Discussion of a Staged SGOTM

[Frederiksberg]

I would like to add that my reason for suggesting stages is not to have all kinds of exotic goals added to the game. The primary idea is to make the game more interesting and exciting by having intermediate standings published during the 4 months of play. This would also help the slow teams keep a better pace which makes for a more interesting competition IMO.

An alternative way of accomplishing this could be to define the stages by date/turn number and use some known score function to determine the stage result. It could be based on the game base score modified by the turn number or some formula could be developed that takes into account population, known techs and maybe also wonders and culture. We have never had an SGOTM where the goal was to maximize score.

[Xcalibrator]

Much of the recent discussion reminds me of... quests. Apologies if this has already been suggested, but what if successfully completing quests/side-challenges subtracted turns from your finish date? I personally kind of like (some ) quests, but their randomness doesn't belong in xOTMs. This approach, though, is much less random and adds some of the flavor of pursuing different victory conditions, which most people seem to like. It would also decrease the value of Progress-chart gazing because you don't know how many bonus turns each team has accumulated, and would prolong the hopes of teams who appear to be lagging. Choosing what the "quests" are, though, would probably be difficult in terms of keeping them balanced, but maybe that doesn't matter so much--leave it up to the teams to work out which are most valuable and synergize with each other.

[Gumbolt]

A lot is being talked about the SSE strategy. I suggest the following task. You must settle all specialists in one city. Or x specialists must be settled in a city. You could make it certain types of specialists have to be used for certain things.

Now this would really make teams work for their win if they can't bulb edu/lib and astronomy.

[kossin]

^^^ No it just becomes a micro comparison between teams as every strategy will be the same with a slight tech path variance.

[ZPV]

Originally Posted by kossin

^^^ No it just becomes a micro comparison between teams as every strategy will be the same with a slight tech path variance.

Not quite. If the goals are all (or mostly) in a linear path to a victory condition, then yes, that will happen.
edit: unless you are only referring to the scenario directly above your post, which seems like only a smallish variant to normal play.

There are ways to avoid that, though - e.g. putting in some intermediate goals which apply to one of several different strategies (say, raze 8 cities; build 8 cathedrals; run a 3-GP golden age; etc) and scored so that halfheartedly building cathedrals and razing cities while waiting for your spaceship to arrive isn't really worth very much at all.
It does take quite a bit of work to get the balance right, so that there are multiple viable strategies for the laurels.
Another option is to make the goals seriously weird (I'm thinking of the lose-the-space-race-to-Gandhi game in particular as an example), so that it's not just form-filling and you really have to think, to fulfil the goals in a timely manner, although in this case it's probably not much different to not having the stage goals there at all.

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by LowtherCastle

This again strikes me as sure to go against one type of VC or another. In SG14, the Wizard of Oz requirement already ruled out Cultural victories for all intents and purposes, since fastest cultural involves the absolute minimum of military units and military techs. I admire Fifth Element's choice to go for cultural, but that decision sacrificed all hope for any metal medal.

I'm not yet convinced of that. There was plenty of good land for 9-10 cities without an early war, together with bulbing astro and then the usual culture game, with suitably late unit spam to kill the wizard. 9 knights plus six airships were enough for 99% kill, and the gold and silver medallists used lower-tier units. There's still a lot of stuff you'd have to do that is tangential to a normal culture game, though.

[LowtherCastle]

Originally Posted by mabraham

I'm not yet convinced of that. There was plenty of good land for 9-10 cities without an early war, together with bulbing astro and then the usual culture game, with suitably late unit spam to kill the wizard. 9 knights plus six airships were enough for 99% kill, and the gold and silver medallists used lower-tier units. There's still a lot of stuff you'd have to do that is tangential to a normal culture game, though.

Astro is not on the Cultural Tech path. How do you squeeze that in?

[mabraham]

Originally Posted by LowtherCastle

Astro is not on the Cultural Tech path. How do you squeeze that in?

The standard "cultural tech path" is not appropriate for SGOTM14. One needs Astronomy to kill the wizard. That means SGOTM14 Culture time will not be competitive with a non-Astro Culture win on the same map, but it does not follow that Astro+Culture has no chance ("sacrificed all hope for any metal medal") against Astro+military. That can only be settled with experience, of which there is little, because few high level games get Astro as part of a pre-existing plan for Culture.

Of course if there was evidence that the fastest Culture wins on similar maps would be around T160, then the Astro+wizard handicap would be known to be too much.

[LowtherCastle]

Originally Posted by mabraham

The standard "cultural tech path" is not appropriate for SGOTM14. One needs Astronomy to kill the wizard. That means SGOTM14 Culture time will not be competitive with a non-Astro Culture win on the same map, but it does not follow that Astro+Culture has no chance ("sacrificed all hope for any metal medal") against Astro+military. That can only be settled with experience, of which there is little, because few high level games get Astro as part of a pre-existing plan for Culture.

Of course if there was evidence that the fastest Culture wins on similar maps would be around T160, then the Astro+wizard handicap would be known to be too much.

Astro is optimal for a military approach in this scenario, so it made sense to leverage the philosophical trait to bulb most or all of Machinery+Optics+Astro--this sped up the victory for both PD and OSS.

For Cultural VC, one needs to spam Great Artists, not Great Scientists. So what you're suggesting is that Cultural has to:

1. build and finance a sizable military force that has to travel by galleon from one corner of the map around the periphery (no canal cities captured/built for cultural) to the other corner of the map. This costs a huge amount of hammers and involves a lot of maintenance for a long period of time.

2. Has to research additionally: Compass+Machinery+Optics+Astro, none of which you're likely to get in trade from AIs by T160, to say nothing of T130 (don't forget you need optics relatively early to even find the Wizard... ).

3. Research all the usual cultural techs, build the usual cultural wonders, spam the usual cottages and GAs, whip the usual religious buildings, get the usual religions, all long before T170.

Seeing is believing. I'd like to see that.

[BLubmuz]

Originally Posted by LowtherCastle

(...) Seeing is believing. I'd like to see that.

you described exactly what we (Fifth Element) did in SG 14!

And our date was only few turns worst than your date in the HoF. And you must add that we were attacked by the North!
So i think our game was great. Pity it took the wooden spoon compared to the "military" games. It was a mistake of mine not considering to use galleons for the military options, but only the land (walk) and no one in FE objected, unfortunately

[LowtherCastle]

Originally Posted by BLubmuz

you described exactly what we (Fifth Element) did in SG 14!

And our date was only few turns worst than your date in the HoF. And you must add that we were attacked by the North!
So i think our game was great. Pity it took the wooden spoon compared to the "military" games. It was a mistake of mine not considering to use galleons for the military options, but only the land (walk) and no one in FE objected, unfortunately

My HoF date was from Challenge I, game 2. That it's #1 in the HoF tables is accidental. The Challenge specified that I play as Tokugawa and who my opponents were. The map was specified as Global Highlands. Aggressive AI. I had to worry about getting DoWed and whatnot. None of this is what jesusin would play if he were going for the HoF best in that category. Furthermore, that game was the only CIV cultural VC I've ever finished. (I played one partial game before that in my first attempt at that challenge and abandoned it after I got dogpiled...) So my date is anything but optimal. But I'm not comparing your game to the optimal anyway and I'm not even judging how well you guys did. I'm sure you did very well and I applaud you.

I'm just comparing it to military VCs based on the SG14 scenario and saying that there's no way under the sun Cultural was going to win SG14. For that, all the more, I applaud your team.