian Encampments in Civ V is laughably simplistic as though the only thing Barbarians ever did is build (train) new military units.

Your Comments are most Welcome:

Please let us know of any other game subsystem that requires RNG to function properly.

Also, please let us know of other unnecessary use of RNG like in the implementation of Barbarians in Civ V or Civ IV (for comparison).

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 09, 2011, 07:01 PM

Barbarians:
I did a query one time that showed that only between 10-15% of the games submitted to the Civ4 HOF had barbarians turned on.

Is this thread your attempt to justify forcing all HoF Civ V games to have Barbarians on, because you are so disappointed by the low 10-15% of Civ IV HoF games that used the option?

I'm convinced that your stated reasons for forcing Barbarians on for Civ V Hof games are not in least grounded by the facts.

The link between Barbarians and City Sates is very weak. When a Barbarian Encampment is far from the City State that requests its destruction, what was is its in-game reason for offering the reward? It seems that Barbarian units don't wander far from their Encampment, so how is this possible? If City States often offer Influence for Barbarian Encampment destruction, that would clearly be a game breaking series of RNG events.

The argument that some Civilizations' unique ability that depends on the existence of Barbarians necessitates forced used of the Barbarians option is absurd. Each civilization's unique ability can't be so powerful that the Civilization becomes game breakingly powerful, therefore a Civilization's inability or neglect of its unique ability likewise can't be crippling to that Civilization either.

So far, I've only seen you speculate that somehow allowing the "No Barbarian" might give a Civ V HoF player some advantage that compensates for the huge advantage of having Barbarians and the nearly "free" City State influence they provide. I don't think anyone believes that the "No Barbarian" option provides the player with a net advantage or any advantage at all, including yourself.

Where is the Civ V Beta Gauntlet that at least explores the "No Barbarian" option and its possible consequences for Civ V HoF play?

Banning the "No Barbarian" option from Civ V HoF should require proof that permitting this option allows an exploit that provides a game breaking advantage? Where's the proof?

Sun Tzu Wu

Monthar

Jan 09, 2011, 07:28 PM

Is this thread your attempt to justify forcing all HoF Civ V games to have Barbarians on, because you are so disappointed by the low 10-15% of Civ IV HoF games that used the option?

I'm convinced that your stated reasons for forcing Barbarians on for Civ V Hof games are not in least grounded by the facts.

The link between Barbarians and City Sates is very weak. When a Barbarian Encampment is far from the City State that requests its destruction, what was is its in-game reason for offering the reward? It seems that Barbarian units don't wander far from their Encampment, so how is this possible? If City States often offer Influence for Barbarian Encampment destruction, that would clearly be a game breaking series of RNG events.

The argument that some Civilizations' unique ability that depends on the existence of Barbarians necessitates forced used of the Barbarians option is absurd. Each civilization's unique ability can't be so powerful that the Civilization becomes game breakingly powerful, therefore a Civilization's inability or neglect of its unique ability likewise can't be crippling to that Civilization either.

So far, I've only seen you speculate that somehow allowing the "No Barbarian" might give a Civ V HoF player some advantage that compensates for the huge advantage of having Barbarians and the nearly "free" City State influence they provide. I don't think anyone believes that the "No Barbarian" option provides the player with a net advantage or any advantage at all, including yourself.

Where is the Civ V Beta Gauntlet that at least explores the "No Barbarian" option and its possible consequences for Civ V HoF play?

Banning the "No Barbarian" option from Civ V HoF should require proof that permitting this option allows an exploit that provides a game breaking advantage? Where's the proof?

Sun Tzu Wu

I agree with this. It should be my choice whether I want to have no, regular or raging barbarians. It really only affects Bismark and Suleiman if they're off. Both of which can end up fielding way too large an army/navy very quickly with barbarians turned on. Since barbarian camps will spawn units appropriate to the era, this means getting free current tech units throughout the game, by ensuring there is a place for them to spawn from.

Granted, Bismark will have a more difficult time finding barbarian camps to raid in the late game and his ability is limited to attacking the camps themselves. Since the raging barbarians setting only seems to effect the units spawn rate, not the camp spawn rates, his ability can't be gamed with this setting.

Suleiman, on the other hand, can greatly benefit from raging barbarians since he only has to get one of his ships near a barbarian ship to convert (capture) it. Since the raging barbarians means more unit spawns at a much faster rate, he can amass a huge navy in a very short time.

Therefore if any setting pertaining to barbarians should be banned it's the "raging barbarians", not the "no barbarians" setting.

With no barbarians in the game, that makes completing city state quests an actual challenge instead of the almost mindless send 1-2 units to take out the camp with the players bonus vs barbarians. Even deity difficulty gives a small bonus vs barbarians.

The even simpler, kill a barbarian near the CS for 5 points is a joke. More often than not, especially on the higher difficulty settings, you'll wound the barbarian and the CS will finish it off, thus you get nothing. Plus, as of the last patch, you have to kill it with a melee unit or it doesn't count. Even if your archer and the barbarian are both standing inside the CS's borders, if you shoot it, you get nothing.

TheMeInTeam

Jan 10, 2011, 02:17 PM

Read what I was replying to again. Comparing yourself against the top competition is certainly an incentive to get better. The top competition (and most of those comparing) always playing against the optimal set of opponents, refining strategies that simply don't work if the opponents aren't optimal, how does that help make someone a better player?

For one, you'd have to actually realize what situations are optimal. Two, you'd have to understand what works in what situation and why. Three, even under optimal conditions this game is still civ, and people who can post top scores in HoF can certainly win standard settings with good consistency.

This entire part of the discussion is missing the point, however. AFAIK, HoF has never been seen as a tool to improve, but rather as a means to showcase strategies/approaches/ability.

Certainly I'm interested in actually competing. But it's not the sole reason to play. There's also more ways within the HOF to measure skill and compete than individual #1 slots. A game isn't suddenly not worth playing just because I don't/can't get a #1 slot for it.

Why not make a thread to disable settings YOU like then, because there are other ways to measure skill and compete? How is this anything but a 100% canned argument with no supporting statements? How is this argument even different from me saying the EXACT same thing, except with barbs on?

Also, if you're not actually vying for one of the goals HoF sets, then why are you voting on allowed/disallowed settings?! This thread isn't about forcibly not allowing barbs, you'd still be able to play with them on. What is your basis for this quoted argument as a reason to force barbs on then? It doesn't make sense.

And your own painfully ignorant argument simply boils down to 'If everyone has to deal with these random events, it allows undeserving people to get #1 slots.

Negative.

My argument is that by increasing random factors, more games played are required to filter out the "noise" random factors creates. My position is that allowing extra random factors increases tedium as opposed to skill. My counter-argument is that you guys wanting to force a setting one way have ZERO OBJECTIVE BASIS to force that setting.

In other words, my argument is a lot stronger than your side of things because it's based on logic. The presence of some random factors does not logically conclude that the game should be ENTIRELY RELIANT on them. Why, then, does the competition not seek to minimize their impact and reduce tedium?

Sure, my opinion is simply subjective opinion. I would much rather see a HOF that requires players to learn to play well against everyone, to develop strategies that can cope with things like having a warmonger start next door, even if that means the most skillfully played game doesn't always get the fastest finish. I'd prefer not to see a HOF that removes ruins, requires optimal opponents to be competitive, and still results in the most skillfully played game not always getting the fastest finish.

Cut the ducky/horsey crap. Now you're going to hide behind a subjective personal opinion, rather than giving us a reasonable, quantifiable reason we can't use a given setting in HoF? Really? Do you REALLY think that having barbs off, or any setting one way or another, is going to eliminate skill determining the outcome? You have no more basis for this crap I'm quoting than I'd have for saying that having barbs on makes the game easier and starting next to warmongers is favorable.

I asked for some objective, analytical reasoning, and even gave examples of it being done in the past. Your response was to ignore than and talk about your own personal feelings about a public competition, WHICH YOU OPENLY ADMIT YOU'RE NOT REALLY COMPETING IN. The reality of that should be very, very telling.

A refresher, straight from HoF website:

"At it's most basic level the CFC HOF just takes that simple screen to a new level. It is, quite simply, a database, an elite level of tables of the best games. Not the best games of a single player, but of all CFCr's that care to participate. It's an oppurtunity for humans to play standard stand-alone games, and yet submit them into an environment where they compete with other humans at the same time. "

"At the community level, the CFC HOF exists to serve the players who compete in it. As games are submitted, verified and posted on the tables, it will become clear who is the best."

And yet here we have people who want to FORCE top HoF players to use a setting, and why?

...because they don't agree with the settings because of how they feel. They don't even understand the fundamental concept of HoF as quoted, and instead blather on about "dealing with this or that" when HoF is about the "best games".

Since this seems to be really, really hard for some of you to understand, let me try to get it through the thicker skulls: you get "best games" with optimal settings/starts in standard HoF. Extra restrictions are placed in gauntlets to allow people to compete with differing rules. Any restriction of STANDARD HoF submissions better have a VERY good reason behind it, not some non-competitor's personal opinion.

Banning the "No Barbarian" option from Civ V HoF should require proof that permitting this option allows an exploit that provides a game breaking advantage? Where's the proof?

EMPHATICALLY quoted for truth.

sanabas

Jan 10, 2011, 06:44 PM

My argument is that by increasing random factors, more games played are required to filter out the "noise" random factors creates. My position is that allowing extra random factors increases tedium as opposed to skill. My counter-argument is that you guys wanting to force a setting one way have ZERO OBJECTIVE BASIS to force that setting.

In other words, my argument is a lot stronger than your side of things because it's based on logic. The presence of some random factors does not logically conclude that the game should be ENTIRELY RELIANT on them. Why, then, does the competition not seek to minimize their impact and reduce tedium?

Your argument is based on the logical extension of the idea that more random factors means more abandoning games befoire the skill can shine through means more tedium. My argument is based on the logical extension of the idea that always starting with optimal settings, making it impossible to compete without doing so, increases tedium. There's no hiding behind subjective personal opinion, my view is the logical extension of my subjective opinion, your view is the logical extension of your subjective opinion.

Cut the ducky/horsey crap. Now you're going to hide behind a subjective personal opinion, rather than giving us a reasonable, quantifiable reason we can't use a given setting in HoF? Really? Do you REALLY think that having barbs off, or any setting one way or another, is going to eliminate skill determining the outcome?

Do you REALLY think that forcing barbs on, forcing random opponents, allowing ruins, is going to eliminate skill determining the outcome? If you don't, then why keep using it as the primary justification for your opinion?

TheMeInTeam

Jan 11, 2011, 02:49 AM

Your argument is based on the logical extension of the idea that more random factors means more abandoning games befoire the skill can shine through means more tedium. My argument is based on the logical extension of the idea that always starting with optimal settings, making it impossible to compete without doing so, increases tedium. There's no hiding behind subjective personal opinion, my view is the logical extension of my subjective opinion, your view is the logical extension of your subjective opinion.

Actually, saying that playing under optimized conditions increases tedium is probably wrong. One thing neither of us have harped on much so far is the straight practicality/possibility of doing/policing/replicating settings. Mapfinder existed because there was no better alternative to accomplish the same thing, for example.

So, in discussing HoF settings, we have a range of possible options. There's a chance that all settings are equally tedious, but I find that unlikely. Barring that, there are going to be settings that make the game more tedious or less tedious. Here you are arguing that locking a setting (which still doesn't have a proven reason) would make the game less tedious. You've still no basis for this.

The reason my side of the argument is stronger right now is because and only because I'm not trying to force players to play with barbs off in general HoF (If I were to take that position, then I would need to come up with proof as to why barbs off allows for better competition). General HoF allows the widest possible variety of settings so that players can get the best game results (again, taken straight from the HoF FAQ). In order to ban a setting, players need a VERY GOOD REASON. You don't have such a reason; as this arguing over subjective points repeatedly is demonstrating. On my end, I don't have any proof that they should be forced OFF, either, but that isn't the position I actually took. Banning settings without a good, well-defined/analytical reason is bad practice.

We can arbitrarily ban anything based on the arguments here. We could ban using the ottomans, or ban playing against america. We could even recycle some of the exact same arguments presented here to do it. Where's the proof?

Do you REALLY think that forcing barbs on, forcing random opponents, allowing ruins, is going to eliminate skill determining the outcome? If you don't, then why keep using it as the primary justification for your opinion?

I'm not the one advocating change. You're the one arguing the side of banning something, so let's turn your question around.

Do you really think that forcing barbs/random/ruins on is going to add skill element to the game? You may have considered this, but simply allowing the choice of those things might functionally force top players to use them because of the "chance" they might provide an advantage. There's a potentially strong case for forcing them off...but I've seen zero objective case for turning them on by force on this thread.

More importantly, do you have any objective reasoning to take that position? Any of us can argue for our preferred settings, but what good does that do?

General HoF is different from gauntlets...and the difference is the point of gauntlets.

Sun Tzu Wu summed it up best: Where is the proof that this setting provides a game breaking advantage?

Denniz

Jan 11, 2011, 04:31 PM

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 12, 2011, 01:11 AM

My think with regards to Barbs is based on two things:

1. There are Leaders (2?) and a game play feature (influence for killing barbs) that make the absence of barbs have some effect on play beyond just dealing with the barbs that come your way.

Where's the proof that using the "No Barbarians" option, results in an exploit related to Leaders whose unique ability is related to Barbarians (there are 3 such leaders)?

Influence is awarded for destroying Barbarian Encampments and not for killing Barbarian units. With the "No Barbarians" option, there would be no Barbarian Encampments and thus no Influence for destroying them. How is the lack of such Influence rewards an exploit?

2. Allowing Barbs to be optional is effectively requiring players to play with them off in order to compete with best times. I base this on past behavior (Civ4 barb 'on' rates) and the natural desire to optimize setups.

You can't use statistics on Civ IV Barbarian option usage to predict Civ V Barbarian option usage. In Civ IV, having Barbarians, especially with Huts on was a significant disadvantage, since the unit entering a Hut was often surrounded by Barbarians units that killed it. In Civ V, the Barbarians are too weak and incompetent to defend a Barbarian Encampment, making the Influence reward trivial to achieve.

Requiring Barbs to be on would level playing field with regard to that setting.

Leaving the Barbarian option open also levels the playing level, by leaving all options on the table. Let the players pick the option they prefer rather than force them to use a particular option.

What this is leading to is for each option, the HoF staff decides which one is legal. That would probably be OK, if such action made an exploit impossible to use. But that is not the case, since there is no exploit.

We sought feedback in this thread to verify our thinking with regards to Barbs. The poll shows that most don't really have a problem with Barbs being required. No matter what we end up doing, some are going to agree or disagree.

The poll is nothing more than a reflection of the Civ V Beta Gauntlets that have been played so far = all required the Barbarian option. The wording of the poll question made it seem that the "No Barbarian" option should be banned; you got the numbers you wanted, because of the way the poll question was worded.

So when is the HoF going to include a Civ V Beta Gauntlet that requires the "No Barbarian" setting?

Requiring the Barbarian option will make it virtually impossible to play a totally peaceful game, since the Barbarians lack the diplomacy interface that would make peace with them. Forcing Barbarians will make players who prefer peaceful, builder games very unhappy.

Exactly where is the exploit in "No Barbarian" games that provides the reasoning for banning the "No Barbarian" option?

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 12, 2011, 01:33 AM

Here is an exact quote of the first post of this thread:

Barbarians are a lot more integral to Civ5 than they were in Civ4. The majority of the HOF IV submissions were played with "No Barbarians" checked. (i.e. off).

The question is: Do we want to allow Barbarians to be turned off for the Civ 5 Hall of Fame?

The first sentence almost tells the people polling they should favour including Barbarians in game because they are "a lot more integral to Civ5 than they were in Civ4".

You are almost begging people to vote for against allowing "No Barbarians" option.

So please don't use a biased poll to support your decision to ban the "No Barbarians" option.

Also, even though it is very biased, only 2/3 of the voters actually favor banning "No Barbarians"!

Sun Tzu Wu

P.S. Also, the selection to ban "Barbarians" is not even offered in the poll. I would vote to ban Barbarians, because I believe they impair or even break the game. I haven't dug enough to find proof yet and I'm not sure I will, since the game imbalance probably doesn't rise to the level of an exploit.

TheMeInTeam

Jan 12, 2011, 02:49 AM

1. There are Leaders (2?) and a game play feature (influence for killing barbs) that make the absence of barbs have some effect on play beyond just dealing with the barbs that come your way.

STW correctly asks for proof that this feature provides a severe advantage/disadvantage in HoF. We've yet to see any.

I'd also like to point out that what you're saying here in #1 isn't unprecedented. Many of the early UUs in civ IV were tailor-made anti-barb units. Inca, Mali, Native America, and Maya for example all had an easier time vs barbs than standard leaders, as did every AGG leader for the experienced player because the combat I would flip the odds of a warrior in forest vs archer in favor of the player by >20%. This, in a game where barbs actually threatened to capture cities as opposed to being a largely turn-shaving nuisance and taking units in civ V.

In other words, you're trying to sell the idea that having the CHANCE at gaining influence from barb camps is so big a difference that the setting needs to be locked. When you compared it to settings old and new that are allowed/disallowed (permanent alliances vs no tech trades, marathon vs normal, events and vassal states), that position is ridiculous :lol:.

2. Allowing Barbs to be optional is effectively requiring players to play with them off in order to compete with best times. I base this on past behavior (Civ4 barb 'on' rates) and the natural desire to optimize setups.

This is where you drop from "opinion" to "wrong".

You yourself have pointed out that barbs are a different feature in civ V than IV. This makes any conclusions based on IV patterns completely unreliable. I can just as easily say (and provide a little evidence) that leaving players the option will force top competitors to always leave them on and deal with a nuisance/hassle for the chance of favorable outcomes, say maritime-city state boosts via worker-freeing abuse for example.

On top of all that, it's worth noting that EVERY feature will eventually have a tendency to be turned on or off if allowed. I bet you'd see that in civ IV if you looked at each one individually (vassal states, choose religion, events, permanent alliances, random personalities to name just a FEW). I'll even guess that the % variance on at least some of those features will be HIGHER, and yet you've started no thread about them, yet. That's because banning features based on this criteria for a system that by definition looks for optimized playthroughs is fundamentally unsound. I don't see why barbs are an exception, and nobody has shown them to actually be an exception.

We sought feedback in this thread to verify our thinking with regards to Barbs. The poll shows that most don't really have a problem with Barbs being required.

General public agreement does not constitute a sound decision making process here.

Most players for the first few years of civ IV's existence would have told you that FIN is overpowered or at least materially better than most traits (IE a much stronger runaway poll result than what we have here, and despite more options!). Elite players have since proven otherwise. I could go on with examples where the majority of players don't even know how to milk features, but there's no point; we both know it.

The issue here is NOT how many people have a problem with the option of the feature. The issue is whether the feature can be reliably shown to provide such an advantage/disadvantage that it constitutes being turned off in general HoF. I have serious issues with the practice of banning some things in civ IV HoF and not others; it was indisputably arbitrary. Are we going to repeat that in civ V in an even more extreme fashion? I'll do everything I can here to try to discourage that.

So I ask yet again: where is the PROOF? Show us a numerical reason from civ V that banning "no barbarians" has merit based on the criteria of consistently fair/competitive settings.

Monthar

Jan 12, 2011, 04:52 AM

My think with regards to Barbs is based on two things:

1. There are Leaders (2?) and a game play feature (influence for killing barbs) that make the absence of barbs have some effect on play beyond just dealing with the barbs that come your way.

2. Allowing Barbs to be optional is effectively requiring players to play with them off in order to compete with best times. I base this on past behavior (Civ4 barb 'on' rates) and the natural desire to optimize setups.

Requiring Barbs to be on would level playing field with regard to that setting.

Just to prove how flawed this thinking is with regards to barbarians, I started a game with the current gauntlet's settings. The only thing from the default settings that I changed was to go with with raging barbarians. I chose Suleiman as my civ. By turn 50 I was over my military supply limit due to the number of barbarian galley's I captured from building one, yes, just one trireme and setting it to auto-explore. Every time I captured a galley I set it to auto-explore. I had also met every AI and reveled half the map.

Apparently the military demographic doesn't count naval units, because it said I was dead last with my single starting warrior and 12 triremes/galleys. I had to keep disbanding galleys just to stay under my supply limit, so my production wouldn't suffer.

In my games playing as Bismark I had similar results, it just took a little longer, but not by much. Except in those games it put me at #1 in military, because all land units do count. Most of those games were with default barbarian spawn rates instead of raging.

Due to how easily Bismark and Suleiman can build up their military might from just abusing their UA, I can guarantee you, if having barbarians is optional, anyone playing as either of these two civs will not only leave them on, they'll likely set them to raging.

You yourself have pointed out that barbs are a different feature in civ V than IV. This makes any conclusions based on IV patterns completely unreliable. I can just as easily say (and provide a little evidence) that leaving players the option will force top competitors to always leave them on and deal with a nuisance/hassle for the chance of favorable outcomes, say maritime-city state boosts via worker-freeing abuse for example. QFT

This will also guarantee that folks will likely have barbarians on for other civs as well. Especially if playing with a civ that gets bonuses from having CS allies.

In games where someone is playing as Genghis Khan, they might prefer to have barbarians off since they would have no real benefit from having them in game. In fact it might be a hindrance for them, since their UA means they should be attacking CSs, not forming alliances with them.

Civs that a player would want barbarians on and why are as follows:

Aztec - To gain the extra culture from unit kills. Raging barbarians would be a nice benefit and no need to go to war.

China - To earn more GGs before going to war, or to use for GAs if trying to go for a peaceful win.

Greece & Siam - for cheaper CS alliances.

Germany & Ottomans - to amass a huge military by only buying/building 1 or 2 units to start and getting the rest for free from the barbarians.

Songhai - for the triple gold from pillaging the barbarian encampments. Easy money without having to go to war to earn it.

That's 7 of the 19 civs that don't require a paid DLC, or 36.8% of the legal HoF civs that you'd want to have barbarians on if you're playing them. 11 of the 19 (57.89%) civs can go either way, but would likely want them on just because of how good CS alliances are.Only 1 of the 19 civs, Mongolia, that you'd want barbarians off most of the time, that's a mere 5.26% of the civs.

With only 5.26% of the civs wanting barbarians off 36.8% always on and 57.89% of the civs that don't have to have if barbarians are, but will most likely keep them on anyway, I think you'll find that unlike Civ 4, most of the games submitted will have barbarians on, if this is optional. By making it a required setting, you'll probably find you have far fewer submissions for the HoF.

So, unless your goal is to have fewer submissions so you have less work to do, I don't see a valid reason to force us to play with barbarians turned on all the time.

Alphons Rodulfo

Jan 12, 2011, 12:31 PM

Some remarks that might narrow the gap between the opposing forces seen in this thread:

1. Like in all polls, the phrasing of the question will influence the results. I wonder if the results would have been very different if the question in the poll had been “Do we want to allow people to play a HoF game without barbarians if they want to?”.

2. I also do not believe that a democratic process leads to the best decisions. In fact, I know the democratic process causes a lot of bad decisions to be made. I tend to prefer a decision made by a few objective and well informed people (that explains the absence of the enlightened despotism social policy: it would be way too powerful :)).

3. Even if basing a decision based on the poll results only is questionable, the poll did incite a thorough discussion. So this thread is not without its merits!

4. We can see that HoF games are played by people with different views. Whether a player sees the HoF as a chess world championship tournament, or a casual and fun way of playing a silly game (or something in between), I think all players are helped with having a pool of fellow players that is as large as possible. Top rank players should realise that newbies can turn out to be fierce competition after a while. So for any decision on changing HoF game rules the question “Will this drive away players from the HoF?” should be asked. Based on the responses in this thread, it seems that some players will be offended by having to play with barbarians on always. On the other hand, I don't think that barbarian lovers will be offended or driven away from the HoF if some other people like to turn them off.

5. It is hard to think of a specific HoF challenge in which turning barbarians off will be helpful.

TheMeInTeam

Jan 12, 2011, 01:52 PM

The backwards thing is, it is the people arguing in favor of a CASUAL approach to HoF that are the ones who are advocating that OPTIONS BE TAKEN AWAY :sad:.

Why are "casual" players seeking to control/restrict the gameplay of others? Isn't that uncharacteristic of being casual?

By far the most frustrating thing about this entire thread is the combination of its flawed premise and the continued insistence of its advocates to avoid any objective basis for an argument like the plague. I let it get me worked up earlier when it shouldn't have, but the fact remains that we've gone 5 pages into a thread about a given setting without the side advocating change giving a SINGLE objective reason for the change. Not even one numbers based analysis. Ironically, the only person that tried (and did well) is on the side of allowing the options.

And yet somehow, the majority of the voters on this thread still want to ban a setting for HoF, despite that doing so 1) goes against the spirit of HoF based on its FAQ description of what HoF is about 2) has been suggested to do the opposite of what the thread claims 3) actually overlaps with many gauntlet settings 4) limits options long before the metagame consequences of those options is known and 5) breaks HoF traditions.

When you're doing that, you better have a good reason. I'm still looking for the reason banning barbs from general HoF is even topic-worthy, let alone a legit thing to implement; its appearance is very arbitrary right now.

Part of the reason I reacted so strongly to this thread is that 1) it's suggesting something that represents an AWFUL mentality for HoF if adopted 2) it's started by a prominent figure within HoF and 3) literally everyone, even now, refuses to come up with an analytical/numbers based argument that actually supports the OP suggestion...and yet it got a majority vote. That's some bizzaro stuff right there.

Neuro

Jan 12, 2011, 04:23 PM

If an option is so skewed as to require it's use in order to be competitive, it no longer becomes an option.

The question should be "How much of an impact do Barbarians actually have?" There are definite positives to having barbs show up occasionally; they can make allying with CSs much easier, they can be a source of gold and sometimes workers, and they are a good source of experience for troops before going to war with a neighbor. On the other hand, turning them off completely frees you from keeping a home force to stop your lands from being pillaged, and allows you to send non-combat units on long trips without fear of being captured/destroyed.

I suggest that for the next Gauntlet, you allow the option of turning off barbs. I'm guessing you'll pick Science for the win condition, so we'd get a good showing on barbs vs no barbs.

Denniz

Jan 12, 2011, 08:22 PM

Enough. Please. This poll is not a democratic vote on the option. As I stated before, it was about gathering feedback and sparking discussion. The discussion is beginning to get a little too heated. We need to agree to disagree and move on. (You guys have more time and there are more of you than me. I can't keep up. :mischief:)

I think I understand the viewpoints expressed against making "No Barbarians" an illegal option. I have no proofs to offer in favor. I just have my gut feel that I have offered from the beginning.

I respect that a few of you feel strongly apposed to the proposed rule. Just about every rule has/will have people that question it. It is not possible to please everyone 100% of the time.

In the end, the decision on the the various rules for the HOF are the responsibility of the HOF Staff. We will do the best we can to choose wisely.

______________________________

Making a HOF Mod is still out of our grasp but thanks to Gyathaar we know how to read parts of the save file. The current plan is to start a Beta Civ5 HOF, without a mod, in the near future. So any rules that we decide upon that we may come to regret can be changed once we have a mod that allows a permenant HOF. ;)

TheMeInTeam

Jan 13, 2011, 04:05 AM

That said, this isn't a bad idea Denniz; are you open to doing a thread like this (perhaps with a more neutral premise) for other settings? It feels like in the past some of the legal/illegal options in say civ IV would have been different if more viewpoints/analysis were available on them. That may or may not be true, but we'd have a concrete reasoning for what's allowed/not allowed in general HoF.

This is also why I really like the gauntlet concept: it needs no justification for settings, just a "who competes best under these arbitrary settings", where people do in fact have to adapt to do well.

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 17, 2011, 07:05 PM

I recently verified that all seven Civ V Beta Gauntlet's have the "No Barbarian" setting as prohibited setting. How can one evaluate whether the "No Barbarian" setting should be allowed without ever allowing it in any of the Beta Gauntlets? The Beta Gauntlet are the proper venue for testing settings and determining whether the game has any exploits and what needs to be done to avoid them.

Are there any plans to permit the "No Barbarian" setting in future Beta Gauntlets, so at least some objective data can be gathered for or against this option?

What really bothers me is I've asked this question at least twice before in this thread among others. Thus far, I've heard no answer.

Sun Tzu Wu

iggymnrr

Jan 17, 2011, 09:19 PM

Seems like there are other issues that will come up down the road. Things like an option to play without natural wonders would impact Spain, etc. Too many things are in flux right now. The latest exploit I've stumbled on is the CS perma war where gifting CS many mech infantries completely eliminated a 12 city AI without ever declaring war. Personally, UAs based in RNG should be removed from the game.

iggymnrr

Jan 19, 2011, 10:15 PM

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 20, 2011, 11:03 PM

I agree with TheMeInTeam and iggymnrr that we need to explore every Civ V setting and not just the Barbarian setting.

I hope that we can agree that a setting should only be banned when it permits an exploit that the player can use to unfair advantage to win the game significantly faster.

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu

Jan 21, 2011, 12:07 AM

On Sulla's Civ5 Page, he writes a well reasoned critique titled:

"What Went Wrong with Civ5?" (http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html)

After reading it, I must agree 100%, especially with Luddite's mini-critique that Sulla quoted in yellow text near the end of the article.

Does Civ V even have a Future?

It leaves us with grim possibility that Civ V doesn't have a future beyond a few more stop gap patches, because the design itself is doomed to failure by the single-minded idea that restricting units to one per tile would fix previous Civ incarnations' issues with "Stacks of Doom". According to Sulla's article, not only did this result in a military subsystem that fails to challenge the player, it forced contrived restrictions on almost every other subsystem (low tile yields, low production, low research, low wealth) of the game. In conjunction with Global Happiness that permits Infinite City Spread where Cities are limited to Population 4, this pretty much leaves any attempt by the HoF to fix exploits by banning certain settings doomed to failure. Given the poor design and implementation of Civ V, I can't see any way to make a future Civ HoF a credible venue where players can compete with each other on anything close to a fair basis. In addition, the AI's Artificial Intelligence is so woefully inadequate that the latest patch penalized the player's sound strategies/tactics against the AI, because the extremely weak AI could never be fixed to adequately prepare or respond to them.

Can we avoid All of Civ V Exploits via Banned Settings and other means:

So yes, we could examine all Civ V settings for exploits as I suggested in my previous post, but perhaps that is a waste of time. Unfortunately, we may have to conclude that Civ V is so unbalanced and full of exploits that we are ultimately doomed to failure. Even if we can some how plug up the exploits by banning settings and by other means, the game has so little challenge, even at the highest difficulty levels that it will be too boring to play. On the other hand, since the challenge of winning a Civ V game is so low, there should be no trouble filling the HoF tables with games, but due to the "boredom factor", the better players who want a challenging game will go back to Civ IV: BtS or move on to something else. Thus, the Civ V HoF will not really consist of the best games, even though tables might be kept full by players who are willing to put up with the tedium to have their handle listed with the #1 game. Frankly, I can't see much appeal to having a Civ V HoF #1 game, since the game is so poorly designed and impacted by random events and undetected exploits, it wouldn't even be a reflection of the skill of the player that owns the top spot.

Please Read Sulla's "What Went Wrong with Civ5?":

I strongly recommend that every player and especially every HoF staff member carefully read Sulla's article that I've linked to above. After that we will at least have a better understanding of the magnitude the task of making Civ V exploit-proof enough to be a reasonable candidate for a HoF. You can proceed with the HoF, but will significant players still be around to play Civ V for HoF competition?

Sun Tzu Wu