Turn Discussion

[Krill]

Interesting point. I'd probably argue that it isn't though - Kaz aren't an ally, it isn't to gain an advantage, we killed the Cav units next to the cities threatened so they weren't at risk of being taken, the cities that could be taken by Cav were, it was an act of goodwill to keep the game moving, SANCTA was supposed to die so "Right of conquest" wasn't denied, and the cities were handed over to an aggressor.

Yeah, we broke rule 3.4 all right

 

[Kaleb]

I think there were a lot of good positives in this game but a number of learning points too.

The most obvious ones that spring to mind:

1) Simultaneous timer would be better.
2) New Random Seed on reload.
3) No random events.

Map was alright but could have been a bit better balanced.

I would also say that 6 teams would be better as with 5 teams getting a 3v2 situation is quite likely. but with 6 teams 2v2v2 or 3v3 is also possible.

What else?

 

[Krill]

Don't isolate teams, and don't use overly large maps (although it appears that CFC specialises in using maps that are much larger than normal).

 

[Sommerswerd]

1) Simultaneous timer would be better.
2) New Random Seed on reload.
3) No random events.
What else?

I disagree with simultaneous turns, it is a nightmare to manage that in a war... Oh how the allegations would fly... However, I agree with New Random seed... (the lack of that was arguably what killed this game), and no random events is also a good one. I would add...

4) No technology Brokering
5) No espionage - (Maybe just Allow map and screen trading with contact instead of with paper) Maybe allow players to switch/defect teams team instead?!?
6) No barbarians - (More teams with closer starting locations instead)
7) No pausing or reloading for any reason... missed turns should just be part of the game (kind of like a mis-managed government)

I would also like to have some mandatory polling (this was a very controversial issue on our team, but IMO it increased participation dramatically), and mandatory turnplayer switching or periodic turnplayer elections... My thoughts... I really liked this map, and I would like for Sulla to design the next one as well. It was just way too big. I thought the balance was excellent, encouraged non-conventional city placement and presented some interesting early game incentives. I agree that We should play with more teams next time though... maybe even have multiple continents (or at least one new-world-style, uninhabited continent with new resources.)

Don't isolate teams, and don't use overly large maps (although it appears that CFC specialises in using maps that are much larger than normal).

Agreed... No point in waiting a year for war, only to have the game end almost as soon as the war starts. I would honestly rather have more teams (like 8 or 10) on a small, or duel sized map. We also need a clear procedure for quitting/surrendering that does not colapse the game.

It was a clear violation of rule 3.4.

What is Rule 3.4? I know I could probably look it up, but I am just being lazy...

 

[Krill]

I disagree with simultaneous turns, it is a nightmare to manage that in a war... Oh how the allegations would fly... However, I agree with New Random seed... (the lack of that was arguably what killed this game), and no random events is also a good one.

I've seen a couple of forums experiment with the simul turns, and it works fine provided there is a decent amount of time for the turn: a 48 hour turn timer split into 2 or three chunks worked for the Apolyton Demogame that finished last year, for instance.

I would add...

4) No technology Brokering
5) No espionage - (Maybe just Allow map and screen trading with contact instead of with paper)
6) No barbarians - (More teams with closer starting locations instead)
7) No pausing or reloading for any reason... missed turns should just be part of the game (kind of like a mis-managed government)

4) generally means that alliances stay solid instead of being fluid. Not a problem if there aren't more than 7 teams though.
5) different levels of this can be used (ie no spies but allow espionage spending etc)
6) generally flavour, barbs with close teams means less FoW = less barbs.
7) generaly agree.

My thoughts... I really liked this map, and I would like for Sulla to design the next one as well. It was just way too big. I thought the balance was excellent, encouraged non-conventional city placement and presented some interesting early game incentives. I agree that We should play with more teams next time though... maybe even have multiple continents (or at least one new-world-style, uninhabited continent with new resources.)

You should go and read up on the Apolyton BtSDG, which had 2 starting continents for 6 teams and a new world. The new world never even got touched, and it probably never will unless you were playing with lots of teams and had a really fast tech pace.

Agreed... No point in waiting a year for war, only to have the game end almost as soon as the war starts. I would honestly rather have more teams (like 8 or 10) on a small, or duel sized map. We also need a clear procedure for quitting/surrendering that does not colapse the game.

It's getting enough people who want to play and lead a team to do something like that. While it's doable for small teams (say, the size of a SGotM team), anything larger would be hard to get off the ground.

Right now RB is setting up a 17 player pitboss game with simul turns, with each civ controleld by anything from a single player to a small team of 4 players. I think demogames need to go along that line if they are going to have more teams, along with a relatively fast pace (1 turn every 2 days). Getting succession game players involved is probably a good move as well for a new player base.

What is Rule 3.4? I know I could probably look it up, but I am just being lazy...

Rules on city gifting. It's quite ironic if you go and read it.

Are the forums going to get opened any time soon btw?

 

[damnrunner]

I actually think 5 teams is a very good number. I recall having read that when applying game theory to international relations a balance of power with 5 major powers is generally considered to be the most stable. Not sure how much this applies to civ, but it does make sense in that an odd # of teams allows weaker teams to balance against stronger teams.

I think an easier way to "solve" problem with alliances is to disable tech trading. With tech trading enabled any 2 teams that form a tech sharing alliance are essentially guaranteed a massive tech advantage. Kaleb suggested that an even #of teams would allow for more stable alliances - but if that is the case we might as well just lock-in those alliances from the get go.

Without tech trading teams will still make alliances - but they will be much more fluid as the cost of ending an alliance will be greatly decreased. I think this sort of game would be more dynamic and it would probably make it easier for each team to manage their internal affairs without the crazy diplomacy that complicated this game.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Another thing...

8) No Demographics (if possible). I have heard somewhere that this can be done or modded in relatively easily...

 

[Kaleb]

5) different levels of this can be used (ie no spies but allow espionage spending etc)

that reminds me of another point. I think playing with the no score mod would be good too as you can get a lot out of analysing score increases and changes to demographics if you a) have the time and b) the know-how. Although with a simultaneous timer the ability to get the same level of detail is significantly reduced.

You should go and read up on the Apolyton BtSDG, which had 2 starting continents for 6 teams and a new world. The new world never even got touched, and it probably never will unless you were playing with lots of teams and had a really fast tech pace.

One idea could be to have a new world which has the only sources of things like oil, uranium and aluminium... that could be quite interesting

Right now RB is setting up a 17 player pitboss game with simul turns, with each civ controleld by anything from a single player to a small team of 4 players. I think demogames need to go along that line if they are going to have more teams, along with a relatively fast pace (1 turn every 2 days). Getting succession game players involved is probably a good move as well for a new player base.

Yeah, I think starting with so many players in a team may be quite unwieldy and it may be better to get teams with a minimum of two players signed up that can add players as they want.

Without tech trading teams will still make alliances - but they will be much more fluid as the cost of ending an alliance will be greatly decreased. I think this sort of game would be more dynamic and it would probably make it easier for each team to manage their internal affairs without the crazy diplomacy that complicated this game.

The whole diplomacy thing was a lot of fun but also horrendously complicated and time consuming to coordinate between teams of at least half-a-dozen players each! So maybe no tech trading at all would be practical but we'd also miss something quite special

 

[donsig]

Some of the suggestions here seem good but other suggestions seem geared towards reducing the team aspect of the game. I don't see the point in that. This is meant to be a team game and those who have discovered they don't like the team aspect should just play regular multiplayer games.

I'm not sure whether I'd be interested in another game. It seems these games always reach a point where one or more teams give up. Now if we could play a game where war wasn't allowed perhaps we could get a full game in. Maybe we could play with only one victory option enabled so we all know what we're shooting for. That and a balanced map could be interesting.

 

[Krill]

The team aspect is important, but it should be noted that teams need to be fluid. The first question should be, what makes a team, the second, how should a team be run.

My personal view is that the tech options should vary game to game: I dislike no tech trading games because it effectively forces each team to play in one specific way and limits how alliances can work in game, but that doesn't make it bad. No tech brokering basically locks alliances together, and full tech trading allows alliances to fluidly shift.

On the New world...the reason the game ended was because one team got control of it's own continent and didn't need the new world, it could just overrun the other continent. It's possible that such a map could work, but it would need very careful balancing by the map maker, as well as a more restrictive set of game options. To make sure the game went to hte new world, you'd probably have to start with atleast 10 competent teams (with decent spacing instead of the uber spacing that happened in this game) to ensure that enough lasted to the age of galleons.

And on the number of teams...ok, here's the metagame for you: the less teams there are, the sooner a winner will appear (or a runaway civ, whatever). So, to make a game last longer, you need to either add more teams (which is a problem with limited player numbers) or give each team more space (the CFC way). The problem with the extra space solution is it unbalances the game so that you have to play builder, and depending on how the alliances fall...it's not too bad with lots of teams, but with only 5 civs in a game you can get completely screwed over.

damnrunner: perhaps 5 is what is best in RL, but in CIV 5 is the hardest to balance due to the way tech trading works. With 7 it's not that bad, but otherwise even numbers are easier to balance from a metgame perspective. This game is a good example of how normal game theory doesn't always hold: MS, and the position of Cav relative to them, Saturn and yourselves, with SANCTA out in the wilderness. Cavs' position was supposed to be counter balanced by MS and Saturn (who had no reasons to be enemies because they were never going to be looking to colonise each others land), but MS never figured that out...if they had done then perhaps the game theory would have held.

 

[damnrunner]

No tech brokering basically locks alliances together, and full tech trading allows alliances to fluidly shift.

I don't see how this logic works. With tech trading enabled every team has a huge incentive to form a close stable alliances with as many other teams as possible in order to maximize their tech rate. A tech alliance also encourages teams within the alliance to specialize with respect to commerce multipliers (beakers vs. gold). This is disincentive for the alliance to break up later as each team will lose its specialization and consequently end up worse off than it was within the alliance.

Without tech trading I expect that military alliances will still form but I would think these are far less stable. Generally, however, I would expect a game without tech trading to have more constrained bilateral diplomatic agreements. For example gifting gold for resources or units.


I think diplomacy is perhaps the best aspect of Civ games, but I am not sure that encouraging alliances makes for a better diplomatic experience. A close alliance is almost like having a big team with 2 moves. It is hard enough to coordinate actions within one team, and working through the ramifications of close coordination within an alliance took up a huge amount time within the Team Kaz forums.

All of that said – I believe Team Kaz has certainly benefited the most from alliances and tech trading within this game. We became our alliance’s tech powerhouse and were very successful in leveraging that into great military success vs Sancta.

 

[Krill]

I don't see how this logic works. With tech trading enabled every team has a huge incentive to form a close stable alliances with as many other teams as possible in order to maximize their tech rate. A tech alliance also encourages teams within the alliance to specialize with respect to commerce multipliers (beakers vs. gold). This is disincentive for the alliance to break up later as each team will lose its specialization and consequently end up worse off than it was within the alliance.

With No tech brokering, each tech after alphabet only gets researched two or three times, and passed through the tech alliance. The problem with swapping alliances is that tech alliances mean an increased teching speed, and that if an alliance swap happens, some civs are going to end up missing certain techs and then duplicating research, thus slowing them down and meaning they can't contribute to a new alliance for a longer period of time. With full tech trading, this doesn't happen, as the new alliances can share all tech so everyone is equal from the moment of the switch, and with no tech trading, everything has to be duplicated anyway. So No Tech Brokering helps keeping alliances together (relative) because splitting them always gives a worse position compared to Full Tech Trading.

The problem with being a gold producer is that you are at a great risk of getting cut off from tech, you are important, but it's the techers that hold the high value goods.

You should check out Realms Beyond pitboss 1 for examples of how that worked out.

Without tech trading I expect that military alliances will still form but I would think these are far less stable. Generally, however, I would expect a game without tech trading to have more constrained bilateral diplomatic agreements. For example gifting gold for resources or units.

It depends on the map, but yeah, large groups don't tend to form.

I think diplomacy is perhaps the best aspect of Civ games, but I am not sure that encouraging alliances makes for a better diplomatic experience. A close alliance is almost like having a big team with 2 moves. It is hard enough to coordinate actions within one team, and working through the ramifications of close coordination within an alliance took up a huge amount time within the Team Kaz forums.

All of that said – I believe Team Kaz has certainly benefited the most from alliances and tech trading within this game. We became our alliance’s tech powerhouse and were very successful in leveraging that into great military success vs Sancta.

Personally - and this is just me, not SANCTA - I prefer large games that allow lots of diplomacy. What I don't like in a game is where all of the decisions are straight forward, black and white. Co-ordinating with allies is always going to happen to some degree, who researches what tech, who settles where, maybe even an attack on a third party, that's the end product of diplomacy, in game. But what would constitute a good diplomatic experience, in your opinion? That's an important definition to get pinned down.

 

[DaveShack]

I have some ideas for a mod along the lines of the method that GOTM/HOF use to detect reloading, but in a pitboss form. Don't know if they are doable, since I don't know exactly how the GOTM/HOF detection works. Depends on whether the client can communicate additional info to the server. Or maybe limit the modes the save can be loaded in, that might work.

New random seed is interesting, but the drawback there is that you can crash the game if you don't like how things turned out, and get a new set of random numbers.

Simultaneous turns are only a problem if people have trouble following DM rules. Or you just figure everything will balance out (the game's not gonna turn on one battle, right).

Definitely turn off random events.

More teams might be helpful, but the problem is staffing them all. It might help if the players who participate the most would volunteer to split up, OTOH the chemistry might be what keeps them active and thus it might not help. And then you've got folks like me, who used to be here all the time but got slammed by RL, so the active participants this month might not be next month...

 

[DaveMcW]

New random seed is interesting, but the drawback there is that you can crash the game if you don't like how things turned out, and get a new set of random numbers.

That strategy is also possible with the same random seed.

Would you really let people use cheatcodes so they aren't tempted to crash your game?

 

[Indiansmoke]

New random seed is essensial and it is not always possible to crash the game, you can try but it is not sure to work.

Other things that I find important are.

1. Small teams. Having 30 people in the team is just pointless, people need to participate to keep the interest up. Up to 8 people teams IMO.

2. No map experiments. The map in this game was bad IMO. It gave a huge advantage to the team that got lucky with exploring and that realized there were passages to block the land (like Sancta did). And in any case making it a race to who will block the passage first and gain huge land advantage is not good.
The map should be one that gives all teams equal chances to expand from multiple directions (like wheel map or grid map for example) or one that has no passages at all (like a toroidal TBG map).
Another idea is to use equal map (equal TBG for example) That makes sure everyone has the same BFC in capital (and an extra ring) but then all the rest of the land is random.

3. No tech trading. Tech trading just makes the game very single minded. Teams are able to expand mindlessly and then make up with getting a trade partner. With tech trading off you have to balance your tech and expansion and it is not just expansion and wonders race.

4. No huts and no random events. It is just alot of luck involved for a game like this.

5. Espionaze off. Not a mod like no score which completely removes demographics, but just off from in game. This is because spies are a huge luck factor as well and it is just more interesting without them.

P.S Donsig's idea of an always peace game is very interesting.

 

[Sommerswerd]

What about what about an "Always War" game with all victory conditions on? Doesent that accomplish the same thing as no tech trading, etc... without removing the military aspect of the game?... which BTW is at least 50% of the game IMO... (advancing through the different military units/eras). I mean Civ is basically a war game... right? 90% of the units you can build are military units... With "Always war" you can still spy on opponents with units, and you can still form alliances by agreeing not to attack each other.

If we were playing an always peace game, we might as well just start in the Modern or Future era, with Advanced start, and just go ahead and have a space race... right?

Why waste all that time mindlessly teching through the caveman eras if the whole point is just to have a space race? Let's just have a space race... right?

I also like the idea of using a "no-score" mod, because part of what makes people discouraged and want to quit is seeing that their score is lower than others. I think folks would stay in the game longer if they could not see their relative score.

 

[donsig]

Now thinigs are getting back to normal. Always peace and always war are not the same things. In always war two teams do not necessarily have to fight. The point of always peace is not to eliminate tech trading but to keep all teams in the game. In these multiplayer games one or more teams inevitably lose interest when attacked by over powering force. With no war we eliminate that. And, yes, Sommers, we could just go for a space race. Part of my suggestion was having only one victory condition enabled. Culture is another option. It was just a thought. The point is Civ is not a good war game. Once a team gets rolling it is difficult to stop them. And in multiplayer, once an alliance gets the upper hand the victims quit before the alliance can break apart and duke it out.

 

[General_W]

Good discussion going on here - I just wanted to weigh in and say that I think one lesson we should be learning from this disastrous end is that simultaneous turns pitboss would be a nightmare.

I think we've clearly shown, unfortunately, that in an online environment people will instantly jump to the worst possible conclusions about their competitors when anything goes "wrong." Simultaneous turns offers WAY more opportunity for things like this to happen, and is nearly impossible to reload to a previous save with any kind of consistency, because playing order is so random.

It's no secret I prefer sequential turns anyway (and the more thoughtful and deliberative experience it allows) - but if our goal is to minimize the chances of the next PitBoss game descending into name-calling and hurt feelings, I think we have to avoid simultaneous turns.

We've learned some lessons about how to prevent tampering, we can make the ruleset clearer, and at the end of the day - I honestly think most people want to follow the rules and just have a good game. This was CivFanatics first MTDG pitboss game, so it seems normal that we've found a few holes to plug.

EDIT: P.S. as a veteran of 4 MTDG games now, I have to add that Donsig makes a very good point. An always peace game would be long, but I think we'd dramatically reduce the chances of any team quitting (or ceasing to play with any vigor at all) - which is always unbalancing. Not that I'm necessarily advocating for always peace... it's be a weird game to play for sure... but might be fun.

 

[Krill]

The thing that kills games more than anything else is inactivity. TBH I don't think anything but simul turns would solve that, without an insanely quick turn timer (6 hours max...)

Good discussion going on here - I just wanted to weigh in and say that I think one lesson we should be learning from this disastrous end is that simultaneous turns pitboss would be a nightmare.

I think we've clearly shown, unfortunately, that in an online environment people will instantly jump to the worst possible conclusions about their competitors when anything goes "wrong." Simultaneous turns offers WAY more opportunity for things like this to happen, and is nearly impossible to reload to a previous save with any kind of consistency, because playing order is so random.

I disagree wholeheartedly here. The problem that happened was two fold: a basic ruleset was accepted without anyone considering the details, and when those rules turned out to not work well enough arguments erupted because of the effect altering them would have on the game.

There is 1 simple way to solve this: have a game admin that wants to do the job, that is willing to lurk in every teams forums at least once every 2 days, and give them the license to rule on any game issue, making their rule law. If you can stop any issues that might get out of hand in a private fora, the game moves along alot smoother. I managed to do this over on Poly with a diverse bunch of people from different forums that didn't know each other, and while there was flaming before I became game admin, there wasn't afterwards.

As part of that I had to organise how the turns got split during wars, and the important thing to note is that even at the worst par of the day, when each team had only 18 hours to make the military moves, all of the teams managed to make their moves and have whole team discussions...basically the whole forum hates the game admin instead of hte other teams, but that keeps the game moving, so...

P.S. as a veteran of 11 DG now, I have to add that length of the game isn't the issue, it's the willingness of each player on every team to wait out the boring bits where they have nothing interesting to watch or do. Some people would probably find an always peace game boring, just as many people wouldn't find the always war game interesting. Find out what a community wants to play, get someone to make it balanced, and then play it at a pace the majority find easy going. Don't get 12 people together to decide the settings and then look for people to fill the teams in a game you want to play.

 

[slaze]

P.S. as a veteran of 11 DG now, I have to add that length of the game isn't the issue, it's the willingness of each player on every team to wait out the boring bits where they have nothing interesting to watch or do.

Which is why simultaneous turns would be needed. But I disagree with you that game length is an issue - the interest/energy of the average player is far outpaced by the length of the game itself. What we need is a very flexible timer: one that can be relatively short in the beginning (24-36 hrs), but can be expanded in times of war (30-40 hrs per team/alliance group). It is very difficult to maintain a democratic atmosphere when a team has limited time to perform and its players act in different time zones. This way the speed of the game matches what the game gives back.