With the lack of interest showing in this game I doubt we should start a new game, sorry....
When the first Civ2 demo game started we had something like 50 active posters which declined to about 15 at the end because of the beginning of Civ3 demo game. When this demo game began we had something like 15-20 active posters but at the moment I don't see more than 5-6 posters who are actively involved in the game.
More people show up occaisionally but that's not enough to keep the game going, more people need to show up a few times a week and actively participate in discussions and not only voting and leaving.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm glad there are people that will vote but I would be more happy if there would be more posters actually discussing stuff with eachother.

Maybe we can get a bit more interest at the beginning of a new game. I wonder how many look at this game and feel a bit lost. I remember I looked at the first game towards the end and decided it all looked a bit complicated. When the second game started, I thought I'd join as an observer... but look at me now!

Originally posted by Jayne
I wonder how many look at this game and feel a bit lost. Definitely put me in this category. I'm trying to catch up, but I am quite overwhelmed by the whole setup. I find it hard to look at someone else's game and try and figure out what their intentions were, and the democracy just convolutes it even more. I was hoping to learn enough through the end of this game to be of more use in the next one.

Participation is usually up during the beginning, but then, as the game progresses, people usually drop off becasue they lose interest or lose focus of the game. Both Civ II Demo games have ended with a small core group of dedicated players.

If there is a third game, I will not be able to Mod it alone (or maybe not at all). I plan to start my Masters Degree program in the Fall, so I will be even less available than I am now.

As this seems to be turning into a "will there be a next game" thread, I thought I'd ask: any intereste in a succession game as an alternative, or perhaps they are still happening somewhere else in the forum?

I think succession games are in the Stories and Tales forum

I think if we can spread the word out to others it would be easy to garner more intrest. If we send PM's to old DGers or people who signed the registry but don't participate we could get many people. I know the Community Civ3 DG used this tactic when not enough people ran for office and they got a few members back in action. Also, I will be proud to lead NUF in conquering the world. :goodjob:

DoM wrote:If there is a third game, I will not be able to Mod it alone

I've probably time to take over duke 'o yorks role if that helps - post elections etc

I may start having a bit more time, not sure. I think participation has fallen off because the game is so complicated, so near the end. Well, appears to complicated. We have had some great Presidents, and they make it quite a bit simpler for the rest of us. And exciting :)
The duke and Duke were a great team, loosing them both will be a huge blow. :(

Yes, the game getting/looking complicated sure is one reason why people have dropped off. I also think having too good presidents and other ministers may actually have scared people away from participating. Everyone isn't a civ expert or have the patience to plan caravans and city production with the all details for example you do GaryNemo. Don't get me wrong here, you are doing a great job at it, I just don't think people should be scared to take a major position in the game just because they are not good enough at civ. The point of all this isn't to beat the poor AI as efficiently as possible, is it? It's to have fun by combining our model of real democracy with civ. I haven't been too active in this game myself, but I got the feeling that it has become much more of an opting-game of always making the best decision and doesn't leave much room for plain personal preference of a certain strategy compared to the first demogame. Of course people still have different opinions and such, but what I'm getting at is that people with limited civ skill may feel very left-out in discussions that are all about "technical" issues like IRPB:ing and tech-path opting. Not sure I manage to make it clear what I'm getting at, but I would guess people interested more in the "demo" part than the "game" part may have dropped off.

That's not my personal reason for not being more active btw, I just don't have enough time to play more demogames than the mp one I'm already involved in over at GC.

Anyway, maybe letting less experienced players hold high government positions just as much as experienced ones and not focusing as much on winning the game would make it more fun for more people to play.

Originally posted by Talar
Anyway, maybe letting less experienced players hold high government positions just as much as experienced ones and not focusing as much on winning the game would make it more fun for more people to play.

Everyone is welcome to run for a position, whether they are an 'expert' or not. I also think most people vote for people based upon their activity in the game more than their skill level.

Everyone has their own style of holding a position. For example, GaryNemo happened to be a very detailed Domestic Advisor, other people may not be. Whatever is not detailed out by the Advisors will be decided by the President.

From chatting with people about the game, the main problem seems to be getting into it. If they find the game is at a complicated part, then they don't think they can offer any assistance to the game and don't participate.

The seond problem is just the fact that the game goes on for months. Some people get tired of the game becasue it moves too slowly for them, some people say it moves too fast. Most say they get busy for a little while and find it hard to get back into the game since they feel they have lost perspective of it.

Generally, all that is needed to see where the game is is to download the save, browse through it and read the last turns thread. All that has happened before that point is basically mute.

In addition to that, even if people are not elected, they are more than welcome to post in threads and offer advice and opinions.

I have seen people browsing the forum and I have been told that they do not post because they agree with what was said and had no contrary ideas. They didn't feel it was necessary for them to post just to confirm an idea that was already suported by others.

Perhaps we should consider the level that the game is played on. You have to admit, a new player would be scared by the deity level we're playing. I know I was, and if it we'ren't for that scared attitude, I may have joined the democracy game when I first registered at CFC last year.

Sheer complexity of the democracy game and it's mechanics may also be a point. I will say, that compared to the Civ3 game, this is simple.

A lot of it is probably a fact we all have to face up to - Civ2 isn't as new as it once was. As easily demonstarted by the Civ3 forums vs. the Civ2 forums, people tend to gravitate to the new and shiny. Perhaps we could have an advertising run bigger than just a few sigs. Does someone want to write about the game, and DoM, do you think you could get TF to post these reports on the homepage w/links?

TF has no problem with posting Demo game news on the main page. I even tried to have our newspaper reporters write stuff up for the main site page. I believe it happened once that way. I use to do them when I could, unfortunately, I haven't been able to do it in quite long time.

I think if people understood how the Demo game is played, they would realize that the difficulty level is irrelevant to their abilities. They don't have to play the game by themselves. Also, remember, all the game settings were voted on prior to the game starting, so it reflected what people thought would be best.

I think if people understood how the Demo game is played, they would realize that the difficulty level is irrelevant to their abilities. They don't have to play the game by themselves. Also, remember, all the game settings were voted on prior to the game starting, so it reflected what people thought would be best.

That gives me an idea. Perhaps, for now, rather than a news post on the main page, someone could write up an explanation of the demogame for posting. This article could contain information about how the game is played, etc., plus anything we think will calm newbie fears. I can testify this has been more a learning experience than anything else.
Perhaps a more veteran player can write this up - I'm not exactly well known.

As to a weekly update, I'd be willing to do that. I did that at one time with the old newspaper...

Talar wrote:I just don't think people should be scared to take a major position in the game just because they are not good enough at civ.

I am definately not the best player, as my GOTM scores show, but I still get nominated for President! :lol: I definately recommend the demogame as a way to learn from other players.

I must admit I first looked at the demogame towards the end of the first game and thought it looked too complicated, but I'm glad I decided to take the plunge at the beginning of the second.

I definately think we need a good advertising campaign at the beginning of the third game, and get more people involved in the decision making by having more (maybe smaller) provinces with governers. A good write-up of this game for the main page may help (maybe the stories and tales thread too). I'm getting excited about the third game already!!! :lol:

Jayne, you were an EXCELLENT Queen, which is why you kept getting re-elected :D I think playing as the President would be an excellent way to learn. I only wish I had the time to do so :(

I think Talar has made some very insightful comments about participation in the demogame. Other things (darn that job) have curtailed my participation in this game, but even when browsing, often everything had already been summed up/planned by some key people, so there was less urgency for me to post any ideas/comments. Towards the end, of course, I didn't even take the time to read through all of GN's excellent city reviews and suggestions. It's hard to take the time to review that many cities and then debate micromanagement decisions.

This leads to a suggestion for the next game. Let's make it on a smaller map, so there will be fewer cities to fuss over and the game will go quicker and be easier to take in for newbies and those with less time to browse (like me :D ).

I joined this game myself somewhere in the midgame stage. Despite being an experienced civ player I found it somewhat diffuse to grasp everything that was going on. I did download the savegame and even posted a few suggestions and after following the game for a while I got into it. Still there was a higher treshold than I had imagined because of the many plans and things going on that required extensive browsing through old threads to figure out what exactly people were talking about.

I didn't have the time nor the dedication to get fully involved in this game and start running for government positions, so I have just been occasionally dropping by to post some minor comment since then.

There seems to have been plenty of new members who have registrered in the registry thread since I join, but how many of them has stayed as active players? I don't know, but I guess not very many of them. I'm not totally sure of the reason why not more people stay to become active or drop off the game, but like I said the treshold might be higher tahn you who are involved in the game think it is, so doing something about that could help. Also getting more players to participate from start would also be a good idea :)

About playing on lower difficulty I think it would make the game even less challenging than it is now. In sp games many people (myself included) tend to not finish most of their games because they are certain of victory, so there is no challenge. Same goes for the demogame to some extent even if the democracy part of the game still can be fun even after everyone know the game will be won.

A more challenging game can be had by playing team demo game as we do on GC, but that also bring other sorts of problems like smaller teams and the democracy part of the game becoming a bit suffering.

I don't have a perfect solution for the best form of playing demogames, but I still like them enough to play them as they are. If we want to attract more players however we will probably need to improve the current form of demogame to make it more attractive. I'm not sure how, but maybe add some competitive element outside of the actual game. It could for example be having all players divided in 3 parties with certain opposing agendas set from start, like one military party, science/trade party and isolationist party. Just wildly tossing around ideas now, but my thought with this is to add more of a political/democracy game in addition to the civ game. I'd like to see more "political maneuvering" and give people some reasons for making decisions not necessarily for the best of the country, but also for the best of their party, just like in real democracy ;)

To be honest the fun of playing demogames isn't really the game part as in smacking around a few AI civs, it's the democracy part played here on the fora.

Here's an idea.

We have obviously found that at this point, playing Civ2 is rather easy. If we go into a Democracy Game 3, perhaps we could place some restrictions on oursleves to make the game more challenging. A more challenging game encouarges wider conflicting opinions, which always serves to drum up interest. Heck, the fact we're playing a modified version of the game would draw up interest in itself.

As for this challenge, I could only suggest using a scenario, or placing an interesting restriction, like staying in the same government all game, or something.

I would definately like to do more for the Demo game, but the main problems are lack of time and people. In the first Demo game I was sending out PM's to people who had registered to get them to come back into the game for at least a little while. Even then we had the last 2 or 3 months of the game go with the same volunteers for the positions.

This demo game is ending stronger than the first game, with a larger group of 'core' players.

Unfortunately, there is a point where the demogame becomes too much 'demo' and not enough 'game'. The Civ 3 game went too far to the 'demo' side very early on. I tried to keep the Civ II one on the 'game' side.

I can't tell you how many people I've asked about the games and why they stopped playing. Most just got bored or lost track of it and didn't want to spend the time to get back into it.

I'm open to suggestions......?

How about:

No rehoming caravans/freight
Keep a spotless reputation

If we want to be really crazy, no buying cities?

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
If we want to be really crazy, no buying cities?
It would be a very bloody-game ; I'm not sure it is the vocation of a Democracy. :love2:


Keep a spotless reputation
Yes, this could be a great challenge.

How can we use the scores in F11 to give some objectives ?
Or somethnig like a scenario with special cities to take or civs to eliminate ?

Keeping a spotless reputation would be nice and indeed a smaller map!
A smaller map won't allow as many cities as we have now and the game won't take as long so those two things are good to keep people interested. :)

Also, the polls are fun and a good way to get some input from people who feel they don't need to post because their opinion has already been voiced, but I felt some of the polls towards the end of this game were getting a bit complex. Maybe the polls should be a little simpler, and the specifics decided in the discussion. For example... instead of polling 3 options for a tax change, you poll yes or no, then discuss how it could be changed in the thread!

I agree with the smaller map, but maybe leave restarts switched on! Then you've got that element of not knowing if the dead Vikings had reincarnated into Germans!

I've learned a lot from this Demo Game, and would like to participate in the next one. A Smaller Map makes sense, but I've learned that is always Pangea. Maybe people would prefer one big Continent - I'd be happy either way. For Islands, it might need to be Medium Map.

The discussions at the beginning were intense and detailed, because we only had 2 or 3 units and everything mattered.

If I had time, I'd still make polls like I used to. Perhaps more of them with fewer choices, but I saw that as Democracy in action.

There is another side to this as well :) - an international community. Look at the improvement in Elsaak's English ! I know others of you are not native English speakers, yet you seem to be so. Let's face it, these are tough times for America and others' views of the USA, and every effort at international cooperation and fun is important.

Thank you GaryNemo, this sounds particullary for the "Old-Europe" citizen that I am in real...

Small Map/fewer cities = good. I find it tough to keep on top of what is going on in anything more than 30-40 cities when I am the one playing every turn. To try to see what's going on after someone else has played 5-10 turns and play catch-up with what happened is extremely difficult. It's like a neverending succession game where you don't ever get your own turn to get a feel for the game. Maybe part of it is because I'm joining the game so late, but it's hard to have an opinion on what to do next if it takes a week just to figure out what's happened. I think a smaller map will make it easier to stay on top of the situation.

I think a Spotless Rep would be a useful restriction. (It's not like it's that hard to do, even if you want war). Outlawing City Bribes will definitely make tactical decision making more important. I think both are good ideas.

The Party idea is interesting. It would simulate some of the issues we deal with today where changes in administration result in major direction changes, often undoing the efforts of the prior administration, but this might be too tough to manage on the forums here, especially with limited interest. You could also easily get a situation where one party dominates, thus shutting everyone else out of the process (and that would be bad!)

Another idea... what about an OCC? Probably much easier to keep track of for people who can't visit often.

or a 10-CC ?

I don't recommend SMALL map, just SMALLER. The size can be set to custom, something perhaps just a bit smaller than MEDIUM. I've played my last couple games on a custom size map and made them square, which I've found more satisfying than the rectangle you typically get. Another thought would be to have somebody not directly involved in the game create a custom map for us, if we can get somebody to agree to do that much work.

Keep rep spotless=agree!

No city bribing=I could support this, but willing to go either way.

political parties=This was discussed and strongly squashed in the first demo game, and I never quite understood why it was not allowed. I think there is the possibility of political maneuvering going overboard and people feeling personally attacked or rejected. As GN pointed out, this is a great forum for building community and we don't want to jepordize that or create hard feelings between fellow CFCers. With that warning in mind, I think having different political parties, or something to that effect, could add a whole new element to the game that could be quite fun, and give folks who don't quite have a grasp on the game itself for whatever reason a way to get involved and participate. I think it's an idea worth continued discussion, anyway.

Jayne and Elsaak snuck in while I was typing :) I've never played OCC, so that might be really interesting, and certainly would keep the game easier to grasp. I like the idea of limiting to a certain number of cities. we'd need to decide what to do with captured cities then.

when I play OCC, I cannot capture cities, so I have to destroyed them totally with units outside ;
I don't know if it's allowed to take them and then to disband them ...?

Problem with an OCC is that there's not a lot of action. It's not that there aren't a lot of important decisions to be made, but they are often regarding minutiae like rearranging workers or trying to gift to keycivs to get a tech in a certain number of turns without wasting beakers, planning out which will be hidden techs so that you can determine what order to research, what order your none-settler will go through roading and irrigating, etc. I love OCC games, but I could see this type of decision-making really turning off a lot of people.

A "Limited number of Cities" game would have to resolve the issue of what to do with captured cities (or forcing us to Raze them, which gets difficult), or require a space ship approach like OCC.

Originally posted by Elsaak
when I play OCC, I cannot capture cities, so I have to destroyed them totally with units outside ;
I don't know if it's allowed to take them and then to disband them ...? Yes, you have to raze the city in OCC. You aren't supposed to have a 2nd city for even one turn. Typically you just play nice most of the game and don't fight many wars.

Woo, this thread became popular while I was asleep :)

I like the idea of putting some restrictions on ourselves, maybe not too much but at least no city bribing and no caravan rehoming sounds good.

I know the civ3 game turned very much "demo", with a lot of roleplaying and stuff. That's not exactly what I'm proposing. My idea is to add a competitive element to the demo part of the game too. The political parties would be totally unrelated to any real parties and we should try to get members somewhat equally distributed between them. It's very likely one party might become dominant, but it's the same in real life and for the good of the game we should try to keep them fairly equal. Having only 3 parties also gives us a good chance that the two smaller mostly could join together to overrule the large. Also we could write the constitution in a way that doesn't give the majority party supreme power, maybe government positions could be divided proportionally to the number of votes. The party with the most votes just get the most seats and get to choose their seats first, making them much more likely to get the president position.

I think something like this could give us both more of the demo part and more of the game part as both would become more challenging.

I will admit - I tend to like the 'demo' part of the game.

Talar - I don't know about political parties. There are two rather basic prerequisites: 1) A good number of players, and 2), a number of opposing views. While the first may be attainable, the second would be difficult, becuase there always seems to be a single, best, startegy...

Also, the talk of an OOC sounds interesting, but I might aim for a 5CC, so perhaps we could elect a governor for each city or something... A spotless rep and no caravan rehoming sounds better. How 'bout a game where the only cities we can capture/bribe are those that were captured by the AI?

Originally posted by Octavian X
1) A good number of players,


Yes, but not THAT much, only enough to make 3 parties and I think we could manage that with the current number of players.


and 2), a number of opposing views. While the first may be attainable, the second would be difficult, becuase there always seems to be a single, best, startegy...

Exactly, that's why I'm proposing to give the parties predefined goals like for example military party, science party and isolationist party (I'm sure we could come up with better goals later :mischief: ) The parties first priority would be to use their policy as our main strategy, even if it may sometimes conflict with the objective choice of best strategy.

I'm not saying this party thing is the best way to do the next demogame, it depends on what exactly we like the demogame to be and I guess different people have different opinions about that. But I'd like you to consider this a serious option. Whatever we chose for the next game I'll try to be more active than I have been in this one (except maybe for OCC which I never really liked much).

It won't be an OCC and won't have parties. Sorry, I just don't see how it can work and still maintain what the Demogame is meant for. I've talked with several people in the last couple months and no one has been able to come up with a system that can work and not change the 'core' of the demogame.

Parties are, by nature designed to separate and segregate people. Something we don't want to do on CFC. Also, it can very easily lead to flaming, trolling, and fighting. The advisors are as close to a party system as we will get. If the demo part of the game was concentrated on more, people would be having discussions about wanting to build a cannon (military), instead of a caravan (trade), instead of a library (science).

As Octavian X pointed out, we don't really have enough people to try any sort of party system anyways. And I'm sure people would like to be on the 'winning' party so those that are having less influence will most likely just stop playing. So, even if it started as a multi-party system, I think it would end as a single party system. I don't want to have to spend all my time in here watching people like I did for the Civ 3 Demo game.

Maybe we can have soemthing like a 20 City Challenge.

Then, we can have two main options for AI cities:

1.) We can attack AI cities, but not occupy them. If we can't raize them, then we have to leave it until it can be raized. This would give the added difficulty of leaving troops behind to watch cities, as well as give us longer supply lines, and, on top of that, any Wonders the AI builds will be unusable to us.

2.) We can occupy AI cities, but not build any new ones once we reach our 20 city limit.

On top of that, we can still have the 'no bribing AI cities' rule, or maybe a 'no spy' rule....?

I like the idea of maybe not being allowed to capture cities, only raze them. With islands we would need to rely even more on a navy.

Yes, this first option sounds good ;
People, do you prefer to raze all the enemy cities (and destroy any AI wonders), or to allow to take only those Wondered cities (easier !)...?

Maybe we could go with the 20 (or whatever number) city rule as a hard ceiling like the OCC limit of one - you can NEVER have more than 20. Then, a key decision is going to be whether it's worth it to build all 20, or stop a few short of 20 so we can capture key cities when necessary. Once we hit 20, we'll have to consider whether it's worth it to disband existing cities so that other, more strategic or more productive ones can be built or catptured instead.

I'm in for a new game:)
I'd like to play a game on a single continent with all the civs on. I'm not sure I like having a limit on cities, but will accept whatever is decided.

DoM, I've not been involved in the Civ3 demo game, so don't know of the dynamics you speak of there, but I am not yet convinced that parties or some way of enhancing the "demo" part of the game would necessarily devolve into flame wars and problems. I agree it is a danger, but I don't think that is reason to unilaterally declare that it won't happen. Can we not at least discuss ways we might allow it to happen and safeguard against the dangers you speak of? Discussing how we might make it work is not the same thing as saying we're going to do it.

Here's a thought: citizens have assigned themselves to home cities, but this has meant nothing to the game. In real life one of the real conflicts in democracy is region vs. region and local vs. national. If players somehow were encouraged to develop strong ties to a particular city/region they might find themselves arguing/voting for things that would help their city/region but not necessarily be in the best interests of the nation as a whole. Advisors would be asked to consider national interests and have to convice the populace of the good of their plans even if it meant trouble for a particular region. Make sense? (I feel like I'm not explaining it well). It would mean assuming a bit of a role-playing stance for everybody.

The essence of interest is conflict. If there is no conflict, there is generally no interest. The end stage of a Civ game loses interest for many because the conflict is essentially over. All that is left is administration, and nobody (well, few people) enjoy debating over minutia. A system such as this would provide an arena of conflict that has no bearing on real life--it's not based in different approaches to the game or different real-life political outlooks--and would provide for conflict even late into a game, as cities/regions vie to be the one to build a late wonder, for example. This, I think, would largely diminish the chance for conflict to cross over into the personal and become a problem. What do you all think?

In the Civ 3 game we tried a quasi system of 'guilds'. This allowed people to focus on an element they wanted in the game and try to convince others of that view point. Once the guilds started PM'ing their 'members' and giving them an 'election guideline' it went to hell.

As I said, I'm open to suggestions, but there are certain things that I will need convincing of before I'm willing to try them again. When I said there would be no parties, it was based upon the posts that I had seen thus far. What had been suggested had, for the most part, already been tried and failed.

I like Tim's way of maintaining the city cap. If we want to keep a city later on and are already at the cap, we will have to disband an existing one first.

Touching on what Leowind wrote, I like the idea of people taking a little responsibility for their town. Advisors would suggest what needs building eg more settlers, caravans. Then each member would say what the build queue for their town should be, and where workers should be. Of course, the domestic advisor can over-rule this (with good reason) and in times if war, the military advisor. The domestic advisor would also be responsible for any unclaimed cities. Members with overlapping towns may need to negotiate for tiles for workers!!

Good ideas Leowind. Creating a local vs national conflict could probably work just as well as conflicting policies. As you say a conflict of some sort is necessary to create interest. That's the point I was going for too even if I'm not as fluent in the english language as you are.

As for a city cap, the idea of making it harder for ourselves by gameplay restrictions I think is basically good, especially if we won't have any kind of party or regional conflicts. But I don't think a city cap of 20 would do much difference. By the time we reach that many cities we will most likely already be at the point where we can see that we are going to win the game.

I sometimes disband one of my starting settlers and then walk around some with the remaining one before settling to give the AI a head start. That makes the early game much more challenging without putting limitations on my choice of strategy. I also never bribe AI cities. The problem as I see it is to keep the game challenging after it reaches the point where we get the upper hand, because I'm sure it will sooner or later. The most fun games I've had with civ (and the ones I have actually finished) is the ones where I had tough competition from the AI all the way to the end and sometimes even lost. The only way the AI can give such competition is by being the largest empire around and at same time having other AI:s to trade tech with.

Maybe a combination of a slower start and a city cap could give us the challenge we want. Unless we want to try some kind of party/region idea and take the risk that we all become degraded to flamewar-fighting 12 year olds ;)

It's only a game after all, and supposed to be fun for everyone involved. Maybe we should take a vote to see what we would get the most players for. If we make one of those polls where you can chose multiple options we can include OCC and everything else discussed and vote for the ones we most would like to play.

I love all these ideas that keep coming!! We definately will need lots of polls about how the set up the next game once President Civ has erradicated everyone else. Should be next week the way he's playing?!!! ;) :lol:

I like the delayed start idea. We can either explore until a certain year, then settle. Or not move at all!!!

I, too, like the delayed start idea. How about the auto-start option (or whatever it's called)? Civ will play the first few turns for us, then we have to make do with what the game gave us to start with. It would be less than ideal, I would assume, and might be easier in some ways then just sitting on a settler for 15 turns or whatever.

The worse job the game does in playing the first few turns of our civ, the better. :D

That's an interesting option. The few times I've used the accelerated start weren't all that bad.

In addition to that, perhaps we could change other game rules. Simplified combat and flat world would make for some more interest...

Originally posted by Octavian X
The worse job the game does in playing the first few turns of our civ, the better. :D

I started a game with accelerated start just to see the results, it was horrible, ehhh... perfect I mean :rolleyes:

I noticed another option as I did this - Bloodlust. What about combining a no spaceship game with a city cap. That would give us some real challenge I think.

As trying to play for a SS win would certainly kill interest in the end game, I think bloodlust makes good sense. That coupled with no bribing cities would certainly be a challenge. Auto start with a cap to number of cities we can own at any one point, slightly smaller map. All sounds good.

I'm not sure what the advantage..err...disadvantage of simplified combat would be. Flat world would be different; I have no strong feelings either way on that.

Seems like Leowind and I are totally agreed on how we want the demogame :D I prefer the same settings, unless we are going to use some party/region system.

How many active players do we have for the next game anyway, anyone have a good estimation?

Originally posted by Talar
Seems like Leowind and I are totally agreed on how we want the demogame :D I prefer the same settings, unless we are going to use some party/region system.
Then I guess we're ready to set it up and do it ;)
How many active players do we have for the next game anyway, anyone have a good estimation?
Perhaps someone should start a preliminary registration? If there is enough support expressed here for that idea I could do that later; or someone else could do it sooner :D

So many good ideas on DGIII!

I'm pretty late to my $0.02 in, but that never stopped me before :)

I like the idea of simplifying the game by fewer cities. Too many cities make the game very tedious - something that those from DGI will testify to I'm sure. It may be found that even 20 cities will be a lot - especially on a smaller map, but restricting the size of the players' civilization is definitely the way to go I think.

In Civ3 forums - especially with their succession games - various games put restrictions on them to make them that much more interesting. I remember some where attacks could only be made by 1-move units. In another no wonders could be built (though they could be captured). This is a great facet to add to the CivII demo games for various reasons:
- The AI is so dopey that it can sometimes be no challenge even on Deity
- CivII is so well known that strategies can become rote. Retrictions will force new thinking and the development new strategies
- It can add a bit of simplicity where needed and possibly generate more interest thereby

I'm sure that there will be polls aplenty to discuss some of these possible restrictions. I see that some are already up. I like the city cap (as mentioned), but we can also take this further and play pure isolationist (i.e. keep to a certain land mass or area, only fight if attacked, only fight to defend, only fight on own land/own waters, etc.) We should definitely curtail the purchasing of cities as that is one way the player civ can easlily exploit the inept AI. Other than that, the choices can be many and varied. Not building but being able to capture wonders could lend a great bit of difficulty - especially when combined with a city cap and a 'no-purchase' agreement on a higher level. Imagine having to sit around waiting for the AI to build Mike's Chapel or JS Bachs (the AI never seems to get Theology) and then performing a surgical strike to take the city - and then defend it for the game in the middle of an enemy civ....

Well, those are just a few thoughts.

Regarding parties or conflicting groups. At first I thought 'what fun'. Perhaps we can have an impartial 3rd party to set up a specific map whereby our civ can start with 3 cities - one each on an island that can hold about 5 or 6 cities each (of course, each AI would also have to start with 3 cities) There can be 3 parties each representing an island, but we'd all still be one single civilization with survival as the key component. I thought it would be cool to have each clamoring for things to ensure survival, and different playing styles by different island/parties could show interestingly different results. Sure, you'd like to have the SSC on your own island, but it would be for the good of the civilzation in general to have it in the best city no matter what.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this would work, and the reason is simply attrition. We've tried having competitive succession games and even several Demo Games going on at the same time, but people drop out and all of a sudden one group has 5 memebers and the others have 2 and 1. I realize we could have people shift when necessary, but it might just get all too confusing.

OK, I'll stop typing now. I will try to stay abreast of what's going on here and try my best to participate in the game wherever I can.

+1 to participation. I'm kind of a civ2 newb (had it for a few days), but have played civ3 alot, so I don't think the change will be all too difficult. I'll just read the threads and do as much as I can. Is there anyplace I really have to officially register in this, or will that come later?

No need to officially register yet. The last Democracy Game just ended in our glourious victory, so we are in the process of organizing the next. You'll see a new registration thread soon.

BTW, welcome to the game! Please, participate often, and thanks for taking the name of one of my favorite anime characters. :D

I'm join the Demo game! :)

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
I like Tim's way of maintaining the city cap. If we want to keep a city later on and are already at the cap, we will have to disband an existing one first.

Okay, ehm, i'm kinda lost here.. how does one disband a city??

To disband a city, you just keep building settlers (or starve your population) until you are back at city size 1. When you build the next settler it will ask you if you want to disband the city.

hehe, ok
I was hoping for an answer like: 'well, easy: just click the 'Disband City' button' :D

So what happens when you're capturing several cities? Imediatly start building settlers in other cities or build settlers in the cities you just captured?
Also: is (for instance) 20 cities an absolute maximum, or is it ok to have like 21 or 22 cities for a few turns when you're invading another country, meaning the city cap isn't very strict?

Originally posted by DvR
hehe, ok
I was hoping for an answer like: 'well, easy: just click the 'Disband City' button' :D

So what happens when you're capturing several cities? Imediatly start building settlers in other cities or build settlers in the cities you just captured?
Also: is (for instance) 20 cities an absolute maximum, or is it ok to have like 21 or 22 cities for a few turns when you're invading another country, meaning the city cap isn't very strict? That's what makes this such a devious restriction. It is much cheaper and quicker to disband the city by starving it rather than building settlers, but then you get no benefit from its dissolusion (thus we have a hard decision to argue over). Also, my understanding is that the discussions of the cap have mostly been centered around a "hard" cap so that we would be forced to make difficult decisions like keeping a few city-cap "slots" open for capture vs. building all 20 right away, which city to disband, how to disband it, which cities are worth capturing and which should be razed, etc. The whole idea of the cap is to (a) make the game more challenging and (b) give the democracy some difficult decisions to debate amongst ourselves.

I hope you get to read this this far down but could somebody please e-mail me when the next game starts


sgibutch@yahoo.com

The "next game", which I assume is the current game has allready started. The elections have been held, the game created and empress Jayne will start playing Saturday/Friday:)